“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