Girl in the Water

by Dana Marton

  The girls worked, laughing, chatting, listening to music. They didn’t put their work down even while answering questions. They worked hard. Most of them had come from the streets, so they knew the alternative.

  None of them had been in the visiting volunteers section of the building. They weren’t allowed up there, a rule that Ian thought sensible.

  They visited the young girls’ schoolroom next and received the same eager-to-please but unhelpful answers.

  “Maybe you could conduct one-on-one interviews tomorrow,” he told Daniela when they were back in their small room after a surprisingly satisfying cafeteria dinner of fish and fruit, settling in for the evening.

  She sat on her bed, watching him with what he thought was a guarded expression. They had the lights off to keep the bugs away from the screen that had a small tear in it. Moonlight dusted her with silver.

  “I want you to tell me why you’re going back to Rio,” she said. “Please don’t treat me like a child.”

  She wore a thin, strappy nightgown.

  He lay on his bed, on his side, wishing for air-conditioning. He was immensely grateful for that five feet of distance between them. No, she was most definitely not a child.

  So he told her about Lavras Sugar and Ethanol. “Finch was working for Lavras in Rio at the time he got in trouble. Maybe the trouble he got in was at Lavras. If I interview, I’ll probably meet the head of security, the guy Finch worked for. I want to find out what happened.”

  “Whoever Finch ticked off either killed Finch or had him killed,” she pointed out. “I don’t like it that you’ll be going into possible danger alone.” She rubbed a narrow hand over her eyes. “You didn’t see him.”

  Finch’s body. Tortured.

  She dropped her hand but was still for only a second or two before her fingers began worrying the edge of her nightgown.

  Ian hated that he’d made her upset. “They’re not going to knock me off in the middle of the HR department. It’s a professional building, headquarters of an international corporation. I’ll be safe. I’ll poke around, then I’ll be out of there before they can so much as come up with a plan.”

  “I wish I could come with you.”

  “We came to Brazil to investigate baby Lila. Even I shouldn’t be going. I’ll make up for the missed time when I get back.”

  “I don’t want you to stay in Rio overnight.” She fixed him with a hard look. “Pierre asked me out. He wants to take me to the opera. If you don’t come back, I’m going to go with him.”

  No way was Monsieur French Casanova getting anywhere near Daniela. “I won’t stay the night.”

  He couldn’t tell for sure in the semidarkness, but she looked a little on the smug side. Probably was. She was probably playing him like a fricking fiddle.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ian

  “So you and Senhor Finch were close friends?” Marcos Morais, the head of security at Lavras Sugar and Ethanol asked. He was almost as tall as Ian, freshly cut dark hair, expensive suit, shifty eyes.

  “Finch and I were in the US Army together,” Ian said. “Last I talked to him, he liked it here in Rio. When I lost my job back home, I figured I might as well head down here. He kind of disappeared. Maybe I’ll track him down.”

  “You used to talk with him often?”

  “Called each other once a month or so. You know, checking in.”

  “Have you been in Brazil before?”

  “Not recently.”

  They’d already discussed Ian’s qualifications and were just shooting the breeze as the interview was winding down.

  “Seems like Lavras is a great place,” Ian said. “I bet you’ve been here forever. What’s not to like about sugar, right?”

  “Easy job.” Marcos stayed laid-back, twirling his pen on the desk. He played the whole interview that way. Hey, we’re all friends here. “I had a small company protecting diamond mines before this. Believe me, you wouldn’t like that.”

  Ian had some understanding of the private armies that protected diamond mines. “I believe you. Guarding an air-conditioned office beats being out at the mines, in malaria-infested backwoods, doing cavity searches on laborers to make sure they aren’t stealing anything.”

  Marcos’s hand stilled on the pen. “Been in the business?”

  “Had friends who were.”

  “Here?”

  “Africa.”

  Marcos nodded as he pushed to his feet and held out his hand to signal that the interview was over. “Thank you for coming in. You’ll be hearing from us shortly. Make sure your contact information is correct.”

  “Definitely. If you think of any other questions, just call,” Ian said as he left the man.

  He walked out to the elevators, didn’t accidentally-on-purpose get lost this time. He had what he’d come for. Whatever had happened to Finch, Marcos had been part of it. He’d brought up Ian’s friendship with Finch way more times than was necessary. And every time they talked about Finch, the pulse in Marcos’s neck beat a little faster, his gaze turned a little sharper.

  Once baby Lila was safely back with her parents and Ian returned to Rio, he’d start his investigation with Marcos Morais.

  He walked out of the building, thinking about various ways he could dig into Morais. Then he reached the sidewalk and scanned the street. He didn’t have to wait long for a cab.

  “Airport,” he told the cabbie, then relaxed back in his seat.

  “Big accident on the highway, senhor. You American?” When Ian nodded, the guy cranked up the air-conditioning. He grinned in the rearview mirror. “I want to be New York City cabbie someday.” He looked as eager to please as if Ian had the power to make the guy’s ambitions come true. “I’ll take the backroads. Sim?”

  “Sim.” Ian’s mind was on other things.

  What did Finch find at Lavras? What did he take?

  Was Lavras doing something illegal? Did Finch find proof? But then why not take it to the authorities? Was Finch blackmailing Lavras with whatever he found? Finch was a good kid, but he’d always been impulsive. And he hadn’t had the best track record at resisting temptation.

  He’d almost gotten court-martialed in the army when he’d crushed a beer bottle with his bare hand on a bet and cut his palm to shreds. Destruction of government property.

  Finch had gotten in trouble more than once for drinking and doing stupid shit. Once, in the middle of the night, he’d colored their superior officer’s uniform pink with Kool-Aid.

  As Finch’s past fiascos circled in Ian’s head, he failed to notice that the cab wasn’t going towards the airport at all, until they were on a single-lane road somewhere in the outer suburbs and the cabbie drove into a weed-infested tunnel.

  A white van blocked the cracked concrete of the road ahead of them.

  Ian reached for the gun tucked into his waistband.

  The cab stopped.

  Another white van stopped behind them, blocking them in.

  The cabbie jumped out and ran from the short tunnel, scrambling up the embankment to their left, then disappearing over the rise.

  Shit.

  Ian dove for the front seat. Too late. Bullets were flying already.

  “Throw your gun out,” somebody was shouting.

  He had no other choice. He was hemmed in. Enemy before him, enemy behind him. He had no real cover. And if one of the idiots hit the fuel tank…

  Ian tossed his weapon, an old Taurus .357 Magnum, through the open driver’s side door. Hadn’t had it long, dammit. He’d bought it off a kid on the edge of the favelas after he’d gotten into Rio this morning. He’d planned on stashing it someplace safe before he flew back to Manaus. Couldn’t take a gun on an airplane these days.

  As soon as he tossed the revolver, the shooting stopped.

  “Get out of the car. Hands in the air.”

  He did as they told him. If they wanted him dead, they would have blown his head off already.

  Right now, right here, he’d bee
n outmaneuvered, plain and simple. He needed to gain time, and he needed to gain a sense of the enemy he was facing.

  Marcos Morais, head of security at Lavras, got out of the van behind the taxi and strode forward, a Taurus PT92—Brazil’s response to the Beretta 92—in hand. Better by a long shot than Ian’s weapon had been. Next time, he’d buy a gun off someone like Morais instead of a street kid.

  The man walked toward Ian. “I thought of a few more questions.”

  He looked confident about getting answers. He had every reason to be. A four-man crew stood behind him, with weapons drawn.

  * * *

  Daniela

  Ian hadn’t returned by midnight. He wasn’t answering his phone either.

  Daniela called Iris after dinner to check in, but hadn’t told her about her missing son, just that Ian was out investigating. She didn’t want to worry Iris. Iris was having enough trouble with her bingo partner, who was lording five grandchildren—and a sixth on the way—over her.

  Exhausted from scouring the worst slums of the city, Daniela finally went to bed, to his bed—to make sure she couldn’t possibly miss Ian if he came back. But she couldn’t fall asleep.

  By five in the morning, she was on a GOL Linhas Aéreas flight and reached Rio by noon since she only had one quick stop in the city of Brasília—the seat of the Brazilian government, the federal capital of Brazil. She made herself sleep on the flight so she wouldn’t be completely beat when they touched down. In Rio, she rented a car because she was pretty sure someone had taken Ian, and she was going to rescue him, so she’d need a getaway car, not a cab.

  The thought that, like Finch, Ian was dead, killed, floated at the edges of her consciousness no matter how hard she fought to beat it back. The possibility of this worst-case scenario made her chest feel crushed, as if a water buffalo had sat on her.

  Images of Finch lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor flashed into her mind, and she broke out in cold sweat. She refused to accept that she was too late to save Ian.

  But she couldn’t believe the best-case scenario either, that Ian had simply lost his phone and missed his flight last night. She hadn’t had the kind of life that gave her that kind of optimism.

  She settled on the most likely scenario: Ian had run into trouble.

  She could track his cell phone with hers through GPS, same as he could track hers. He’d insisted on that years ago. At the time, she’d rolled her eyes and called him overprotective. Now she was glad she’d agreed.

  As far as she could tell, he was in a large building at the edge of the industrial district. A sugar refinery, she realized when she finally reached it. Two men stood at the gate, two more security guards at the entrance of the main building.

  If they thought they could keep her from Ian, they had another think coming.

  * * *

  Ian

  “Where are the diamonds?” Marcos Morais asked.

  “At the diamond mine?” Ian guessed.

  The man pistol-whipped him, knocking his head to the side.

  Ian stood against the whitewashed cement-block wall, his hands tied to steel pipes on each side of him.

  Marcos and he had spent the previous evening in a conversation exactly like this. Then Marcos had left for the night, leaving Ian alone in the small utility room to the rats and his worries about Daniela. He’d spent a couple of hours trying to undo the ropes, but Marcos must have been some Boy Scout extraordinaire. The ropes held.

  And first thing in the morning, Marcos was back, fresh and ready for round two.

  Ian braced himself against the wall behind him, as if nothing but the wall was holding him up. His nose was bleeding. Stars danced in his vision. He didn’t have to pretend hard that he was in bad shape, about to fold.

  Marcos finally stepped closer. Ian was careful not to grin. The idiot was now close enough for a head butt or for having his legs swept from under him. Once Marcos was on the ground, Ian could crush his scrawny neck under his boots, finagle Marcos’s knife away from him, and then Ian would be out of there.

  He decided to wait a little longer. He was still hoping Goat Man would show up. Marcos wasn’t Goat Man. He didn’t have a scar on his nose. Ian wanted both bastards. He hoped to hang in there as long as he could, just in case.

  He figured Marcos might call in reinforcements for the final beat down. Come on, Goat Man.

  But instead of Marcos calling anyone, he drove his fist into Ian’s stomach. “You tell me where the diamonds are, or I’m going to take you apart into small little pieces. Have you ever seen the machines that grind up the sugarcanes?”

  Ian hadn’t, but he could easily imagine. He tried to suck in air. At least yesterday’s lunch was long gone, so he wouldn’t vomit again.

  “Who killed Finch?” he asked, more breathless than he liked, but at least he could still talk.

  “Fucking idiots.” Marcos drove his fist into Ian’s stomach again.

  He doubled over. Coughed. Several seconds passed before he could straighten. “Tough having partners…who don’t know…not to kill a man…before he gives up the information.”

  Marcos punched him in the ribs next. “Don’t worry. That’s not going to happen here. First you talk, then you die. I’m clear on the order.”

  Ian spit blood. “It’s a pleasure…doing business with a professional.”

  To hell with waiting for Goat Man.

  Ian prepared to lurch forward, but the door opened, and a man in his early twenties hurried in, dressed in a security uniform.

  The guy didn’t look at Ian but kept his gaze studiously on Marcos Morais. “Senhor.”

  Marcos snarled at the interruption but went out to talk to him. After a moment, the lock clicked.

  Which meant Marcos had been called away for a time.

  Ian tried to blink away his double vision. His head swam.

  Time to blow this popsicle stand. He just needed a minute to recover. He slid to the ground into a sitting position, his back to the wall, his arms stretched to the side, suspended by the ropes.

  He tried to catch his breath as he scowled at the door—solid steel, and not a damn thing in here to pick the lock with. He glanced at the small window. That had potential.

  Except, the window darkened even as he watched. Someone moved past.

  A guard?

  Okay, one guard he could handle.

  As pain pounded through him, Ian focused on his ropes again but didn’t get more than three seconds. Then the glass was kicked in, and the second after that, Daniela’s head appeared in the gap.

  For a moment, her face was a study in tension, then she relaxed and smiled at him. “Hey.”

  God, let this be a hallucination. She could not be here.

  “Are you okay?” She examined the room, then slipped in, careful of the broken glass, landing on her feet with a small bounce like a cat, looking more curious than scared. She wore black hiking boots, tight black shorts that ended mid-thigh, paired with a black tank top, her hair in a tight bun at her nape.

  He growled at her. “What are you doing here?

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  She was saving him. He was supposed to be her protector. How in hell had they ended up with their roles reversed?

  She walked up to him. Stopped. Took in the ropes.

  “Can you untie me?” The pain in his ribs was abating at last.

  “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Not enough to stop me from getting out of here.”

  “Good.”

  Instead of cutting him loose, she straddled his lap, one knee braced on the ground on each side of him. “Just give me a moment to be relieved, okay?”

  She put her arms around his chest and lay her head in the crook of his neck.

  He couldn’t move away, nothing but wall behind him. “Marcos could come back any second.”

  “If you’re talking about the guy who just walked out of here, he jumped into a car and drove off. I think he’ll be a while.” She pull
ed back to examine every inch of Ian’s face.

  “Daniela?”

  She brushed back his matted hair from his temples with her slim fingers, her green eyes filled with concern. “I was afraid that they killed you.”

  Her voice was tender and…sexy, and he couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think how intimately they were pressed together.

  “Untie me. Please.”

  She lifted up his shirt and carefully wiped the sweat and blood off his face. And then she lowered her head and brushed her sweet lips over his in a move so erotic and so innocent at the same time, that hot need shot though him out of nowhere, so strong that it made him dizzy.

  Thank God, his hands were tied. Because there was no way he would have been able to keep them off her.

  He held completely still.

  She brushed her full lips back and forth over his. She was smiling as she whispered, “You’re mine now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  Right, because he so wanted to run. But he said nothing. He absolutely could not encourage her.

  He didn’t have it in him to reject her yet again either. He hated putting pain in her eyes.

  She nibbled his bottom lip gently. Then she licked the corner of his lips. Ian was glad Marcos had focused on his midsection. His face was all right, other than what he thought was a split eyebrow.

  He was harder than the steel pipes he’d been tied to, and she had to feel it, sitting on him as she was. He didn’t dare move a muscle.

  She licked a slow, delicious line across the seam of his lips. Not kissing her back took every ounce of strength that he had.

  She had passion. He was glad in a way. He’d been worried it might have been brutalized out of her—but he really wished she pointed her newfound passion somewhere else.

  Of course, then he’d want to murder the guy.

  She kissed him a little harder.

  And then his control was gone, as fast as if it’d been shot from a cannon. He was probably going to hell, but he didn’t care, because he would happily spend all eternity burning in flames for the chance to kiss Daniela back.