Walking along, looking like a guy minding his own business and not like a guy cataloguing the scene taking place at the Old Gallery’s front door, he ran through the frequencies on his receiver again and came up empty. He hoped to hell Beranger had someone on the inside giving a warning, but he sure wasn’t hearing one, and he hoped to God the dealer had more sense than to let the cops get ahold of the Sphinx. Dax did not want to have to go up against the official Paraguayan anything to accomplish his mission. It wasn’t a matter of scruples. He’d do whatever it took to get the Egyptian statue, but there were only so many hours left on this gig, and the clock was ticking. He didn’t have time to take on the Paraguayan police force.
Of course, truth be told, if he was going to have to take them on, he’d rather take on three of them in the market than the whole organization at their headquarters and be trying to steal the Sphinx out of their evidence locker.
Three cops.
It didn’t make sense. If they’d been staking out the gallery, they knew how many men were inside.
Hell, this wasn’t a bust. It was a shakedown, and if Suzi Toussi was the target, he needed to get to her first. The Old Gallery was big, but not so big that he couldn’t find her pretty damn quickly.
Yeah, he’d play it straight. Grab the girl, shake her down himself. Tough guy, all the way.
He turned into the alley bordering the gallery and lengthened his stride, speeding up. Halfway down the narrow opening, the same pile of junk and garbage containers he’d used two days in a row was still in place, still granting him easy access to Beranger’s second story. He quickly climbed to the top of the containers and swung himself up onto the roof, and in less than a minute was slipping through the window he’d jimmied open his first night in town.
The room he entered was dark, dusty, and sweltering. If it had been a hundred and one in the shade at the cantina, it was easily a hundred and ten in the upstairs room. Below him, he could hear the commotion of the police entering the gallery: raised voices, barked orders, and shelves of Beranger’s tourist junk, the cheap stuff he kept by the front door, crashing. Guerrilla tactics-this was definitely a shakedown. Behind him, he heard the sound of someone running across the roof.
He leaned back and took a quick look through the window, just in time to see Jimmy Ruiz skid to a stop at the edge of the building and lower himself over the side, into the alley. He had a messenger bag slung over his shoulder that he had not been carrying when he’d entered the gallery with Suzi. Dax was guessing Beranger’s.
Well, hell, so much for Suzi Toussi’s partner, and whatever anyone else thought, Jimmy Ruiz was obviously convinced that the cops were after him. Dax hoped the guy was right, and for the second time, he wondered what in the hell was in the bag.
Crossing the room, he put his ear to the door and heard someone heading his way, someone wearing blue-and-white-striped, handmade, leather spectator peep-toe pumps-he was putting the bank on it. He’d know the sound of a woman running in high heels anywhere, and this woman was running up the stairs at breakneck speed.
He was impressed.
He was also ready when she reached the top of the stairs and started to dash down the hall. With one smooth move, he opened the door, caught her hard into his arms, and swung her inside the dark and dusty room. While she still had the breath startled out of her, he clamped his hand over her mouth-not that she was likely to scream for help. She had definitely been running away.
She immediately started fighting him, squirming this way and that, her body twisting in his grip. When she tried to impale his foot with her spike heel, he lifted her partway off her feet.
Kee-rist. He tightened his hold on her, squeezing her hard enough to get her attention.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Ms. Toussi,” he said close to her ear. “So don’t fight me.”
She jerked her head around, trying to see him, but he doubted if she could see much in the gloomy room.
“Yeah, I know who you are, Suzanna Royale Toussi, fresh off the boat from Denver, Colorado. If Ruiz was your partner, you’re on your own,” he continued, his voice low and hard. “He took a powder about thirty seconds ago and disappeared into the alley, so I strongly advise that you take my help in getting out of here.”
At that, she said something from under his hand, something short and vehement, and he didn’t blame her. Then she started to squirm again, really putting herself into it. Up against anyone except a trained commando, she might have had a chance. She was that good, pretty tricky with the moves-but she didn’t have a chance, not one. She was packing a pistol in a shoulder rig, though. At least that’s what in the hell it felt like, and nothing could have surprised him more, or pleased him better, except her not being here at all. Pistol or not, his standard operating procedure on a snatch and grab was to not give the snatchee a chance to bring any kind of a weapon into play and he’d followed procedure. She was securely restrained, her arms pinned to her sides. He could have had her on the floor in less than a second, or slammed her up against the wall and knocked her senseless in less than that, but he didn’t want her on the floor, and he was too good at his job to have to knock her senseless.
So he struggled with her, let her wear herself out, and he kept tightening his grip on her, keeping her a little off balance, making her work to stay on her feet. It didn’t take long in the hundred-plus heat for her to need a break.
When she went limp in his arms, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling, her shoulders slumped, he didn’t loosen his grip, not an ounce. He couldn’t take the chance.
Down in the main gallery, Beranger’s junk was still crashing to the floor, voices were still raised, but no one else was pounding up the stairs. In between the shouted orders and interrogation, Dax could hear Beranger whining and wheedling, doing his best to placate the police. Pointedly, he didn’t hear anyone else. Beranger, Ruiz, and the bodacious Suzi Toussi hadn’t been that far from the entrance when the police had busted in. Ruiz had fled, Toussi had fled, albeit in different directions, and Beranger was holding the fort. The big bad boys on the deal were either still sequestered in the “viewing room,” or they’d found another way out of the rabbit warren of the Old Gallery-the plan currently holding the top spot on his own “To Do” list.
“If you’re ready to cooperate, we need to get out of here,” he said close to her ear again.
She shook her head no, the gesture absolutely adamant.
“You want to stay?” That didn’t make sense, but she nodded.
Well, hell.
“Not an option,” he said, and he meant it. She could hear what was going on downstairs as well as he could. “Come on.”
He was doing her a favor, and she had to know it, but when he started half carrying her, half plain old moving her along across the room, she began struggling again and trying to dig in her heels.
All well and good, he didn’t give a damn. She was the piece that didn’t fit here. She had information he needed, and he was taking her with him through the window and across the roof.
“Bull,” he said, when she mumbled something against his hand.
She repeated her threat, enunciating fairly damn well for someone with a hand clamped over her mouth-and he got the message. He got it loud and clear:
“I’m with Ponce…he’ll hunt you down…kill you, if you kidnap me.”
“Bull,” he said again, and he meant it.
It was a good threat, though, given her current circumstances, very imaginative, very quick, guaranteed to get a guy’s attention and possibly his cooperation, maybe the only thing guaranteed to get a guy’s attention. Esteban was a lightweight, but his father wasn’t, and nobody fucked with Arturo Ponce’s family, not without a very careful calculation of the odds.