“So where’s the real statue?” And that made four times.
Levi opened his mouth to say something but then seemed to think better of it and smiled instead, which was a shame, because Levi Asher had very gray, crooked teeth.
He obviously needed another glass of champagne, or two, or three, whatever it took to keep loosening his tongue.
“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, now isn’t it?” he did say, sounding like a jerk for a reason. “Fortunately, I have a lead I’m following, and I’m guessing you do not?”
He was always easy to hate.
“I’ve got a couple of things I’m working.” Like you.
For a moment, he looked at her, measuring her, chewing away with a chomping, swaying roll of his jaw. She didn’t have a clue what he was thinking-and that was not good.
“It’s been a difficult day,” he eventually said, then swallowed. “Stressful.”
He had that right.
Suzi leaned in closer, resting her hand on his leg and giving him a comforting little pat.
“Would you like some help, Levi? I’m very good at following leads and finding things,” she said, and under the table, she rubbed her strappy platform heel up and down his calf.
And that’s when she felt all the little hairs on the back of her neck start to rise.
Noticeably so.
Unavoidably so.
With her hand still on Levi’s leg, she glanced across the dining room, and ran smack-dab into an iron-gray gaze locked onto her like a tractor beam.
She considered herself very cool under pressure and oblivious to the unsolicited demands of men, and she was-except, it seemed, when it came to this man.
Her pulse instantly picked up in speed, and she quickly broke the contact between her shoe and Levi’s calf. She straightened up, sitting back in her chair and loosely linking her fingers around her champagne glass.
“Absolutely, Suzi dear,” Levi said, and she dragged her attention back to him. “No question about it. We should be working together on this. I’ve been thinking about it all day, ever since I heard you were here. Partners, yes, that would be best.”
Suzi stared at him for a moment, surprised-and wary. His offer appeared generous at most, and benign at the least, but she could guarantee it was neither. Levi Asher made his money by knowing other people’s business and knowing how to work it for his own gain. He was calculating and ruthless, and not anybody’s friend-least of all hers.
None of which dissuaded her, not at this point.
“I’m in,” she said unequivocally. “What did you have in mind?”
So she’d run out on Dax. So what. She refused to feel guilty. The whole fifty-fifty deal would never have worked-and yet she did feel a little twinge of guilt. He had gotten her out of Beranger’s, and considering what had happened in there, it was a damn good thing. He’d come after her at the Gran Chaco, and kept on coming, even after seeing what had happened to Jimmy Ruiz. He’d tried to protect her from going back into the gallery, and he’d paid Marcella and Marceline a hundred dollars to watch over her while he’d gone out to get her some dinner. She knew, because it had cost her another hundred to get them to sell her some clothes and let her out of the Posada.
He was practically a saint, and she’d run out on him.
Guilt, that’s what drew her gaze back across the dining room, and oh, hell, he looked good.
He’d changed clothes, cleaned himself up from the sludge and mud of the day’s misadventures. Unlike her, he looked very elegant, and yet still very tough, in a black polo shirt and a pair of dark gray slacks. She noticed he was still wearing his trail boots.
You can take the boy out of the jungle, she thought, but you can’t take the jungle out of the boy.
The polo shirt was almost a crime, really, the way it hugged his shoulders and how the material stretched around his biceps. He’d gotten the mud off his face and combed his hair, but it was sticking up a little in front. His jaw was hard and still stub-bled with beard, and he was relaxed back in his chair with all the barely leashed power and grace of every big bad boy who’d ever been at the top of the food chain.
Long legs, strong hands, oh, yes, there was a reason she’d been kissing on him all day.
“There’s a place up the river,” Levi said, leaning in closer, taking up the slack of her retreat. “And a man there who is… involved with the Sphinx.”
Her gaze shot back to Levi.
Her first score had netted her two points: a place up the river and an involved man. Maybe this was all going to be easier than she’d thought-but probably not.
She put her hand over Levi’s where he had it on her knee and gave him a little squeeze-a promising type of squeeze.
“What’s his name? Is he someone you know?” That’s all she needed, a name-the guy’s name or the place’s name. She didn’t care which, she just needed somewhere to start looking again, and she’d be out of El Caribe in a heartbeat.
“I don’t know his name, but I can guarantee he’s worth talking to.” Levi’s smile returned, all toothy and gray and maybe starting to get just a little bit wobbly, and she gave his hand another encouraging squeeze. “He was…uh, at Beranger’s today, after the damage was done. We were all scrambling around, trying to find the statue in the wreckage, and Remy was dying on the spot, shot up by the police, and not talking to anybody, though everyone tried to rush over and help.”
Yes, she just bet they had. Probably more like rush over and try to shake the location of the Sphinx out of him before he expired.
“That must have been terrible for you, Levi,” she said, leaning over again, letting her personal concern for his safety put a catch in her soft, soft voice.
He popped a tiny empanada in his mouth as his gaze slowly fell to her cleavage and got stuck there.
“It was a… a, uh, free-for-all in the gallery, absolutely crazy, Ponce and the cops with a whole damn platoon of bodyguards trying to take charge, which my men and I simply weren’t going to allow-and then this man came in the back door, just one man, and we all got hit.” He stopped, and reached for a toothpick with deep-fried baby squid on the end of it.
“Hit?” she prompted after a few seconds of dead silence.
“Uh, yes, Suzi dear.” He lifted his bloodshot eyes to meet hers and used his teeth to drag the bit of squid off the toothpick and into his mouth. “Zapped with some force,” he said around the tapa, “something unlike anything I’ve ever known, something hot. It was everywhere, all over us, making our skin crawl, and we all ran, but Gervais got caught by this man, right by the throat, and of all things, my dear, he wanted to know your name.”
A bolt of alarm skittered down her spine. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear.
“My name?” she asked.
“Yes,” Levi confirmed, still chewing. “And mine.”
“Wh-why?” This was not good, some guy zapping people in Beranger’s wanting to know her name.
“Because we’re the dealers here,” Levi said. “You and me. This man said he would have the Sphinx at this place up the river tomorrow, and he wants to sell, and who else is he going to contact in this town to unload something as valuable as the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III besides you and me? Beranger is dead.”
Precisely, and Beranger was the last guy who’d tried to unload the Sphinx.
“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions? Just because this guy says he has the Sphinx doesn’t mean he actually has it.”
He looked at her like she’d missed the whole point-which she undoubtedly had.
“Nobody is jumping to anything,” he assured her, sounding thoroughly exasperated and annoyed and frustrated and like all the champagne and the four shots of vodka he’d had at the craps table were finally, suddenly, starting to kick in. “I have been ch-chasing this piece of Egyptian junk for the last damn four months, and that’s not counting all the years when I merely thought it might be out there somewhere, and the one thing I can guarantee you, Suzanna, is that somebody has it-in their hands, in their keeping, right now, in this damn city. Everything points to it being here.”