Present company excluded, to her knowledge, only four people knew where she was: whoever was manning the front desk at the Gran Chaco, General Grant and Dylan Hart, neither of whom would be calling her on the hotel phone, and the man who had put her in the cab in front of the Posada Plaza.

Dammit.

“Excuse me,” she said to Ruiz.

Taking her purse with her, she walked past him and the Sphinx to take the call more privately in the suite’s bedroom. She closed the heavy doors behind her and threw the bolt before going over to the bedside table to answer the phone.

“Yes?”

“Señora Royal,” a softly spoken, very officious man said. “This is Rodrigo at the front desk. A reporter from The Daily Inquirer is here to interview you. Should I have the guards pass him through?”

A discomfiting mix of curiosity and alarm held her firmly in place-a reporter? Here in Ciudad del Este? She couldn’t possibly have screwed up that badly.

For one, she hadn’t had time to screw up that badly. She’d only left Washington late last night. She hadn’t even been gone twenty-four hours yet.

“Oh…ah, yes, the interview, I’d almost forgotten,” she said, stalling for a moment, thinking. “Tell me, Rodrigo, what is the reporter’s name again?”

“Danny Kane, señora. He said to remind you that the interview was arranged through a Señor Duffy in Denver, Colorado, the United States. The guards have him detained at the main gate. Should I have them pass him through?”

Danny Kane, Dax Killian-the names were fairly obvious, and if they weren’t enough to clue her in, Duffy in Denver sealed the deal. Duffy’s had been the bar where she and Dax had almost had a date six months ago. So what in the world was he up to, and what did she want to do here? He’d been on his way to see Beranger, hoping to score the Memphis Sphinx, at the same time that she’d been zipping back to the Gran Chaco, hoping to score the same damn thing.

Was it possible that he’d gotten lucky, while she’d tanked? If so, why come to see her?

No, she decided. If he’d gotten the Sphinx, he wouldn’t be here-that’s what the smart money said.

And if she’d gotten it, she’d be on her way out, too, one way or the other. So the question became-

“Señora?”

No question at all, she decided. If Killian had dragged his butt all the way out to the Gran Chaco to see her after seeing Beranger, she wanted to know why.

She checked her watch. She had at least ten minutes before he would get through the mandatory vehicle search. Explosives-that’s what the armed guards were looking for, which said plenty about Ciudad del Este.

“Yes, Rodrigo,” she said. “Have the guards pass him through, and call me when he arrives at the lobby.”

“Sí, señora.”

She ended the call and dialed another number. When the phone was answered, she keyed in a code and waited until General Grant’s machine picked up.

“Hi, Buck. This is Suzi. The party was a disaster. We got raided by the police. No confirmation on the item. Others in attendance were Levi Asher and Esteban Ponce, both of whom were on the guest list you gave me, so the intel is good. The guy who wasn’t on the list used to be one of yours, in a manner of speaking, Daniel Axel Killian. Check that out for me, will you? What’s Dax Killian doing here? I’ll call when I have more.”

She hung up the phone and headed into the bathroom, her mission clear-get rid of Jimmy Ruiz and his fake Sphinx, but keep him dangling, in case it turned out she needed him for something, like to help her set up a meeting with Esteban Ponce. She could find Levi Asher on her own. He was never more than a couple of phone calls away. Ponce, on the other hand, could easily be holed up at some local hacienda or estancia, or at someone’s big house near the country club.

In the bathroom, she quickly stripped out of her ruined suit and slipped into a pair of olive green cargo pants and a white T-shirt with her shoulder holster fitted snugly over the top. She finished the outfit with a black camp shirt printed with white and yellow orchids to conceal and camouflage the pistol and holster rig. The RFID scanner went into a pocket on her pants, along with her phone, some cash, and her identification. A few other necessities came out of her purse and went into a canvas fanny pack she buckled around her waist. Then she pulled a pair of low-heeled, brown leather boots out of the satchel.

With her boots tied, she was ready to face whatever the night brought on, including Dax Killian, she hoped.

Dinner in Denver?

And in the middle of a top secret mission she’d said yes? Good Lord, she didn’t know what in the world either of them had been thinking, or at least she wasn’t about to admit to anything, not even the obvious, not here.

A couple minutes later, when she opened the doors from the bedroom to the living room, ready to shoo Jimmy Ruiz out of her suite, she realized she’d been wrong about the night ahead, dead wrong-and Jimmy had not been fast enough.

He’d been shot, over and over again.

There was blood everywhere.

She clenched the doorknob, her knuckles white, her pulse suddenly pounding, her gaze riveted to the body on the floor for a long, endless, gut-wrenching moment before her brain and her training kicked in.

Geezus. Sweet geezus. She took a breath and drew her pistol, and began clearing the suite, just like Superman had taught her, starting with the bar area and moving to the patio. Coming back through the living room, she avoided looking at Jimmy and walked to the main door. It had been left open, and she quickly checked the veranda overlooking the lobby. It was empty. Whoever had killed Ruiz was gone.

They’d also stolen the Sphinx.

Geezus. She looked back toward the body and felt her breath catch in her throat, felt her chest tighten. Jimmy Ruiz had been killed for a hunk of plaster, shot multiple times in the torso-and the whole game had changed.

She started to close the door, then stopped with it still partway open. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t close herself in a room with a massacred body lying in a pool of blood. Not even Christian Hawkins, Superman, could teach her how to do that.

Good God. A wave of heat rose in her face, and she felt an edge of panic skitter across the base of her brain. Sweat broke out on her upper lip.

She took a breath, then another.

Jimmy Ruiz.

Dead. He was so still, so torn up, lying there with his blood and his insides spilling out of him, his blank eyes staring off into nothing.

He had a gun, and he’d drawn it, but he hadn’t used it. The.45 lying next to him on the floor didn’t have a silencer, and if he’d gotten a shot off, she would have heard it, even in the bathroom behind two sets of closed doors. The deed had been fast and effective, and she hadn’t heard a damn thing, no struggle, no cry for help, no shots, which meant that whoever had killed him had been using a suppressed weapon, and to her that meant one thing-professional killer, somebody who killed as part of their job or for hire, a gangster or somebody’s thug, which was just about everyone in the whole goddamn country.

She honest to God didn’t think it had been Dax Killian, and yet… and yet she knew he was more than capable of killing as brutally as necessary. He’d been trained for violence of a very high order. He was one of the world’s warriors, the one in a hundred who ruled in combat, the one in a hundred who did what had to be done-dispassionately, professionally.

But this wasn’t combat.

At least it hadn’t been until now.

So help me…so help me, God. Her gun hand started to shake, and her breath grew shorter, and she stood there, second after second, frozen in place, looking at Jimmy, at what was left of him.

It had been a long time since she’d seen a dead body, but not long enough. It would never be long enough.