Tara Janzen - Breaking Loose

Erich wasn’t going to allow it-so he kept Shoko close. If the beast should rise up in front of him some night, or make his lunge from behind, Shoko would be there to deflect the blow, or to take it herself. It mattered not which-not to Erich. She was a tool he used to sate his needs and grant him what little sleep he dared, and when she was gone, he’d make another.

Of course, the Sphinx could change the game…perhaps.

Cocking his wrist, he sent the gel-caps sliding to the other end of the canister again.

“Come here, baby,” he said softly. “Come get your medicine.”

With all the power and ease of a superbly fit and barely tamed animal, the Asian beauty crossed the porch and knelt before him. Eyes closed, mouth open, she tilted her head back and waited.

He never failed her.

Opening the canister, he chose a red pill out of the jeweled array, each saturated hue denoting a different Souk Special.

“Wider,” he said.

When she complied, opening her mouth wider, he dropped the gel-cap onto the back of her tongue and reached down to stroke her throat until she swallowed. She never knew what he gave her, and he kept things that way, purposely, definitively.

Without moving another muscle, she slowly opened her eyes. He knew what she saw-her lord and master, matching her in elegance in every way, a long, narrow nose over a firm mouth, a shock of thick blond hair bluntly cut and casually swept to one side, blue eyes the color of a summer sky. She’d once told him that she thought he was beautiful, which he’d found so very odd. Not the opinion, but that she’d had one. She usually didn’t. What she did have, and she had it in abundance, was obedience and chemically induced youth.

She was older than him, fifty-six to his forty-two, but she looked no more than thirty, her skin smooth and flawless, her body a sleek expanse of hard muscle overlaid with soft feminine curves. She didn’t look like she could break a man’s neck, but she could-in a heartbeat.

“We should go, Warner, today. Now,” she said, still on her knees in front of him. “To Ciudad del Este. We should be there when this Killian makes his deal with the Frenchman. I don’t trust him.”

That last bit was superfluous, almost laughably so. She didn’t trust anyone, ever. Neither did he, but there was always an extra component of risk to be weighed when venturing out into the unguarded world, a component of exposure he’d become less and less inclined to entertain over the last four years, which was why he hadn’t already taken over from Killian.

“He won’t cheat me.” Not for any reason. Erich knew that much about the man. “If the Sphinx is in Paraguay, as he’s told me, then he’ll get it and bring it to me.”

Killian, unlike some of the other men he’d hired, was motivated down to his core, and not by the substantial reward Erich had posted for the finding of the statue. Far more than the money, Killian wanted the information Erich had used to coerce him into finding the Memphis Sphinx, an utterly priceless piece of intelligence Shoko had tortured out of a Pakistani general who had betrayed him.

Sleeper cells of terrorists in the heartland of America-the fears were justified, and Erich had the name of a man who nurtured and presided over such a cell. He also had the name of a town in the state of Texas where this deadly cell slept, biding its time for the call to martyrdom.

Killian was a patriot.

“He won’t cheat me,” Erich repeated, utterly convinced.

Shoko continued to hold his gaze, her eyes growing flatter and deader with each passing moment, as if he wasn’t worthy of even her lowest contempt.

He knew that look-the bitch-and it never boded well.

“What?” he asked, his voice sharp. He didn’t like her in this mood. She was quite capable of killing him, and the day she decided she could face her own death, he had no doubt that she would break him into a dozen pieces and then rip him apart into a dozen more-bare-handed and with her teeth, if it came to that.

“There’s a woman, Warner. I can smell her.”

A woman.

Erich’s own mood grew suddenly grimmer.

He didn’t claim to know how Shoko sometimes knew things, though he doubted if it was actually by scent, but he’d learned not to doubt her-and if she said there was a woman involved in the Ciudad del Este deal, then he didn’t doubt that there were all manner of unforeseen catastrophes on the horizon. Women, in and of themselves, had often been catalysts of catastrophe in his life, starting with his mother-who also, unfortunately, had not died at Erich’s hands. A woman’s mere presence, he’d learned at a young age, was often enough to skew a paradigm, which was why he didn’t keep one around-present company excluded, except Shoko was not like any other woman on the face of the earth.

“A woman?” he repeated.

“Yes, Warner. It’s not good.”

No, it wasn’t. Realistically, the odds of one woman ruining his chances at immortality were on the slim side, a possible, but not wholly probable, catastrophe.

And yet if there was a woman suddenly involved with the Sphinx, she was a new player.

Erich didn’t like new players-not at this late a date, not when the Gates of Time were destined to open Sunday night and bestow life everlasting upon the person who held the Sphinx in their hands, the refracted moonlight from its crystalline eyes washing the supplicant in immortality.

That person would be him. He was the supplicant, and after Sunday night, he would be immortal.

Let the beast strike at him then and be broken.

He looked down at Shoko where she still knelt at his feet, at the warm color of her skin, the erotic perfection of her every curve, the soft pink of her mouth-and the black, dead flatness of her eyes.

No, there was not another like her, not anywhere.

“Can you be ready to leave in an hour?” he asked. The flight from the coast of Brazil to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, was no more than three hours.

She nodded, and he smiled. They would be in the City of the East before nightfall.

Left-right-left-right-left-right…one long-legged stride after another.

Left-right-left-right… hips swaying in rhythm with her steps.

Out of the alley and onto the sidewalk, past an old Kawasaki up on its kickstand and chained to a handcart, skirting a line of plastic garbage bags spilling trash onto the pavement-left-right-left-right. All Dax could do was keep up. Suzi Toussi walked like she owned this godforsaken street in Ciudad del Este, and as long as she kept heading in the right direction, Dax was going to let her revel in that illusion. He had a Wilson Combat.45 tucked under his right arm in a shoulder holster, with two extra eight-shot mags and one in the pipe backing him up, enough to command a fair amount of personal space, even in this hellhole.

And Suzi had whatever she was carrying in her holster and him, whether she wanted him or not.

His money was definitely on the “or not” side of the equation.

She sure seemed to know where she wanted to go. His room at the Posada Plaza was only two blocks away, and she’d nearly covered the first one-but he seriously doubted if that’s where she was headed.

Tough.

That’s where she was going.

When she veered at the corner, he tightened his hold on her arm again. Possibly a risky move, but he was a risk-taking kind of guy.

“This way, Ms. Toussi,” he said, redirecting her without slowing down.

“I thought we could catch a taxi up at the next corner,” she said, responding to the change without breaking stride.

We? He liked that-and the way she stuck with him. He liked that a lot. It was just plain good thinking on her part not to try to ditch him.