“Suzi,” he said, “Suzi Toussi,” as if he simply liked the feel of how it rolled off his tongue.
He didn’t smile much, but when he did, it was dazzling-a quick grin, a boyishly lopsided curve of white teeth accompanied by a twinkle in his eye. He had that kind of eyes, dark hazel and utterly depthless, like the stars and the cosmos were in them, and when he grinned, she felt like she could see all of it, all the way down through the ages of the universe.
“I realized last night that I had made a mistake,” he continued. “And I usually don’t.”
She believed him. He wasn’t the type to make mistakes, never had been, and yet things had happened to him, bad things, and they were easy to see-the scars on his arms, the scars on his neck and face. Interestingly, they didn’t mar his looks. He was as beautiful as he’d ever been, and J. T Chronopolous had always been a beautiful man-tall, and strong, and muscular, his face cleanly chiseled, an older, tougher-looking version of his brother, Kid Chaos.
“What mistake?” She wanted to know everything, especially what had happened to him. Just looking at him made her heart pound. He was a friend, a street runner from way back, one of the best of a crew of former juvenile car thieves who had become Special Defense Force. She and J.T. went back years, and yet not even the faintest glimmer of recognition lit his eyes when he looked at her.
“You’re not the one I should have taken last night,” he said.
Well, it was hard not to agree with that, but she went ahead and asked.
“Why not?” Good Lord. She’d gone to his funeral six years ago, and she’d cried her heart out with everyone else who had been at that gravesite, and if he wasn’t dead, then she needed an explanation.
Everyone at Steele Street would need an explanation. She felt like a Saturday morning hero, some kind of intrepid adventurer, to have gone off into the wild jungles of Paraguay in search of an ancient Egyptian statue purported to have the power to grant everlasting life-and to return with the lost chop-shop boy risen from the dead, the one who’d changed them all.
He smiled and reached for the backpack.
Oh, yes, that was her all right, Indiana Jones and some Crystal Temple of the Covenant-type thing, except what he pulled out of the backpack was a granite and gold statue known far and wide as the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III, the Memphis Sphinx, and he set it down on the table between the coffee urn and the butter, next to the salt and pepper.
The real deal. Just sitting there. Defying all the death and destruction it had left in its wake in Ciudad del Este and probably everywhere else it had been for the last four thousand years. A tingling rush of excitement coursed up her spine.
She would have known it anywhere.
“Go ahead and look it over if you want to,” he said. “It’s lasted for millennia. I don’t think it’s going to fall apart on my kitchen table.”
And he didn’t much sound like he cared if it did.
J. T. Chronopolous and the Memphis Sphinx-Suzi’s Big Day, indeed.
Geez.
She reached out and picked the statue up and immediately felt the weight of it, not just the granite, but the gravitas, the seriousness of it.
“So how long have you been working for the DIA?” he asked.
Her heart took a start, and she looked up from where she was running the tip of her finger over the Sphinx’s paws.
“What in the world would make you think that?” She was shocked, truly. No one could possibly know whom she was working for in Paraguay.
He shrugged. “It’s their statue. They’ve had it for over ten years, squirreled away in a lab, using it for experiments they and the CIA conducted in remote viewing under the code names Stargate and Moonrise. The Memphis Sphinx, in particular, was associated with the Moonrise part of the program.”
Her nerves, which she thought she’d been doing an amazing job of controlling, started to fizzle and spark.
“And you know this because?”
“I think I was part of that program.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
He shook his head. “I know Erich Warner, though, and I brought you here because I thought you were working for him.” There was just enough question in the statement that she felt she needed to answer.
“No,” she said. “I’m not working for a world-class degenerate psychopath.”
“Do you know Daniel Killian?” he asked, giving her heart another start.
“Uh…yes.” She returned the statue to the table.
“Is he a criminal, mob connected, cartel connected?”
“No,” she said.
He gave another small shrug, as if he didn’t believe her, and then he checked his watch.
“There were four buyers at Remy Beranger’s yesterday afternoon. Ponce was there for his father. Levi Asher was there for himself. You were there for the DIA, at least you haven’t denied it, and someone was there for Erich Warner,” he said. “Daniel Killian is the only one left.”
A startling conclusion, if he was right, which he wasn’t. A number of the buyers on the DIA’s list had not shown up at Beranger’s.
“What makes you think it’s not me? What changed your mind?”
“Instinct.” He poured more coffee into his cup, and as the steam curled up around his right hand, she noticed a tremor run through it, strong enough to make his hand shake. Some of the coffee spilled onto the table, and he carefully put the urn back down. He was missing half of his ring finger, and she was not going to ask how, or why, but her heart just broke.
What had happened to him?
“And your phone,” he finished. “You have a couple of interesting numbers in it and not much more.”
Her phone, dammit.
“Can I have it back?” She’d looked for her fanny pack first thing when she had awakened, knowing it contained her two best chances for escape: her 9mm and her phone. But she hadn’t been able to find it and would have been shocked if she had.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. Not until after Erich Warner is dead. Then you can have it all, even the Sphinx.”
Her eyebrows lifted as she absorbed that surprising offer.
“Thank you.” It was the only appropriate thing to say. It was also exactly how she felt-thank you very, very much, Mr. Conroy Farrel. Erich Warner dead was a big favor to everybody.
He reached for his coffee, revealing the inside of his right arm. It was a tragedy of scars. Another tremor rippled up the inside of his forearm even as she was looking at it, and when she glanced up to his face, she saw him wince.
J.T., my God, J.T.-he’d been on a mission, like dozens of missions he’d gone on before, down into Colombia, and he’d been killed there. That’s what they all thought, what they’d all thought for six years.
But here he was, his memory gone, his body a testament to the suffering he’d borne, and she was overwhelmed by it all. She didn’t know where to begin to help him, or if she should even try. He didn’t even know who she was, and sometimes it was better not to fix things but to let them lie-and she had no idea what would be best for John Thomas Chronopolous.
It made her feel so helpless, and when she looked at him, she wanted to tell him.
But he’d kidnapped her and was holding her hostage, and she needed to be smarter than to trust him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Creedence Clearwater Revival, CCR, those were Creed’s boys, the guys with his theme song-”Run Through the Jungle.”
Like a cat.
A hundred yards from Dylan and Hawkins’s OP, Creed cut down through the trees to the river. He could hear the boat getting louder, coming nearer, but he needed eyes-on ID. They’d seen two fishing boats already today, and if it was another one, all the better. If not, the boss was going to have to make a few more command decisions.
At two hundred yards, Creed knelt in the brush at the shoreline, concealed behind a dense layer of trees and vegetation, sweat running down the greasepaint camouflaging his face.