Breaking Loose Read online

  He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a small silver canister, then rocked it back and forth, listening to the gentle slide of the multicolored gel-caps inside. Pills for life, pills for death, pills for pain, pills for peace-he knew what she needed, and he knew when to give it to her, and always, he made her wait until she felt the need. It kept her always on edge.

  Holding the canister up to the sun, he let the reflection off the shiny metal flash on the sleeping woman’s body, elusive moments of bright light touching her here and there, warming her skin an undetectable degree, undetectable to anyone except her-and slowly, she began to rouse, stretching with languid grace, her legs sliding over rose-colored sheets, the long silky fall of her raven black hair slipping across her breasts and pooling on the bed.

  She never left his side, not ever.

  “Have you heard from Killian?” she asked, her voice liquid and warm from sleep. It was a deception, the warmth. Pure ice ran through her veins.

  And the added shade of darkness in her eyes told him she was quickly approaching the edge of her need.

  “Yes,” he told her. “He’s at the gallery now, and says the news is good. We should hear something more tonight, after his meeting with Beranger.”

  This new guy he’d taken on, this Dax Killian, was proving to be a real bargain compared to the other men Erich had targeted for special mission recruitment over the years. “Exceptionally skilled,” “reliable,” and “cheap” weren’t words that normally went together in Erich’s world. But Killian had been his for the small price of a woman’s life, a savvy piece of work named Esmee Alden, and for an additional bit of information Erich had been able to dangle-both of which he’d had no problem putting on the bargaining table.

  Not so for Shoko. His silken-haired beauty had been forced to relinquish the American girl almost before she’d even begun to torture the brave little thing. A couple of cuts, that’s all the Blade Queen had managed before Erich had taken her toy away.

  He’d made it up to his lover, much to the horror of those he’d eventually sacrificed to Shoko’s knives, but it wasn’t as though he’d precisely had another option. He’d had a use for Killian. In his business, he always had a use for men like Dax Killian, highly adaptable, superbly trained, elite former warriors from the sovereign nations of the world, and Killian had demanded the release of his partner in return for his cooperation, for being put on retainer, so to speak.

  A bargain indeed, for when the day had come, when the rumors had begun to run and Erich had deployed his team of mercenaries, Killian had been the one to track down the Memphis Sphinx. Or so Erich hoped, and so he prayed. Time was running out, and failure was unacceptable. He needed the Sphinx, felt the need of it deep in his gut where fear lay in an ever-tightening knot, sapping what little joy he’d ever felt in life. He needed the Sphinx’s protection of immortality; nothing else could save him from the shadow he felt breathing death upon him at every turn.

  Shadow-there was no better name for what haunted his steps, another failed experiment Dr. Souk had left behind in Bangkok when he’d defected to Negara, not a gift, but a curse, a man who had been sent to them through avenues so black, they hadn’t even known his nationality. There had been a CIA connection to that beast, too, an agent named Tony Royce. But by that point in his career, Royce had been working both sides of the fence for half a dozen governments, and least of all for his own.

  Royce, too, was dead now, and again unfortunately not by Erich’s hand.

  But the beast was alive, long since escaped from the Bangkok lab instead of dying as had been expected, desired, and decreed by Souk himself. The beast should have died from the last injection the good doctor had given him.

  Should have died and had not. He was loose in the world and deadly, gathering strength all these years, readying for a killing strike. Fiercely predatory and on the hunt for the instrument of his destruction, which of course was Dr. Souk, first and always Dr. Souk-but the beast didn’t seem to understand that, and in every way, in every day, Erich felt the creature on his trail, sniffing close to the edges of his life, lying in wait, killing deals and allies in equal measure, reaching out and touching Erich’s existence and most assuredly determined to destroy him.

  Erich wasn’t going to allow it-so he kept Shoko close. If the beast should rise up in front of him some night, or make his lunge from behind, Shoko would be there to deflect the blow, or to take it herself. It mattered not which-not to Erich. She was a tool he used to sate his needs and grant him what little sleep he dared, and when she was gone, he’d make another.

  Of course, the Sphinx could change the game…perhaps.

  Cocking his wrist, he sent the gel-caps sliding to the other end of the canister again.

  “Come here, baby,” he said softly. “Come get your medicine.”

  With all the power and ease of a superbly fit and barely tamed animal, the Asian beauty crossed the porch and knelt before him. Eyes closed, mouth open, she tilted her head back and waited.

  He never failed her.

  Opening the canister, he chose a red pill out of the jeweled array, each saturated hue denoting a different Souk Special.

  “Wider,” he said.

  When she complied, opening her mouth wider, he dropped the gel-cap onto the back of her tongue and reached down to stroke her throat until she swallowed. She never knew what he gave her, and he kept things that way, purposely, definitively.

  Without moving another muscle, she slowly opened her eyes. He knew what she saw-her lord and master, matching her in elegance in every way, a long, narrow nose over a firm mouth, a shock of thick blond hair bluntly cut and casually swept to one side, blue eyes the color of a summer sky. She’d once told him that she thought he was beautiful, which he’d found so very odd. Not the opinion, but that she’d had one. She usually didn’t. What she did have, and she had it in abundance, was obedience and chemically induced youth.

  She was older than him, fifty-six to his forty-two, but she looked no more than thirty, her skin smooth and flawless, her body a sleek expanse of hard muscle overlaid with soft feminine curves. She didn’t look like she could break a man’s neck, but she could-in a heartbeat.

  “We should go, Warner, today. Now,” she said, still on her knees in front of him. “To Ciudad del Este. We should be there when this Killian makes his deal with the Frenchman. I don’t trust him.”

  That last bit was superfluous, almost laughably so. She didn’t trust anyone, ever. Neither did he, but there was always an extra component of risk to be weighed when venturing out into the unguarded world, a component of exposure he’d become less and less inclined to entertain over the last four years, which was why he hadn’t already taken over from Killian.

  “He won’t cheat me.” Not for any reason. Erich knew that much about the man. “If the Sphinx is in Paraguay, as he’s told me, then he’ll get it and bring it to me.”

  Killian, unlike some of the other men he’d hired, was motivated down to his core, and not by the substantial reward Erich had posted for the finding of the statue. Far more than the money, Killian wanted the information Erich had used to coerce him into finding the Memphis Sphinx, an utterly priceless piece of intelligence Shoko had tortured out of a Pakistani general who had betrayed him.

  Sleeper cells of terrorists in the heartland of America-the fears were justified, and Erich had the name of a man who nurtured and presided over such a cell. He also had the name of a town in the state of Texas where this deadly cell slept, biding its time for the call to martyrdom.

  Killian was a patriot.

  “He won’t cheat me,” Erich repeated, utterly convinced.

  Shoko continued to hold his gaze, her eyes growing flatter and deader with each passing moment, as if he wasn’t worthy of even her lowest contempt.

  He knew that look-the bitch-and it never boded well.

  “What?” he asked, his voice sharp. He didn’t like her in this mood. She was quite capable of killing him, and the day
she decided she could face her own death, he had no doubt that she would break him into a dozen pieces and then rip him apart into a dozen more-bare-handed and with her teeth, if it came to that.

  “There’s a woman, Warner. I can smell her.”

  A woman.

  Erich’s own mood grew suddenly grimmer.

  He didn’t claim to know how Shoko sometimes knew things, though he doubted if it was actually by scent, but he’d learned not to doubt her-and if she said there was a woman involved in the Ciudad del Este deal, then he didn’t doubt that there were all manner of unforeseen catastrophes on the horizon. Women, in and of themselves, had often been catalysts of catastrophe in his life, starting with his mother-who also, unfortunately, had not died at Erich’s hands. A woman’s mere presence, he’d learned at a young age, was often enough to skew a paradigm, which was why he didn’t keep one around-present company excluded, except Shoko was not like any other woman on the face of the earth.

  “A woman?” he repeated.

  “Yes, Warner. It’s not good.”

  No, it wasn’t. Realistically, the odds of one woman ruining his chances at immortality were on the slim side, a possible, but not wholly probable, catastrophe.

  And yet if there was a woman suddenly involved with the Sphinx, she was a new player.

  Erich didn’t like new players-not at this late a date, not when the Gates of Time were destined to open Sunday night and bestow life everlasting upon the person who held the Sphinx in their hands, the refracted moonlight from its crystalline eyes washing the supplicant in immortality.

  That person would be him. He was the supplicant, and after Sunday night, he would be immortal.

  Let the beast strike at him then and be broken.

  He looked down at Shoko where she still knelt at his feet, at the warm color of her skin, the erotic perfection of her every curve, the soft pink of her mouth-and the black, dead flatness of her eyes.

  No, there was not another like her, not anywhere.

  “Can you be ready to leave in an hour?” he asked. The flight from the coast of Brazil to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, was no more than three hours.

  She nodded, and he smiled. They would be in the City of the East before nightfall.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Left-right-left-right-left-right…one long-legged stride after another.

  Left-right-left-right… hips swaying in rhythm with her steps.

  Out of the alley and onto the sidewalk, past an old Kawasaki up on its kickstand and chained to a handcart, skirting a line of plastic garbage bags spilling trash onto the pavement-left-right-left-right. All Dax could do was keep up. Suzi Toussi walked like she owned this godforsaken street in Ciudad del Este, and as long as she kept heading in the right direction, Dax was going to let her revel in that illusion. He had a Wilson Combat.45 tucked under his right arm in a shoulder holster, with two extra eight-shot mags and one in the pipe backing him up, enough to command a fair amount of personal space, even in this hellhole.

  And Suzi had whatever she was carrying in her holster and him, whether she wanted him or not.

  His money was definitely on the “or not” side of the equation.

  She sure seemed to know where she wanted to go. His room at the Posada Plaza was only two blocks away, and she’d nearly covered the first one-but he seriously doubted if that’s where she was headed.

  Tough.

  That’s where she was going.

  When she veered at the corner, he tightened his hold on her arm again. Possibly a risky move, but he was a risk-taking kind of guy.

  “This way, Ms. Toussi,” he said, redirecting her without slowing down.

  “I thought we could catch a taxi up at the next corner,” she said, responding to the change without breaking stride.

  We? He liked that-and the way she stuck with him. He liked that a lot. It was just plain good thinking on her part not to try to ditch him.

  “We don’t need a taxi.” Not where they were going.

  “You have a car?” Regardless of how easily she’d taken the change in direction, the look she leveled at him from over the tops of the perfectly round, small gold and tortoiseshell sunglasses she’d taken from out of her purse should have stopped him in his tracks.

  It didn’t.

  “Yes,” he said. “But we don’t need it either, not yet.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and was relieved to see the coast was clear. They weren’t being followed.

  “Why not?” she asked. It was a legitimate question, for which he had a quasi-legitimate answer, which she could either buy or not. It didn’t matter to him one way or the other.

  “Give me a chance here,” he said, “and I’ll get you back to your hotel in due time.”

  “Due?”

  “Due.”

  He kept hustling her along, and to his surprise, she kept letting him. He’d been expecting insurrection since they’d gotten off the roof.

  “So where are we going?” she asked, her tone the only cool thing in the tropical city, and he meant cool like ice, but she still had the “we” thing going, which worked for him.

  “I have a room at the Posada Plaza.”

  Her gaze went unerringly to the decrepit five-story building partway down the next block, and he was impressed. She’d either done a lot of homework before showing up in Ciudad del Este, or she was paying very close attention to her surroundings. The sign for the Posada Plaza was damn near indistinguishable from the dozens of others tacked onto the building. At one time, the hotel had been stylish. Hints of its former glory remained in the building’s pink stucco and the ornate shutters still hanging next to a few of the windows, but there was no disguising what it had become-a dive, pure and simple.

  “The Posada,” she said, her heels click-clicking in an unbroken rhythm as they crossed the street. “I almost booked in there.”

  “No kidding?” Right, and tomorrow the sun was rising in the west.

  “No kidding, but I changed my mind at the last minute, something about the roach count.”

  “It’s pretty high,” he admitted, and that was no lie.

  “Then what are you doing there?” she asked, sounding more curious than smart-mouthed about it. “You could have afforded better.”

  “Location, location, location,” he said dryly, keeping her moving. They weren’t nearly far enough away from the unfolding disaster at the Old Gallery to suit him, no more than a hundred meters. He knew, because his radio signal was guaranteed to a hundred and fifty, and he’d wanted to leave himself a cushion-thus the Posada. “Where are you staying? The Gran Chaco, or El Caribe?” It was one or the other. There were only two ultra-luxury hotels in the city.

  And wasn’t it sweet, this little conversation they were having, with the deal of the day blown all to hell behind them-and that pushed him. That pushed him hard. No matter how many times it blew up, this deal wasn’t done until he walked away with the prize.

  “Gran Chaco,” she confirmed.

  Well, she was in for a bit of a letdown then. The lobby of the Gran Chaco was a tropical paradise, a garden courtyard of exotic flowers and bubbling fountains with mosaic columns spiraling up two floors to flank a first-class Asian fusion restaurant and a bar famous for their Singapore Slings.

  The lobby at the Posada Plaza had a grill across the check-in window to protect the night clerk, one dead plant in a pot at the bottom of the stairs, and a restaurant specializing in ptomaine.

  Lucky for her, he wasn’t planning on keeping her very long-just long enough to shake a little information out of her and get her out of town. There wouldn’t be time for a meal.

  Or anything else, for that matter, and he was pretty disappointed in himself for even thinking about anything else. But there it was, jump-starting his imagination with every roll of her hips, with every glance he slanted in her direction.

  She was drop-dead gorgeous, silky auburn hair swept up into a sleek French twist, except for the strands that had slipped out and w
ere brushing across her shoulders, pale skin, almond-shaped eyes, exotic and richly, deeply brown shot through with streaks of green and amber. They knocked him out every time she lowered her sunglasses and gave him one of those looks. And man, oh, man, did she have a mouth on her-in every sense of the word. Smart, like he’d said, damnably imperious, and lush, her lips slicked with some cinnamon-colored sugar-and-spice lipstick he wanted to lick off.

  Yeah, that’s what he was thinking about, kissing her crazy while he got his hands up her dress. He usually had more sense, but her whole “can’t touch that” attitude was enough to make any guy want to rise to the challenge.

  And he meant rise.

  A fleeting grin crossed his mouth. That’s what came from six months of fantasizing about a woman-a short fuse.

  “The Posada isn’t so bad,” he said. “No worse than most of what’s down here, as long as you stay out of the elevators.”

  She cast him another one of those whiskey-on-the-rocks looks from over the tops of her sunglasses, and his grin widened. Yeah, a knockout, just like he’d said.

  “They’ve got a tag team running the lifts and working the clientele between floors, Marcella and Marceline,” he explained. “The night clerk gets fifteen percent on the action between the first stop and the lobby, and the day clerk is taking ten on floors two through five, and everybody is shelling out five to the cops.” She needed to know how bad it was here, bad everywhere, on every corner, in every shop, not just Beranger’s when he was carrying hot goods. Ciudad del Este was a cesspool of violence and misery, the police included. She needed to know she needed to get out.

  “Just a regular little home away from home,” she said, her heels still hitting the street, one step after another. No matter how bad it looked-and even from a fair distance, the Posada looked like rough trade in a bad dress-Suzanna Royale Toussi kept walking like she wasn’t in over her head.