Con pressed the end key and went on to the second number on her call log. The phone was answered, but nothing was said, and then he heard a series of clicks. Sonuvabitch, the receiving phone was waiting for him to key in a code.

Sonuvabitch.

He couldn’t believe it.

She was the DIA agent. Her phone setup was pure covert ops.

And that meant Daniel Killian was his connection to Warner. The world was definitely going to hell in a handbasket when former Special Forces operators started running contraband for the likes of a scumbag like Erich Warner-but that was the world’s problem, not Con’s.

He only had one problem, and fortunately, he had a phone number for the man who could solve it-Daniel Killian.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Following Shoko down the stairs at the Posada, Dax felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He glanced at the phone’s screen, and thank God, Suzi’s name was at the top.

“Yes,” he said into the receiver, bringing the phone to his ear.

“Killian,” some guy said, and Dax’s heart plummeted. “My name is Conroy Farrel, and I’ve got two things I think you’re looking for-the Memphis Sphinx and Suzanna Toussi. For a price, you can have them both.”

“Where are they?” He didn’t miss a step, despite the jolt that went through him. Conroy Farrel-he would not be forgetting that name. Whatever the guy had, he definitely had Suzi’s phone.

“Costa del Rey Ten kilometers up the Paraná to where the Tambo comes in. Then another four kilometers up the Tambo. You’ll see my place on the north shore. I hope you’re already moving, because you’re running out of time.”

“What’s the price?” There was always a price, and it would inevitably be something big and hard to get that was going to cost Dax something big and hard to hold on to, like maybe his life. He had plenty of enemies for the things he’d done-more than he could count.

“Erich Warner, bring him to me. I know he wants the Sphinx, and you can guarantee him he’ll have it before tomorrow night, before moonrise.”

Sometimes when a guy least expected it, when every damn thing except his sex life had been going wrong all damn day, he got a break.

“We’ll be there.” He hung up the phone, and Shoko took it out of his hand. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. She was fast enough to surprise him and strong enough to get her way.

She could have asked, but he would have said “Fuck you,” and she probably knew that.

She hit a couple of keys and looked at the screen.

“Su-zee,” she said, a satisfied smile curving her lips. “I knew there was a woman. Who is she, this Su-zee?”

“A dealer out of New York who was at Beranger’s gallery earlier. She says she’s got the Sphinx, and she wants to make a deal.”

Those dead black eyes slid over him, and he had to consciously check himself to keep from striking out and snapping her neck. Rumbling with the Blade Queen was not going to get him what he wanted most, which was his girl back.

Farrel wanted Warner in exchange for Suzi? Dax could deliver.

“Where is she, this Su-zee with the Sphinx?” She made the name “Suzi” sound like something she was going to be scraping off the bottom of her shoes.

Over his dead body, he thought, and he wasn’t planning on checking out anytime soon.

“That information is for Warner,” he said. “When I see him, I’ll tell him.”

Her lips curled, and she practically hissed at him-bitch. She could hiss all she wanted. He only had one shot at doing this. He reached out and took his phone back. Yeah, he was pretty fast, too, and pretty damn strong.

When they reached the street, he was unceremoniously relegated to the front seat of the Humvee, shotgun, which was fine with him. On this job, he was working for Warner.

He glanced over at the driver, a young guy, sharply dressed in a spic-and-span black T-shirt with camouflage pants, who looked like he took himself and his job very seriously. Fine with Dax, he liked serious guys. He was kind of a serious guy himself. But it would be damn nice to know whose Humvee he was riding in, and even better to know where they were going. Regardless, he figured his “minute flat” with Warner was hell and gone.

He let out a heavy sigh and relaxed back into his seat.

“Caray! La mujer está loca, sabes?” he said, shaking his head. Cripes, the woman is crazy, you know?

The young driver kept his eyes on the road and didn’t say anything, but Dax saw the small grin he couldn’t control.

That’s all he needed, a little something to work with, and by the time they pulled up to a walled compound an hour out of Ciudad del Este, Dax and Pedro were on a first-name basis, and Dax knew exactly where they were-Joaquin Vargas’s estate, and he knew Pedro’s life story and Vargas’s business.

Drugs and guns-that’s what made the world go around, especially on the Paraguayan frontier.

They drove past Vargas’s elaborate villa and came to a stop half a mile down the drive, under a smaller house’s portico. There were guards everywhere, all over the grounds, all of them armed. Dax was told to stay in the car until Pedro drove around to the garage entrance of the house.

That’s right. He was the hired help, and he very much wanted to keep it that way-low-key, important but not equal, not worthy of too much notice.

Pedro led him inside, all business again, down a long marble-floored hall to a large library, where he was directed to wait.

He’d been slumming it in the market and at the Posada Plaza for three days, and been in muck up to his knees for half of today, and this place was stunning, like a museum, everything pristine and expensive from the floor-to-ceiling bookcases and rich wool carpets to the huge mahogany desk commanding attention on the far side of the room. There was a fireplace on the near wall, flanked with leather chairs and a couch, and various exquisitely inlaid tables.

Dax took up a position slightly off to one side of the fireplace, where he could see the whole room, and he kept a good hold on his duffel bag, and tried not to think too much about the phone burning a hole in his pocket, or about the last call he’d gotten.

He needed to stay cool, to play it as it lay, and somehow, without anybody knowing it, get exactly what he needed here tonight.

“Have you failed me, Mr. Killian? Or does this Suzi have what I want?” The tone was bored rather than strident, but Dax could instantly see the strain on Erich Warner’s face when the man walked into the room.

Good. For what Dax needed him to do, strain was the perfect motivation.

He also saw the iguana draped on Warner’s shoulder, a young one, not very big, with a jeweled collar and a linked-chain leash, an odd accoutrement for somebody who looked more like a fresh-faced German schoolboy than anyone over eighteen should. Warner’s hair was very blond, thick, and bluntly cut, his features straight out of the Aryan handbook, which Dax knew was a tremendous source of pride for the man.

Dax also knew he was into some pretty strange stuff on the side, genetic research or some such, which under the best of circumstances he didn’t believe belonged in the hands of an underworld kingpin. But he’d heard things about drugs and procedures, and the truth of it, in Dax’s opinion, was the walking advertisement for strangeness that was always at his side.

Shoko, gliding in behind him, was neither bored nor strained. She always just was-oddly present in the moment and dangerously ready. Even considering the size of the room, he was well inside her “reach out and touch you before you can blink” perimeter again-and her boss was unhappy with him.

Sometimes he thought he needed a new job.

“I haven’t failed,” he said with the utmost confidence. “Do you have the information?”

No information, and Dax would kill the bastard himself.