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.
“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.