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—”
Brody’s hand closed around hers. “Gracias, Sister. My wife and I thank you for your hospitality, of course. If we could find dry clothes—”
“Sí. Sí.” The nun looked relieved. “Please wait here. I will send Sister Frances to assist you in a moment if that will be satisfactory?”
Brody’s fingers squeezed Angeline’s in warning “Sí.”
She nodded and turned on her heel, gliding back along the corridor. Her long robes swished over the stone floor.
The moment she was out of sight, Brody let go of Angeline’s wrist and she sank down onto one of the long wooden benches situated alongside the tables. She rubbed her wrist, flushing a little when she realized he was watching the action. She stopped, telling herself inwardly that her skin wasn’t really tingling.
What was one more lie there inside that sacred convent, considering the whoppers they were already telling?
Brody sat down beside her and she wanted to put some distance between them given the way he was crowding into her personal space, but another nun—presumably Sister Frances—silently entered the dining area. She gestured for Brody and Angeline to follow, and Brody tucked his hand beneath Angeline’s arm as he helped her solicitously to her feet.
They followed the silent nun down another corridor and up several narrow flights of stairs, all lit with those same iron wall sconces. Finally she stopped and opened a heavy wooden door, extending her hand in a welcoming gesture. Clearly they were meant to go inside.
Angeline passed the nun, thanking her quietly as she entered the room. Brody ducked his head to keep from knocking it against the low sill and followed her inside. The dim room contained a single woefully narrow bed, a single straight-backed wooden chair and a dresser with an old-fashioned ceramic pitcher and basin atop it.
The nun reached up to the sconce on the wall outside the door and pulled down the lit candle, handing it to Brody. She waved her hand toward the two sconces inside the bedroom, and Brody reached up, setting the flame to the candles they contained.
Warm light slowly filled the tiny room as the flames caught. Brody handed the feeder candle back to the nun, who nodded and backed two steps out of the room, pulling the wooden door shut as she went.
Which left Angeline alone with Brody.
The room had no windows, and though Angeline was definitely no fan of small, enclosed spaces, the room simply felt cozy. Cozy and surprisingly safe, considering the surreal situation.
“Well,” he said in a low tone, “that was easier than I expected.”
She gaped. “Easy? They won’t even let us see the children.”
“Shh.” He lifted one of the candles from its sconce and began prowling around the room’s small confines.
She lowered her voice. “What are you looking for?”
He ignored her. He nudged the bed away from the wall. Looked behind it. Under it. Pushed it back. He did the same with the dresser. He turned the washbasin and the pitcher upside down, before replacing them atop the dresser. He even pulled the unlit bare lightbulb out of the metal fixture hanging from the low ceiling. Then, evidently with nothing else to examine, he returned the fat candle to the sconce.
“Don’t think we’re being bugged.”
Her lips parted. “Seriously?”
“I’m a big believer in paranoia.” He looked up at the steady candle flames. “Walls in this place must be about a foot deep,” he said. “Can hardly hear the storm out there.”
And she was closed within them with him in a room roughly the size of the balcony of her Atlanta apartment. “Sorry if I’m not quick on the uptake here. Is that supposed to be good or bad?”
He shrugged, and began pulling off his rain poncho, doing a decent job of not flinging mud onto the white blanket covering the bed. “It ain’t bad,” he said when his head reappeared. “At least we probably don’t have to worry about that hurricane blowing this place to bits.” He dropped the poncho in the corner behind the door. The Rolling Stones T-shirt he wore beneath it was as lamentably wet as her own, and he lifted the hem, pulling the gun and its holster off his waistband.
He tucked them both beneath the mattress.
“Probably,” she repeated faintly. “Bro—Hewitt, what about the children?”
“We’ll get to them,” he said.
She wished she felt even a portion of the confidence he seemed to feel. “What happened to that all-fire rush you were feeling earlier?”
“Believe me, it’s still burning. But first things first.” His long arm came up,