Gabriela had to hold back a laugh. “Let us hope not.”
Laura invited Dylan to shower, too, an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I saw the way he looked at you,” Laura said after Dylan had left the room. “Are you sure you’re safe with him?”
Laura might do better to ask whether Dylan was safe withher, though the fact that she was working and maintaining her cover meant she couldn’t jump his bones. “Yes, I’m sure. He has been most respectful. But Idofeel naked without my veil.”
It was the truth. She’d worn a veil for more than a year.
Laura gave her a sympathetic smile. “It’s only for a short time. But what will you do? These mercenaries are everywhere. There are roadblocks on all the highways leaving the city. If they stop you, you’ll have to show your ID, and then they’ll have you.”
That was going to be a problem.
“I don’t have my ID. The people who abducted me didn’t think to let me run inside to get it.”
Laura studied her for a long moment. “I know a man who makes good fake IDs. He might be able to connect you with smugglers going to Colombia—if that’s where you’re going. But there’s a reward for the two of you. I’m not sure you can trust anybody out there, not with people as desperate as they are.”
“We trusted you.” All the same, Gabriela would rather take her chances on the streets. With her training—and Dylan’s—they stood a good chance of making it to the border on their own. But she couldn’t say that. “Thank you, Laura. You have helped us today beyond all hope. Tell Señor Cruz what you told me. He is the expert on such things. He’ll know if it’s too risky.”
Then Dylan was there, his T-shirt stretched over his chest, his pecs visible through the white fabric, his short dark hair damp. “If what’s too risky?”
9
“That must be the place.” Sister María of the Very Tight Jeans pointed with a nod of her head toward the second-to-last house on the street. “Remember, you’re my step-brother, and you’re rescuing me from an abusive boyfriend.
“Sí, claro.”Yes, of course.
This had been Sister María’s idea—and Dylan was impressed. In two flat minutes, she’d put the whole story together in micro-detail. The abusive ex-boyfriend. The need to get to Colombia, where Dylan, who’d come from Cuba with his poor departed father, had a construction job. The thugs that had stolen her ID card.
She’d suggested they use her birth name, which he already knew from the initial mission briefing, and combine it with Rojas, the last name that was on his fake ID. “That way, we can be relatives—siblings, spouses, whatever we need to be.”
Dylan couldn’t have done a better job himself. But he had to ask. “Won’t you be breaking your vows to lie like this?”
“I vowed poverty, chastity, and obedience. Lying might be a sin, but God understands our circumstances.”
Jesus, Dylan hoped so. He’d been uncomfortably horny since the moment Sister María had stepped out of the bedroom, those jeans and that T-shirt revealing all of the delicious curves that her shapeless gray habit had concealed.
She didn’t just have a beautiful face and the heart of a saint. She had a body, too—full breasts, a slender waist, a sweet ass that filled out those jeans like...
Stop,cabrón. She’s a nun.
Yeah, Dylan was going to hell.
If they hadn’t been trying to escape a bunch of murdering assholes, he might have beat one out in the shower just to get the urge out of his system. But he hadn’t wanted to get caught holding his dick instead of a weapon in case trouble came knocking, so he’d scrubbed off the sweat and grime and had gotten back to the job.
He needed to get Sister María back to the US. He couldn’t afford distractions.
“You do the talking,” she said. “I should seem afraid.”
They walked up to the house, and Dylan knocked, his gaze shifting to the street around them, where kids kicked a soccer ball and adults sat on porches enjoying the sunset, not a Guachimán in sight.
The door opened to reveal a young man in jeans and a black tank top, tattoos on his forearms. “Yeah?”
“We need an ID. A friend sent us to you.”
The man’s gaze moved over Sister María in a way that put Dylan on edge. “Fifty US dollars.”
Knowing he needed to haggle, Dylan made a counter-offer, pointing to the pack of cigarettes rolled into his T-shirt sleeve. “How about forty dollars and this unopened pack of Cuban smokes—Cohibas.”