She hung up the phone and headed into the bathroom, her mission clear-get rid of Jimmy Ruiz and his fake Sphinx, but keep him dangling, in case it turned out she needed him for something, like to help her set up a meeting with Esteban Ponce. She could find Levi Asher on her own. He was never more than a couple of phone calls away. Ponce, on the other hand, could easily be holed up at some local hacienda or estancia, or at someone’s big house near the country club.
In the bathroom, she quickly stripped out of her ruined suit and slipped into a pair of olive green cargo pants and a white T-shirt with her shoulder holster fitted snugly over the top. She finished the outfit with a black camp shirt printed with white and yellow orchids to conceal and camouflage the pistol and holster rig. The RFID scanner went into a pocket on her pants, along with her phone, some cash, and her identification. A few other necessities came out of her purse and went into a canvas fanny pack she buckled around her waist. Then she pulled a pair of low-heeled, brown leather boots out of the satchel.
With her boots tied, she was ready to face whatever the night brought on, including Dax Killian, she hoped.
Dinner in Denver?
And in the middle of a top secret mission she’d said yes? Good Lord, she didn’t know what in the world either of them had been thinking, or at least she wasn’t about to admit to anything, not even the obvious, not here.
A couple minutes later, when she opened the doors from the bedroom to the living room, ready to shoo Jimmy Ruiz out of her suite, she realized she’d been wrong about the night ahead, dead wrong-and Jimmy had not been fast enough.
He’d been shot, over and over again.
There was blood everywhere.
She clenched the doorknob, her knuckles white, her pulse suddenly pounding, her gaze riveted to the body on the floor for a long, endless, gut-wrenching moment before her brain and her training kicked in.
Geezus. Sweet geezus. She took a breath and drew her pistol, and began clearing the suite, just like Superman had taught her, starting with the bar area and moving to the patio. Coming back through the living room, she avoided looking at Jimmy and walked to the main door. It had been left open, and she quickly checked the veranda overlooking the lobby. It was empty. Whoever had killed Ruiz was gone.
They’d also stolen the Sphinx.
Geezus. She looked back toward the body and felt her breath catch in her throat, felt her chest tighten. Jimmy Ruiz had been killed for a hunk of plaster, shot multiple times in the torso-and the whole game had changed.
She started to close the door, then stopped with it still partway open. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t close herself in a room with a massacred body lying in a pool of blood. Not even Christian Hawkins, Superman, could teach her how to do that.
Good God. A wave of heat rose in her face, and she felt an edge of panic skitter across the base of her brain. Sweat broke out on her upper lip.
She took a breath, then another.
Jimmy Ruiz.
Dead. He was so still, so torn up, lying there with his blood and his insides spilling out of him, his blank eyes staring off into nothing.
He had a gun, and he’d drawn it, but he hadn’t used it. The.45 lying next to him on the floor didn’t have a silencer, and if he’d gotten a shot off, she would have heard it, even in the bathroom behind two sets of closed doors. The deed had been fast and effective, and she hadn’t heard a damn thing, no struggle, no cry for help, no shots, which meant that whoever had killed him had been using a suppressed weapon, and to her that meant one thing-professional killer, somebody who killed as part of their job or for hire, a gangster or somebody’s thug, which was just about everyone in the whole goddamn country.
She honest to God didn’t think it had been Dax Killian, and yet… and yet she knew he was more than capable of killing as brutally as necessary. He’d been trained for violence of a very high order. He was one of the world’s warriors, the one in a hundred who ruled in combat, the one in a hundred who did what had to be done-dispassionately, professionally.
But this wasn’t combat.
At least it hadn’t been until now.
So help me…so help me, God. Her gun hand started to shake, and her breath grew shorter, and she stood there, second after second, frozen in place, looking at Jimmy, at what was left of him.
It had been a long time since she’d seen a dead body, but not long enough. It would never be long enough.
Oh, Christ, please. She couldn’t do this.
A sob left her, and she clamped her mouth shut, holding everything inside. She couldn’t afford to fall apart, not here, not now.
A fake Memphis Sphinx.
Somebody was going to be very unhappy when they looked at the bottom of the statue and figured out they’d gotten exactly nothing for their trouble, and that very unhappy person might just decide to come back.
With the realization came a fresh wash of fear, born in panic and running like a streak of wildfire down her spine, all of it leading to one undeniable conclusion: She needed to get the hell out of the Gran Chaco.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dax saw the bad news the minute he pulled into the parking lot of the Gran Chaco-Esteban Ponce’s Range Rover parked in front of the hotel’s grand entrance with one of his boys standing guard.
Fuck. This was a party, and he most definitely should not have been late. Goddamn.
He braked to a stop and pulled the Jeep into first gear. Jimmy Ruiz’s Land Cruiser was sitting a few rows over, and he bet that guy wasn’t too damn happy to have Ponce show up at his afternoon soiree.
Guaranteed, nobody was going to be happy to see him either. There was nothing like bad odds and a dead body to put him into Don’t Fuck with Me mode, and while the Frenchman was going cold on the floor of his shop, Ruiz and Suzi’s odds at the Gran Chaco had laid out at two to one against.
He crossed the lot and the hotel’s drive, entered the lobby, and headed straight to the front desk.
Halfway there, he changed his mind and his direction, heading instead toward Esteban Ponce. The guy was crossing the lobby in his white sports coat and red silk shirt, with one of his bodyguards and one of the cops from the gallery, complete with carbine. To top the bad scene off, Esteban had Beranger’s damn messenger bag slung over his shoulder.
Sonuvabitch. The Sphinx. Somehow, some way, he was getting played on this deal every which way from Sunday, and just who in the hell was Suzi Toussi really working for here? The bulge in the bag was the right size, the right shape, and Esteban had the world’s most satisfied expression on his face, the asshole, but Dax was just going to have to let it go.
Because everything that had happened this afternoon had happened way too damn fast to suit him, and he had this little problem. This little doubt eating at him, chewing him up in chunks and spitting him out with the last of his common sense and every step he took, and that little problem was all legs, slinky curves, and auburn hair, tearing him up and whispering her name in his ear-Suzanna Royale Toussi.
Truth was, he didn’t give a damn who she was working for in Ciudad del Este, a state of affairs he was not going to be analyzing anytime soon. She hadn’t gotten out of the middle of this thing, not by a long shot, and he needed to make that happen ASAP. Yeah, that was the smart move, go find the girl, the Sphinx be damned. Sweat out the deal for two years, bust his ass for four months, and then just walk on by and let the damn thing take a hike out the door.
Hell. It wouldn’t get far. Dax swore it.
But Suzi, dammit, if the Memphis Sphinx was heading one way, and she was heading the other, then chances were that things had not gone her way, and in Ciudad del Este that was a damn good way to get killed.