Breaking Loose

by Tara Janzen

  Christ. Scout had a soft spot for every sniveling brat on the planet-and he had a soft spot for Scout. If he had a sniveling brat, she was it.

  And if that wild-ass boy on Con’s payroll who was chasing her from one side of the globe to the other didn’t watch himself, Con was going to put his butt in a sling. Scout could do better than some red-haired, freckle-faced heathen with more balls than brains. Jack Traeger was running on pure testosterone, which was fine on the job, but not when it came to Scout.

  “Your call,” he said to her, and saw a small smile of satisfaction curve her lips. Pretty soon, she’d be the one giving the orders. He could see the writing on the wall. He could see a lot of writing on the wall, and sometimes it unnerved him, especially when it concerned her and their mission.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. It wasn’t too late for her to walk away. Her part of the mission had only one target, Erich Warner. But the mission had gotten complicated, and in Con’s experience, each added layer of complication increased the possibility of failure, and failure was a dangerous commodity.

  The look she gave him would have quelled a lesser man.

  “Don’t go there, Con,” she said. “I’ve got as much right to this as you do…almost.”

  Yeah, but the almost was a big one. He was locked in, every chemical in his body irrevocably changed by the drugs he’d been given-and the scars, hell, from the looks of them, he was damn lucky to even be alive. As bugged as he sometimes got with his memory situation, he was glad he couldn’t remember being tortured, but he’d been cut, that was for damn sure, deep and often. Given the array of “tools” available to the good doctors in Bangkok, it didn’t take much figuring to figure out who’d carved him up.

  Scout had not been touched by the brutality or the drugs, but her father had been in that charnel house in Bangkok with him, and the Girl Scout’s father had not made it out alive.

  “So how does it look?” she asked, slanting him a curious glance. “Cool? Like it’s magic or something?”

  “Really cool,” he said and grinned. At heart, Scout was still a kid, and to the best of his ability, he tried to keep it that way. “But no magic.”

  “It’s worth a fortune, though, right?”

  “Millions, easy.” To everyone else. For Con, the statue had only one value, the same value it had to the spymaster-bait. Keep it or lose it-he didn’t care, not after Erich Warner was dead, and to that end, he wanted to get the statue to Costa del Rey, King’s Coast, the compound he’d taken over up-river. Given the tricky time frame on the transference of immortality-brief and nonnegotiable with the rise of the full moon at sunset, with all necessary astral conjunctions in place, the whole shebang destined to happen in just a little over twenty-four hours-Warner had to have his sights locked onto Ciudad del Este and be waiting for the call.

  Con was going to do his damnedest to oblige.

  It wasn’t revenge. It was justice. Dr. Souk was dead, Tony Royce, Con’s initial contact into the blackest operations ever run out of the underbelly of the U.S. government, the same, long dead. Scout had only one name left on her Christmas list-Erich Warner, the man who had supported and nurtured Dr. Souk’s demented mind and twisted science. The man who’d turned Souk’s research and experiments into a worldwide, multimillion-dollar industry in psychopharmaceuticals, the kind of drugs Con couldn’t live without. None of the pills made him high. They just kept him alive, and his life was only one of thousands Warner had touched and destroyed. The German’s operations extended far beyond what had gone on in Bangkok. The man had constructed an empire of misery and suffering, of dragging people under with the dirtiest and darkest of crimes-and someone had to hold him accountable. Someone had to stop him.

  If the world needed a defender, a guardian angel to stand between it and hell, it was Warner’s dark deeds that had made one, and so the man would be killed by his own creation. Scout saw a hard, karmic balance in the completion of such a brutal circle.

  Con only saw necessity.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Traffico jammo at the guardhouse with the main exit gate closed. Hell, Dax thought. This sucked.

  Even worse, it was dangerous.

  Things had been crawling along, up until about thirty seconds ago, when the gate had come down, and in less time than it took to say “sonuvabitch,” a traffic jam had been born, everyone jamming up, getting cattywampus on the road, ready to push through, practically parking on top of one another. Some people were getting out of their cars, walking, talking, starting to get in the guards’ way, slowing things down even more.

  Geezus.

  He and Suzi weren’t nearly far enough behind Esteban Ponce’s Range Rover, not for this kind of crap. It was eight or so cars ahead of them, bristling with antennas, unmistakable, and they had another dozen piled up behind them.

  “This could get dicey.” And it wasn’t just Ponce. Something had happened to get that gate closed off, to change their protocols, and the biggest thing he could think of was the bloody corpse in room 205. Someone had found it and the cops had been called. “We need to change places-discreetly.”

  She immediately undid her seat belt and started over the console, for once not arguing. He was appropriately grateful. If they needed to make an escape, he needed to be the one driving-that is, if he survived the seat exchange.

  Good God. In a matter of seconds, she went from being the untouchably divine Ms. Suzanna Royale Toussi, to being Suzi, Girl on Top. And for the record, even sweaty and wrung out, she was so drop-dead gorgeous, it almost defied description. Nobody looked like her in real life, except Suzi Toussi, sleek and sophisticated, her makeup so bare it was barely there, her skin pure peaches and cream. The softness of her cheek, the sweet, elegant lines of her face, the winged arches of her eyebrows, every angle and curve on her conspiring to create beauty.

  Fortunately, he was a very cool guy who was more than able to keep a level head in the proximity of female physical perfection.

  Right.

  “Excuse me,” she said, using his shoulder to steady herself.

  “S’okay.” Geezus.

  “Oh… sorry.” She kept moving over him, around him, next to him.

  “Yeah, uh…” Fine, everything was fine, but her hair was brushing his cheek, and the inside of her arm was up against his neck, and…

  “If you’ll-”

  “Yeah, right.” She was right. He needed to slip out from under her.

  He managed, somehow, to maneuver into the driver’s seat, he hoped without giving himself away-that he’d kinda stopped breathing there for a second or two to keep from inhaling her.

  But he was okay now. All systems go.

  Right.

  And then his phone rang.

  He took a look at the number, and hell, he didn’t dare not pick up.

  “Yes,” he said into the receiver.

  “I have a friend in Paraguay,” Erich Warner said. “A few miles from your location, and he is offering his services, to send armed men into Ciudad del Este to help secure the Sphinx, if you are having trouble meeting my expectations.”

  Yeah, yeah, the guy was just full of fricking expectations, the biggest turning out to be almost impossible. One damn statue, Dax had thought four months ago when Warner had set out the bait-one damn statue in exchange for the kind of information agencies of the U.S. government spent months and years searching out.

  “No, sir, that won’t be necessary.” That’s the last damn thing he needed, a private army spooking everybody into next week. “We should stick to the plan. The statue is here, in the city, and I have the deal set. When I have it in my hands, I’ll call for the transfer of funds. Do you want me to use this number?”

  “When you have the Sphinx, yes.”

  And that was the whole damn trick, now, wasn’t it?

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, hell,” Suzi said softly, leaning forward in her seat, her gaze fixed out the windshield.

  Oh, crap.<
br />
  “Who is that?” Warner asked, his voice sharp, and just the thought of the bastard knowing about Suzi made Dax’s blood run cold. “What’s her name?”

  “Some girl. Hey, honey, what’s your name?” he asked, then briefly put his finger to his lips, warning her not to speak.

  He waited a beat.

  “She says for ten thousand guaranis I can call her Azúcar, Sugar.”

  And he still wasn’t happy. Dammit. Not about her speaking, not about Warner hearing her, and for sure as hell not about what was happening up ahead. Ponce’s guys were piling out of the Range Rover, burly and armed.

  “Don’t make any mistakes, Killian. I’m not in the mood.”

  Finally, he and Erich Warner had something in common. Dax wasn’t in the mood for any mistakes either.

  “Yes, sir.” And not for the first time, it crossed his mind that there were fifty good ways to kill the bastard-and maybe a hundred good ways to use him, if Dax could keep his hands in the cookie jar. Colonel Hanson had suggested very strongly that he should try. If Warner’s information turned out to be operable, if there was a sleeper cell in Texas with a viable plan for an act of terrorism, and if they were stopped because of what Dax was able to do in Ciudad del Este-then it was no contest. Erich Warner would live to fight another day. As a matter of fact, Colonel Hanson had strongly suggested that Dax make it so. Hanson wanted to mine the vein for as long as possible.

  “I’ll expect your call soon, very soon.” It was a threat.

  When the call disconnected, Dax slipped his phone back into his pocket, and all the while, he watched the action up ahead.

  There was plenty-with drawn guns to add to the suspense.

  “Oh, hell,” she said again, and oh, hell was right.

  Ponce’s bought cop was striding up toward the guardhouse, undoubtedly to throw his weight around and get Ponce’s car through the gate, the rest of the idiots trapped at a standstill on the road be damned.

  Two of the Brazilian’s goons were walking down the haphazard line of cars, gesturing and yelling, telling everyone to move, move, move. Vamos! Get out of the way. Back off. Make room for the most important and expensive Range Rover to turn around.

  One way or the other, Esteban Ponce wanted out of this roadblock.

  For Dax, it was a classic rock and a hard place-start doing the bumper car thing to get out of there, too, and draw a lot of unwanted attention. Or stay put and take the chance that these guys wouldn’t recognize Suzi from earlier at Beranger’s.

  It took him about a tenth of a second to calculate the odds on a guy not remembering Suzi. He cranked the wheel hard and threw the Land Cruiser into reverse.

  “Oh, hell,” she said again, and he didn’t doubt her for a moment.

  He looked back up the line of cars, and Esteban Ponce himself was getting out with the Sphinx in his hand, looking extremely agitated and very unhappy. The driver who got out with him appeared to be trying to calm him down, but the spoiled youngest son of Arturo Ponce refused to be consoled. He was throwing a fit, a temper tantrum, and any second, he was going to break something. Dax could see it coming.

  Holding the Sphinx by the top, Ponce shoved the bottom of the statue in the driver’s face, his other arm swinging wildly.

  “Is there something wrong with the bottom of the statue?”

  “That’s where the plaster shows through,” she said, both of them watching damn near breathlessly through the windshield. Sunlight was glinting on the fake creature’s eyes. The gold mane was catching the light. From a distance, the thing looked good.

  “Then this is it,” he said.

  “I think so.”

  In the next moment, it was a done deal. With a final grand gesture of unprecedented, undeserved, monumental disappointment, Ponce smashed the statue to the ground.

  They couldn’t see what happened to it, but the way Ponce was kicking around at the road, and still waving his arms about, and practically frothing at the mouth, Dax had a good idea that the thing had been smashed into smithereens.

  “You’re sure that was a fake.”

  “Absolutely positive. One hundred percent.”

  “Then we’re out of here.” Whatever it took.

  And it was going to take a lot.

  He stepped on the gas and bumped into the car behind him, moving it about six inches. Then he cranked the wheel hard to the left and bumped into the car in front of him.

  He noticed Ponce’s goons notice the Land Cruiser.

  “The next time you’re coming up on a guardhouse, Sugar, or really, anytime, even just for a stoplight”-he cranked right and stepped on the gas again, bumped into the car behind him, heard all the cussing going on, and just kept gunning the motor, really moving the car behind him-”it’s a good idea to keep enough distance between you and the car in front of you that you can see their tires.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Good girl.”

  He cranked left one more time, stepped on the gas, took the Cruiser over the median, into the southbound lane, and headed back to the Gran Chaco.

  “I think there’s another road out of here,” he said, remembering the maps of the city he’d downloaded and studied.

  “One of the service roads on the golf course goes all the way down to the river. If you follow it long enough, it’ll empty out on Calle Palma.” Palm Street.

  Okay, he was impressed.

  “Ponce is going to head back to Beranger’s, same as us,” she said, turning in her seat and looking out the back windshield.

  He heard it, too, the sound of sirens approaching from the north. Hell.

  “We’ll never get ahead of him taking the river road,” she said. “Do you hear those sirens?”

  “Yeah, and we don’t need to get ahead of him. We just need to get in place. He can have first shot at Beranger’s. If he walks out of there with anything, I’ll go after it.” He speeded up-quite a bit. “How far is this service road into the golf course?”

  She looked out each side window. “About a quarter mile.”

  He speeded up a helluva lot more. The best way for this to work would be to get off the road before the cops even knew they were on it.

  He was hoping a hundred miles an hour for a quarter mile would do the trick.

  “Do you have a visual?” he asked, somewhat surprised by the quick pickup and good handling of the Cruiser. He wasn’t an SUV kind of guy, but this thing was doing its job.

  “No. We’re still clear.”

  There was no median this far from the guardhouse, so when he saw the smudge of a dirt road peeking out of the heavy vegetation on the east side of the pavement, he slowed down just enough to take the turn without rolling the vehicle-which was quite a bit of slowing down.

  Thirty yards in, he slowed down even more, and at the edge of the golf course, where the trees ended, he came to a stop. They would cross after the cops went by.

  It didn’t take long, about half a minute, before the sirens crested and started to wane, the police passing them on their way to the Gran Chaco.

  So, this was perfect. They’d escaped the cops. Ponce was very unlikely to turn around and virtually follow the police to the scene of where he and his men had committed murder. Even in Ciudad del Este, that was bound to go over very poorly. Of course, the cops would be looking for Suzi. Everyone was going to be looking for Suzi, and all of them for no good reason.

  He needed to get her out of this country, and he needed to keep her with him until he could do it.

  Yeah, that’s the way it was going to be from here on out, him and Suzi Q joined at the hip, until he put her on a plane, whether she liked it or not.

  And yeah, he knew exactly where he was headed with the whole joined-at-the-hip plan-trouble.

  Which didn’t stop him from making his play.

  “We need to cut a deal, you and I, together.”

  She buried her head in her arms on the dash and swore under her breath, way under, but he heard her, and he
waited until he got what he wanted.

  “Fifty-fifty,” the word finally came out.

  “Sure. Great. I can work with that.” Not really. She was lying, but he didn’t care. He was lying, too. He didn’t need a deal with her to get what he wanted. He just somehow, in a very real macho caveman way, needed to be in charge of her for a while, until she really did leave the country.

  It wasn’t about sex.

  Not all of it. Really. Not even most of it.

  It was more about… more about…

  He let his gaze drift up the length of her to where she was draped over the dash like she didn’t have an ounce of energy or gumption left. No, it really wasn’t about sex. The sun was coming in through the windshield, dappled with the shadows of the palm fronds above them, dappling her. She had a line of sweat running down her side from under her arm, and one down the middle of her back, turning her black shirt even darker. The telltale print of her holster showed across her shoulders in another damp trail, and he could see the grip of a semiautomatic pistol where her shirt had been pushed back, a Beretta M9 to be exact, a 9mm, and yes, he recognized it just by the frame and magazine.

  She actually looked kind of tough, wearing a pair of lace-up boots and tactical pants with cargo pockets, like maybe she could kick a little butt. Of course, she’d be kicking it in a silk camp shirt and butter-soft Italian leather boots, so soft the tops folded down. Her tactical pants weren’t heavy cotton twill like his, either. They looked like a linen and cotton blend, expensive, tailored to within an inch of their lives for some long-legged, curvy-hipped, small-waisted, all-girl female like Suzi Q… Sugar… Shu-gah.

  Sweet.

  Her hair was coming out of her Spa Monterey ball cap in kind of a tangle, but he could still see the nape of her neck-and when he did, he knew that was it. The whole caveman thing was about the nape of her neck, the sheer tenderness of that soft expanse of satiny skin, the silken strands of auburn hair curled damply across it, the delicacy of her nape, the vulnerability of it.