Terrific. That’s all she needed. She started walking with him, keeping her eyes straight ahead. When she reached the point where the guards were standing, she gave them a quick smile and continued walking.

  Her brain was racing. If she could get away from this man she and Ellie could hide out in the restroom again, or maybe sit in the corner of a restaurant in the terminal. She could find a phone in a quiet place and call the hotel in Miami to warn her father that she hadn’t made the flight. Once she was out of sight, she could quickly modify the plans that Lucia made. But reports might be all over the news by then about Eduardo Sanchez’s missing “adopted” baby. Maybe there was an earlier flight to the U.S. than the Houston flight. It was risky, but it could be done.

  She glanced back through the glass doors. The guards were observing them. Closing her eyes, she muttered a short prayer as she continued to walk. Lord, you’ve brought me this far. I know You’ll bring us the whole way home.

  Sonny realized that, whether she liked it or not, she was probably going to have to stay the night in Colombia. Her first priority was to get away from this man and the attention he had brought to her. In order to do that, she’d have to leave the airport. The problem was she didn’t know her way around Cartagena.

  Sonny shook the thought from her head. She couldn’t fail. Not just for Cash and baby Ellie. But now for Lucia. She had no choice but to get away from the airport. At least for now.

  “Now that you’re done hiding, you can give me the information I need,” the stranger said, breaking into her thoughts.

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was on vacation,” Sonny said. “You know, people do have vacations.”

  “Sure they do. You were on vacation,” he said sarcastically. “And my name is Alice and I live in a place called Wonderland.”

  “I guess I can call you Al, then?”

  He threw her a wry grin and pushed the door open. Sonny scanned the parking lot to see if anyone was paying attention to them.

  “Come with me. I have a ride waiting for us.”

  Sonny knew that the last thing she needed was to have to flag down a taxi. She’d heard that taxi drivers in Cartagena happily snowed you if you didn’t know the city. However, it was still safer to take a taxi than walk anywhere. American tourists with American dollars were targets for criminals.

  The fact that she was still on airport grounds put both Ellie and her at risk. But could she really take a chance on this guy and his ride, whoever that was?

  Another problem dawned on her as the sun beat down on her head. She was almost out of money. She’d paid for the hotel room and her meals with cash. Colombians liked U.S. dollars and there were enough tourists down here that American cash couldn’t be traced back to her. But she’d stayed longer than she’d expected and had gone through her reserve. She had a credit card, but credit cards were way too traceable, and she knew she needed to be careful.

  Careful? Yeah, right. They’d done everything as planned and Lucia was still dead. Except for the fact that this little baby who was now crying loud enough to drown out the street noise was finally in her arms, it had all gone wrong.

  Sonny wanted to cry, too, but she bit back the tears. There’d be time for that later. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if she broke down now. It certainly wouldn’t get her on that plane that was taxiing down the runway on its way to Miami.

  “Oh, Lucia,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

  “What was that?”

  They were still standing on the curb and for a moment, Sonny had forgotten someone was with her.

  She pushed away thoughts of Lucia and fought for composure. “Who are you and how do you know my brother?” she asked again.

  He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Sonny tried to cover Ellie’s ears, but the baby was flailing as she cried.

  “I don’t think anyone is going to appreciate your breaking their eardrums.”

  “It’s hot and we’re sitting ducks here. It’s time to go.”

  A car rolled to a stop in front of them. The man stepped off the curb and opened the back door, gesturing for her to get inside.

  “This is our ride. Get in.”

  She shot him a disbelieving look. “Are you out of your mind? What makes you think I’m going to get into a car with you before I even know who you are?” Sonny asked, knowing full well that she had no other option.

  “Gillespie Waite. You can call me Gil.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I introduced myself.”

  “I’m not getting in that car until you tell me what I want to know. People have a bad habit of disappearing in this country and this baby and I are not going to end up on that list.”

  He stared at her, considering what she’d said. “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  He smiled and for a fraction of a second, he didn’t look as suspicious as he had in the airport.

  “And?” she pressed.

  “I was hired to find your brother. Cash Montgomery is your brother, isn’t he? He was arrested in Chicago on drug trafficking charges and then fled before his hearing.”

  “Says you. My family and I know he was framed. Who hired you?”

  “His bail bondsman. You can take up the ‘framed’ theory with him and the federal prosecutor.”

  “What’s the bail bondsman’s name?” Sonny couldn’t remember the name offhand but she was sure she’d recognize it if he told her. She wanted to know if Gil really knew it or if he was just giving her a line to shut her up.

  “Does it matter?”

  “To me it does. You’ve just ruined my chance of getting this baby out of Colombia safely.”

  “You said that before.” He leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “I wouldn’t go yelling that too loudly. Especially since something tells me you’re not exactly running with the law yourself right now.”

  She stifled her defeated sigh. “The name?”

  “Telling you the name of the bondsman isn’t going to change the fact that you and the kid need to get into the car before we draw any more attention to ourselves than we already have. As I’ve told you, these guards are trigger-happy. We may have fooled them inside the airport, but we won’t get lucky like that twice.”

  “You call me missing my plane lucky?”

  He continued, his voice booming over hers. “All they need is just a hint of a reason to put some pressure on that trigger and let those bullets spray. It doesn’t even need to be a good reason. And they don’t care how much of a mess they make. Get my drift? ’Cause they’re not going to do the cleaning up.”

  She did know. She knew what kind of people her family was dealing with. It pained her to think that Cash had fallen into the hands of men who were so willing to do him harm, the likes of which had already been done to Lucia.

  Gil held the door to the backseat open. Sonny fixed her eyes on him, taking in the hard look of challenge on his face. She was up to that challenge, but how could she drag Ellie into it? If she screamed, the authorities would come running and she had no doubt it would end in bloodshed, just like Gil said. Every instinct she had told her it was a bad idea to go with this man. Isn’t that what self-defense classes taught women? You’re as good as dead if you get into the car?

  But he knew about Cash. And in her arms was Cash’s little daughter, a baby that Lucia had just given her life to free—despite what Torres had said, she knew Lucia’s death was because of Ellie. She had no idea where Dylan was or if he was any closer to locating Cash. In a way, Gil was all she had.

  And dead was dead, whether by his hand or the guards who had their own brand of justice. She could only hope he’d have mercy on the baby. “What’s in this for you?” she said, trying one last time for information.

  “I take your brother back to the U.S. for prosecution before the bail needs to be paid and I get a nice bonus for my troubles. That’s the way it works.”

  “Do you take us, too?”

  The words were out of her mouth before she had time to think about what she’d said. The surprise in his eyes mirrored what she felt. But it was the only way. She’d come far, but she couldn’t do this alone. She needed help and if she worked this right, she and Ellie might be able to get back to the States alive.

  “Look, you’re the one who is responsible for me missing my plane. I don’t have any more money to pay for food or hotel rooms. If you’re going to detain me until you get whatever information you think I have—”

  “Go on. Get in,” he said quietly.

  She closed her eyes and sighed softly. Ellie was still fussing, though much more quietly than before. She needed a diaper change and a bottle, neither of which she’d get while Sonny stood there and debated.

  Gil was after money. She was out of it. He wanted her brother. She wanted safety for all of them. If Gil could find Cash, that was just an added bonus, wasn’t it? With her plane long gone and the airport guards suspicious of her, she had only one choice. She had to go with him.

  She stepped off the curb and into the backseat, hoping she hadn’t just made the worst mistake of her life.

  They’d ditched the other car twenty minutes ago for a nondescript tourist vehicle that blended in with all the other rentals on the road. It didn’t have that new-car smell that cars in the U.S. had. This one had been used. A lot. It was an older model that would have been traded in years ago and sold on a used car lot back in the States.

  Sonny wasn’t complaining—it had provided a place for her to change Ellie’s diaper and put a bottle together to feed her.

  Gil didn’t say anything about where they were going and Sonny didn’t ask. She was emotionally spent, relishing the quiet and grateful for the opportunity it gave her to say a silent prayer to the Lord. He’d brought her this far. Much farther than she’d thought was possible. The fact that she was now holding her brother’s daughter in her arms was proof of His grace. That alone held her disappointment and frustration at bay.

  If Dylan knew what was going on, he’d have a cow—Sonny was sure of it. Both Tammie and Serena had wanted to make the trip, but it was too dangerous for them. The very people who’d kidnapped Ellie were still out for vengeance on their family and would recognize Serena and Tammie immediately, especially since they looked almost identical.

  The car turned down a side street. Sonny braced one arm on the seat in front of her to stay upright with the baby in her other arm. No car seat. She lost good-aunt points on that note. But she hadn’t expected to be in a car with Ellie again.

  They hit a deep pothole in the middle of the street. Sonny gasped as her head nearly hit the roof of the car. Gil turned back to her.

  “You two okay?” he asked.

  Sonny took a moment to study his face. He was a bit older than she was, by about five or six years, making him Cash’s age. He had a slight build with broad shoulders that almost didn’t fit his frame. His hair was dark, thick and wavy, and his eyes were so brown they were almost black. Could they be that dark? She wondered. Maybe it was just the lack of light on this sheltered side street that made them seem that way.

  There was a hard gruffness about Gil, yet when he glanced at the baby, Sonny could swear she saw a faint smile, as if the big bad wolf was showing a soft side.

  Sonny was about to reply when the female driver, who Gil had referred to as Cooper, spoke.

  “Marco is still trying to hack into that Web site,” she said.

  “Any luck?”

  “Nada.”

  Gil grimaced and shook his head. “This is not good. We need more.”

  Cooper gestured to the backseat. “Did she tell you anything?”

  “Only that she doesn’t know where Cash is but she wants to find him, too.”

  “She speaks fluent Spanish?” Cooper asked.

  “She seems to.”

  “She’s in the car, by the way,” Sonny called out from the backseat, sounding as annoyed as she felt. “She has a name and she wants to know where we are going.”

  “Sorry. We’re headed to a hotel on the coast with some small villas in the old part of Cartagena. We have to make sure we look like we’re tourists,” Gil said.

  Cooper added, “When we get there, you can tell us all about your brother.”

  Sonny stared at the eyes that met her in the rearview mirror. “What makes you think I’m going to tell you anything?”

  “Because believe it or not, we want to find your brother alive as much as you do,” Cooper said sarcastically.

  Sonny turned to Gil. “Who’s this?”

  The driver glared at Sonny in the rearview mirror.

  “Calm down, Cooper.” Gil chuckled and shook his head. “Cooper’s a member of my team, Miss Montgomery. She’s not all that fond of Colombia, either. It’s making her cranky. Although it could be that she’s been spending a little too much time with me and Marco. We might be rubbing off on her.”

  “Knock it off, Gillespie,” Cooper snapped. “Excuse me if I’m a little tired of waiting around in the hotel all day while you sightsee and Marco plays on the computer.”

  Gil pretended to be hurt. “Ouch. And I doubt Marco will be happy to hear you said that.”

  With a roll of her eyes, Cooper added, “I’m scared.”

  Gil laughed.

  It was obvious the two had worked together for a while and felt comfortable sparring. Sonny watched Cooper in the mirror. She wasn’t exactly a pretty woman, but whatever attractive features she had were eclipsed by the fact that she did nothing to make herself look more feminine. Her hair was cut short to her scalp and she wore no makeup or jewelry.

  Sonny pulled her gaze to the scenery. When had she become so vain? She was used to dressing on the more casual side, preferring an old pair of jeans that were worn and patched in spots to pants or skirts. Sneakers won over shoes—never mind heels—most days of the week. Cooper was different, though, as if she was trying to conceal the fact that she was a woman. Maybe in her line of work she had to.

  “We’ll see what we can get out of her when we get back,” Gil finally said.

  “What are you going to do?” Sonny chimed in, tired of their rudeness. “Beat it out of me?”

  Cooper rolled her eyes in the rearview mirror and then settled them back on the road.

  Gil turned to her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Everything about this is ridiculous. Why shouldn’t I be, too?”

  He turned around and they were all quiet for a while. Sonny used that time to hold the baby close. She hadn’t allowed herself the luxury of really looking at Ellie, of enjoying her like she would if they’d been somewhere safe. In the airport bathroom, she’d been afraid someone would see her and know right away that Sonny was not Ellie’s mother.

  But now she studied the warm baby in her arms. Ellie looked a little like Cash, but mostly she looked like Sonny’s mother.

  She wondered what her mother was thinking right now. She must be worried. She’d had a lot to worry about recently with all that had happened with Cash. Finding out that Cash had secretly married Serena and that they’d had a child who’d been kidnapped had been quite a shock for all of them. But Sonny knew her mother wanted her granddaughter home as much as the rest of the family did, and that she’d put aside any fears she had about Sonny coming to Colombia.

  Ellie had settled now that she’d had her bottle. Sonny knew next to nothing about taking care of babies. But she knew her brother Cash didn’t, either, and he’d entered the world of parenthood. She was a quick learner and she’d do anything she could to keep Ellie safe, happy and healthy. Anything.

  “Tell me again where we’re going?” she said, breaking the silence.

  Gil glanced back at her, giving the baby a quick look. “Somewhere a little more comfortable than that dive you holed up in these last few weeks.”

  Her eyes widened. “You were watching me?”

  His smile was quick. “Don’t be so surprised. My talents are many.” When she didn’t appear amused, his smile faded. “It’s my job. It’s what I do.”

  Gil had been watching her. This man that she’d only laid eyes on a few short hours ago had been watching her and she’d never even suspected. She closed her eyes as disappointment washed over her. No wonder something had gone wrong. Had her carelessness given Lucia away, too?

  She tried to push the thoughts invading her mind aside. For now, anyway. There’d be time enough later to sort through what had happened and what had gone wrong. Right now, she had to concentrate on what to do next.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll both be safe from whatever you’re running from where we’re going.”

  Tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. He said the words as if he actually believed them. What a nice feeling that must be.

  “There isn’t such a place,” she answered. “At least, not here in Colombia.”

  Maybe nowhere in the world.

  THREE

  The woman was an enigma, Gil thought as he turned his attention back to the road, which was still slick from a hard rain the night before. He’d prepared himself for more rain today. In fact, he would have preferred torrential rain for the rest of the long ride from the airport to the villa instead of a brightly shining sun. It would drown out this nagging doubt that coursed through his veins.

  He’d expected Sonny Montgomery to give him a bit more of a fight. Thinking of the baby in her arms, he wasn’t sure how much of a fight she actually could have put up. Ellie was the reason she’d given in so readily. She’d really had no other option than to go with him.

  Well, no matter. They were already skating pretty close to the legal line in the first place by picking her up at the airport. If Sonny wanted to leave once they got to the villa, there wasn’t anything the team could do to stop her—she wasn’t the criminal. But if they could do a little good-cop-bad-cop routine before she left, she might spill her brother’s whereabouts and they could all go home a little sooner.

  They drove in relative quiet, except for the occasional whimper from the baby as she stirred in her sleep. They followed the highway until it spilled them into the coastal city of Cartagena where tourists were milling about in shorts, sandals and straw hats they probably paid too much for from street vendors who had a hard time taking no for an answer. The team had an easier time blending in here than back in Monteria or at the airport where soldiers seemed to outnumber civilians.