Barefoot With a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover Book 2) (23 page)

But she’d hadn’t come here looking for a girl, and she couldn’t let one wide-eyed orphan with a similar name derail her from her real mission.

“Rosalia,” Chessie said softly. “Was there ever a boy at this school named Gabriel? He would be the same age, around four.”

The other woman looked up from her baby, meeting Chessie’s eyes, frowning, but not answering. Maybe she didn’t understand.

“It would have been in the last few years, maybe recently.” Chessie knew there was a note of desperation in her voice, but this was the only lead they had, the only address.

The database she’d seen hadn’t listed a date that the mother had passed away, Chessie thought. It could have been anytime in the last four years. She could have died in childbirth, which might explain why she’d been silent all these years.

For a long moment, Rosalia was still, so, so still, it was as though she’d been frozen. “I will ask my father.” She stood quickly, walking away, leaving Chessie with her arms around Gabrielita.

If there was no boy named Gabriel, then…

“Let me brush your pretty hair,” Chessie whispered.

Gabriella just looked up and gave a warm smile. “Mamá?”

Chessie’s heart folded over itself, leaving her speechless. “I have a nice hairbrush I can use.”

Getting one of the brushes she’d brought for this express purpose, Chessie ran the rough bristles through Gabriella’s curls, easily picking up a dozen strands that could be tested for DNA. After a few moments, she surreptitiously dropped the brush back into her handbag. As she did, she looked up and found
Señor
Ramos looking down at her.

“Come,” he ordered, surprising her with English and gesturing for her to get up and follow him.

Chessie stood, easing the child to the ground, but Gabriella was having none of it. She wrapped her arms around Chessie’s leg and squeezed.

“I’ll be back,” she promised the little girl, but Gabrielita just clung tighter.

Señor
Ramos bent over and spoke softly, putting a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. After a moment, she let go of Chessie, but still gazed up lovingly.

Chessie smiled and patted her back with a silent promise to return, then glanced around for Mal. “My friend?” she asked, not seeing him in the schoolhouse barn.

He muttered something in Spanish and pointed outside, then made a gesture that she interpreted as bouncing a basketball. She hadn’t even realized he’d left.

Chessie followed the man outside, around the back to another structure, much smaller, wooden, unpainted. He opened the door and gestured for her to go through a crooked opening into a dimly lit room with a bed, a cardboard dresser, and a toilet and sink. The floor was broken concrete, and the windows were open.

He faced her, a frown pulling thick black brows together. “Why are you here?”

His accented but perfect English threw her, almost as much as the accusation in his voice. Damn it. She shouldn’t have gone with him. Mal was outside, and she was…on her own. “I’m a teacher, like—”

“Who are you looking for?”

Chessie felt the blood drain from her face, realizing how vulnerable she was. Not that she thought this man would hurt her, but they were here on a lie. A lie that…might be keeping her from truth.

But she’d already asked Rosalia about a four-year-old boy named Gabriel, and she wasn’t going to leave the farm without knowing for certain if he’d been here.

“A child named Gabriel, about four years old. His mother is dead. I have reason to believe he was brought here.”

Very slowly,
Señor
Ramos shook his head, nothing but honesty in his eyes. “No one named Gabriel.”

She closed her eyes as the finality of that hit. Maybe the child she was looking for was a girl. Maybe that little—

“I would like to give you something,
señorita
,” he said, holding up a hand to make her stay where she was. Wordlessly, he crossed the room to the simple cardboard dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled out a chain, like a heavy necklace or…no, it was a rosary.

“For you,” he said, handing her the rosary. “
Para darte las gracias
. To thank you.”

To thank her? Chessie looked at the thick beading and the heavy silver cross at the end, decorated by a gorgeous red stone.

“The sacred heart,”
Señor
Ramos said. “
El Sagrado Corazón
.”

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. And valuable. Very, very valuable. “But, no. You should keep this for the children.”

He just held it closer to her.

“Or sell it for the school?” she suggested, rubbing her fingers together to indicate the money this piece could buy. “You could buy supplies and books and food.”

“It might help you,” he said.

Meaning she could pray with it? Or—

He leaned closer, making Chessie think he was going to kiss her cheek. Instead, he whispered in her ear, “Seek him at the
municipal
. Go there. Today.”

The word was soft, the Spanish accent heavy, and she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. Something about the municipal?

“What are you doing in here?” At the sound of Mal’s voice, she turned to find him standing in the doorway.

“We’re talking,” she replied, stepping back to realize
Señor
Ramos had closed the rosary in her hand.

Mal looked from one to the other and asked Ramos a quick question in Spanish. Surprising her, the man answered in Spanish, then gestured around the room as if to say he was showing Chessie around.

And not revealing that he spoke perfect English, had just given away a valuable necklace, and had whispered a possible lead in her ear.

“I think we can go now,” Mal said.

Yes. To the
municipal
, which sounded like the English word ‘municipal’ —so it might be the community’s government, and a place of public records. Definitely a lead.

The other man nodded and added something in Spanish, walking out and leaving the two of them alone in the tiny room.

“What did he say?” Chessie asked.

“He said, ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for.’” Mal walked out ahead of her, leaving Chessie to consider that as she tucked the rosary in her pocket.

“So do I,” she whispered. “So do I.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Just don’t get your hopes up, Chessie.”

“You’ve said that three times,” she replied. “I’m being realistic, is all.”

But she still seemed as enthused about the idea of storming the municipal offices as when they left the Ramos’s farm. Now they were already seeing the hideous apartment buildings of Caibarién, and she hadn’t backed off. “The
municipal
isn’t going to be like your local post office, willing to help,” Mal reminded her.

“Do you have a better idea? Where else can we go but the building in this area that houses exactly the kind of paperwork we want? Where the guy who we think owned the place where Gabriel was last seen
sent
us?”

So many caveats in there, he lost count but added a few more. “The building that is
supposed
to house it, if they’ll let us in, if they’re open and not fishing.”

She grunted and smacked the leather of the front seat. “Why are you so pessimistic?”

“Because I’ve lived in Cuba before. Ramos probably has a friend who works at the
municipal
, and he knows we’re prepared to grease every palm that’s extended to us.”

“Pessimistic, bitter,
and
cynical.”

He threw her a look. “Well, you didn’t want to like me.”

She made a face that looked an awful like…it was too late for that. “And maybe Ramos was trying to tell me that there was a recording error and the boy we’re looking for is a girl,” she continued. “I should have asked him.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. In fact, you shouldn’t have told Ramos the real reason we were there,” he said. “First rule of being in the field: stick to your cover story, no matter what.”

“If we never accomplish our mission, what good is the story?”

He understood that question and had grappled with it himself in the field, but she didn’t have the experience to know when to trust someone.

“We don’t want anyone on our tail, Chessie,” he explained. “It’s one thing to try to find a kid anonymously and get some DNA for Gabe. It’s another to get on the wrong radar and put you in any danger. If I so much as smell something that could hurt you, we’re gone. Out. Back to Barefoot Bay.” He didn’t mean to sound quite so vehement, but that’s the way he felt.

“Got it.” She let out a sigh as if to acknowledge her mistake in judgment. “It was just those kids…they all seemed to need something so much.”

“Yes, they do. And if there’s one thing you, an obvious nurturer, needs to know is that you can’t save them all.” He understood that longing, though. “Even if they get under our skin,” he added. Because wasn’t that what got him in the mess that was his life, his record, and his lost career?

“I know,” she said, but he doubted she did. “Like Gabrielita. Such a precious little thing, Mal.”

He heard the hitch of pain and sympathy in her voice. “Careful, Francesca,” he said, purposely using the name he called her when he really wanted her attention.

“She could be related to me.” She reached into her purse, picking up the hairbrush she’d already stripped of potential DNA-producing hair, which was now tucked safely into a sealed plastic bag. “Although she didn’t look like Gabe. Did she look like Isadora?”

He thought about the child in question and remembered Isadora’s near perfect beauty, with caramel-and-chocolate-colored curls and haunting green eyes. “Not really.”

“I know!” She snapped her fingers. “Maybe there’s information about Isadora in the municipal office.”

“Highly unlikely. She was a translator for the CIA and an American citizen. And you
cannot
go in there and start dropping the names of agents.”

“I won’t,” she promised him. “And I didn’t say their names to Ramos, you know. I never mentioned Gabe or Isadora. I never said a last name.”

“No, but just cool your enthusiasm. I realize it’s motivated by boundless hope and big family love, but be chill.”

“I am chill.” She turned to him, her gaze scrutinizing. “You jealous of that stuff, Mal? Of my boundless hope and big family love?”

He tapped the brakes as a crab crossed the street in front of them, the sight comical, but Mal couldn’t laugh. Instead, he imagined what it would sound like if he drove over that crab and cracked the shell. It would sound a lot like that question she’d just asked breaking the protective barrier he’d spent years building, just like that free-range crustacean. And killing the poor guy.

“Define jealous.”

She just laughed at that, totally on to him now. “You know you don’t have to go through your whole life clinging to pessimism and changing addresses.”

Actually, he did. Something hot and tight squeezed his chest, making him incredibly uncomfortable and actually glad to see the offices of the
municipal
down the street. “Speaking of addresses, we’re almost there.”

She took the bait and shifted her attention to the road. “All I need to do is call that Canadian number I have to get the server for Internet access. I’ve already figured it out and have a plan.”

Of course she did. “You do know there are no computer files in this office, right? Maybe in Havana, maybe at the national level. But in a municipality with a population of about six thousand? The best you’ll find is yellowed, handwritten papers, which were probably filled out by someone drunk or on the take. Or both. And you don’t even know what you’re looking for.”

She gave a soft laugh. “Bitter, cynical, and pessimistic is back.”

“Okay, just for fun, let’s say you find a birth record for Gabriel,” he said, rumbling toward a parking space. “Or even a record of Isadora’s death. What would you do with that information?”

She turned her whole body to look at him as if he’d grown another head. “That is a
trail
, Mal,” she told him. “When you’re trying to find someone, you follow the trail. The municipal office is the only lead I have. Unless…” She patted her jeans pocket.

“Unless what?”

“Maybe this is part of our trail.” He glanced over as she revealed a long, beaded necklace-type thing with a bright red stone on a cross. No, not a necklace. A rosary. He peered at it, taking his eyes from the road to really give it a good look.

“I’ve seen that before.” The rosaries were around Cuba, of course, on the black market in the country that was supposed to be atheist but housed a good number of Catholics. But something about that one…and then he remembered.

“Gabe gave one that looked a lot like that to Isadora.”

“Really?” She practically jumped out of her skin. “Then it is a clue!”

“Or he was giving you a gift, and it just looks like the one your brother bought on the street. I don’t think they’re that uncommon, just kept out of sight for the most part.”

“You were there when he bought it? You recognize it?”

“I remember the day because Gabe said it was to make up for the fact that he swore so fucking much.”