Nearly, but not quite.

Suzi would never forget. She couldn’t, no matter how many years passed.

She pulled away from him and was so disappointed by the effort it took. She was usually smarter. He was an unnecessary complication, the competition, the guy to beat, not the guy to be kissing.

“That was a mistake,” she said. Unacceptable. Dangerous territory.

“Yeah.”

“We have a job to do.” She had unfinished business, and she couldn’t afford to fail, not in the work she did for Buck, and never again in the work she did in Eastern Europe. She wasn’t trying to save the world, or even every poor woman who fell into prostitution-but the younger girls, the ones who were trafficked from the U.S. to the Balkans, the Czech Republic, and the one she’d found in Ukraine, in Odessa on the Black Sea-with the SDF crew’s help, and Buck Grant’s documents, she’d returned six of those girls, almost seven.

It was the “almost” that kept her going. The “almost” she hadn’t forgiven herself for. The last thing she’d needed was another black mark on her soul, but there it was now, and like the first one, it had a sweet name-Lily Anne Thompson, but at least she could voice that name. The other one, the one she felt with every breath, that one she couldn’t speak.

Hell, sometimes she wondered if she was going to live long enough to make up for her failings and wash away her sins.

“Which one next, Warner?”

Inside the luxury cabin of his Learjet, flying high over the western edge of southern Brazil, Erich Warner closed his SAT phone and returned to watching his mistress roll half a dozen pretty pills around a small silver bowl-blue, red, green, orange, yellow, purple, all gelcaps, bright and shiny.

She was fascinated by her pills, as well she should be. He’d only let her go a minute too long without medication half a dozen times. Each time had been a punishment, a lesson taught. Each time had been a lesson learned.

Sometimes he wondered if he would ever let her go longer. Two minutes, possibly. The pain, he knew, was excruciating. He’d spent enough time in Dr. Souk’s lab to have seen human suffering on a truly epic scale-not in quantity, but epic in the quality and the depthless wonder of the suffering.

Pain had been Dr. Souk’s stock in trade. No mere torturer, he’d been a medical genius, a chemist, and Shoko was one of his finer creations. Erich knew why she cut people to ribbons, literally, with her knives. She was sick. Her mind twisted by the pain of her countless near deaths and rebirths in Souk’s laboratory.

Poor, bitter little thing. He’d been known to give her prizes as well as punishments, and today, he’d decided, would be a prize day. Maybe his generosity would bring him luck. His faith in Killian was being tested.

Tonight, the man had said. He’d have the Memphis Sphinx tonight.

If he didn’t, Dallas, Texas, was in for a very bloody Monday morning the first week in April. Heroin made for predictable bedfellows, drug lords and warlords, and nobody had more heroin to transport than a man who was both, Akram Jamal in southern Paktika, Afghanistan. For the favor of piggybacking one of the Afghan’s loads into Marseilles in one of Erich’s cargo ships, and for facilitating the land transportation of a shipment of surface-to-air missiles, SAMs, across Tajikistan, Jamal had given him the name of a restless Saudi deep in the heart of Texas.

Erich had more power and money than half the countries he did business in, and yet neither power nor money was enough to save him from Souk’s shadow beast. The creature had an uncanny ability to reach into Erich’s business and make his presence known. Two of Jamal’s lieutenants had been killed during the transport of the surface-to-air missiles, and the missiles had arrived in Jamal’s warehouse irreparably disabled. Erich hadn’t supplied the missiles. He’d only transported them-and yet it was clear to him that the shadow beast had been involved. He left things for Erich, marks. There had been a mark on one of the SAM crates-XT7, Dr. Souk’s code for a particularly effective drug he’d created. It was the only mark Erich had needed to know the beast had been involved. Always it was like this, the silent, evasive threat of him. The creature lurking around Erich’s deals, breathing on them, ruining them, then disappearing for months.

He was alive, he knew too much, and Erich had not been able to stop him in any way. The situation was untenable, and the solution was the Sphinx. With the shield of immortality upon him, he could track the beast down and kill him-or bring him to heel.

The thought was a recurring one and never failed to make his blood race, to control that much power, to chain the beast to him the way he’d chained Shoko.

“The woman, Warner,” Shoko said, looking up at him from where she sat at his feet, gently rolling her pills around and around in the silver bowl, the iguana resting along her hip and thigh. “I heard her on the phone, while you were talking with Killian.”

“What about her?” As if he didn’t know.

“I want her, Warner. I told you there was a woman, and I want her for my own. No interference.”

“So be it,” he said, granting the unknown “Sugar” a death unlike anything she ever could have imagined.

Shoko smiled, and that truly was a lovely sight.

“Purple, my dear,” he said, and she all but purred, taking the purple pill out of the bowl and putting it in her pocket for later, when she needed it.

For the next few hours, she was free of him, free to roam as she willed, and he had no doubt that when they landed, some poor sap in Ciudad del Este would pay for her freedom with his life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Stakeout-Suzi had never been on a stakeout, but surprisingly, the scene in front of her was very familiar-half a dozen prostitutes congregating on their strip of turf in front of Galeria Viejo, gearing up for the night shift.

“Coffee?” Dax asked, offering his cup.

She’d opted for bottled water when he’d made his recon stroll past the Old Gallery and then slipped into a dive called El Mercado for a few supplies, but a little coffee wasn’t a bad idea. She’d stayed in the Land Cruiser, parked a ways down the street, but in a place where they had full view of the main door and Ponce’s Range Rover parked out front.

“Thanks.” She took the cup and held it to her mouth, blowing first before taking a sip. “So what do you think? Is that the world’s oldest profession?”

“Nah,” he said. “War is the world’s oldest profession, by a long shot, and then comes tax collecting, and then the trick turners showed up to give everybody some relief from the other two.”

She grinned, and when he glanced over, he did, too.

Yes, sir, that was them, just a couple of fun-loving kids with murder and mayhem behind them, and a four-thousand-year-old occult statue in front of them-hopefully.

Ponce hadn’t even left a guard on the Range Rover. All five of his crew, himself included, were in the gallery. Suzi almost hoped he did find it. At least they’d know where it was then, and she didn’t doubt that Dylan and the boys could steal it back, maybe even before Dax could get his hands on it.

“What are his chances, you think, of them finding anything in there?”

“Slim to none, about the same as ours. The place is really torn up inside. As a matter of fact, you might want to reconsider this plan and let me just take you to the airport.” He held a cookie out for her, from out of a bag he’d bought, and she took it.

They’d been an hour on the river road, getting back into town, and were an hour into watching the gallery, and that was the third or fourth time he’d suggested taking her to the airport.

“No,” she said. “I need to get inside, look around for myself.”

She still had the scanner, her ace in the hole, and yes, he was bound to notice when she pulled it out, but until she was in the gallery, she was keeping her technical advantage to herself.