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She believed in her involvement with Hollins-Winword. But that didn’t mean she was anxious to risk her neck over four sentences, which was generally the size of the puzzle pieces of information with which she was entrusted. Brody’s message for her that night at Leandra and Evan’s wedding reception had been even briefer.
Stanley experimenting. Sandoval MIA.
She’d memorized the information—hardly difficult in this case—and shortly after she’d returned to Atlanta, she’d relayed the brief missive to the impossibly young-looking boy who’d spilled his backpack on the floor next to her table at a local coffee shop.
She’d knelt down beside him and helped as he’d packed up his textbooks, papers and pens, and three minutes later, he was heading out the door with his cappuccino and the message, and she was sitting back down at her table with her paperback book and her latte.
“You didn’t look twice at the name Sandoval.”
Somehow, cold water had snuck beneath the neck of her poncho and was dripping down the back of her spine. She tugged the hood of her poncho farther over her forehead but it was about as effective as closing the barn door after the horse was already out, considering the fact that she was already soaked. “Does it matter? Sandoval’s not that unusual of a name.”
His lips twisted. “How old were you when you left Santo Marguerite?”
The kernel inside her suddenly exploded, turning tense curiosity into a sickening fear that she didn’t want to acknowledge. “Four.” Old enough to remember that the name of the man who’d destroyed the Central American village where she’d been born, along with nearly everyone else who’d lived there, had been Sandoval.
She reached out and closed her hand over his slick, wet forearm. “I’m no good at guessing games, Brody. Just tell me what you want me to know. Is Sandoval involved with the kidnapping?”
His gaze flicked downward, as if surprised by the contact, and she hastily drew back, curling her cold hands together.
“We haven’t been able to prove it, but we believe that he is the money behind the Santina Group. On the other hand, we know Santina funds at least two different black market organizations running everything from drugs and weapons to human trafficking. According to the pharmaceutical company Hewitt works for, he was on to something huge. Has to do with some little red frog about the size of my fingernail.”
He shook his head, as if the entire matter was unfathomable to him. “Anyway, the pharmacy folks will try to replicate synthetically the properties of this frog spit, or whatever the hell it is.” His voice went terse. “And in the right hands, that’s fine. But those properties are also the kind of properties that in the wrong hands, could bring a whole new meaning to what profit is in the drug trade.”
“They’ve got the parents and now they’re after the kids, too. Sandoval or Santina or whoever,” she surmised, feeling even more appalled.
“We’re working on that theory. One of Santina’s top men—Rico Fuentes—was spotted in Caracas yesterday morning. Sophia Stanley’s parents were Venezuelan, and she inherited a small apartment there when they died. The place was tossed yesterday afternoon.”
“How can you be sure the kids are even at the convent?”
“Because I tossed the apartment yesterday morning and found Sophia’s notes she’d made about getting there, and packing clothes and stuff for the kids. I didn’t leave anything for ol’ Rico to find but who knows who Hewitt and Sophia may have told about their kids’ whereabouts. I’ve got my people talking to everyone at the pharmaceutical place, and so far none of them seems to know anything about the convent, but…” He shrugged and looked back at the road.
“Hewitt obviously knew they were on to something that would be just as significant to the bad guys as to the good,” he told her. “Otherwise, why squirrel away their kids the way they did? They could have just hired a nanny to mind them while they went exploring in the tepuis.” He referred to the unearthly, flattop mountains located in the remote southeast portion of the country. She knew the region was inhabited by some extremely unusual life-forms.
“Instead,” he went on, “they used the convent where Sophia’s mother once spent time as a girl.”
“If this Rico person gets to the children, Santina could use them as leverage to make sure Hewitt cooperates.”
“Bingo.”
“What about Hewitt and Sophia, though? How will they even know their kids are still safe? Couldn’t these Santina group people lie?”
“Hell yeah, they could lie. They will lie. But there’s another team working on their rescue. Right now, we need to make certain that whatever threats made concerning those kids are a lie.”
She blew out a long breath. “Why not go to the authorities? Surely they’d be of more help.”
“Which local authorities do you think we can implicitly trust?”
She frowned. Miguel had often complained about the thriving black market and its rumored connection to the local police. “Brody, this kind of thing is way beyond me. I’m not a field agent. You know that better than anyone.” Her involvement with Hollins-Winword had only ever involved the transmittal of information!
A deep crevice formed down his cheek as the corner of his lips lifted. “You are now, sweet cheeks.”
“I do have a name,” she reminded.
“Yeah. And until we get the kids outta this country, it’s Sophia Stanley.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Beg all you want. There’s a packet in the glove box.”
She fumbled with the rusting button and managed to open the box. It was stuffed with maps and an assortment of hand tools. The packet, she assumed, was the dingy envelope wedged between a long screwdriver and a bundle of nylon rope. She pulled it out and lifted the flap. Inside was a narrow gold ring with a distinctive pattern engraved on it and several snapshots.
He took the envelope and turned the contents out into his hand. “Here.” He handed her the ring. “Put this on.”
She gingerly took the ring from him and started to slide it on her right hand.
He shook his head. “Left hand. It’s a wedding ring, baby cakes.”
Feeling slightly sick to her stomach, she pushed the gold band over her cold wedding-ring finger. It was a little loose. She curled her fingers into her palm, holding it in place.
She’d never put a ring on that particular finger before, and it felt distinctly odd.
“This,” he held up a picture, “is Sophia.”
A laughing woman with long dark hair smiled at the camera. She looked older than Angeline, but overall, their coloring was nearly identical, from their olive-toned skin to their dark brown eyes.
“Not a perfect match,” Brody said. “You’re prettier. But you’ll have to do.”
She frowned, not sure if that was a compliment or not, but he took no notice.
“These are the kids. Eva’s nine. Davey’s four.” He handed her a few more pictures, barely giving her time to examine one before handing her the next. “And this is papa bear.”
If the situation hadn’t been as serious as she knew it was, she would have laughed right out loud. The real Hewitt Stanley definitely matched the mental image his name conjured.
Medium height. Gangly and spectacled. Even from the snapshot, slightly blurred though it was, the man’s un-Brody-ness shined through. Other than the fact that they were both male, there was nothing remotely similar between the two men. “This is who you’re pretending to be.”
“You’d be surprised at the identities I’ve assumed,” he said, taking back the photographs when she handed them to him. He tucked them back in the envelope, which then disappeared beneath his rain poncho.
“Why do we even need to pretend to be the Stanleys, anyway? The nuns at the convent will surely know we’re not the people who left their children in their safekeeping.”
“Generally, the Mother Superior deals with outsiders. She’s definitely the only one who would have met with Hewitt and Sophia when they took in the children. And she’s currently stuck in Puerto Grande thanks to the weather that we are not going to let stop us.”
“Maybe we can fool a few nuns,” she hesitated for a moment, rather expecting a bolt of lightning to strike at the very idea of it, “but the kids will know we’re not their parents. They will certainly have something to say about going off with two complete strangers.”
“The Stanleys had a code word for their kids. Falling waters. When we get that to them, they’ll know we’re there on behalf of their parents.”
The situation could not possibly become anymore surreal. “How do you know that?”
“Because I do. Believe me, if I thought we could just walk into that convent up there and tell the nuns we were taking the kids away for their own safety, I would. But there’s a reason Hewitt and Sophia chose the place. It’s hellacious to reach, even on a good day. It’s cloistered. It’s small; barely even a dot on the satellite imaging.”
Again she felt that panicky feeling starting to crawl up her throat. “W-what if we fail?” The last time she’d failed had been in Atlanta, and it hadn’t had anything to do with Hollins-Winword. But it had certainly involved a child.
He gave her a sidelong look. “We won’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this when you showed up at the aid camp?” If he had, she would have found some reason to convince him to find someone else.
“Too many ears.” He reached beneath his seat and pulled out a handgun. So great was her surprise, she barely recognized it as a weapon.
In a rapid movement he checked the clip and tucked the gun out of sight where he’d put the envelope of photographs beneath his rain poncho.
She’d grown up on a ranch, so she wasn’t unfamiliar with firearms. But the presence of rifles and shotguns hanging in the gun case in her father’s den was a far cry from the thing that Brody had just hidden away. “We won’t need that though, right?”
“Let’s hope not.” He gave her a look, as if he knew perfectly well how she felt about getting into a situation where they might. “I don’t want to draw down on a nun anymore than the next guy. If we can convince them we’re Hewitt and Sophia Stanley, we won’t have to. But believe me, sweet cheeks, they’re better off if I resort to threats than if Santina’s guy does. They don’t draw the line over hurting innocent people. And if we’re not as far ahead of the guy as I hope, you’re going to be pretty happy that I’ve got—” he patted his side “—good old Delilah with us, sweet cheeks.”
He named his gun Delilah?
She shook her head, discomfited by more than just the gun.
Sandoval certainly hadn’t drawn the line over hurting people, she knew. Not when she’d been four and the man had destroyed her family’s village in a power struggle for control of the verdant land. When he’d been in danger of losing the battle, he’d destroyed the land, too, rather than let someone beat him.
“It’s not sweet cheeks,” she said, and blamed her shaking voice on the cold water still sneaking beneath her poncho. “It’s Sophia.”
Brody slowly smiled. “That’s my girl.”
She shivered again and knew, that time, that it wasn’t caused entirely by cold or nerves.
It was caused by him.
Chapter Two
They abandoned the Jeep where it was mired in the mud and proceeded on foot.
It seemed to take hours before they managed to climb their way up the steep, slick mountainside.
The wind swirled around them, carrying the rain in sheets that were nearly horizontal. Angeline felt grateful for Brody’s big body standing so closely to hers, blocking a fair measure of the storm.
She lost all sense of time as they trudged along. Every step she took was an exercise in pain—her thighs, her calves, her shins. No part of her seemed excused until finally—when her brain had simply shut down except for the mental order to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving—Brody stopped.
He lifted his hand, and beat it hard on the wide black plank that barred their path.
A door, her numb mind realized. “They won’t hear,” she said, but couldn’t even hear the words herself over the screaming wind.
His fingers were an iron ring around her wrist as the door creaked open—giving lie to her words—and he pulled her inside. Then he put his shoulder against the door and muscled it closed again, yanking down the old-fashioned wooden beam that served as a lock.
The sudden cessation of battering wind was nearly dizzying.
It was also oddly quiet, she realized. So much so that she could hear the water dripping off her onto the stone floor.
“Señora.” A diminutive woman dressed in a full nun’s habit held out a white towel.
“Thank you.” Angeline took the towel and pressed it to her face. The weave was rough and thin but it was dry and felt positively wonderful. She lowered it to smile at the nun. “Gracias.”
The woman was speaking rapidly to Brody in Spanish. And though Angeline hadn’t spoken the language of her birth in years, she followed along easily enough. The nun was telling Brody that the Mother Superior was not there to welcome the strangers.
“We’re not strangers,” Brody told her. His accent was nearly flawless, Angeline realized with some vague surprise. “We’ve come to collect our children.”
If Angeline had held any vague notions of other children being at the convent, they were dissolved when the nun nodded. “Sí. Sí.” The nun turned and began moving away from the door, heading down the middle of the three corridors that led off the vestibule.
Brody gave Angeline a sharp look when she didn’t immediately follow along.
She knew she could collapse later, after they knew the children were safe. But just then she wanted nothing more than to just sink down on the dark stone floor and rest her head back against the rough, whitewashed wall.
As if he could read her thoughts, Brody wrapped his hand around her wrist again and drew her along the corridor with him in the nun’s wake.
Like the vestibule, the hallway had whitewashed walls. Though the wash looked pristine, it didn’t mask the rough texture of the wall beneath it. There were no windows, but a multitude of iron sconces situated high up the wall held fat white candles that kept the way well lit. The few electrical sconces spread out less liberally were dark.
Angeline figured they’d walked a good fifty feet before the corridor turned sharply left and opened after another twenty or so feet into a wide, square room occupied by a half-dozen long wooden tables and benches.
The dining hall, the nun informed them briskly. Her feet didn’t hesitate, however, as she kept right on walking.
“You catching all that?” Brody asked Angeline in English.
She nodded. She’d come to English only when Daniel and Maggie Clay had adopted her after her family’s village was destroyed. And though Angeline had deliberately turned her back on the language of her natural parents, she’d never forgotten it, though she’d once made a valiant effort to do so.
She’d already been different enough from the other people in that small Wyoming town where she’d gone to live with Daniel and Maggie. Even before she’d been old enough to understand her actions, she’d deliberately rid the accent from her diction, and copied the vague drawl that the adults around her had possessed. She’d wanted so badly to belong. Not because any one of her adopted family made her feel different, but because inside, Angeline had known she was different.
She’d lived when the rest of her natural family had perished. She’d been rescued from a poor Central American orphanage and been taken to the U.S., where she’d been raised by loving people.
But she’d never forgotten the sight of fire racing through the fields her cousins had tended, licking up the walls and across the roofs of their simple houses. And whatever hadn’t been burned had been hacked down with axes, torn apart with knives, shot down with guns.
Nothing had escaped. Not the people. Not the livestock. Not the land.
Only her.
It was twenty-five years ago, and she still didn’t understand why she’d been spared.
“Sophia.” Brody’s voice was sharp, cutting through the dark memories. Angeline focused on his deep blue eyes and just that abruptly she was back in the present.
Where two children needed them.
“I’m sorry.” How easily she fell back into thinking in Spanish, speaking in Spanish. “The children,” she looked at the nun. “Please, where are they?”
The nun looked distressed. “They are well and safe, señora. But until the Mother Superior returns and authorizes your access to them, I must continue to keep them secure.”
“From me?” Angeline didn’t have to work hard at conjuring tears in her eyes. She was cold, exhausted and entirely undone by the plot that Brody had drawn her into. “I am their mother.” The lie came more easily than she’d thought it would.
The nun’s ageless face looked pitying, yet resolute. “You were the ones who made the arrangement with Mother. But now, you are weary,” she said. “You and your husband need food and rest. We will naturally provide you with both until Mother returns. The storm will pass and soon she will be here to show you to your children.”
“But—”
