Chapter 13 — What He Was Taking

“But why the sisters?” Inmaculada asked.

“Why put them to sleep?

What does he want with them?”

Soledad lowered her head, and the answer, when it came, was greed, plain and ugly.

Matías had never planned to stay a fugitive forever; he had planned to leave rich.

The convent was full of quiet wealth — the chapel silver in its safekeeping, the old relics from the mountain restoration, the alms and the offerings, the small treasures of centuries.

But moving through an occupied convent at night was impossible with the sisters sleeping lightly in their cells, any one of them liable to wake and raise the house.