by Dana Marton
She shook her head.
His heart sank.
“Senhor Finch teaching me English,” she volunteered.
And what else, Ian wanted to say but didn’t.
“When did he die?” he asked, instead of when was he killed.
For the moment, Ian was willing to pretend that Finch had fainted and hit his head on the corner of the stove, if that gained him any cooperation from Daniela. If he scared her any more, she might not answer at all.
She pulled into as tight a ball as possible. “Senhor Finch went away. He will come back.”
Right. She was wearing his lucky belt. Ian had Finch’s Glock in the back of his waistband. No way had Finch gone anywhere.
“He died on this kitchen floor.” Ian gestured in the general direction with his head. “You and I both know it. Let’s cut the bullshit. When did Finch die?”
Silent seconds ticked by.
“A month ago.” Her voice was barely audible.
Ian’s throat burned. A month ago, he’d been halfway between here and Rio.
He swore, then when Daniela flinched, he said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
But, fuck, he wanted to hit someone. And he wanted a drink. He’d been on the road for months. He hadn’t had a drink since he’d blown into Santana the day before.
And while searching through the house earlier, he hadn’t found a single bottle of hard liquor, for which he blamed Finch. The bastard was a beer drinker, and not much of one at that.
Ian cursed him silently. For getting into trouble, for dying without waiting for Ian to get here, for not having a fricking bottle of rotgut tequila in the house, goddammit.
“How did he die?” he asked.
Daniela folded in on herself even tighter. Any more of that and she might disappear. The goddess of the river was gone. She didn’t belong here. She belonged to the Amazon. Her staying at the house with Ian was wrong, as it’d been wrong with Finch. Somehow the setup stripped her of all her power.
“I don’t know.” She tucked in her chin, obviously not believing that Ian wouldn’t hit her.
He was so damned tired, only his grief and anger kept him awake. “How did he die?” he asked again.
“I wasn’t here,” she said.
And he believed her.
She’d been fierce with the eel, but she was scared to death of him. Probably all men. If she’d been sold to Finch…Ian didn’t even want to think about what her life might have been beforehand.
Now that he’d spent a little time with her… He didn’t think she would have attacked Finch. And if she’d been here when someone else had, they wouldn’t have left her alive as a witness.
“All right.” He pushed to standing, beat as shit. He’d been up all night watching for Finch, and months of endless tracking before that. “We’re going to get some sleep.”
She immediately rose and walked into the bedroom, got on the bed. Her shoulders looked tight, her jungle-green eyes filled with apprehension, but as Ian watched her, he knew with a sick feeling in his stomach that she’d do anything he told her.
“Fuck you, Finch,” he said under his breath.
He took off his belt, sat on top of the covers, put his feet up on the bed, then grabbed her ankle and pulled her over. She didn’t protest. The resigned look in her eyes said she wouldn’t protest anything.
He fastened her left leg to his right one with the belt. “I’m going to tie us together, so you don’t run off while I sleep. I have more questions, but I’m tired.”
She could undo the belt, but her efforts would wake him up. The last thing he wanted was her in his bed, but it was the best idea he had at the moment.
He put Finch’s gun under the mattress on his side, exactly where he’d found it, then lay back down.
She lay down next to him. Then she scooted closer and reached her hand toward him.
“No,” he snapped, and ground his teeth, because what the hell else was he supposed to do in this damned situation?
She pulled her hand back, her gaze filling with worry and confusion.
He closed his eyes. “Tomorrow, after you answer all my questions, I’ll let you go.”
She was so quiet, he wasn’t sure if she didn’t stop breathing. But he didn’t open his eyes to check.
Chapter Four
Daniela
The Rio Negro rushed on outside, the sounds of the water filling the night, along with the sounds of the bugs in the trees. In Senhor Finch’s giant bed, Daniela held her breath as she folded her body until her fingertips could reach the belt buckle.
She had to escape.
She’d waited too long. She should have run away right after Senhor Finch had been killed.
She hadn’t, because here at least she had a roof over her head without having to entertain men. Living in Senhor Finch’s house, people assumed she belonged to Senhor Finch, and nobody tried to take control of her, tried to sell her again. They didn’t know Senhor Finch was dead.
But now, Senhor Slaney knew.
He had eyes like a jaguar, like he was lord of life and death, eyes that pinned her and saw even her thoughts. He’d looked at her, and she told him everything. She didn’t think he was a bad man. But he was the most dangerous man she’d ever known.
Senhor Slaney was going to send her back to Rosa tomorrow.
“I’ll let you go,” he’d said, meaning Daniela was done here. Time to go back.
He hadn’t meant he was setting her free. He would have to buy her from Rosa for that, and why would he do such a thing? Paying good money, then letting Daniela go would be the same as just throwing his money in the river. What would he benefit? Nothing.
In the morning, Senhor Slaney might give her to a fisherman going upriver and ask Daniela to be delivered to Rosa. Or simply give her to a policeman. Rosa knew all the police.
Daniela had to run and trust fate that she wouldn’t be caught. She had to run now. In the morning, it would be too late. So with trembling fingers, she tried to loosen the belt without waking the man next to her.
A beam of moonlight, softened by the mosquito net, fell over his face.
He had hair and eyelashes almost as dark as hers. He was the most physically powerful man she’d ever met, and he moved like the jungle hunter. Like a jaguar.
She’d seen a jaguar once.
They rarely came out of the forest as far as her village, but Daniela had seen one the night her mother had drowned, the night of the flood. All the village had run uphill, into the jungle, looking for high ground. When Daniela had realized that her mother wasn’t there, she had run back, and met the jaguar on the path.
The roar of the river and the people in the forest had probably disturbed the beast’s night hunt; he’d come to check out the clamor.
As Daniela had rushed around a bend in the path, a dark shadow separated from all the other dark shadows in front of her. She froze. Precious little moonlight filtered through the double canopy, but that dim light glinted off sleek black fur.
Daniela held her breath.
The jaguar sniffed.
Keen tension stretched in the air, strings of tension so taut they could have been played as a musical instrument. Her heart thump, thump, thumped in her chest, louder than it’d ever beaten, and still not as loud as the blood rushing madly in her ears.
Then a goat cried in the distance, maybe caught in high water.
And in a blink, the jaguar had disappeared.
Daniela had fallen down, dropped like a monkey shot out of a tree. She gasped for air. All that time, she hadn’t breathed.
When she recovered, she was too scared to continue on toward the village, so she ran back to the people huddled together in the jungle. She hadn’t found her mother until morning, tangled in tree roots at the edge of the flooding river.
Ana’s long hair streamed out around her face, the locks half-covered with mud, as if reaching into the earth, as if she was growing roots herself and would now simply transform into another
form of being, but still very much part of the rain forest.
That image often returned in Daniela’s dreams. But not tonight. Tonight, she wouldn’t sleep.
She shifted on Senhor Finch’s bed. Senhor Slaney’s bed now.
The jaguar was here for her again. And again, he would let her go. Yet she’d still be trapped. Just as she hadn’t been truly safe in the village after her mother’s death. The jaguar had let her go, but then Daniela ended up in Senhora Rosa’s clutches.
Not this time.
Not again.
She worked silently and carefully, her fingers like the delicate legs of the water bugs as they ran across the shallow ponds without disturbing the surface. She nearly worked the belt free when a large hand closed around her wrist.
Slowly, she turned to face the man who captured her. His dark gaze burned into hers in the dim moonlight.
“If you run, I will find you. Do you understand?”
Her heart beat in her throat. “Sim, senhor.”
The jaguar would let her go. But only when he was ready.
* * *
Ian
Ian dreamt of Linda and the twins under water, Connor and Colin screaming, “Daddy!”
He startled awake drenched in sweat, and for a moment, he didn’t know where he was. The bamboo walls, palm thatch ceiling, and oppressive humidity brought him to Brazilian reality.
Connor and Colin couldn’t have screamed, he told himself. They had been too young to speak. And too young to know who was at fault for not protecting them, letting them go into that river. The father who hadn’t come when he was needed.
The air and the room around Ian felt like a wet, dark weight, like it could drown him—not like a river, but a slow sinking in thick swamp water. His head pounded.
Next to him, Daniela was still sleeping.
He took in the small, curled-up heap she made in the bed. With tear streaks all over her face, she looked about sixteen. He felt like a dick.
He untied himself from her and fastened her to the bamboo footboard. He tucked the gun into his waistband, then hurried off to piss, hurried back, half expecting to find the bed empty, but she was still there, now sitting.
He leaned against the doorjamb, didn’t step any closer.
“You can unbuckle that now.” He nodded toward his belt.
And then what?
He needed a shot of something. Jameson’s would be good—a couple of shots, actually. He shoved his shaky hands into his pockets. Hell, he’d settle for some rotgut tequila, if Finch had only stocked some.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told Daniela again, because judging by the tight set of her slim shoulders, it bore repeating.
She nodded but didn’t relax.
“Why don’t you use the bathroom, then we’ll see about breakfast.”
The promise of food seemed to galvanize her, and she sprang into action, confirming his suspicions that she’d gone without food in the past. Better and better.
He padded to the kitchen barefoot, found eggs in the ancient fridge and some coconut oil, used the pan on the stove to make scrambled eggs. When he heard her behind him, he turned.
She was staring as if he had a tap-dancing monkey on his head.
He had no idea what was wrong now, so he pointed at the table. “Sit.”
He put the eggs on the table. Half a dozen forks sat in a cup on the counter. He grabbed two. He didn’t feel like hunting around for plates. He grabbed a lone flatbread from a plastic bag, then carried everything over.
He hadn’t had breakfast with someone at a kitchen table in two years. Hell, this was probably the first time he’d have breakfast in the past two years that hadn’t come from a bottle.
For a second, he thought of Linda and the twins, the last breakfast they’d had together before he’d shipped out. Linda had been crying, begging him to stay.
“You’ll be fine,” he’d said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
But it hadn’t been fine. What happened after he’d left was so far from fine, he didn’t have a word for it.
His head pounded harder. He had to squeeze his eyes shut as he stood, because movement made the pain worse. There had to be a place somewhere in the neighborhood that sold liquor. Tequila was the same word in every language, right? Somebody would point him in the right direction.
But as he cautiously opened his eyes so he could leave, his gaze fell on Daniela. She was squirming on her seat, chewing her bottom lip.
“What’s wrong?” He spoke quietly, but each word was like a cannon shot in his head anyway.
She immediately stilled. “Nothing, Senhor Slaney.”
She could control her actions but couldn’t hide the worry in her large green eyes. Worry tinged with fear.
He silently cursed, sat back down, then handed her one of the forks. “Just Ian. Dig in.”
He waited until she hesitantly did go for the food, because he had a fair idea that otherwise, she’d hold out for leftovers. He hated that she expected him to treat her like a dog. Had Finch? Dammit, he didn’t want to think that about his friend.
He wanted to ask her about the day Finch died, but he didn’t want to scare her out of her wits by starting with murder, so he asked, “So, you always lived around here?”
And was glad he did, because her shoulders did relax a little as she told him about her mother, Ana, and her village, then the trip with Pedro down the river.
Of course, then, the more she said, the more Ian wished he hadn’t asked.
Pedro. A fucking bastard who’d sold her to some whorehouse, apparently. Ian hoped he might run into the man while he was here. He seriously wanted to punch something, and Pedro’s face would be as satisfying a choice as he could imagine.
Then Daniela told him about Rosa bringing her to Santana and giving her to Finch, and by that time, Ian’s stomach was flooded with acid, so he gave up on breakfast.
If Finch was alive, Ian might have strangled his friend himself, even if Daniela had nothing but praise for him, and told Ian how happy she’d been, how Finch had never even beaten her and fed her every day.
Because Ian couldn’t handle the praise, he said, “Tell me how he was killed.”
And then they were suddenly at murder.
Daniela paled. “I don’t know, Senhor Ian. I came home, and he was dead.”
She’d told him as much yesterday. He needed more. “You didn’t see anybody?”
“A man came to the door the day before. And he watched the house the day before that.”
“Did you tell Finch?”
“Sim, Senhor Ian.”
“What did Finch say?”
“He said I should go away for a few days.” She hung her head. “But I came back in the night,” she muttered, tucking in her neck as if expecting to be punished for the disobedience. “Senhor Finch was dead.”
Ian pushed for details and got more than he bargained for when she gave him a full description. Slivers of bamboo under the fingernails. And a cut-off ear.
Tortured. Christ. Finch had been twenty-seven. Too damn young to die, and even with all the stupid things he’d done in his life, he hadn’t deserved to die like that.
Dark fury choked Ian. The desperate need for a drink pounded in his head, using it for a punching bag. Left hook, right hook, uppercut. He squinted against the sunlight pouring in the windows. “What did the man who came to the door look like?”
“He was a goat man,” she said, touching her chin.
“He had a goatee?”
“Yes, like a goat’s, dark. And big ears that held up his hat.”
Not much to go on.
“Anything else? Scar on his face? Limp? Anything I could find him by?”
“A scar on his nose.” She drew a line straight across the bridge with her finger.
“What did he wear? Poor clothes, rich clothes, a uniform?” A uniform would be helpful. A uniform would be an actual lead.
“Rich clothes, senhor,” Daniela said. �
��A white suit with a white hat.” And then she added, “Once, a man in a white suit came to visit one of the girls at Senhora Rosa’s house. Senhora Rosa said he was an important man. He worked for the police.”
But not a cop, if he didn’t have a uniform. Maybe he’d been a detective. Or higher. The police commissioner. Ian considered that for a few seconds before he asked, “What happened to Finch’s body?”
She shrank again.
Ian made a point to relax his body language. He leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs in front of him, and gentled his voice. “I’m not going to be angry.”
Still, several seconds ticked by before she said with reluctance, “I buried Senhor Finch, like my mother. I just…” She swallowed hard, wouldn’t look at him. “I couldn’t find a log to carve out.”
Ian stared. He pictured her struggling to drag Finch down to the river on a sheet, then rolling him into the black water.
Damned if Ian knew how to feel about that.
Not mad at her, though. She did what she had to for survival, and Ian was glad that she’d done it. If she’d gone to the police, they would have either locked her up for the murder or taken her back to Rosa. He was glad that she’d had this past month here, without anyone to abuse her.
He kept asking questions, repeated some he’d already asked, but she didn’t have much new information to add.
The best Ian could figure was that whoever had been after Finch in Rio had found him here in Santana and killed him.
Daniela finished her food and immediately jumped up to clean the table.
Ian stood too. The food had knocked his headache back a little.
All right, what’s next?
Maybe he could talk to the neighbors. Maybe someone had seen more, seen the man come into the house the night of the murder. Or more than one man. Hard to see how one guy could have taken down Finch.
Before he could think more about that, Daniela was in front of him, her hands tightly clasped together, her eyes downcast. The table was already clean. “Please don’t send me back to Rosa, Senhor Ian.”
The quiet desperation in her voice made acid claw at his stomach lining. He needed a shot of whiskey, the sooner the better.
