Breaking Loose

by Tara Janzen

  Great soliloquy, she thought, really great, but not precisely correct. Levi Asher was a Grade-A cutthroat, true, but only in the financial sense. The pompous little pervert squirreled his way through the art world, wheeling and dealing and throwing his weight around to get what he wanted, and he usually succeeded. He had his failings and foibles, mostly sexual, but he’d never cut a throat. Suzi would bet her favorite Nikki McKinney angel on it-and she wasn’t parting with her Christian Hawkins dark angel painting for love or money.

  Esteban Ponce hadn’t cut any throats either, not that were on the record. His father, Arturo, was a different story, but Arturo Ponce had far better things to do with his time than chase around after the ancient artifacts of a four-thousand-year-old religion, unlike his son, who didn’t have anything better to do than juggle his numerous girlfriends and distract himself with occult objects.

  As for Remy Beranger, he didn’t look strong enough to cut the strings on a kite, let alone a throat, and Jimmy Ruiz, arguably the most criminal guy in the group, was sitting in the palm of her hand, held in place by a shot at five hundred thousand dollars and a threat the U.S. government wouldn’t hesitate to deliver on if he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain.

  No, she wasn’t down here dealing with cutthroats.

  But maybe Dax Killian was.

  She ran her gaze over him and the room again.

  There was definitely evidence of a holster under his right arm, a band of leather she caught a glimpse of running over the shoulder of his T-shirt and under his other shirt, and the large duffel bag on the console appeared to have gear in it rather than clothing. The sides of the bag were poked out in places, and upon closer inspection, the curved edge of metal she saw in one of the outside pouches on his backpack could be a thirty-round magazine, like one used for an AR-15.

  Wonderful.

  The man was well armed, after the Memphis Sphinx, and wanted her out of his way. Fine. She could accommodate that request.

  “Cutthroats?” she said, letting the first thread of doubt slip into her voice, readying him for the boatload of disinformation heading his way. She didn’t need him thinking about her or what she was up to from here on out. She wanted him to think she was out of the picture. “I was sent down here to complete the transaction on an antiquities deal. Skip didn’t mention anything about cutthroats.”

  “Skip?” he repeated. “You mean Lester “Skip” Leonard? He’s your client?”

  “Yes.” She nodded, and my oh my, he certainly hadn’t disappointed her with picking up on the Illinois politician’s name. There were two “Skips” in Congress. The other was a representative from New Hampshire. “He made all the arrangements, set up the deal. My job was to meet with Remy Beranger and verify the authenticity of the statue. If Beranger is selling the real thing, then I call Skip, and funds are released into Beranger’s account.”

  “And you take the statue with you back to Illinois?”

  “Well…yes,” she said, standing up a little straighter, looking like a woman who was back on firm ground, like she knew exactly what she was doing-and knew what she was doing wasn’t exactly right.

  “Skip Leonard should have known better than to send a woman down here.” He voiced the opinion as cold fact. “Especially after contraband.”

  Suzi had a talent, a small one, for blushing on cue. She did it now. Looking him straight in the eye, she braved her way through his icy accusation, while letting a soft wash of color bloom on her cheeks as a clear admission of guilt.

  Yes, she was silently telling him, I know I’m skirting the edge of the law here.

  Aloud, she brazenly played the party line. “We’re doing the world a favor.” Screw contraband. “I only wish I’d gotten here earlier. You saw what happened back there. Nothing is sacred to these people. A piece as important as the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III should be in more capable hands-hands capable of keeping it safe. I’m on a rescue mission here, Mr. Killian.”

  Both of his eyebrows lifted, letting her know he’d heard that line before-probably dozens of times in dozens of places. It wasn’t an original defense, far from it.

  “I’m sure you are,” he said, but in a way that called her a liar.

  She couldn’t fault him for that. She was lying through her teeth.

  “If you know anything about me, you know my reputation. It’s impeccable.” At least in the art world. Among a certain contingent of her ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends, the words “high maintenance” and “coldhearted” were bandied about with damning regularity. She couldn’t fault them, not really. If she could have frozen her heart solid, she would have done it in a nanosecond and never, ever looked back. Hearts broke. Sometimes in ways that couldn’t ever be put back together.

  “On all counts,” he agreed.

  “So who are you working for?” That’s what General Grant and the DIA would want to know-who the hell else was in on this game?

  “Myself.”

  “Interesting.” And as much a lie as half of what she’d been feeding him. She glanced around the room again and let out a brief sigh before bringing her gaze back to him. She didn’t have to look at her watch to know it was time to go. “You’re right. I didn’t sign on to this deal to get shot at or to get involved with the police. It was supposed to be a straightforward authentication and pickup job. I get to keep my retainer whether I deliver the Sphinx or not. I’ll miss out on the commission, of course, but quite honestly, I didn’t expect this place, Ciudad del Este. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Except for the dozen or more times she’d been to Eastern Europe these last five years, since Christian Hawkins had taken her under his wing and told her he had a use for her.

  That’s what Christian did, find a use for people, and if they were broken, he put them back together. She’d seen it work. Personally, she didn’t think she would live long enough for Superman’s magic to take hold on her. But she was still here, still on the planet, and she had a job to do. It kept her going.

  “I have,” he said, “and these kinds of cities don’t improve over time. You’re not safe here, especially down in the market, trying to do business with the likes of Remy Beranger.”

  She conceded the fact with a short nod of her head.

  “Do you mind if I call myself a cab?” she said, walking over to the phone on the console, not waiting for him to answer.

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll take you.”

  “No,” she said, picking up the receiver and dialing the front desk. “I appreciate your help at the gallery, but I can handle the rest of this. I can get myself back to the hotel.”

  “Not just your hotel,” he said. “All the way home.”

  She glanced over at him, the receiver to her ear, and he was giving her “the look,” the look men gave women who they thought needed a little help in their decision-making process.

  It took an effort of will not to roll her eyes, but she managed.

  “All those guys I dated from Steele Street?” she said. “They made sure I could take care of myself. Don’t worry, Mr. Killian, I can get myself home.”

  For once, he looked satisfied with her answer.

  “Senator Leonard, right?” he asked.

  She nodded, and he smiled-like a wolf. And she noted, with all due respect, that there was nothing in that look that made her want to roll her eyes. Quite the contrary. No doubt, Skip Leonard was in for a very interesting conversation somewhere down the line.

  “Yes,” she said into the phone when the clerk answered. “I need a…oh… un momento, por favor.” She handed him the phone, having used up her whole supply of Spanish. “This isn’t the Gran Chaco.”

  At the Gran Chaco, the desk clerks spoke English, or at least a version of English that included limo service.

  It took Killian about ten seconds to arrange her cab, before he hung up. “I’ll walk you down.”

  “Thank you.” It didn’t hurt to be polite, and it didn’t matter if he put her in the cab, as long as he wasn�
��t going with her. “Curious, wasn’t it? The police showing up like that? I hope to God they didn’t actually shoot anybody.”

  “Probably just a shakedown,” he said, opening the door for her, and when she was through, he locked it back up behind them. “They’ve got to make their lunch money somehow. I may just mosey over there, see what the damages are.”

  “You mean see if there’s still a deal.” That’s what she would have done, if the deal weren’t already headed her way.

  He just smiled, that slow wolfish smile, and she smiled back, a sweet and easy curve of her lips.

  CHAPTER NINE

  She was working him. God, was she working him. Dax knew it, and he was still taking the bait. She could melt a brick wall with that smile.

  “I’m tempted to go with you,” she said, and all he wanted to say was, No, baby. This one’s not for you.

  What he said instead was, “How about if I take you out to dinner the next time I’m in Denver?”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realized that might not have been his wisest course-to ask her out on a date.

  Yes, he thought, unbelievably, that’s exactly what you just did, boyo. You asked her out on a date when you know she’s done nothing but lie to you since you grabbed her in the Old Gallery.

  He was fucking brilliant.

  But she was fucking gorgeous. It was bound to go to a guy’s head.

  “Denver, then,” she said, laying on another smile gee-fricking-guaranteed to slay him.

  She knew it.

  He knew it.

  And she knew he knew it.

  He had no defense, but he wasn’t getting sidetracked, not even close. He was multitasking. That was all. Guys did that sometimes, multitasked about some really important issue, like, say, the fate of the world… and sex. It was always sex, that second task, just humming away in the back of a guy’s brain.

  And yes, he was well aware of the inherent contradiction of trying to get rid of a woman and get in her pants at the same time, especially, somehow, if the pants were white cotton undies.

  They rounded the third-floor landing and headed down to the second. He was keeping her moving, hopefully without being obvious enough to rouse her curiosity. Curious women were dangerous women.

  Unless they were naked and in your bed.

  Right. He was all for curiosity in bed-or out of bed, or anywhere, actually, when a woman was naked, and if she was naked and dangerous, all the better.

  More multitasking. Geezus.

  His point being that he’d lied, too. That had been no shakedown at the Old Gallery. Before she’d gotten her optics out, the dust had been going up in rooster tails, the whole lot of them, police included, piling out of the building and burning rubber to get away-from what the hell what, is what he wanted to know. Ponce, his crew, and, for whatever reason, one of the cops, had been going one way, Asher the other, and that damned Jimmy Ruiz had circled back to get the Land Cruiser. The only person he hadn’t seen come out the front door had been Remy Beranger. The sick little Frenchman hadn’t been anywhere in sight.

  “So when did you get interested in ancient Near Eastern artifacts?” she asked.

  “A couple of years ago,” he said, giving her as good an answer as any. He took hold of her arm for the next few steps, because the carpet was lifted in places and torn in others. It was an instinctive gesture-three-inch heels, steep stairs, bad carpeting, hold on. He didn’t even think about doing it. “How about you?”

  “My interest isn’t personal,” she said. “It never is, not with antiquities, and a piece like this Memphis Sphinx, a statue with no known provenance or verifiable authentication, has a good probability of being something other than what all these buyers have been told.”

  “You mean it’s a fake.”

  “There’s a good possibility of that, yes.” They reached the last flight of stairs, and he made sure they got down them and through the lobby as quickly as possible. He didn’t have a problem with the place, it suited his needs, but he understood why she did, and he’d noticed Marcella and Marceline over by the elevators get all but riveted to the floor by the sight of a real girl.

  He didn’t blame them. Even in the great pantheon of real girls, Suzanna Royale Toussi was realer and girlier than most. Anyone who wanted to know how it was done would have been staring their eyeballs out-like Marcella and Marceline.

  He hated to tell them, but it didn’t matter how hard they stared, or how hard they tried, even with a trowel and forty yards of spandex, they couldn’t get within spitting distance of the super-hot Ms. Toussi. Not on his Curve-o-Meter.

  “Beranger could have the real deal,” he said, opening the hotel’s main door onto the street. The Posada Plaza didn’t have the world’s best air-conditioning system, but it was a damn sight better than the straight heat of the city. It was still a hundred and one outside, and the sidewalk was steaming.

  “Yes, it’s a possibility,” she conceded.

  “Do you believe in it, the Sphinx? The whole immortality thing, that it has mystical powers?”

  The question seemed pretty straightforward to him, but he felt her stiffen, her body making a subtle shift from acquiescence to defense.

  “No,” she said, reaching up and adjusting her sunglasses, settling them more firmly on her face, her voice coolly adamant. “Absolutely not.”

  He’d hit a nerve, unintentionally, and it didn’t take him more than a moment to realize which one.

  Hell. Under other circumstances, he would apologize, but he didn’t think her knowing he’d been investigating her would improve the situation, and this most certainly wasn’t the time to be bringing up the subject of her dead daughter.

  He’d given her loss a lot of thought over the last few months, remembering how she’d looked that night in the gallery, so gorgeous it hurt, and absolutely untouchable, like she did now. More than once, he’d wished he could reach out over the miles and offer her some comfort, usually about the second glass of Scotch, sure, but the intent had been pure. She was cool, all right, firmly in control, and he’d bet that was exactly the way she needed to keep things.

  Well, she had a lot better chance of doing that if she got out of Ciudad del Este inmediatamente.

  A cab pulled up at the curb, and she started forward.

  He matched her stride for stride, and when they reached the taxi, he opened the door for her, then stood by while she moved past him to get in. At the last moment, he reached for her arm again, stopping her with a light touch.

  She turned to face him, the obvious question on her lips, but he beat her to the punch.

  “You’re making the right decision here,” he said. “I’ll let you know how it all turns out when I get to Denver.”

  Classic strategy, reinforce the goal, which idiotically seemed to be that damned dinner date, once he wrapped up his whole trading-the-ancient-Egyptian-statue-for-the-intel-on-a-terrorist-sleeper-cell-in-the-heartland-of-America mission.

  “I’ll hold my breath,” she said, her eyes unmistakably focused on him through the amber lenses of her sunglasses.

  Cool, cool Suzi Toussi-he just shook his head and stood back as she finished getting in the cab, and he closed the door for her when she was settled.

  Reaching in his pants pocket, he pulled out a roll of bills and thumbed off a few, then leaned down into the passenger side window of the front seat and handed the bills across to the driver.

  “Gran Chaco,” he said. There was only one.

  “Está bien,” the driver replied with a broad smile, noticing the healthy tip Dax had added to the fare. “Muy bien.”

  Turning to look in the back seat, Dax had only one word for her. “Home,” he said, and he meant it. He didn’t want to see her in Ciudad del Este again. The congressman was out of luck on this deal-and really, when he thought about it, few things were scarier than the thought of a congressman looking for immortality.

  She glanced at him over the tops of her sunglasses, and he
figured that was as good as he was going to get. The message had gotten through. That’s all he wanted. He stepped back on the curb, and even after the cab pulled away, he stayed there, watching her leave.

  Home-it’s what he’d said. It’s what he expected.

  What he didn’t expect was to see a goddamn blue Land Cruiser with Jimmy frickin’ Ruiz at the wheel pull out of a side street and take off after Suzi’s cab.

  Geezus. He was starting to feel like he was in the middle of a beehive, with all the worker bees buzzing around trying to steal the honey and snatch the queen.

  Dammit.

  Suzi or the Sphinx-it wasn’t really a contest, but one of those prizes was going one way, and the other-he hoped to hell-was still at Beranger’s. Or if it wasn’t, that’s at least where the trail would start.

  Again, dammit.

  He pulled his radio receiver out of the cargo pocket on his pants and started down the street at a fast walk, heading for his rent-a-Jeep, and trying not to draw any attention to himself. Ciudad del Este was the shopping capital of Paraguay, racking up billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise sales every year, most of it illegal. In the market, the streets were always packed, not just with shoppers, fruit sellers, guys hawking all kinds of crap out of handcarts, armed security guards for the big stores, and the occasional, oddly open-market drug dealer selling his goods off the hood of his car, but with hundreds of hormiguitas, “little ants,” men who made their living smuggling goods across the border on their backs.