Girl in the Water

by Dana Marton

So he did, taking her sweet mouth, feeling as if he’d been underwater for years, and was just now coming up for air. All the pain of his body was gone. He could barely even remember it. He couldn’t remember anything but her.

  And that thought pulled him back to sanity.

  This was not the time and place.

  There was no time and place for anything between them.

  He drew away, both of them breathing hard.

  She folded against him once again, her arms around his torso, her head coming to rest on his shoulder as she softly whispered, “Ian,” her warm breath tickling his skin.

  His heart stumbled in his chest.

  “Could you please untie me now?” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded strangled.

  She took one last second. Then she moved off him and untied him, without looking at him, focused on the ropes.

  While he strode to the chair in the corner to pick up the phone that Marcos had taken from him the day before, she hurried to the window. She was up and out before he could offer her a boost.

  He had a harder time. His shoulders were wider, so he scraped against some of the broken glass, ended up losing a little more blood, not that he cared at this stage. Daniela was in the middle of enemy territory. He needed to get her the hell out of there.

  Except he barely had a chance to brush the glass off his shirt before they were discovered. The security guard who’d interrupted Marcos’s questioning was running toward them, gun in hand.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Daniela

  As more guards followed the first one, Daniela and Ian ran for the chain-link fence at the back of the factory lot.

  Panic rattled Daniela as she stumbled on the loose gravel, then caught herself. Her lips still tingled, her heart a confused mush, but she had no time to think about that now.

  The fence is too far.

  They wouldn’t be able to get away before the men caught up with them.

  Rain had begun to sprinkle while she’d been inside. She prayed it wouldn’t turn into a serious downpour. At least the guards weren’t shooting. But why? Had they been ordered not to kill the prisoner?

  To avoid getting caught halfway up the chain-link fence, then being dragged down by their ankles, Daniela and Ian stopped short of the fence and stood ready to take down the four guards who were quickly catching up, shouting at them to halt.

  “The two on the left are mine,” Ian said.

  Which implied the two on the right were hers.

  What, he wasn’t even going to try to shove her behind him?

  She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He looked grim and ready to fight. And he was letting her fight by his side like a real partner. Then she had no more time to marvel, because the men reached them.

  That they apparently weren’t allowed to shoot made all the difference. They turned their rifles in order to use the butt of the weapons to knock Ian and Daniela down, but before they could get that far, Ian knocked one unconscious with a roundhouse kick.

  Daniela attacked the skinniest guy, the one nearest to her. She went for a punch to the solar plexus, like Ian had taught her, ducking under the rifle, swinging her right arm back and putting her whole body behind the punch, aiming not at the guy’s chest but about a foot behind it, as if wanting to put her fist through him.

  The guy didn’t take her seriously, didn’t try hard enough to block. Big mistake. She knocked him back on his ass, where he stayed, gasping for air.

  The next guy approached her more warily, but she knocked him down too, with a well-aimed roundhouse kick just like Ian’s—thank God for the heavy-soled hiking boots she’d brought on the trip in case they needed to go into the jungle.

  Ian’s two were down too, and he turned to help, but she was already lunging at the fence. The rain made the aluminum links slippery, but she’d been born to climb trees in any kind of weather. A little water wasn’t going to defeat her.

  Ian was right behind her. Then they were over the top, jumping the ditch outside the fence, then in the rental car that waited where she’d left it on the shoulder.

  She slammed behind the wheel, and he didn’t argue as she got them the hell out of there.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked instead, checking her over.

  “No. You?”

  “A couple of bruised ribs from last night. I’ll live.”

  He flipped down the sun visor and checked out his face in the mirror. He pulled up his shirt and wiped off the last of the blood with the inside of the shirt before tugging it back down. Then he ran his fingers through his hair to comb it back into order.

  When he was finished, he flipped the visor up. “How do I look?”

  Like the man I’m falling in love with. God, she couldn’t say that. “Your eyebrow is cracked. You have a black eye to put all black eyes to shame. And your knuckles are busted.”

  “If airport security questions me, I’ll say I’ve been in a car accident.”

  “Or beat up by someone who wanted your wallet. They’d definitely believe that.” Then a different problem occurred to her. “Do you have your passport? You can’t get on a flight without ID.”

  But he nodded. “They only took my phone and gun.”

  “What gun?”

  “I bought some protection before I went to see Marcos at Lavras. I got it in the building without trouble. It’s a sugar company, not a courthouse. They don’t have metal detectors. But they caught up with me later.”

  He told her what happened as she drove straight to the airport.

  That he let her drive was new. Before, Ian always drove when they were together. He really was beginning to treat her like a fellow investigator.

  “Did you find out anything?” she asked.

  “Our buddy Finch stole diamonds.”

  She took her eyes off the road for just a second to stare at him. “No way.”

  “Sadly, yes. Marcos used to work for the diamond mines. I’m guessing he stole a couple, somehow Finch saw them, and he lifted them.”

  “Why? How could he be so stupid? Didn’t he know they’d come after him?”

  Anger and disappointment laced Ian’s voice as he said, “He probably thought he could outrun them.”

  Silence settled on the car as she thought of Finch, who, whether he’d realized it or not, had saved her from Senhora Rosa. “Why didn’t he leave Brazil right away?”

  “Who the hell knows? Maybe he had a buyer lined up in Manaus.” Ian’s hands fisted on his knees.

  Then they were at the airport, and they got through without trouble. On the plane, full as always, they couldn’t really talk about Finch and the diamonds, so they had to shelve that conversation.

  Ian drifted off in the aisle seat. Daniela stayed quiet next to him. He probably hadn’t gotten much rest last night. His neck bent at an uncomfortable-looking angle as he slept now. She should have given him the window seat, should have thought about that when they’d sat down. He was going to wake with sore muscles.

  She slipped her hand between his head and the headrest and tilted him toward her, until his temple rested on her shoulder. As he settled against her, she smiled with satisfaction, a lot more relaxed now that she was leaving Rio with Ian.

  He was safe.

  And she had saved him.

  Now he’d definitely see her as a strong, grown woman.

  She couldn’t wait until he kissed her again.

  * * *

  Eduardo

  Eduardo Morais watched as his father drank one glass of cachaça after another in his study.

  The old man had called in both his sons, but Marcos was off tracking the American who might have their stolen diamonds.

  Eduardo was almost glad Marcos had lost the guy. At least now, in comparison, Eduardo didn’t look so stupid for Finch’s premature death. Now Marcos had made a mistake too. The brothers were once again on equal footing.

  And maybe, if luck was with Eduardo today, he’d be the one to deliver checkmate to his father.
<
br />   The old hyena behind the desk had to make do with his younger son today, and his squinting, disapproving eyes said he wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t appreciate losing half his audience when he was in the mood to pontificate.

  Joaquim the butler-cum-bodyguard stood unobtrusively in the corner, stepping forward only when his boss’s glass needed to be refilled.

  “You and your brother give me nothing but grief lately,” Raul Morais grumbled.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I should have had more children,” the man said moodily, staring in front of him. “I wanted to, with darling Maria. But Maria…” He sighed. “I could have with the others, but…” He shrugged.

  Thank God you didn’t. But Eduardo nodded.

  “After Maria died and I ran north,” his father said, “I went into the rain forest at the end of the rainy season with the loggers, and we didn’t come out until the beginning of the next one. At night, I dreamt of Maria. For months and months, I never got closer to a woman than that.”

  Eduardo said nothing. When the old man got into a mood like this, he just needed an audience. He didn’t require a response.

  “Then logging season ended,” Raul Morais said, “and we floated the logs down the river. I stopped at the first village, went straight to a hut where I heard a woman would take care of me. I could only imagine—some old whore who could no longer hack it in the bigger towns downstream.” He gave a strangled laugh. Shook his head. But then a fond, almost affectionate look came over his face, so unusual that it made Eduardo actually pay attention.

  “Instead,” the old man reminisced, “I found a beautiful young girl, a mix of some Indian, some white, some black. Large brown eyes, long dark hair down to the back of her knees, nothing but a scrap of cloth wrapped around her hips, her budding, firm breasts bare…” He sighed. “I felt a tenderness that I thought I’d buried with Maria.”

  Eduardo shifted in the chair and swallowed back a groan. Would he have to sit through a listing of all the prostitutes his father had ever slept with?

  “The girl told me her mother wasn’t home.” Raul Morais kept going. “I wasn’t interested in her mother.” A faint smile softened his harsh mouth. “I asked her name. Ana. She was a virgin.”

  Eduardo had his doubts, but he didn’t voice them.

  “I didn’t pay her before I left,” his father said. “It wasn’t like that between us. I didn’t want her to think that I made her into a whore. I was going to make her into my wife. I’d float the logs down to Manaus with the crew. Get my pay. Then I meant to go back.”

  “But then you met Mother,” Eduardo said to hurry along the tale.

  “In Manaus, I met the geezer who owned the logging operation. He had no sons, just one daughter, a round, bucktoothed girl who wanted me as soon as she set eyes on me. Your grandfather’s house was a revelation, let me tell you. The nicest place I’ve ever been inside, and they only let me as far as the foyer, hat in hand, waiting for my pay.”

  Eduardo had a hard time picturing his father as a humble laborer. He’d never known the man as anything else but a proud, confident, heavy-handed dictator.

  He seemed to be lost in the memories. “Tile floor, antique furniture, a chandelier overhead. And a whole second floor at the top of a wide staircase. Just for two people and their servants. Your grandfather had other businesses besides logging. He had two small ships that ran goods and adventurers up and down the Rio Negro.”

  “And you thought, someday you’d be like that,” Eduardo said dutifully, resigned to having to hear the whole annoying story.

  “I saw then what was possible.” His father’s eyes shone. “Your grandfather handed out the pay personally, magnanimously, bald and overweight, huffing just from having come down the stairs.

  “Hasn’t swung an ax in decades, I thought. Yet there the man stood, having all the money, while us poor bastards who broke our backs and risked our lives would get just enough money to eat and whore through the rainy season, then be broke and desperate enough to sign up for another go when logging season started up again.”

  Eduardo didn’t point out that his father paid his own workers just as little, or less.

  “After we got our pay,” Raul Morais said, “we were sent around to the kitchen in the back for a meal. The daughter came in. To me, the kitchen alone seemed like a palace. And the girl, Rafaela, seemed like a princess—even if bucktoothed and plump as a stuffed pigeon. And the princess wanted me.

  “I spent the rainy season seducing her, making sure that she was with child by the end. We married. When logging season started, this time, I went back up the river as crew boss. Maybe it was your grandfather’s way of trying to get rid of me.”

  Not the first or last person to have that idea, Eduardo thought.

  His father squared his shoulders. “I refused to die. I finally saw the light. I understood that riches don’t come from hard labor. Riches come from leaping on opportunities. A successful man moves forward by leaps and bounds. So I leapt.”

  Eduardo reached nonchalantly into his pocket and fingered the small capsule there—a jungle poison that would mimic a heart attack.

  If only Joaquim, that gorilla of a butler, would turn his back. Or leave for a minute. Doesn’t the damn man ever have to piss?

  “By the time the next logging season came around,” Raul Morais said, “I had a son, your brother. I named him Marcos to soften up your grandfather, then convinced the man to rest and let me take over the business. I never held another ax again either.” His tone stiffened with pride.

  “Then Grandfather died the next year.” A suspiciously convenient death. Eduardo was familiar with this part of the tale.

  His grandfather had died, and Raul had another son. This one, he’d named Eduardo, after the little brother he’d left behind in the favelas in Rio. And as Raul Morais held his new son, he realized he was rich enough to have his brother found, to have his brother brought to Manaus, so he hired an investigator to do just that. And now, Uncle Eduardo might end up with Morais Timber.

  The younger Eduardo hated his namesake with the heat of the equator. He squeezed the capsule in his pocket, caught himself, stopped and pulled his hand out. He didn’t want to burst the damn thing.

  “Sometimes I think the happiest I’ve ever been were those years in Manaus,” his father kept blabbering. “I thought all the hardship was behind me. I’d done all the starving, thieving, killing, so my sons would never have to. I wanted you and Marcos to live like the rich I saw in Rio, people I watched passing by in fancy cars when I’d still been a child of the favelas. I wanted to raise you to be princes.” He sighed. “Have I made a mistake there?”

  “Of course not, Father.” The old man had given them everything. Except his love. And now, the Morais millions.

  “I’ve been soft,” Raul Morais said. “I didn’t discipline you enough.”

  Eduardo swallowed back bitter anger. He was pretty sure the old man beating him and Marcos bloody with a bamboo cane a few more times would not have made them into better men. They both had plenty of scars on their backs.

  Once, when he’d been ten, the old man had beaten him to the point of fainting. He could no longer remember why, but he could still remember the slicing pain. It had to be over idleness. The old man hated nothing more than any perceived sign of laziness in his offspring.

  Eduardo reached back into his pocket, palmed the capsule, then took it out, resting his hand on his thigh, waiting. One second when nobody looked was all he needed.

  “I should have paid more attention to you two, but I had too much work.” The old man stared into his drink, reflecting. “All my time, all my energy I put into the business. Every real I made, I bought land with it. Not the rubber plantations that were going out of business already at that time. Just virgin rain forest. I’d buy as much as I could. The government was making noise about controlling its resources. Permits were needed for everything, and fees, and blasted taxes upon taxes. If you didn’t have p
ermission, logging was no longer legal.”

  “But you wanted to stay legal for your sons,” Eduardo said. How many times had the old man told them that? Always expecting gratitude, even admiration. Did he expect to be worshipped?

  Had he even done it all for his sons? Or because he’d wanted to build his kingdom in the sunshine, not in the shadows. A king needed a kingdom. That had always been his fantasy: the boy from the favelas who would be king. Or, at least, the father of senators, maybe even a president.

  He shook his head now. “My new friends in business didn’t understand me. They laughed at me. The land was dirt cheap. I bought as much as I could, and then I bought more.” The grin he gave was pure favela, pure hustler. “And then I gave money to politicians to crack down on illegal logging. After that, I gave them more money to make national parks of large chunks of land I couldn’t buy. It all made the lands Morais Timber owned more valuable.”

  He fixed his son with a steady stare. “Leap on opportunities. And if there are no opportunities, create them.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “But never forget, it’s a jungle out there.”

  Eduardo resisted rolling his eyes. What did his old man know about the jungle anymore? Morais Timber had moved its executive offices to Rio decades ago. Raul Morais wanted to be closer to the place where decisions were made. He was now a wealthy man. Politicians curried his favor.

  Raul was on his third wife now. The first, his sons’ mother he’d married to pull himself out of poverty. The second to gain admittance to the highest echelons of Manaus, a city that had been growing by leaps and bounds. The third, he married after moving to Rio. He needed a way into Rio society, a hostess with class and breeding who would host his parties when he entertained senators and millionaires.

  Eleanora was currently in Switzerland for some kind of health treatment.

  The previous wives, Raul Morais had simply discarded. The two sons he kept. He didn’t have any other children. On purpose. He had the heir and the spare—enough. He was building a kingdom. He didn’t want a bushel of offspring to fragment it into small slivers after his death.