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“Okay, Sister. Not sure I believe you.” He waved a hand to stop her protest. “Don’t take offense. Not sure I believe in God either, but if it is true, I can tell you that your people are better off issuing proclamations from Rome. Being on the ground here, getting involved in this, is dangerous. Way above your pay grade.”
Did they pay nuns?
Unperturbed and unruffled by his comments, Sister Dee looked around the room. She scanned his paintings. Her eyes rested on the easel. A painting he’d started the day he’d met her. A dark-skinned woman stood naked on the beach. Her arms thrown to the sky. Streaks of sunlight danced over her, falling as if from heaven. He thought she’d ask about it, prayed she didn’t, and nearly sighed aloud when her eyes drifted over to the boxes.
“Where do you get these passports? They’re from all over the world. Some don’t even have stamps from Mexico, so you’re not stealing them from here.”
She was back on the offensive. A clever lady. He retrieved the passport she’d dropped. The one for Carlos. He brushed it off. “I think you should leave.”
Her gaze dropped to the passport. She nodded at it. “You’re worried about Rosa. But she is safe at a hotel, and there are many others like her. Women your boss takes advantage of. Won’t you help me?”
Bugger. Couldn’t afford to get tangled with amateurs. Or liars. And, yet, he did have a lot of information. Information he’d intended to turn over to the proper authorities after he’d found Sophia. “What do you want from me?”
For a moment, she seemed taken aback. “Insights into Walid’s business, his personal habits, and routes you might be aware of, ways of secreting people through the country.”
Information he had. “All right, luv, give me a few days to research you, your explanation, and make a decision.”
“But do you have the routes? Telling me now could save lives.”
Pushy. “I’m asking for time.”
“For what? To go back and tell Walid about me?”
Anger flared. He’d given her enough to show that wasn’t true. She was trying to draw him in, maneuver him so that he would tell her something, exposing himself, and aligning with her no matter what. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“You? And I’m supposed to just accept that you’ll keep my secret?”
He took her by the arm, spinning her around, then led her to the front door, opened it, and pushed her through. “Bloody hell. You kept my secret, so trust me to keep yours.”
He slammed the door in her stunned face.
Chapter 9
As the lunch crowd at the soup kitchen dwindled, Dada wiped splatters around the food well. A week. It had started with Sion’s abrupt dismissal of her and had gotten worse from there.
A new group of refugees had come through in the last few days, flooding the town with new mouths to feed, new stories to hear. But even with all the activity, it hadn’t escaped her notice that Rosa hadn’t shown with Carlos today.
Could Sion have sent her off sooner than the date on her ticket? Doubtful. Sion might not be speaking to her, but Rosa was. Dada had registered her in a hotel. She’d have known if the woman had checked out.
Alarm built in her chest. She turned to the sister beside her. “Have you seen Rosa today?”
Lifting a tray from the food well with a set of tongs, the sister looked around. “No.” She shrugged. “That is typical behavior. She has continued her journey north.”
“No, she hasn’t. She wouldn’t skip lunch. She has a small child to feed.”
“Perhaps the child is sick.”
Maybe. Dada put away the washcloth she’d been using. “I’m going to check where she’s staying, just to make sure. Do you think anyone will mind?”
The sister dropped the tray with a clang. “I mind. You have been shirking your duties, and though Sister Angelica gives you leave to do so, I am not her. You will stay and do your job.”
Praying for patience, recognizing the difficulty in putting together a new undercover identity, Dada picked up her pace.
#
After finishing her job, Dada went down the street to Rosa’s hotel. Passing through archways lined with yellow painted pillars, she walked across the muted, multicolor tiles to the front desk. The manager recognized her and smiled. In no time at all, she was able to get him to give her an extra room key.
With the key in hand, Dada repeatedly knocked on Rosa’s door. No answer.
Removing her small berretta Tomcat from a hidden pouch, she flicked off the safety and used the key to enter. The door beeped.
The room appeared clean, though the bed was unmade. There were no signs of a struggle. Slipping inside, she cleared the room, the bathroom, then went back for the closet.
Something rustled inside. Calm and focused, she slid the door open, then dropped to her knees before the sobbing little boy who had a shirt stuffed in his mouth to keep from making a sound.
She flicked on her weapon’s safety, stowed it, and spoke to the boy in soothing tones. He calmed as she spoke. She put her arms out. After long coaxing moments, he rushed at her, threw his arms around her neck, and clung to her
Tears weren’t weakness. Not his. Not hers. They were the cleansing before rebirth.
As Dada carried the shaking child out of the room, through the lobby, down the sidewalk and back toward the convent, she managed to get the boy to answer questions.
Kissing the child on his warm head, aware of the tears soaking her tunic, she prayed that Rosa was safe. Prayed she’d be returned. Prayed, although the only prayers she knew were the ones she’d learned for this mission.
The other sisters were returning from the soup kitchen when she neared the abbey. One rushed over. “Sister Dee? What has happened?”
“The mother,” Dada explained. “She was taken, and I need to go back and speak with the police. Can you take the boy?”
The sister nodded.
“I need you to go with this kind woman,” Dada gently explained to Carlos.
It took a few moments, but he agreed to go with the sisters.
One of them gently lifted him away and the other sisters gathered around the child, cooing to him, blessing him, soothing him with a loving kindness that was one of the dearest things she’d ever witnessed.
But now she had a mother to find.
#
Inside the traditionally decorated Mexican hotel lobby overrun with policia and a fussy hotel manager, Dada decided she thoroughly disliked Comandante Javier Lopez. And not just because he wore sunglasses inside, but because he spoke down to her.
A half-foot shorter than her six feet, his tone still seemed to want to pat her on the head. “You see, my dear,” Javier explained, “many women leave their children, so you are wasting your time. Go back and pray, Sister, and leave the investigations to us.”
“Rosa didn’t leave. She was taken.”
“Her room was undisturbed,” he said waving away another officer who approached. “You are jumping to conclusions.”
Straightening her spine, willing herself not to seek the comfort of the bracelet on her wrist, she employed a tone as brisk as it was frustrated. “You are the one jumping to conclusions. This woman didn’t abandon her child.”
The Comandante shrugged. “My experience tells me otherwise, but you have a too-kind heart. I know the cold realities of this journey, of traveling to El Norte, because I’ve seen it before. You think she is the first woman to leave her child?”
Dada’s fear and anxiety was morphing into stomach-turning rage. This man wasn’t going to even try to find Rosa. Hadn’t tried to find the women who’d gone missing in the past. Wouldn’t try to find any that went missing in the future.
Of course, she knew the statistics. Due to the horrible drug wars, ninety-three percent of crimes in Mexico went unsolved. And those were just the reported crimes. Many crimes went unreported.
Logic told her not to push. Her “too-kind heart” said not pushing him didn’t bring lost women home. “If you never
search for them how can you know they have left their children? How can you know they weren’t taken?”
His disturbed frown etched puppet lines around his round chin. “You live an entirely different life from these people, from us. You are sheltered. Taken care of. You don’t know what you’re talking about. The rules here aren’t made by God, Sister. They’re made by men.”
Javier lifted his sunglasses and stared at her with brown foggy eyes. “Men like me.”
For a moment, his statement stood between them, as solid and immovable as the bars on a prison. She could continue to challenge him, but to what end? It would only serve to draw her more surely under his scrutiny. An examination she could ill afford assuming, as she did now, that he knew more about these disappearances than he was saying.
Adopting the same confident calm Sister Angelica wore, she turned with a, “God sees all, Comandante.”
“Then he must be blind.”
Chapter 10
Seated at his workstation, eyes tired and sore from the long day, Sion examined every last detail, down to the minute edges of the photo on the passport. It was perfect.
His cell buzzed. Reaching into his pocket, he answered. “Oye.”
“She’s gone,” Dee said.
How’d she get his number? Leaning back in his chair, he gripped the phone. “Who?”
“Rosa. I think she’s been disappeared. Can you help me find her?”
A knot formed in his throat. He dropped Rosa’s passport, got to his feet, and began to pace. “What did the police say?”
A sigh more fury than frustration rolled through the line. “I spoke with a Comandante Javier. He believes she abandoned her child. I believe he makes broad assumptions.”
He paused on a floorboard that cracked under him. “I know of him. A few years ago, the fiancée of the bloke whose mum owns this building went missing.”
“Do you mean Geraldo? He had a fiancée who went missing?”
