“I wonder what that’s all about,” Dylan asked.

But Hawkins, hell, he figured they were going to find out soon enough.

Conroy Farrel was one tough customer, and the Memphis Sphinx was absofuckinglutely amazing, and Suzi was safe. Dax had caught sight of her standing just inside the door, the Sphinx in her hands, with Conroy standing in the shadows behind her.

Dax had hoped to get a lot closer to both of them, but Farrel had other plans. Actually, Conroy Farrel had only one plan-kill Erich Warner as expediently and with as little fanfare as possible.

That’s the way Dax would have done it, but he wouldn’t have put Suzi in the middle of it, and Farrel’s plan was deeply flawed in that respect.

Dax quickly crossed the stretch of empty ground between the house and the dock, wondering if Erich Warner wanted the Sphinx badly enough to abandon common sense, leave the boat, and go up to the house to get it.

Probably, he thought with disgust.

Warner would have the illusion of cover-heavy on the “illusion” part. The German could take as many of Vargas’s soldiers as he wanted, and he could take his little Oriental pit bull, Shoko, but Farrel had made it clear that the Sphinx wasn’t moving without Warner personally coming up and getting it.

Dax knew for a fact that Warner wouldn’t get anywhere near the house, let alone near the Sphinx. Conroy Farrel would drop him the instant he got a shot, which would be the exact instant Erich Warner poked his head out from under the canopy on the boat.

Dax knew, because that’s the way he would have done it.

He made his way down the dock, through two squads of Vargas’s trained militants, and stepped into the boat. Vargas’s captain had remained on board, in charge of the craft.

“We’ve got a problem,” Dax said to Warner. Actually, Dax had more than one, but the German really only had one. “The dealer wants to talk with you personally.”

“Why?” Warner asked, showing a respectable amount of skepticism. “I can have the money transferred from here, she can check her accounts, and you bring me the statue. That’s the deal.”

It always came down to this-who had whom over the bigger barrel. On this deal, Dax figured it was a wash. Both men had already shown an obsessive amount of zeal for what they wanted.

“She wants to meet.”

Warner looked disgusted.

“Some woman named Suzi thinks she’s calling the shots here?” He said the name with such disdain that for a moment, Dax thought the man’s intelligence and instincts for survival would win out.

“Yes, sir.”

“She wants a million dollars for her statue, and she’s running out of time. Tell her I’ll make the transfer when she gives you the Sphinx.”

Behind the German, Shoko said something in Japanese, something bitchy, and Dax saw Warner’s mouth tighten.

“Shoko told me there was a woman involved. Call this dealer, tell her the terms of the original agreement are set.”

“Actually, sir, she wants to talk with you.” He handed Warner the radio Conroy had left for him on the deck.

Warner gave the thing a very skeptical look, then took it and keyed in the mike. “Yes,” he snapped. After a moment, his expression hardened. “Five million?”

Hardball on a losing game, Dax thought.

“I want to see it.”

Of course he did, and Dax needed to be somewhere else.

“Sir,” he interrupted, keeping his voice very low. Warner turned to him. “Tell her I’m coming up there to negotiate the terms of the meeting. You shouldn’t go in there cold.”

Warner dismissed him with a nod, probably having no intention of going up to the house, not if he could get what he wanted any other way, and he was a man used to getting his way.

It was all a moot point. The line of sight from the house to the boat was a straight shot at seventy yards. Conroy Farrel didn’t give a damn about the money or the Sphinx, and Warner didn’t have to leave the boat. All he needed to do was move about four feet, and he’d be dead, and something was telling Dax that Conroy had a plan to get Warner to move four lousy feet.

And he did.

The collective murmur of awe running through twenty calloused drug runners made Dax look up toward the house, and he wondered how in the world Erich Warner was going to resist.

Farrel had sent Suzi out onto his deck, obviously unarmed, the radio in her one hand, held up to her ear, and in the other, the Memphis Sphinx, held up high into the fading light of the late afternoon sun. The Sphinx did not fail, not in any way. The light falling on the crystal eyes shattered into a dazzling, glittering spectrum of color and brilliance. The body of the statue was luminous in sunlight, supple. It was as if Suzi were holding an incandescent creature, a living thing that was warming in her hand.

An illusion, of course, but a damned effective one.

Anthropologists had a term they used when trying to get close to indigenous peoples who had never before been contacted by the outside world-“lure and attraction.” They would set glittery pieces of modern junk along riverbanks, where the tribes-people were known to come for water or to fish, and that’s what Conroy was doing, luring old Warner in with a show-a beautiful woman, a stunning artifact, and lots of flash and dazzle to catch the German’s eye.

Dax wouldn’t have fallen for it, but he knew how little exposure was necessary for a sniper’s shot to hit home. All a sniper needed was to see part of a man’s head, just enough to get on target, and if Dax had been responsible for Erich Warner’s safety, he would have made damn sure the German didn’t go poking his head out of the boat.

Warner was doomed. Dax’s problem was Suzi. When Conroy killed Warner, all those twenty drug runners could easily have a knee-jerk reaction and open fire. Or possibly, Conroy wouldn’t be content with just killing Warner. Maybe he would open fire on all of them, and then it was going to be mayhem, with Suzi exposed for as long as it took her to get back in the house-a few seconds at most. But it took far less than one second to die.

So Dax made his way back down the dock, through all the armed men, and when he heard the shot, he knew Warner was already dead, that the man had stepped out of concealment to get a better look at the amazing sight of immortality blazing away in the sunlight.

Stupid bastard.

The thought was fleeting, cut short by a screeching wail of some unspeakable emotion coming out of Shoko. For a second, the twenty men on the dock were held in check by the awful, wrenching sound.

Not Dax, he was moving, breaking into a run, heading for cover, and planning his assault on the house.

Orders-Creed loved them. They gave his life a certain dimension. Performing them superbly well gave him a lot of satisfaction.

The boss had said to tranquilize Conroy Farrel if the man set one foot onto the deck, if he exposed himself for even the barest instant of time-and Creed did. He’d been watching the doorway like a hawk, and almost at the same time as Creed heard the shot, Conroy stepped out, and Creed put pressure on his trigger, darting the man.

To Creed’s amazement, the guy did not go down. He kept moving.

“Tough bastard,” Zach said, obviously impressed, with good reason.

“Suzi?”

“Farrel grabbed her on her way in-geezus.”

A screeching, banshee wail tore through the air.

“Boss?” Creed said into his radio.

“Close on the house,” Dylan said. “Get Suzi and Farrel out of there.”

“Geezus. You seeing that?” Zach said next to him.

“Christ.” He heard Dylan in his ear.

“Who is that woman?” he said, but didn’t get an answer. Down on the dock, the Asian woman had drawn a knife and already cut three of the soldiers trying to get back on the boat. They all had blood on their shirts. One of them had dropped to his knees, his hand holding his throat. Creed could have given him the odds on that move working out for him-zip.