“She beat the crap out of me every time I tried to escape, and that was quite a few times.”
“Good for you.” Geezus. He didn’t know a guy who could have come out ahead of Shoko, and his girl had stayed in one piece. “Turn away, Suzi, and cover your ears.”
She didn’t ask why, she just did it, and he put one shot in the back of Shoko’s head. It was just good business.
Together, he and Suzi walked back to the boats, and they found a couple of containers to carry river water back up to where Shoko and Warner were lying with the Sphinx still sitting on Warner’s chest. One container after another, they poured the water over the Sphinx, washing off all the blood. When it was clean, he pulled the duct tape off and Warner’s hands fell to either side, his arms dropping to his sides.
For good measure, they splashed the rest of the river water over it, emptying both containers.
“You want me to carry it for you?” he asked, but she shook her head and bent down to pick up the statue.
What a thing, he thought, all golden and granite and crystalline, warmed by moonlight. It really was beautiful.
Suzi was careful, picking it up and holding it close in to her chest, and they started back down to the boats.
She had it cradled in her arms, facing up, and when they were ten yards from the shore, the eyes lit up like a couple of damn flashlights. Two beams. Bright as frickin’ halogen, cutting through the night like a pair of lasers, and lighting her up like a Macy’s parade.
And then they turned off.
Fuck, he thought.
“Geez,” she said. “Did you see that?”
He let out a short, unhappy laugh.
“Oh, yeah, babe. I saw that.”
Per-fricking-fecto.
Another damn mystery in his life.
“I need a drink.” He was just being honest. Scotch had been invented for times like these.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Creed awoke to the sound of a ringing phone. He was lying flat on his back in the dark… in a cave, that was right. And he’d gotten hit by a pile driver… yeah, that was right.
He rolled onto his side, curled up, and pushed himself to his hands and knees. Geezus. He put one hand on his forehead before he got to his feet. Geezus.
He flipped on his flashlight, arranged his carbine so the sling wasn’t all cattywampus, and then he found the phone, lying on the dock, about twenty feet away.
“Hello,” he said when he answered it.
“What are you doing answering Suzi’s phone?” Dylan asked. He’d recognize the boss’s voice in his sleep.
“I found it in the cave under the house. The one behind the gate we could see on the river.”
“You have Suzi with you?”
“No.” He turned his head one way, very gently, then the other way, just as gently.
“Farrel?”
“No.” He had a few kinks from rumbling with the guy, but he did not have the guy.
“So we lost him.” Dylan didn’t sound too glad about that bit of news.
“Maybe Zach got him.” But Creed doubted it. One guy was not going to take down Conroy Farrel.
“Zach just checked in, empty-handed,” Dylan said. “The house is clear, and he’s headed down to you. Superman and I are coming in.”
“Good.” That was all good. Zach had cleared the house, while he, Creed, had gotten his clock cleaned.
Damn. He knew what he’d seen. It was all coming back in Technicolor.
“What about Killian?” Dylan asked. “We saw him take a go-fast boat out of that cave and head up-river after the gunboat. Have you-forget it. Here he comes now.”
Creed heard it, too.
“Or at least that’s the boat,” Dylan said. “Can you see who’s in it from where you are?”
“I’m in a cave, boss.”
“Oh…right.”
He heard Dylan saying something to Hawkins.
“Okay,” the boss came back on the phone. “Cristo here brought along his night vision goggles, so he’s up one-”
“Two,” Creed heard Superman say.
“Bull, two… oh, he’s taking a point for his superlative body count on the Paraguayans, and all I can say is I hope we don’t read about this in the damn papers. You see a CNN reporter up there anywhere?”
“No.” His head was clearing a little now.
“And we have positive identification on Suzi Toussi and Dax Killian coming out of the Tambo River, lounging comfortably in the front seats, with no one else on board, and I’m guessing heading back to Ciudad del Este,” Dylan gave the report. “We’re going to need to talk to him.”
“Debrief him.”
“Find out what he’s been up to since he left the Army.”
“Maybe get him on board,” Creed said. It’s what they’d all been thinking since Dax Killian had shown up in Denver six months ago, working a job that had ended up involving one of their own. The guy was a legend, very skilled, and they all knew for a fact that he could steal a car blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back. He had chop-shop chops.
“Yeah. I’ve been talking to Grant.”
“Good.” SDF was always running just a little shorthanded it seemed lately, at least to Creed. The world needed saving eighteen times a day some weeks.
“So what can you tell me about Farrel?”
“I saw him.” Up close and personal.
“And?”
“And we need to bring him in. No assassination. And if the CIA sends anybody else after him, we need to take them out.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
“Okay then…got it.”
Yeah, Creed knew how the boss was suddenly feeling, gut-punched, and sick, and maybe elated, except he’d be too confused to get very far with that one, and edging up behind all that, moving in fast, like a frickin’ freight train, would be the anger.
Yeah, Creed knew all about it. What he didn’t know was what to do with all of it-except put each overwhelming emotion in a box, and put each box someplace where none of them would get mixed in together, because man, that was one toxic brew. Compartmentalization-it was the only way.
“We’ve got his girl,” Dylan said. “If we can’t find him, he’ll come to us.”
And they’d sure as hell better be damn good and ready for when that happened.
“Stay where you are,” Dylan continued. “We’re at the boat. The package is still in good shape, and we’ll be there in about five minutes. We’ll check the compound, rifle through Farrel’s house, steal everything we find, and then go see what happened to that gunboat.”
Hell.
“Sounds like a long night, boss.”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll have you home before dawn.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Ciudad del Este
“Ouch.”
“That’s the last one.” Dax smoothed a small bandage over one of Suzi’s cuts. He’d paid double for super-service in this dump, so he’d had no qualms about letting her soak her heart out in the Posada Plaza’s bathtub, and now she was all warm and steamy and clean, and wrapped in a towel he couldn’t wait to take off of her, and this time it really wasn’t about sex.
He’d been in the bathtub with her, and he knew she was as exhausted as he was, which was bordering on dangerous. They’d moored Conroy Farrel’s ultra-expensive boat at the public docks, paid four kids to watch over it for the night, and eaten on the way back to the hotel.
All they had to do now was sleep.
“Come on, let’s get you into bed.”
Her hair was wet and stringy. Her makeup was long gone. She had a bruise the size of a pistol grip along her temple and cheekbone. She was almost trembling she was so tired and had so much emotion to work through-and she’d never been more beautiful to him in her life.
Yeah. He’d racked up a whole day and a half in her company, and somehow she was his, lock, stock, and barrel, one hundred percent, all his, the whole girl.
His.
Only his.
The rest of the world could go take a flying leap.