Breaking Loose Read online

  It was dark going down the stairs, with only the faintest light coming up from below. He could hear the river running and smell the water.

  He had his carbine safety off, his finger on the trigger, and step by silent step, he went down the stairs. He had a tac light on his weapon, but he would save it until he thought he had a target. He was good in the dark, the best, so there was no reason to give his position away.

  He stopped on the last step, his hackles rising, a warning shooting straight up his spine. He wasn’t alone down here.

  The man came from out of nowhere, from out of the darkness with a speed Creed couldn’t counter. The first hit had them both grappling on the dock, and Creed quickly realized that he wasn’t in a fight. He was in a death match, and it was his death. The guy on top of him who had him in his grip was unbelievably strong, and he meant unfuckingbelievably strong. Creed could bench three hundred pounds all day long, and he couldn’t budge this guy. Geezus. Dying in fucking Paraguay.

  The guy had knocked his carbine off to the side, and it was tangling him up in its sling, making it hard to get to a knife, and then the guy just stopped, went completely mannequin on top of him, and the longer the guy held him down, pressing him into the dock, making it impossible for him to move, the better look he got at the guy’s face-and he knew the guy was looking at him, too. He could feel it in the slightest lightening of his hold, he heard it in the catch of the guy’s breath, and everything he felt, and saw, and heard, fueled an anger so deep, it gave him strength he hadn’t known he possessed.

  In one mighty lunge, he upset the balance of the guy’s hold, and they were grappling again. He’d seen it, the sonuvabitch. He knew. A flash of the truth had been in the man’s eyes, and Creed was going to kill him. The betrayal was an abomination.

  J.T.

  My God, he’d died a thousand deaths in his heart, endured a thousand nights of shame for not being able to save his partner, his friend, and J.T. was here.

  Creed was going to kill him.

  His rage was boundless, like the opening of a floodgate.

  And in an instant it didn’t matter. The guy landed one blow, and Creed’s lights went out in a burst of agony.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Something terrible was happening to the Asian woman, something besides her being consumed by an ever-growing madness. When she’d dragged the dead German out of the bottom of the boat and hauled him up onto the shore, and then kept going, Suzi had seized her chance, using her feet to pull the dead captain closer-but she couldn’t get him close enough to grab his gun, not while she was cuffed to a piece of metal bolted into the boat. Dammit.

  She was going to die here.

  The woman made another trip with the Sphinx before coming back for Suzi, and the minute she undid the cuff from the boat, Suzi lashed out, pushing hard against her chest and sweeping her leg out to kick the woman’s legs out from under her-and it worked, just the way it worked in training, when she was exhausted and Superman kept pushing her harder and harder, being mean, being tough, roughing her up.

  When the woman went down, Suzi kicked her hard and made her escape, leaping over the side of the boat and letting herself sink under the dark water.

  Freedom.

  She stroked for the bottom, trying to become as invisible as possible, but didn’t get far before a hand buried itself in her hair and dragged her back up to the surface. For a second, Suzi thought she could fight the woman off, but in the next passing second she realized the Asian woman wasn’t just strong-she was very strong. Stronger even than Superman.

  There was no hope, no chance. The woman had her under control, her hands cuffed back together, and was hauling her up onto the shore in less than half a minute, dragging her up through the grass like a half-drowned rat.

  Suzi spluttered and choked, and for good measure, the woman hit her in the face before dropping her next to Erich Warner.

  Damn. Suzi didn’t even care that he was dead. Dead people were not the ones beating the crap out of her. She was never going to be afraid of another dead person, not ever.

  A cramp hit her, and she wrapped her arm tight around her middle and threw up on the ground, a whole stomachful of river water.

  Geezus. She was probably going to die from that.

  But then she thought no, not really. She was going to die bleeding out for Erich Warner and the Memphis Sphinx-unless she could figure out a way to kill this bitch with the knives.

  She threw up again, and used the back of her hand to wipe her mouth, and then she launched herself at the Asian woman, right over the top of Erich Warner’s dead body, her hands going for the woman’s throat. If she could just get a grip-but the woman knocked her away, and the blow left her stunned.

  For a moment, she lay there, trying to catch her breath, trying to clear her head so she could think, but all she could think was that she didn’t want to die-not now, not in this place, and not by this woman’s hands.

  Dax gunned the twin Mercs on Farrel’s go-fast boat, going even faster, driving the thing in curving arcs up the winding Tambo River. He didn’t know where Suzi was. He only knew the worst place for her to be, and that was with Shoko, and Shoko had gone up the river, undoubtedly not very far-unless she’d already gotten what she needed. So the farther he went, the surer he was that the Blade Queen of Bangkok had gotten the Sphinx, and probably Suzi, too. Both those things had been promised to him by Conroy Farrel, and both of those things had been missing from the house.

  Shoko had a use for Suzi. He wasn’t kidding himself about that. Warner was dead. The Blade Queen was either going to try for immortality for herself, which would only make sense, or she was going to try for magic trick number two, which was resurrecting the dead.

  Dax had a feeling that for whatever reasons, and she probably had more than one, Shoko was going to go for magic trick number two, which required copious amounts of fresh blood.

  And he had to wonder, really, who in the hell dreamed this stupid shit up? Like life wasn’t complicated and mysterious enough without that crap.

  Geezus. His life was plenty complicated, and if a guy wanted mystery, well, hell, that’s why God created women. All the mystery a guy ever needed was wrapped up in a soft mouth and a racetrack’s worth of curves.

  He throttled down for a tight turn up ahead, pointing the bow and letting the back end of the boat slide in behind before he gunned it again.

  Two more winding turns in the river later, he saw the gunboat, and it was empty. Twin Mercs didn’t leave any chance for a silent approach, but that hadn’t been his plan. He wanted Shoko to know he’d found her. He wanted her attention on him as quickly as possible. He wanted her to be faced off with him, not Suzi-and sweet geezus, he wasn’t a second too soon. There was movement in the grassy field, low and to the ground, and the furtiveness of it just about stopped his heart.

  “Shoko!” he called out. His next move was to pull the rock-crystal eye out of his pocket and hold it high in the air. “Shoko!”

  He didn’t tie off the boat; he ran the bow up close to the shore and kept the engines running.

  “Shoko!”

  In the fading light, he saw more movement, bodies moving, but he couldn’t tell which was Shoko and which was Suzi-and he was praying one of the moving bodies was Suzi. There was a small mound in the field that looked like a nonmoving body, like a dead guy-and that would most likely be Erich Warner.

  Except that was Shoko up there, and knowing her, she could have killed half a dozen people by now.

  “I have the eye!” he shouted.

  All movement stopped, and he hoped to God that he had her attention.

  “You’re running out of time, Shoko. If you want the eye, you need to give me the woman now!” He was still shouting, making himself very clear. “If you shoot me, the eye goes over the side.” He had very deliberately moved his hand over the river, and was leaning in that direction.

  “She’s hurt, Killian. If you want her, you’ll have to come a
nd get her.”

  Hurt.

  He took a breath, tried to slow the racing of his heart.

  “Show her to me, Shoko. I need to see that she’s still alive.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her again that she was running out of time. She knew it. The sun was dropping like a cannonball now, with the full moon scheduled to come into view over the eastern horizon as soon as the last rays of sunlight faded from the western sky.

  “Your bitch, Killian,” Shoko said, and two dark forms rose up from the ground in the deepening gloom.

  He jumped off the boat and started forward.

  “I want to hear her voice, Shoko.” It was an old negotiator’s trick, to keep using someone’s name. There was nothing like a person’s name to get and hold their attention.

  After the last command, he stopped. He could hear the river and the rocking of the boat, hear the waves lapping against the hull, and he waited to hear Suzi’s voice.

  “Dax… Dax…”

  That was his girl all right. He started across the grassy field, moving quickly but carefully.

  “Let her go, Shoko, and you can have the eye. I-” His next words were cut off by a keening scream that rent the air, a wailing cry of pain, more agony than he’d ever heard.

  The two women crumpled back to the ground, becoming nearly indistinguishable from each other, and he started to run.

  “Nooooo…” the voice cried. “Noooooo…”

  It was Shoko.

  “Which one? Warner, Warner…which one?”

  At twenty-five yards, he could see her clearly on her knees at Warner’s side, wailing. Suzi was handcuffed, half sitting, half leaning on the ground, free from Shoko’s grip but not running away.

  He ran to her side and dragged her to her feet. She was nearly limp. He held her close and backed off, his gun drawn, but Shoko barely seemed aware of them.

  “Nooooo…” she wailed. “Warrrrrrner.”

  She looked to the east and grew even more frantic, her crazed eyes coming to rest on them.

  “The crystal, give it to me, hurry, hurry.” She reached out her hand.

  Erich Warner’s body had been arranged, straight and true on the ground, the Memphis Sphinx on his chest, facing him, facing east. Shoko had duct-taped his hands to the statue, and she had a pile of brightly colored pills poured out onto his handkerchief where she’d laid it on the ground.

  Okay, this was weird, and oddly compelling. It was also, Dax realized, an act of utter desperation, and he wondered for a moment if it was love motivating her. Then he thought not. He tossed her the crystal eye, keeping Suzi close, and wondering what in the world Shoko was going to use for blood. Warner was covered in it, but unless he’d had a bad accident on the way up the river, Dax figured most of what he was seeing had come from rolling around in the bottom of the boat with a guy who’d had his throat slit.

  He kept backing off. He could have shot her. He was more than ready, but there was this little tug of curiosity he couldn’t deny, and he had a feeling that this was going to be one of those times when things just took care of themselves.

  He hadn’t forgotten about the envelope in Warner’s jacket, but for all the trouble he’d gone to, the months of searching, he wanted to see this thing through. He wanted to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was all a bunch of crap.

  So he backed off, and he didn’t take his eyes off Shoko, or his finger off the trigger of his.45, and every time she looked to the east, he wondered at the stark fear in her eyes.

  She pulled a knife out of a sheath on her belt, and he took up the slack on his trigger.

  She looked to the east again and placed her left hand on top of the statue. When moonlight flooded the grassy area, coming up over the tops of the trees and pouring across the wide spot in the river before flowing up the shore, she slashed her wrist, deep.

  A cry left her, a cry of such pain, he nearly reached for her. But he didn’t. He watched as her blood spurted out of her artery and poured over the statue, and when the moonlight struck the crystal eyes, he was held in place, enthralled by their glittering luminescence.

  It was beautiful, an amazing sight to see, but it wasn’t magic.

  A minute passed, then half a minute more with Shoko’s life pouring out of her. Next to him, he felt Suzi take more of her own weight on her feet, felt her come around a little bit, and the two of them stood quietly in the moonlit field and watched Shoko, the Blade Queen of Bangkok, die, and they watched Erich Warner stay as dead as he’d ever been.

  But Dax didn’t lower his pistol, not for a second, and when Shoko finally collapsed on her dead lover, he knew the world had suddenly become a better place.

  “I’m taking that Sphinx,” Suzi said at his side, and it was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.” It was hers. She’d more than earned it. Even if he’d had a use for the damn thing, he’d have let her have it. “Are you okay?”

  He stepped back up to the bodies, bent down, and pulled the envelope out of Warner’s jacket. He shoved it way down deep in the cargo pocket on his pants before buttoning the pocket.

  “She beat the crap out of me every time I tried to escape, and that was quite a few times.”

  “Good for you.” Geezus. He didn’t know a guy who could have come out ahead of Shoko, and his girl had stayed in one piece. “Turn away, Suzi, and cover your ears.”

  She didn’t ask why, she just did it, and he put one shot in the back of Shoko’s head. It was just good business.

  Together, he and Suzi walked back to the boats, and they found a couple of containers to carry river water back up to where Shoko and Warner were lying with the Sphinx still sitting on Warner’s chest. One container after another, they poured the water over the Sphinx, washing off all the blood. When it was clean, he pulled the duct tape off and Warner’s hands fell to either side, his arms dropping to his sides.

  For good measure, they splashed the rest of the river water over it, emptying both containers.

  “You want me to carry it for you?” he asked, but she shook her head and bent down to pick up the statue.

  What a thing, he thought, all golden and granite and crystalline, warmed by moonlight. It really was beautiful.

  Suzi was careful, picking it up and holding it close in to her chest, and they started back down to the boats.

  She had it cradled in her arms, facing up, and when they were ten yards from the shore, the eyes lit up like a couple of damn flashlights. Two beams. Bright as frickin’ halogen, cutting through the night like a pair of lasers, and lighting her up like a Macy’s parade.

  And then they turned off.

  Fuck, he thought.

  “Geez,” she said. “Did you see that?”

  He let out a short, unhappy laugh.

  “Oh, yeah, babe. I saw that.”

  Per-fricking-fecto.

  Another damn mystery in his life.

  “I need a drink.” He was just being honest. Scotch had been invented for times like these.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Creed awoke to the sound of a ringing phone. He was lying flat on his back in the dark… in a cave, that was right. And he’d gotten hit by a pile driver… yeah, that was right.

  He rolled onto his side, curled up, and pushed himself to his hands and knees. Geezus. He put one hand on his forehead before he got to his feet. Geezus.

  He flipped on his flashlight, arranged his carbine so the sling wasn’t all cattywampus, and then he found the phone, lying on the dock, about twenty feet away.

  “Hello,” he said when he answered it.

  “What are you doing answering Suzi’s phone?” Dylan asked. He’d recognize the boss’s voice in his sleep.

  “I found it in the cave under the house. The one behind the gate we could see on the river.”

  “You have Suzi with you?”

  “No.” He turned his head one way, very gently, then the other way, just as gently.

  “Farrel?”

  “No
.” He had a few kinks from rumbling with the guy, but he did not have the guy.

  “So we lost him.” Dylan didn’t sound too glad about that bit of news.

  “Maybe Zach got him.” But Creed doubted it. One guy was not going to take down Conroy Farrel.

  “Zach just checked in, empty-handed,” Dylan said. “The house is clear, and he’s headed down to you. Superman and I are coming in.”

  “Good.” That was all good. Zach had cleared the house, while he, Creed, had gotten his clock cleaned.

  Damn. He knew what he’d seen. It was all coming back in Technicolor.

  “What about Killian?” Dylan asked. “We saw him take a go-fast boat out of that cave and head up-river after the gunboat. Have you-forget it. Here he comes now.”

  Creed heard it, too.

  “Or at least that’s the boat,” Dylan said. “Can you see who’s in it from where you are?”

  “I’m in a cave, boss.”

  “Oh…right.”

  He heard Dylan saying something to Hawkins.

  “Okay,” the boss came back on the phone. “Cristo here brought along his night vision goggles, so he’s up one-”

  “Two,” Creed heard Superman say.

  “Bull, two… oh, he’s taking a point for his superlative body count on the Paraguayans, and all I can say is I hope we don’t read about this in the damn papers. You see a CNN reporter up there anywhere?”

  “No.” His head was clearing a little now.

  “And we have positive identification on Suzi Toussi and Dax Killian coming out of the Tambo River, lounging comfortably in the front seats, with no one else on board, and I’m guessing heading back to Ciudad del Este,” Dylan gave the report. “We’re going to need to talk to him.”

  “Debrief him.”

  “Find out what he’s been up to since he left the Army.”

  “Maybe get him on board,” Creed said. It’s what they’d all been thinking since Dax Killian had shown up in Denver six months ago, working a job that had ended up involving one of their own. The guy was a legend, very skilled, and they all knew for a fact that he could steal a car blindfolded with one arm tied behind his back. He had chop-shop chops.