breathe. They walked along what seemed like miles of corridors before Enzo stopped and opened a door, indicating for Clare to enter the room. She stepped inside and her legs almost buckled with relief when a familiar figure jumped up from a chair and ran towards her.
‘Becky!’ Clare flew across the room and flung her arms around her sister. ‘Are you all right? They haven’t harmed you?’ Another wave of relief surged through her when she saw that Becky’s ears, revealed where her long ash-blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, were perfectly fine. Clare wondered briefly who the severed piece of ear she had been sent by the kidnappers belonged to. But, thankfully, her sister seemed to be unhurt, and in fact looked as beautiful and elegant as she always did, despite having been held captive for a week.
Compared to Becky, Clare knew she must look like a grubby urchin from a Dickensian novel in her crumpled, mud-stained clothes. She realised that her sister was staring at her veil.
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Becky pulled the veil from Clare’s head and watched her hair tumble around her shoulders. ‘Thank goodness you haven’t cut your hair short. It’s your best feature.’
‘It was a disguise. I was helped by some nuns in Manaus and the Mother Superior suggested that I should wear a habit and veil as protection from the criminals in Torrente who are apparently God-fearing, although they don’t fear the police.’
Becky gave a shaky laugh. ‘I thought for a minute you had actually joined the church. Wearing the veil makes you look like a very realistic nun.’ She glanced across the sitting room to a door which led into an adjoining room. ‘Don’t you think so, Diego?’
Shock robbed Clare of the ability to speak as she spun round and stared at Diego leaning against the door frame, his arms folded across his broad chest and his lips curved into a familiar cynical smile that was not reflected in his hard as steel eyes. ‘You certainly convinced me, Sister Clare,’ he drawled.
‘I WAS GOING to tell you, but I didn’t get an opportunity to explain,’ Clare muttered. She and Diego were walking along a corridor, following the gang member Enzo, who had ordered them to go with him. Clare hadn’t had a chance to replace her veil, and she felt vulnerable now that her guise of a nun had been blown. The way Enzo’s eyes had insolently roamed over her made her skin crawl.
She wondered if the person called Rigo, who they were being taken to, was the leader of the kidnappers. She was worried that she’d had to leave Becky in the room where they had briefly been reunited. But hopefully this Rigo would accept the ransom money and allow her and Becky, and Diego, to go free, she told herself.
Diego shot her a scathing glance. ‘We had sex, and it wasn’t a quickie, over in a couple of minutes. How much more of an opportunity did you need to mention that you were only pretending to be a nun?’
He swore with muted savagery, aware that their captor walking just ahead of them could overhear. ‘Do you know what a bad time my conscience gave me when I discovered you were...a virgin?’ he said harshly.
He was furious with her for making him feel a fool, although her air of innocence hadn’t all been an act, he brooded, remembering how she had gasped at the moment of penetration, making him realise, too late, that it was her first time.
‘Is that why you had disappeared when I woke up this morning? You felt guilty, so you cleared off.’ Clare’s initial feeling of relief that Diego had gone from the cave when the kidnappers arrived had gradually turned to anger that he hadn’t even woken her to say thanks for their one-night stand, which, of course, was all he had wanted from her.
‘I didn’t clear off. I was on my way to the waterfall to take a shower when I was ambushed and knocked unconscious.’ Diego removed his hat that he’d been wearing with the brim pulled low over his eyes, and Clare made a choked sound when she saw a purple lump on his temple.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been involved. A week ago my sister was snatched while she was on a modelling assignment in Rio, and the kidnappers demanded a ransom for her release. I was instructed to take the money to a cave by a waterfall near to Torrente and was warned that if I went to the police or asked anyone for help Becky would be killed.’
‘You should have told me what you were doing.’
‘I didn’t know if I could trust you.’
‘If you didn’t trust me, why did you give yourself to me?’
Clare told herself she had imagined a faint note of hurt in Diego’s voice. ‘It was just sex. It wasn’t as if it meant anything to either of us.’ She assured herself that her emotions had not been involved, and she was certain it hadn’t meant anything to Diego. ‘What happened after you were brought here?’
‘I must have been knocked out cold and when I came round I was lying on a bed and a beautiful woman, who I’ve just learned is your sister, was leaning over me.’ He grinned. ‘For a couple of minutes I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’
‘I doubt you would be allowed in,’ Clare muttered, feeling a hot surge of jealousy because Diego thought Becky was beautiful.
‘Becky told me she had been kidnapped, but I didn’t make the connection between the two of you because I believed your story that you were a nun going to teach at a Sunday school.’ His expression hardened. ‘You don’t look at all like your sister.’
‘Which explains why Becky is one of the most photographed models in the world and I’m an accountant,’ she muttered.
Enzo halted outside a door and knocked. He looked nervous, and Clare’s heart jumped into her throat. ‘I wonder who Rigo is,’ she whispered.
‘His name is Rodrigo Hernandez and he heads the biggest drugs cartel in western Brazil, with smuggling routes across the borders into Colombia and Peru,’ Diego explained in a low voice. ‘He also operates a huge prostitution racket, has been linked to several high-profile kidnappings and has a reputation for extreme violence.’
‘Quiet,’ Enzo growled, before he opened the door. ‘Rigo will see you now.’
Clare was aware that her life and Becky’s depended on the outcome of her meeting with the dangerous man inside the room. She felt sick with fear and her feet seemed to be rooted to the floor so that she could not move. A hand grasped hers and she jerked her eyes to Diego’s.
‘All right?’ he asked softly. He squeezed her fingers when she nodded. ‘That’s my girl.’
As they walked into Rigo’s office, Clare gained an impression of walnut-panelled walls, a richly patterned carpet and heavy velvet curtains that were drawn across the windows and blocked out the daylight. The stark white light from a lamp illuminated the spirals of smoke that rose up from the tip of the cigar that the man sitting behind the desk held clamped between his lips.
Rodrigo Hernandez was dressed in a sober grey suit and tie and looked more like a well-to-do lawyer than a violent drugs lord who was one of the most wanted men in South America. But his black eyes were pitiless, Clare thought, and his cold smile sent a shiver through her.
‘Miss Marchant. I see you have brought a friend with you. Take a seat, both of you.’
‘Diego agreed to drive me to Torrente,
