She lowers her eyes, as well as her hands. “Y-you're not?”
“I'm not with a cartel.” I had thought that didn’t need saying, but clearly I don’t know how things work. “I'm only here to find someone.”
“You came here for…an American?”
I nod slowly. I didn’t really plan on having this conversation with a kid. “I'm looking for my sister.” My fingers twitch in the direction of my pocket, but of course, the photo I had is gone. “I lost my photo of her—” and the video in my inbox on my phone, of Missy King wearing a baseball cap and a heavy coat, is next to worthless if I even have service— “but she's got red hair and green eyes. She's not very tall, but she is pretty. Close to my age,” I say.
I can tell I've hit the jackpot. She’s chewing on her lip.
“What is her name?” she says, cleverly biding time. She fiddles a bit more with her necklace, and I feel sorry that I've put her so on edge.
“Her name is Meredith Kinsey, but she once went by Missy King. She was kidnapped, more than a year ago, but she escaped. I’ve been told she took refuge here.” The girl doesn’t confirm my story, so I add, “Sometime recently, the cartel came looking for her. That's what happened to your building, isn't it?”
She clenches her eyebrows and shakes her head, and at that moment, I hear the clicking of a woman's shoes.
“Alexandria.” I hear an older woman's voice before she rounds the corner. When she does, I note a nun's habit and a face that's stretched wide in alarm. Her eyes narrow as they run over the girl's slim form. “Alexandria,” she says, relieved, “go into the back room and help Sister Rita with her reports.”
The girl's eyes hold the older woman's for a moment, and the older woman nods. The girl clutches her necklace, and I realize it must have been some kind of alarm.
A second later, the girl is gone, and the nun is standing stone still, looking stern, and I feel like I’m about to get thrown out of catechism class. “What is your business here, sir? Do you have a child that we can help?”
I shake my head. “I'm looking for someone. My sister, Meredith. She once went by the name of Missy King. She was kidnapped and sold. I heard she might be here.”
I'm searching the woman's pretty brown eyes for some hint, but she gives nothing away.
Instead, she folds her arms across her chest and sighs. “Whether she is here or whether she is not, it makes no difference. We have no business with those who seek to do harm to others.”
“I don’t want to hurt her,” I make the sign of the cross. “I was reared Catholic.”
She arches a brow, and her eyes move from my sweaty head to my dusty toes. “And what are you now?”
“Looking for someone.” I lean in closer and let my urgency show. “And I don’t have much time. If she’s here, I’m her best shot at getting out. But it has to be now.”
More like I’m her only shot, because it really does have to be now, and the sister seems to get it. Her thin lips press together. “Follow me.” Two men come around a desk and she says, “They need to check you for weapons.”
I hand her Carlos’s Beretta, plus the giant magazine tucked into my pants. “I want it back when I go.”
“Of course,” she says smoothly.
They have scanning wands, and I'm slightly shocked when the one on my left goes off around my hip. The one being wielded by a dude on my right goes off around my neck. The men, both of them muscled enough to be imposing, grabbed me by my arms, and the woman holds up her hand.
She comes around behind me, runs her fingers along my neck, and presses something at the base of my skull that almost makes me purr.
“You hurt your neck,” she says simply.
I nod, turning to face her once the men drop me. She nods at my legs. “You hurt your hip?”
I nod again.
“You have a slight limp. Only slight. It must have healed well.”
“Observant.”
She shrugs. “My job.”
She holds her hand out, and when I don't take it right away, she grabs my left one from my pocket. When I recoil, she says, “That's what you are hiding in your pocket.”
I exhale. “Yeah.”
She opens the door to a small office and I step inside. “Tell me about the woman you are looking for. I want the whole story.” I hesitate again, and she puts her hand on my shoulder, urging me into a fold-out chair. She walks around to take a seat at her faux wood desk, where she sits her hands on the table and nods at me. “Go on now, the whole story.”