Long legs, strong hands, oh, yes, there was a reason she’d been kissing on him all day.

“There’s a place up the river,” Levi said, leaning in closer, taking up the slack of her retreat. “And a man there who is… involved with the Sphinx.”

Her gaze shot back to Levi.

Her first score had netted her two points: a place up the river and an involved man. Maybe this was all going to be easier than she’d thought-but probably not.

She put her hand over Levi’s where he had it on her knee and gave him a little squeeze-a promising type of squeeze.

“What’s his name? Is he someone you know?” That’s all she needed, a name-the guy’s name or the place’s name. She didn’t care which, she just needed somewhere to start looking again, and she’d be out of El Caribe in a heartbeat.

“I don’t know his name, but I can guarantee he’s worth talking to.” Levi’s smile returned, all toothy and gray and maybe starting to get just a little bit wobbly, and she gave his hand another encouraging squeeze. “He was…uh, at Beranger’s today, after the damage was done. We were all scrambling around, trying to find the statue in the wreckage, and Remy was dying on the spot, shot up by the police, and not talking to anybody, though everyone tried to rush over and help.”

Yes, she just bet they had. Probably more like rush over and try to shake the location of the Sphinx out of him before he expired.

“That must have been terrible for you, Levi,” she said, leaning over again, letting her personal concern for his safety put a catch in her soft, soft voice.

He popped a tiny empanada in his mouth as his gaze slowly fell to her cleavage and got stuck there.

“It was a… a, uh, free-for-all in the gallery, absolutely crazy, Ponce and the cops with a whole damn platoon of bodyguards trying to take charge, which my men and I simply weren’t going to allow-and then this man came in the back door, just one man, and we all got hit.” He stopped, and reached for a toothpick with deep-fried baby squid on the end of it.

“Hit?” she prompted after a few seconds of dead silence.

“Uh, yes, Suzi dear.” He lifted his bloodshot eyes to meet hers and used his teeth to drag the bit of squid off the toothpick and into his mouth. “Zapped with some force,” he said around the tapa, “something unlike anything I’ve ever known, something hot. It was everywhere, all over us, making our skin crawl, and we all ran, but Gervais got caught by this man, right by the throat, and of all things, my dear, he wanted to know your name.”

A bolt of alarm skittered down her spine. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear.

“My name?” she asked.

“Yes,” Levi confirmed, still chewing. “And mine.”

“Wh-why?” This was not good, some guy zapping people in Beranger’s wanting to know her name.

“Because we’re the dealers here,” Levi said. “You and me. This man said he would have the Sphinx at this place up the river tomorrow, and he wants to sell, and who else is he going to contact in this town to unload something as valuable as the Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III besides you and me? Beranger is dead.”

Precisely, and Beranger was the last guy who’d tried to unload the Sphinx.

“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions? Just because this guy says he has the Sphinx doesn’t mean he actually has it.”

He looked at her like she’d missed the whole point-which she undoubtedly had.

“Nobody is jumping to anything,” he assured her, sounding thoroughly exasperated and annoyed and frustrated and like all the champagne and the four shots of vodka he’d had at the craps table were finally, suddenly, starting to kick in. “I have been ch-chasing this piece of Egyptian junk for the last damn four months, and that’s not counting all the years when I merely thought it might be out there somewhere, and the one thing I can guarantee you, Suzanna, is that somebody has it-in their hands, in their keeping, right now, in this damn city. Everything points to it being here.”

“But anybody could have it.”

“No.” He shook his head, adamant. “It’s not just anybody. It is this man who was at Beranger’s, who is now up the river, and… and you need to go up there and get the damn thing for me… for us.”

Oh, right. And that’s what this was all about? Levi welcoming her with open arms, not because she looked like a guttersnipe, but because he thought he could order her around?

Good God, the man was delusional.

“So where am I supposed to go?” Really, it couldn’t be this easy, but he looked so relieved when she asked that for a moment she thought it was going to be this easy.

“You don’t need to know that.”

The hell she didn’t, but she could let it ride for a minute or two.

“You’ll be going with Gervais, and he knows the name of the place and where it is.”

“Uh, what about you?” she asked. “Where are you going to be?”

He slumped back in his chair and squinted up at her from under his bushy gray eyebrows-and he burped.

“Suzi, you know I’m not a well man.” He reached for more champagne and filled his glass.

No, she didn’t. Overweight, old, and out of shape, yes, flat-out cowardly, yes, but not unwell.

“Actually, you look great, Levi,” she lied.

He beamed for just a second or two at the compliment. “So do you, my dear. You know, you’ve always been one of my favorites.”

“Thank you.”

“We need to work together on this,” he continued, taking a short gulp of wine before he continued. “Gervais wouldn’t know an authentic artifact if it hit him in the head, but you will, and if we present a solid front, this other man can’t play us off against each other.” He was making the hard sell and proving once again that for a real player, money trumped sex every time. “The piece starts at a million, we both know that, and he will, too, but working together, maybe we can keep the price from going to five, which means we both make money, profits to be split fifty-fifty.”

He had a buyer. She could see it in his watery gaze, and he was offering her a cut of the money, which told her exactly what he thought about this whole “up the river” plan-sketchy at best, dangerous at worst.

“What’s your client willing to pay?” All she needed was a name, and he’d have to give her one before she got on a boat heading anywhere.

He hedged for a minute, then said, “Eight.”

Which meant ten.

“Who is it?” she asked, even knowing he wouldn’t say. Push, shove, push back, pull-it was the game they played.

“He’s Japanese.”

“Ahh,” she said. All the good stuff was going to Japan these days.

“What about you?” he asked. “What’s your client willing to pay?”

“Twenty.” Twenty thousand, not million, but that was a minor difference in this situation.

His eyes widened for the briefest moment, and she knew he was hooked.

“Twenty? Well, yes, then, I think we go with your client on the Sphinx, and I’ll find my Japanese friend some other exquisite Middle Kingdom artifact.”

And there she was, making another fifty-fifty deal on something no one she knew had ever laid eyes on.

“Your buyer isn’t interested in a chance at immortality?”

“Suzi, please.” Levi gave her a long-suffering look. “The stories are good for increasing the price. If I had a dollar for every four-thousand-year-old magic statue I’ve handled, I’d be retired in the south of France by now.”

She, too, but she’d never handled a magic statue endorsed by the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.

“So where am I going tomorrow morning?” she asked again.

He just stared at her, blinking owlishly silently perturbed. She knew he didn’t like being pushed once, let alone twice-but neither did she, so she stared right back.

“You’ll have to shrust me on this,” he said, starting to slur his words.

Trust, she was sure, was what he meant, and the hell she did.