Where the hell was Ryder when she needed him? How long would it take him to return to the convent and find out she was gone? What would he do then—shrug his shoulders and decide she was no longer his problem?
No, whether he gave a damn about her or not, he still needed the smartphone. Even if he was tempted to leave her to Soledad’s tender mercies, he still had to get what he’d come for, and he wouldn’t leave her behind.
He also wouldn’t jeopardize his . . . his mission for her sake. He’d warned her of that when she insisted on coming with him. If he didn’t find them soon Soledad would lose patience, and what Ryder had done to hurt her a few days ago would pale in comparison with what the soldiers were suggesting. Rape was considered a fate worse than death, and gang rape would be unbearable. If it came to that, though, Jenny had every intention of surviving, if for no other reason than to slap her baby brother upside the head. She was a survivor—always had been, always would be, and sooner or later Ryder would show up. She could hold out until then.
The air was thinner when they finally stopped the truck, and Jenny felt bruised everywhere from bouncing around on the floor of the truck bed as well as the occasi
onal kicks from the guards. They hauled her down with rough hands, but this time there were no insulting touches, and she suspected Soledad was watching. Someone took her arm, and she picked her way carefully on the unseen dirt beneath her feet. She was picturing some kind of jungle camp when she heard a door open and felt a sudden, shocking blast of air-conditioning.
“Bring her inside,” Soledad ordered. “We have work to do.”
Someone ripped off her blindfold, and she cried out behind her gag as the tape pulled her hair, but the sun was so bright all she could do was blink owlishly, her eyes refusing to focus. When they did she almost thought she was imagining it—the clean, elegant lines of the wood-and-glass house perched up high, backing up to a steep ravine. She staggered forward when someone pushed her in the back, tripping over the flagstone pathway, and stepped into the darkened, air-cooled comfort of the place. The sudden flash of cold made her dizzy, and she stumbled slightly as she was shoved forward once again.
One soldier was still with her—the rest of them were left outside—and he dragged her into a large living room, pushing her down on a low ottoman so that her knees buckled beneath her. “Stay,” he said in Spanish, and ripped the gag off.
“As if I have any choice in the matter,” she said caustically, but she was smart enough to keep it under her breath. The room was spare and sleek, with white leather sofas and thick white carpeting. It looked as if it belonged in a design magazine, not like the headquarters for terrorists disguised as revolutionaries.
Soledad came up to her, and Jenny could recognize the phone in her hand with its distinctive New Orleans Saints case. How could something that supposedly held so much evil information have a football logo emblazoned across it? It was like having Sesame Street handguns.
“You are to help me with this. No one here knows anything about technology, and I cannot even begin to guess what his password is.”
“I’m sure there’s more than one,” Jenny said. “It’s going to take a while to get through them all.” In fact, her brother had been fairly unimaginative when it came to protecting his smartphone, more proof that he was no criminal mastermind but simply someone who’d gotten in over his head. If there was any way she could avoid putting all that information into Soledad’s criminal hands, then she would. Decoding it wasn’t going to do Jenny a damned bit of good—her father wasn’t going to pay one cent to get her free, and neither would her two older brothers, so it wasn’t going to save her life. As for Billy—how could he have told Soledad? They must have known each other, but it was hard to believe her brother was naïve enough to believe Soledad’s saintly act.
Then again, she’d believed that saintly act herself. If Billy had been telling her the truth on board the ship that morning, then he’d hardly let them hurt her, would he? But then, he was out of reach, somewhere halfway across the world in a place where he couldn’t be extradited, and he needed to stay there, particularly since she’d told Ryder about him. And if he had lied to her . . . She didn’t want to think about that.
“We have time,” Soledad said smoothly. “We’re waiting for your boyfriend to come and rescue you.”
“Why bother? No one’s going to pay ransom for him. And he’s not my boyfriend,” she added belatedly. At least she could reasonably assume that the Committee didn’t negotiate with terrorists.
“We’re not going to ransom him, we’re going to kill him. The Committee is well known to us, and they’re not likely to simply let things slide. The smart thing for Mr. Ryder to do would be to return to the States, but he won’t, not unless he has you with him.”
“He doesn’t care about me one way or another!” Jenny protested.
“Probably not. But he’s not going to leave you to my tender mercies, whether he cares or not, which is a good thing. He knows too much about our workings for his own good. His death leaves the American Committee in disarray and gives us time to set up the trade routes once more.”
“Trade routes?” Jenny echoed in deep loathing. “You’re talking about human beings!”
“I’m talking about a commodity,” Soledad said in a silky voice. “You’re such a . . . what do they call it . . . a bleeding heart. These people are nothing to you. The life I give them is better than the toilet they live in now. But no, you must save everyone. I tell you now that this is impossible. You cannot save these people, and most of them come willingly. If something happened to me then someone else would simply take my place. Your Committee friends tried to wipe it out, but they only succeeded in removing the Corsini family from the mix. There are always people to take over, people like your brother.”
“My brother didn’t know what he was doing!” she protested, ignoring her nascent doubts. “You or someone must have tricked him.”
“And you’re such an excellent judge of character, aren’t you?” Soledad cooed. She held out the phone in front of Jenny’s nose. “Get to work.”
Jenny gave her a chilly smile. “You’re going to have to untie me first.”
“You can dictate the names to me.”
“That will take twice as long.”
“I am very fast on a phone keyboard.”
Shit. She was going to have to string her along instead of simply pretending to work on it. She’d make it as tedious as possible. “Do you suppose I might have some iced tea? My throat is parched.”
Soledad sneered. “Parched, is it? Such fancy words. You’ll get tea and something to eat once you’ve broken into the phone.”
“If you’re doing the typing, then I’m going to have to do a lot of talking,” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Then you should begin.”