Erich had more power and money than half the countries he did business in, and yet neither power nor money was enough to save him from Souk’s shadow beast. The creature had an uncanny ability to reach into Erich’s business and make his presence known. Two of Jamal’s lieutenants had been killed during the transport of the surface-to-air missiles, and the missiles had arrived in Jamal’s warehouse irreparably disabled. Erich hadn’t supplied the missiles. He’d only transported them-and yet it was clear to him that the shadow beast had been involved. He left things for Erich, marks. There had been a mark on one of the SAM crates-XT7, Dr. Souk’s code for a particularly effective drug he’d created. It was the only mark Erich had needed to know the beast had been involved. Always it was like this, the silent, evasive threat of him. The creature lurking around Erich’s deals, breathing on them, ruining them, then disappearing for months.
He was alive, he knew too much, and Erich had not been able to stop him in any way. The situation was untenable, and the solution was the Sphinx. With the shield of immortality upon him, he could track the beast down and kill him-or bring him to heel.
The thought was a recurring one and never failed to make his blood race, to control that much power, to chain the beast to him the way he’d chained Shoko.
“The woman, Warner,” Shoko said, looking up at him from where she sat at his feet, gently rolling her pills around and around in the silver bowl, the iguana resting along her hip and thigh. “I heard her on the phone, while you were talking with Killian.”
“What about her?” As if he didn’t know.
“I want her, Warner. I told you there was a woman, and I want her for my own. No interference.”
“So be it,” he said, granting the unknown “Sugar” a death unlike anything she ever could have imagined.
Shoko smiled, and that truly was a lovely sight.
“Purple, my dear,” he said, and she all but purred, taking the purple pill out of the bowl and putting it in her pocket for later, when she needed it.
For the next few hours, she was free of him, free to roam as she willed, and he had no doubt that when they landed, some poor sap in Ciudad del Este would pay for her freedom with his life.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Stakeout-Suzi had never been on a stakeout, but surprisingly, the scene in front of her was very familiar-half a dozen prostitutes congregating on their strip of turf in front of Galeria Viejo, gearing up for the night shift.
“Coffee?” Dax asked, offering his cup.
She’d opted for bottled water when he’d made his recon stroll past the Old Gallery and then slipped into a dive called El Mercado for a few supplies, but a little coffee wasn’t a bad idea. She’d stayed in the Land Cruiser, parked a ways down the street, but in a place where they had full view of the main door and Ponce’s Range Rover parked out front.
“Thanks.” She took the cup and held it to her mouth, blowing first before taking a sip. “So what do you think? Is that the world’s oldest profession?”
“Nah,” he said. “War is the world’s oldest profession, by a long shot, and then comes tax collecting, and then the trick turners showed up to give everybody some relief from the other two.”
She grinned, and when he glanced over, he did, too.
Yes, sir, that was them, just a couple of fun-loving kids with murder and mayhem behind them, and a four-thousand-year-old occult statue in front of them-hopefully.
Ponce hadn’t even left a guard on the Range Rover. All five of his crew, himself included, were in the gallery. Suzi almost hoped he did find it. At least they’d know where it was then, and she didn’t doubt that Dylan and the boys could steal it back, maybe even before Dax could get his hands on it.
“What are his chances, you think, of them finding anything in there?”
“Slim to none, about the same as ours. The place is really torn up inside. As a matter of fact, you might want to reconsider this plan and let me just take you to the airport.” He held a cookie out for her, from out of a bag he’d bought, and she took it.
They’d been an hour on the river road, getting back into town, and were an hour into watching the gallery, and that was the third or fourth time he’d suggested taking her to the airport.
“No,” she said. “I need to get inside, look around for myself.”
She still had the scanner, her ace in the hole, and yes, he was bound to notice when she pulled it out, but until she was in the gallery, she was keeping her technical advantage to herself.
He had caveman tendencies. It wouldn’t be beyond him to just take the damn scanner and try to ship her out. He wouldn’t get far with getting rid of her, but she could save them both the wear and tear of him finding that out by just keeping her secret to herself.
“Senator Leonard must be paying you one helluva commission.”
“Top-notch,” she agreed.
“Bull,” he said.
“Whatever.”
He held an open bag of chips out, and she reached in and got a handful.
Sharing coffee, eating chips and cookies, they both watched the gallery and the Range Rover and the whores.
“I could pay you more.”
That’s all he said, sitting over there dangling bait, and yes, she knew he could. General Grant was paying her twenty plus tactical support, and Dax had both those and more to offer. He’d done well in his business, whatever his business was-which she was guessing was more than the art-recovery-type investigations he’d done with Esmee. The guy had money.
Without biting on his offer, she handed the coffee back to him and reached for her bottle of water.
“And here we go,” he said, leaning slightly forward in his seat, picking up the binoculars she’d donated to the cause.
Ponce and his boys were coming out.
She looked at each man, carefully cataloguing what she saw, and knew he was doing the same. Neither one of them said a word, until the Range Rover pulled away from the gallery and drove off.
He lowered the binoculars and looked over at her. “What did you get?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head.
“Nothing,” he agreed. “They came out empty-handed. Let’s go.”
Three minutes later, back in the alley behind Beranger’s, Dax started prying open the makeshift security gate someone had attached to the Old Gallery’s delivery door. The sun was going down, the alley was still piled with garbage, and Suzi, Dax noticed, was taking a pen-shaped object out of her fanny pack. After getting a look at it, he lifted his gaze to her face.
Geezus, she was beautiful. Beautiful and, he was sure, guilty as hell-of something, standing there holding the small piece of equipment like it was a wand, pen-shaped, yes, but with a readout display and a couple of pressure switches.
“What is that?” he asked, leaning into the length of rebar he was using as a lever on the iron bars. Walking in the front door, where Ponce and his men had come out, would have been nominally easier, but Suzi probably had the top spot on Ciudad del Este’s Most Wanted list for another couple of hours at least. By midnight, for certain, some other horrendous crime, or probably half a dozen, would have taken place and knocked her into yesterday’s old news. Until then, parading her through the lineup of Colony Club whores and pimps taking over the block and congregating in front of the gallery was not in their best interest, and besides, it just wasn’t all that difficult to get into Beranger’s Old Gallery.
“Well, actually,” the beautiful redhead said, “it’s a scanner…for an, uh, RFID tag.”
To her credit, she dropped that bomb without stumbling around too much, and it was one helluva bomb. Right. A scanner.
He stopped with the rebar in his hands, just holding it between the bars of the gate, and looked at her.