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Meet Logan Stafford from The Diamond Diva Vendetta

Will got to his feet, but before he could help her up, Logan put out a hand. She took it and slowly stood. He moved her forward, his hand on her elbow, but her wobbly gait had him throwing an arm around her, making her stand still for a moment. She closed her eyes and leaned into him, and he felt guilty for rushing her. Guilty for other sensations that fluttered through him as well. He tried to remember all the unflattering things he’d read about the Diamond Diva, but it would take a bucket of ice water to douse his body’s reaction to her. “Maybe you should lie down. We can do this later.”

She shook her head and pushed her hip away from him. “No, I need to see.”

He started forward again, and this time she seemed steady, so he walked her out of the room and to the door where Will was waiting. He opened it, and she pulled away from Logan’s support completely, shuffling out into the small clearing. After a few moments, she turned back, a mystified look on her face. “Does America even have a jungle like this?”

Logan nodded. “South America does. You know you’re in Brazil, right? You had a meeting with the sex trafficker Justin Miranda and were nearly killed by someone who thinks you’re the Diva de Diamante, the infamous, almost completely anonymous, head of a very lucrative diamond smuggling organization that milked blood diamonds out of the native-owned lands of Brazil for a decade.”

She put a hand to her temple and started to sway again, and Will leapt to her side, putting an arm around her. “Godammit Logan, cut it out. You’re hitting her with too much too fast.”

Logan’s lips went tight at the scolding. He felt every thread that had led them so close to finding Tiffany Morrow come completely unraveled. If this woman was just a lady from Kansas City with a lousy ex-husband and a cheap phone from a Brazilian lover, they had nothing. No inside information. No bargaining power. Nada.

And he could be in deep shit for having her here at all.

He spun in irritation. “Bring her back inside.”

Meet Rita Miller from The Diamond Diva Vendetta (Coming Soon!)

The next safehouse turned out to be more rustic than the first, and it was obvious the jungle had tried to reclaim it. Rita took one look at all the spiderwebs, and ran back out. She was not spending the night with big ass rainforest spiders. While they cleaned the place out, they put her to work knocking down webs in what looked like some kind of outdoor shower stall. A very long stick got the job done, and she only screamed twice.

She hoped there wasn’t anything living in the large suspended rubber sheet above it that had a shower head in the middle, as she was not tall enough to see. And she really didn’t want to know anyway. She wanted a shower in the worst way, but was she really going to use this thing? How did it work? There was obviously no plumbing.

Throwing down her spider stick, she turned in time to see Will and Rod sneaking out with something they obviously didn’t want her to see. Dear God in heaven, are there snakes in there?

She walked the small clearing around the cabin, trying to calm her beating heart, and stopped in front of what was probably an outhouse. She scowled and wrinkled her nose at the thought. She continued on to the front where there was a fire pit. She looked in the door of the open cabin and saw no sign of a kitchen.

She loved communing with nature on occasion as much as the next person, but she also had no problem professing that at the end of the day, she wanted to use a flush toilet and take a hot shower inside the house before slipping in between her 700 count Egyptian cotton sheets in the middle of very urban Kansas City. C.G. loved camping, but Rita had never been a fan. She sent a desperate prayer heavenward that they wouldn’t be in this particular “safehouse” long.