Rosa shook her head. “Those men are headed north like me. They were paid by another man. He said he wished to give me a job. The men he hired to offer me the job, said he promised there would be no sex.” She rolled her eyes. “But I’ve heard stories of other women who have taken these jobs and never come back.”
A gnawing suspicion started in Sion’s gut. There was no person more vulnerable than someone desperate for money. Add onto that threats to her son, and it was a wonder she’d had the guts to stand up to them.
Rosa hitched Carlos up on her hip. “This was the second time I’ve been asked. I was worried it was traffickers, and that someone might try to take me.”
“Not so sure about that,” Sion said. “This is settled territory.”
Dee frowned. “Meaning?”
“An uneasy truce exists here between traffickers and the police. Traffickers don’t steal women in the area, making more trouble for police already overtaxed with the drug cartels. The police look the other way when women from outside are moved through here.”
Dee’s eyebrows drew in. Her lips thinned out, grew tight.
Bugger, he pulled at his beard. In all the time he’d been working to get in with Walid to find Sophia, and ultimately expose the trafficking routes, he’d never wanted to tell anyone the truth before.
Dee put a palm on Rosa’s shoulder. “If what Sion said is correct, you should talk to the police about—”
“No. Please, Sister,” Rosa said, shaking her head. “Some of the police can’t be trusted. I don’t want trouble. I just want to get to safety.” She met Dee’s eyes. “You understand?”
“Okay,” Dee said. “But you must let me put you up at the hotel. At least, until I can find a way to help you on your journey.”
Rosa looked more afraid than grateful. “I can’t let you pay my room—”
With a soft sigh and a softer look, Dee said, “Please, dear one, it is my honor to help you. It is the work of my Lord. And His work I will always seek opportunity to fill.”
Sion glanced down at his worn trainers. Dee was a good woman. A woman who faced down rich jerks, helped refugees, and kept his secret. Just made him want her more.
Rosa relented, and Dee bent to the little boy, Carlos, and said, “You are courage and light and one of God’s precious children. Don’t let anyone ever make you feel small.”
He felt that in his gut. Looked like God got all the best women. Couldn’t really fault Him for it.
After Dee straightened, they made their way across the square to the hotel. Dee went inside to secure the room and Sion saw his opportunity.
He leaned down to Rosa, trying not to let his size intimidate. “Take this money and my card. I want to help you get someplace safe.”
“Why would you help me in this way?”
“Because I’ve seen what happens when a particular woman catches the eye of a man with power.”
The memory slammed into him.
Gunshots from outside sent the students scrambling from the crates that served as stools, diving for the dirt. Easels and carefully made paintings went over.
“Down, down,” Sion told his art students, though his warning had been unnecessary. The children in the El Salvador village knew the score and had already dropped.
Except Sophia, protected by her father in so many ways. She had frozen on her seat. Sion had grabbed her, brought her to the ground as shouts and screams had flowed through the metal grated window.
And the warning from Sophia’s father, waiting outside for his pequeña artista, little artist. “Run, Sophia!”
Sophia screamed, “Papi!”
Five men burst inside. The first man’s eyes fell on Sophia. “Niña, ven conmigo.” Girl, come with me.
Lurching to his feet, Sion had shoved Sophia toward the back exit where the other students had fled. The man who’d spoken rushed to grab her.
Sion’s fist had connected with the man’s head.
Five against one. Unlike today, that fight, he’d lost.
Rosa hesitated, staring at the card.
He urged. “Please. It’s just a phone number. You call. I help. No strings. Promise.”
Another second of hesitation, and she took the card.
He hoped she called. If she needed a way out, he would help her. That’s what he did in his spare time. It helped ease the guilt of what he’d done to get in with Walid in order to find Sophia. A child he’d let down in the worst way possible.
He played with Carlos until Sister Dee returned with the room key. Rosa took Carlos inside, gushing once more to Dee, grateful in a way that Dee seemed genuinely uncomfortable with.
Sion found his heart filling with a warmth that sent terror through his body. Lust was one thing, but genuine affection…
After Rosa disappeared into the hotel, Dee turned to him. “Would my hero care to walk me to the soup kitchen?”
Hero? Pain stabbed him in the chest. He badly wanted her to see him as a hero. Not as the guy who worked for slavers. “Oh, aye. But I probably protected those blokes from you more than you from them.”
She laughed, and they moved off. Leg screaming in pain after his fight, he limped more noticeably. After a few uncomfortable steps, she gestured at his leg. “I recall reading about your injury. It was a bar fight, right?”
He glanced away. Cringed. A bar fight? That’s how people remembered it. And for most people he wouldn’t care. But her? “Do I look like the type to throw away my career on booze and anger?”
“So what happened?” Though his tone had been hot, she didn’t return the frustration.
They passed trinket-sellers, food stalls, and people eating lunch by the fountain. It was a beautiful day, but his head filled with ugly memories. Learning to walk again. Using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. The long torturous road to mental and physical recovery. “Too nice a day to get into all that.”
“I could google it.”
Bloody hell. She didn’t hold back. She didn’t hold herself even above her own curiosity. “Didn’t think you knew about google blackmail, Sister.”
Her gaze swung to him, held him in a direct and sure stare. “I’m a nun. I don’t live on another planet.”
He broke eye contact, and rubbed at the knot of pain forming at the top of his bum leg. Truth was, he wanted her to know the what had happened.
After a beat of silence, he relented to his own desire to be seen and known by her as a man other than the one who did false papers for slavers. “I had an exhibition game in the States, then went out afterward to blow off steam. As I was leaving the bar, one of my mates, a guy known to have a temper, along with a morality problem, was dragging a woman into his truck. Not a stretch to guess his intent. I ran over, punched him in the side, and tossed him to the ground. I was taking her inside to call the authorities, and—”
She made a sound, as if the memory had just come back to her. “He shot you in the leg three times.”
“Aye.” That he’d been shot in the leg three times the papers had gotten right. “Bloke who’d done it claimed self-defense. He wasn’t prosecuted.”
Sion lost full use of his leg, his contract, but the man—the one who’d been about to kidnap and rape an innocent woman—had lost nothing. He’d even gone on to have a magnificent caree
r—only to revert to form. Years later, he was arrested for trying to rape a different woman.
Dada nodded her head. “The woman refused to testify.”
“He’d paid her off.”
“And the papers began to spin a different story. You went after him in a drunken rage. Him shooting you was self-defense.”
“Had to spin it that way or the squad would’ve lost two star players.”
She reached out to him, grabbed his hand, and squeezed. “They didn’t have to. Just because they would have lost games or money was no reason to lose their morals. You deserved better.”
The warmth of her skin against his flooded through his body, even as a knot of emotion fisted in his throat.
He gently pulled his hand away. It was that or plead with her to leave the church for him, tell her that he’d lost his morals, and that she should join him on the dark side.
Clenching and unclenching his damp hands, he said, “Next time we talk, I want to hear about you. About how you came to be a nun. Deal?”
A troubled expression crossed her beautiful face. “That story would be filled with more errors than those articles written about you.”
And with that bit of makes-you-wonder, she turned and walked toward the soup kitchen.
Chapter 6
Seated on the floor of her sparse room at the convent, Dada waved her wrist—chipped under her skin with a security device and GPS tracker—over her laptop. It beeped.
She opened her laptop and entered a secret site on the dark web. It was empty. For a moment, she stared at a blue screen, but then there was a beep. A box appeared and, inside it, was a sharply angled, red-brown face.
Dark eyes twinkling, her sister Justice began to laugh. “Do they make you wear that fucking hat in your sleep? The shower?”
Dada clicked her teeth together. She’d gotten so used to the habit that she’d forgotten she had it on. “Laugh all you want, abrasive one. I’m doing all of this for your mission.”
“Testy,” Justice said, still laughing. “It’s the celibacy, isn’t it?”
Another box appeared. Gracie. The part in her red hair visible as she focused on one of the many other computer screens in her office.