The moment held her, and she placed both her hands on the statue, one on each side of the lion body. It was truly beautiful, conceived and created on the banks of the Nile four thousand years ago. The granite was warm against her palms, with a luster that caught the light. It wasn’t pure black; there were flecks of gold and gray in the stone, which made it seem to shimmer.

Magical, indeed.

And for the moment, hers.

People had killed for this statue, possibly hundreds of times over the centuries, and suddenly what had seemed so abhorrent before made sense. This black and gold beast with the cut-crystal eyes was worthy of blood, of sacrifice.

She slid it a few inches across the table, into a stream of sunlight, and the crystalline eyes lit themselves from deep within.

Ahhh, she thought. This is it. And when this happens in moonlight, the power of the creature is unleashed. The doors of time will open, either to give or to take-but the power is there, lying latent and heavy in the rock.

With the sunlight catching on every facet of crystal, she reached for the left eye and slowly twisted and pulled, and hoped beyond hope that the piece would release and fall into her hand. She wanted to see inside, to touch a place of ancientness.

This Sphinx was made for Sesostris III, King of Egypt and the Nile, two thousand years before the birth of Christ.

So clearly, she heard the voice of history, of pain, and loss, of being buried in the crypt, of crying out to be released.

Released.

The rod of crystal pulled free, and Suzi’s pulse began to race. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from the dark abyss of the empty eye socket. She leaned closer, her heart in her throat-so dark, like the far reaches of coldest space. Her breath vaporized along the surface of the supremely serene, one-eyed Sphinx.

Impossible.

But she exhaled again-and again the coldness of the statue turned her breath to visible vapor.

She tilted her head slightly to one side, peering deeper into the empty socket. The stone was shot through with gold and gray flecks-and as she looked, noticing each cluster of flecks in the dark night of the eye socket…they seemed to move… in orbits. She blinked and leaned in closer, curious, enchanted… enthralled by the-

“No, Suzi. That’s not for you.” Con grasped the Sphinx by its head, covering the empty socket, and with his other hand, he relieved her of the crystalline eye and set it back into place.

She blinked, feeling a cold shiver trickle down her spine.

Oh, my.

Her phone rang again, and she turned to look at Con. He had the Sphinx in one of his large hands and her phone in the other.

“Go,” he said when he answered.

He listened for a moment, and as he listened, she watched his face turn very grim.

“Dylan Hart. I won’t forget.”

Good Lord, Dylan. The relief flooding through her was palpable. Dylan would be able to find her.

“How many?” Con asked.

She thought about calling something out, but all she could think was-

“Costa del Rey!” she hollered as loudly as she could.

“No,” Con said into the phone, giving her a very cold look.

It shut her up. She’d gotten her point across.

“If you hurt her in any way, I’ll hunt you down, Hart. You bring her back to me, the Toussi woman is yours. If not, you can pick up the pieces when I’m gone.”

And Conroy Farrel had most definitely gotten his point across.

Geezus. Dylan and Hawkins had snatched the girl. She had to get out of here. She couldn’t outrun Con, and she couldn’t outgun him, but there had to be a way.

“We have no deal, Hart, except for the women. Keep your distance.” He hung up the phone and put it back in her pack.

Keep your distance? Good God. Was it possible Dylan was just outside the compound? Suzi had no idea how long Scout had been missing. The girl could have driven into Ciudad del Este and gotten nabbed there for all she knew.

But her gut was telling her Dylan was close. That he and the boys had grabbed Scout right off her own front porch. That’s the way the guys worked-up close and personal.

Con had moved toward the open door onto the deck. He was looking out, and after a moment, gave her an order.

“Get over here.” He still had the Sphinx in his hand. “You’ve got a job to do. If you do it right, exactly the way I tell you to do it, and everything goes well, you’ll walk away from this.”

If not, she’d probably die-he didn’t have to spell it out. She could see the handwriting on the wall.

Holy crap.

He handed her the Sphinx when she stopped next to him.

“There’s a boat coming,” he said, pointing to the river, and when she looked, she could see it, a gunboat with a.50-caliber BMG mounted on it, which did nothing to calm her fears. “Erich Warner is on the boat, and he’s coming to buy the Sphinx.”

“That’s a lot of people on there.” And every one of them was armed with some kind of carbine slung over their shoulders. Holy gee-fricking-crap. There was only one way to spell firefight-B.A.D.I.D.E.A.

She did a quick look around at the interior of the house. Too many windows was her first thought.

“I… uh, need my pistol.”

“I’ll handle security and defense,” he said. “You just do as you’re told.”

Oh, man, she could have belted him for that. Doing as she was told had never been her strong suit.

“We’re going to let them make the first sortie. What I need is for Erich Warner to come off the boat. You’re going to make that happen for me.”

Oh, God. She clutched the Sphinx closer.

Down on the river, the boat was tying up at the dock, and a whole army of guys was getting off. Drug runners, that’s what she was seeing, somebody’s private paramilitary force-and then she saw Dax, right in the middle of all of them, with his own damn carbine slung over his shoulder.

For an instant, she doubted him.

And then she didn’t. She knew Dax Killian, and if he was working for Erich Warner, he was doing it for a reason. He’d been running his end of the Sphinx business like a military campaign, not like a collector. She knew his background. She knew what kind of man he was-the kind she wanted, the kind she needed, and so help her God, the kind of man she could fall in love with.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Well?” Hawkins asked, watching the house and compound through his rifle scope. Dylan had made his offer, trade Farrel’s girl for Suzi.

“He said he wouldn’t forget my name.”

“That’s a start.” He let out a short laugh. Geezus Kee-rist. “Have you decided whose side we’re on? It’s getting a little crowded down there.”

“We’re on Suzi’s side. Everyone else is fair game, including Farrel, if we can’t take control of him.”

“Fuck.” He hated this damn mission.

“Jungle Boy,” Dylan said into his radio. “Are you in position?”

“Affirmative.”

“If Conroy Farrel takes one step onto that deck, I want you to trank him.”

“Affirmative.”

Dylan put the radio back into a pocket on his tac vest and lifted his binoculars back to his eyes.

“Looks like the drug runners are sending Mr. Killian up to parlay.”

They both lay very quietly in the muck and the mud and the leaves, sunk into the landscape as invisibly as possible, watching the scene unfold.

“When Farrel is finished here, he’ll be ready to trade,” the boss said.

“Good. Then we can go back to square one and start all over. That’s good, Dylan.”

“Asshole.”

“I wanted to wrap this thing up in Bangkok last November. We practically had him.” Without a doubt, he and the boss had been at this for a while, tracking down Conroy Farrel.

“You seeing that?” Dylan asked.

“Yeah.” Dax had barely stepped foot on the deck before he stopped, bent down and picked something up, then turned around and headed back toward the two squads of paramilitary forces lined up on the dock.