He’d changed back into his cargo pants, T-shirt, and shoulder holster, with an open shirt over the top. The 9mm he’d carried in a holster inside the back of his slacks had been transferred along with two folding knives to the cargo pants, and he had extra magazines in the pockets.
He rechecked the loads on his sidearms and the submachine gun he’d picked up the day he’d landed in Paraguay. That was one of the perks of working for a world-class criminal-easy access to plenty of armament.
He packed five extra magazines for the subgun in a duffel with a couple of bottles of water and basic survival gear. Then he loaded his tac vest with more ammo, a flashlight, and a sheath knife.
The way this had been going down all day had proved one thing to him-this was not and never had been an art auction. This damn thing had been down and dirty from the get-go, and he had a lot of bad feelings about not knowing what in the hell was really going on here.
Suzi had been kidnapped, with him not ten feet away from her. Somebody was pulling a helluva lot of strings, and when Dax found that guy, he was going down.
He put his vest in his duffel, made sure he had plenty of cash in his pocket, a big, fat roll of it, and turned to head out the door.
And stopped dead in his tracks, staring at a woman who made his blood run cold.
Ice cold.
He’d met some bad men in his life. Killed quite a few of them. But he’d never met anyone like her.
Shoko.
“Warner wants to see you,” she said, her voice a lilting combination of accents and sibilant seduction, the complete opposite of the flat deadness of her eyes.
She was a machine. He believed it down to his own soul that she had none. She’d been made, pieced together somehow, like a Frankenstein, but the seams didn’t show.
She was standing there in front of him in a pair of lace-up boots, all golden-skinned with her long, silky black hair draped over her shoulder, her body encased in a pair of black pants and an olive green T-shirt, and it made his cold blood curdle.
She looked tactical, like she had a plan, like she was going somewhere. She had three knives he could see, and probably half a dozen he couldn’t.
“I’ll call him,” he said.
“No. He’s waiting out front. Let’s go.”
It was a voice of unmitigated command in five feet three inches of pure sadism. He hated her, and she knew it. No big deal. As far as he’d been able to tell, she hated him, too, just like she did everybody else on the planet, including Warner. Dax didn’t know what the German had on her, but it kept her in line. For all the murderous energy she expended on everyone else, she was never anything other than obsequious to Warner.
Which didn’t solve his current problem.
Paraguayan standoff in a dive-that’s what he had here, and the damnedest thing was, he knew he couldn’t take her, not unless he killed her, and that would be screwing the pooch. Old Warner wouldn’t be giving him anything if he killed the guy’s woman-and Dax was using the term “woman” lightly, very lightly.
So he was going to talk to Warner, give him a minute flat, before he headed up the Paraná to where it met the Tambo.
Zipping the duffel closed, he gave Shoko a short nod.
He closed and secured the door to his room as best he could and then followed the Blade Queen of Bangkok down the stairs and out onto the street to an armored Humvee.
Con keyed a code into the boat’s onboard computer, and the steel gate in the cliff wall swung slowly outward. The engine was in idle, and he could hear the waves lapping at the hull. The woman, Suzanna Toussi, was still out cold, stretched across a bench seat down the port side and wrapped in a light blanket to keep the wind off her.
He’d been careful not to hurt her, but he didn’t think she’d be waking up before early afternoon. He was exceedingly skilled in the pressure points of the body, and Ms. Toussi was down for the count.
Scout would take care of her once he got her inside.
When the gates finally came fully open, Con throttled up the engine and drove the boat into the cave that sat beneath the house. It didn’t take long to carry Suzanna Toussi up to a guest room, and once he was assured of her well-being, he clipped her fanny pack off from around her waist and took it with him into the living room.
Her pistol was locked and loaded, a serviceable 9mm. Her driver’s license and passport both had all the requisite authentications, but it was her phone that intrigued him.
She had only two names in her contact file, and five numbers dialed in her call log, which included both her contacts-which all said one thing to him: It wasn’t really her phone. It was a mission-specific phone, and it didn’t take him long to figure out who she was working for. He started at the bottom of her call log, and the man who answered only said one word-”Go.”
Con pressed the end key and went on to the second number on her call log. The phone was answered, but nothing was said, and then he heard a series of clicks. Sonuvabitch, the receiving phone was waiting for him to key in a code.
Sonuvabitch.
He couldn’t believe it.
She was the DIA agent. Her phone setup was pure covert ops.
And that meant Daniel Killian was his connection to Warner. The world was definitely going to hell in a handbasket when former Special Forces operators started running contraband for the likes of a scumbag like Erich Warner-but that was the world’s problem, not Con’s.
He only had one problem, and fortunately, he had a phone number for the man who could solve it-Daniel Killian.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Following Shoko down the stairs at the Posada, Dax felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He glanced at the phone’s screen, and thank God, Suzi’s name was at the top.
“Yes,” he said into the receiver, bringing the phone to his ear.
“Killian,” some guy said, and Dax’s heart plummeted. “My name is Conroy Farrel, and I’ve got two things I think you’re looking for-the Memphis Sphinx and Suzanna Toussi. For a price, you can have them both.”
“Where are they?” He didn’t miss a step, despite the jolt that went through him. Conroy Farrel-he would not be forgetting that name. Whatever the guy had, he definitely had Suzi’s phone.
“Costa del Rey Ten kilometers up the Paraná to where the Tambo comes in. Then another four kilometers up the Tambo. You’ll see my place on the north shore. I hope you’re already moving, because you’re running out of time.”
“What’s the price?” There was always a price, and it would inevitably be something big and hard to get that was going to cost Dax something big and hard to hold on to, like maybe his life. He had plenty of enemies for the things he’d done-more than he could count.
“Erich Warner, bring him to me. I know he wants the Sphinx, and you can guarantee him he’ll have it before tomorrow night, before moonrise.”
Sometimes when a guy least expected it, when every damn thing except his sex life had been going wrong all damn day, he got a break.
“We’ll be there.” He hung up the phone, and Shoko took it out of his hand. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. She was fast enough to surprise him and strong enough to get her way.
She could have asked, but he would have said “Fuck you,” and she probably knew that.
She hit a couple of keys and looked at the screen.
“Su-zee,” she said, a satisfied smile curving her lips. “I knew there was a woman. Who is she, this Su-zee?”
“A dealer out of New York who was at Beranger’s gallery earlier. She says she’s got the Sphinx, and she wants to make a deal.”
Those dead black eyes slid over him, and he had to consciously check himself to keep from striking out and snapping her neck. Rumbling with the Blade Queen was not going to get him what he wanted most, which was his girl back.
Farrel wanted Warner in exchange for Suzi? Dax could deliver.
“Where is she, this Su-zee with the Sphinx?” She made the name “Suzi” sound like something she was going to be scraping off the bottom of her shoes.