“We have no deal, Hart, except for the women. Keep your distance.” He hung up the phone and put it back in her pack.
Keep your distance? Good God. Was it possible Dylan was just outside the compound? Suzi had no idea how long Scout had been missing. The girl could have driven into Ciudad del Este and gotten nabbed there for all she knew.
But her gut was telling her Dylan was close. That he and the boys had grabbed Scout right off her own front porch. That’s the way the guys worked-up close and personal.
Con had moved toward the open door onto the deck. He was looking out, and after a moment, gave her an order.
“Get over here.” He still had the Sphinx in his hand. “You’ve got a job to do. If you do it right, exactly the way I tell you to do it, and everything goes well, you’ll walk away from this.”
If not, she’d probably die-he didn’t have to spell it out. She could see the handwriting on the wall.
Holy crap.
He handed her the Sphinx when she stopped next to him.
“There’s a boat coming,” he said, pointing to the river, and when she looked, she could see it, a gunboat with a.50-caliber BMG mounted on it, which did nothing to calm her fears. “Erich Warner is on the boat, and he’s coming to buy the Sphinx.”
“That’s a lot of people on there.” And every one of them was armed with some kind of carbine slung over their shoulders. Holy gee-fricking-crap. There was only one way to spell firefight-B.A.D.I.D.E.A.
She did a quick look around at the interior of the house. Too many windows was her first thought.
“I… uh, need my pistol.”
“I’ll handle security and defense,” he said. “You just do as you’re told.”
Oh, man, she could have belted him for that. Doing as she was told had never been her strong suit.
“We’re going to let them make the first sortie. What I need is for Erich Warner to come off the boat. You’re going to make that happen for me.”
Oh, God. She clutched the Sphinx closer.
Down on the river, the boat was tying up at the dock, and a whole army of guys was getting off. Drug runners, that’s what she was seeing, somebody’s private paramilitary force-and then she saw Dax, right in the middle of all of them, with his own damn carbine slung over his shoulder.
For an instant, she doubted him.
And then she didn’t. She knew Dax Killian, and if he was working for Erich Warner, he was doing it for a reason. He’d been running his end of the Sphinx business like a military campaign, not like a collector. She knew his background. She knew what kind of man he was-the kind she wanted, the kind she needed, and so help her God, the kind of man she could fall in love with.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Well?” Hawkins asked, watching the house and compound through his rifle scope. Dylan had made his offer, trade Farrel’s girl for Suzi.
“He said he wouldn’t forget my name.”
“That’s a start.” He let out a short laugh. Geezus Kee-rist. “Have you decided whose side we’re on? It’s getting a little crowded down there.”
“We’re on Suzi’s side. Everyone else is fair game, including Farrel, if we can’t take control of him.”
“Fuck.” He hated this damn mission.
“Jungle Boy,” Dylan said into his radio. “Are you in position?”
“Affirmative.”
“If Conroy Farrel takes one step onto that deck, I want you to trank him.”
“Affirmative.”
Dylan put the radio back into a pocket on his tac vest and lifted his binoculars back to his eyes.
“Looks like the drug runners are sending Mr. Killian up to parlay.”
They both lay very quietly in the muck and the mud and the leaves, sunk into the landscape as invisibly as possible, watching the scene unfold.
“When Farrel is finished here, he’ll be ready to trade,” the boss said.
“Good. Then we can go back to square one and start all over. That’s good, Dylan.”
“Asshole.”
“I wanted to wrap this thing up in Bangkok last November. We practically had him.” Without a doubt, he and the boss had been at this for a while, tracking down Conroy Farrel.
“You seeing that?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah.” Dax had barely stepped foot on the deck before he stopped, bent down and picked something up, then turned around and headed back toward the two squads of paramilitary forces lined up on the dock.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” Dylan asked.
But Hawkins, hell, he figured they were going to find out soon enough.
Conroy Farrel was one tough customer, and the Memphis Sphinx was absofuckinglutely amazing, and Suzi was safe. Dax had caught sight of her standing just inside the door, the Sphinx in her hands, with Conroy standing in the shadows behind her.
Dax had hoped to get a lot closer to both of them, but Farrel had other plans. Actually, Conroy Farrel had only one plan-kill Erich Warner as expediently and with as little fanfare as possible.
That’s the way Dax would have done it, but he wouldn’t have put Suzi in the middle of it, and Farrel’s plan was deeply flawed in that respect.
Dax quickly crossed the stretch of empty ground between the house and the dock, wondering if Erich Warner wanted the Sphinx badly enough to abandon common sense, leave the boat, and go up to the house to get it.
Probably, he thought with disgust.
Warner would have the illusion of cover-heavy on the “illusion” part. The German could take as many of Vargas’s soldiers as he wanted, and he could take his little Oriental pit bull, Shoko, but Farrel had made it clear that the Sphinx wasn’t moving without Warner personally coming up and getting it.
Dax knew for a fact that Warner wouldn’t get anywhere near the house, let alone near the Sphinx. Conroy Farrel would drop him the instant he got a shot, which would be the exact instant Erich Warner poked his head out from under the canopy on the boat.
Dax knew, because that’s the way he would have done it.
He made his way down the dock, through two squads of Vargas’s trained militants, and stepped into the boat. Vargas’s captain had remained on board, in charge of the craft.
“We’ve got a problem,” Dax said to Warner. Actually, Dax had more than one, but the German really only had one. “The dealer wants to talk with you personally.”
“Why?” Warner asked, showing a respectable amount of skepticism. “I can have the money transferred from here, she can check her accounts, and you bring me the statue. That’s the deal.”
It always came down to this-who had whom over the bigger barrel. On this deal, Dax figured it was a wash. Both men had already shown an obsessive amount of zeal for what they wanted.
“She wants to meet.”
Warner looked disgusted.
“Some woman named Suzi thinks she’s calling the shots here?” He said the name with such disdain that for a moment, Dax thought the man’s intelligence and instincts for survival would win out.
“Yes, sir.”
“She wants a million dollars for her statue, and she’s running out of time. Tell her I’ll make the transfer when she gives you the Sphinx.”
Behind the German, Shoko said something in Japanese, something bitchy, and Dax saw Warner’s mouth tighten.
“Shoko told me there was a woman involved. Call this dealer, tell her the terms of the original agreement are set.”
“Actually, sir, she wants to talk with you.” He handed Warner the radio Conroy had left for him on the deck.
Warner gave the thing a very skeptical look, then took it and keyed in the mike. “Yes,” he snapped. After a moment, his expression hardened. “Five million?”
Hardball on a losing game, Dax thought.
“I want to see it.”
Of course he did, and Dax needed to be somewhere else.
“Sir,” he interrupted, keeping his voice very low. Warner turned to him. “Tell her I’m coming up there to negotiate the terms of the meeting. You shouldn’t go in there cold.”