She scooted her chair back and started to rise, but he caught her arm with his hand and held her in place.

“Sit back down, S-uzi,” he whined. “Pul-lease, you need to-”

That’s as far as he got.

“Mr. Asher,” a strong masculine voice interrupted with a tone of command she instantly recognized.

Dax.

She turned and found him closing in on her and Levi.

The old man quickly released her, then immediately looked for his men.

“They went back into the casino,” Dax informed him, pulling up a chair from the next table. “We need to talk.”

“And you…are?” Levi asked, trying to draw himself up into a figure with some authority-and failing. Despite his effort, he was still slumped in his chair, all sweaty and drunk.

“Danny Kane, from The Daily Inquirer,” Dax said, flashing his press pass. “I’m down here following a story, and-”

“I’m, uh, sure that I don’t talk to reporters,” Levi said, not actually sounding too sure of anything. “And, Suzi dear”-he turned to her and started to rise shakily out of his chair-”I don’t think you should talk to any, uh, reporters either.”

“No, Levi,” she agreed, being careful not to look over at Dax. She stood, too. “Do you want me to walk you up to your room?” He wasn’t very stable on his feet

“No. No, my dear.” He was holding on to the table. “It’s been a frightful day, truly frightful, and I’m not feeling all that well.”

After four shots, numerous glasses of champagne, and a couple of pounds of deep-fried squid and bacon-wrapped dates, Suzi wasn’t sure that she’d be feeling very well either.

“Yes, Levi, I understand, but-”

“Ah, Gervais.” His gaze shifted to somewhere behind her, and his face brightened. He lifted his hand and beckoned the man over, then returned his attention to her. “You will be here in the morning, right? We have a deal?”

“Yes, but it would be best if you told me-”

He let out a short laugh. “Oh, no, Suzi. No, no. I’m not that drunk. In the morning. You can go with Gervais.”

Dammit.

The burly Frenchman hurried to Levi’s side, took him by the arm, and the two of them started off.

Dammit. Watching him leave just took it out of her, her last ounce of strength. The day had been too long, too brutal, too awful. Frightful, just like Levi had said. All she’d wanted was one damn name to make it all worthwhile, and she hadn’t been able to get it.

She turned to Dax, but before she could say anything, Levi called her name.

“Suzi… dear?”

She shifted her attention back to where he was standing a few feet away, Gervais by his side, still holding on to him, a small, pudgy old man in a very damp and wrinkled pale blue suit.

“Yes,” she said.

“I never got the sh-chance to, well, because He paused for a second, his brow furrowing as he looked at her. “Well, because we haven’t really run into each other lately, but I’m sorry.”

Sorry about something and drunk. She turned back to Dax, hoping to come up with something to say, because the “sorry” word wasn’t going to work for her, not with him. She was on a mission, not a social outing.

“About the girl in Ukraine,” Levi said from behind her back, his voice suddenly sounding painfully clear. “The one you’d set up with Pierre Dulcine in New York, to work in Dulcine’s gallery. He told me the girl was killed in Odessa, on vacation or something, such a terrible tragedy.”

Yes, a terrible tragedy, and poor old Levi didn’t know the half of it.

She took a breath but couldn’t quite find the strength to turn around and face him. It was too much at the end of a bad day, the same way the girl’s death had been too much three months ago. An eighteen-year-old Alabama girl who’d thought she was heading for a life of adventure in Europe, to work at a first-class resort. Instead, she’d ended up at a fourth-rate brothel on the shores of the Black Sea, a grim existence full of brutality and meagerness, and she’d died there.

“Pierre was shocked, of course, quite dishtraught,” Levi was going on. “And we were both so concerned for you, my dear, that somehow the whole awful-awful thing would bring back memories of your own terrible tragedy, what with the similarities. You know, the girl for Dulcine’s getting shot, and your daughter getting shot.”

Her heart stopped for a beat, and in that short, intense interval, all the pain she always barely held at bay came washing into her.

“How old was she again?” Levi asked. “Your little girl? Three?”

Three, and Suzi could hardly breathe, her little girl.

God, it had been so long-and would never be long enough.

Levi was still yammering away behind her, and the thought crossed her mind to just take her whole damn day out on him.

Her baby, her little girl, how dare he bring that much heartache back to life, how dare he be so casually destructive.

She started to rise from the table, her hands closing, tightening. Christian had taught her how to fight, and she could take Levi any day of the week-except before she could make a move, she was caught from behind and hauled up close to a very solid body. Dax, dammit.

“No” was all he said, very softly, very close to her ear, his grip like iron around her waist.

“Let go of-” She started to struggle, just letting herself get wound up to go after Levi and teach him a damn lesson, and maybe get her hands around his throat and just shake him until he gave her the damn name of the place on the river, just throttle the bastard, just get the information out of him-just get him to shut up.

“Not here, not now,” Dax said, his voice still so very calm, his words still for her ears only.

“You don’t understand,” she gritted from between her teeth, tensing against him, ready to fight him, too.

She felt movement around the table, heard the sound of footsteps, but her attention, every atom of her being, was focused on Levi Asher, on the dawning stupefaction spreading across his face that Suzanna Royale Toussi wanted to slug him.

“Back off,” she heard Dax say to someone coming up behind them. “I said back off. I’ve got her. We’re leaving.” He was angry, protective, his voice on edge.

Tension was pulsing around her, Levi babbling, his bodyguard steadying him, and Dax was taking charge, giving clear directions and walking away with her in his arms, getting them out of El Caribe.

“Dylan, we’ve got a mess at the Gran Chaco,” Creed said, walking out of the hotel’s main entrance.

“Explain.”

“Suzi’s AWOL, and the contact she told you about, Jimmy Ruiz? He’s dead. Shot to death in her room. Rumors are running wild out here, but it sounds like the police have all her luggage, and she is definitely numero uno on their suspect list. I thought we should-”

“I’m on it. Stay on the line,” Dylan said, then Creed heard him talking to someone else, giving an order-Get Grant on the horn.

He stopped with his back to one of the portico’s marble columns and lit up a cigar he’d bummed off the boss, holding the phone between his shoulder and ear while he bent his head over the lighter cupped in his hands. He puffed until he got the cigar going, then he closed the lighter and took the phone back in his hand.

Sucking in a mouthful of smoke, he leaned back against the column and visually quartered the area, from the parking lot, to the entrance, to the valet stand and the doormen, and back again to the parking lot.

And he waited, letting the smoke slowly drift out of his mouth.

Fucking twilight zone, that’s where they’d landed with this Sphinx business. He’d seen it coming, and Suzi was in the middle of it. Dammit. That just coddled his balls.

One of the first things he’d seen when he’d walked into the Gran Chaco was the police security on her room, and it hadn’t taken more than two minutes of hanging around in the lobby to find out why. Jimmy Ruiz had been massacred in there. By all accounts, and there were a hundred available, the deed had been a lovers’ quarrel, with the Paraguayan man killed by the beautiful gringa in a jealous rage. Creed could guarantee there hadn’t been any lovers’ quarrel, but that didn’t mean Suzi hadn’t shot Jimmy Ruiz.