by Dana Marton
Falling into a domestic routine with her was oddly comforting and at the same time disturbing. After two years of being alone, did he like it a little too much? He knew one thing, he didn’t want to get used to it.
He’d find Finch’s killers, make them regret the day they were born, then he’d go home, back to his lonely bastard self.
He finished his tea. As always, it did knock his headache back a notch. Enough to move around without feeling as if his head would explode any second.
He pushed his chair back and stood. “Let’s train.”
She put away the last dry dish, then followed him to the living room without protest, maybe even some eagerness.
“Today, I’ll pretend to attack you,” he said. “Just pretend. I’m not going to hit you. I want you to do the moves I showed you before.”
He stepped forward and moved to grab her slim shoulder. She immediately cringed. But even as she did, she turned to slip away from his grasp.
“Good. You’re a quick learner.” And she had good instincts.
He was beginning to understand that it wasn’t that she couldn’t defend herself, but that she’d been forbidden to. Whatever anyone told her to do, she’d been trained to do it. Rosa had probably instructed her not to resist, no matter what men wanted to do with her or to her.
“You don’t ever have to do anything you don’t want to,” Ian told her now, emphasizing every word. “Do you understand? Not even if I tell you to do something. You just say, ‘I don’t want to do that, Ian.’”
Her large eyes dominated her slim face. Sometimes she had the most cartoonish, comical expressions, as if he was some rare foreign idiot the likes of which she’d never seen. At the moment, she was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.
Maybe he had.
But he kept on with her training anyway.
She was scrawny but tough, had a certain wiry strength to her. And this wasn’t about strength, in any case. Whoever might come after them would certainly outmuscle her. But they wouldn’t expect her to have US military hand-to-hand combat training.
She would have the element of surprise. And that was all she needed to get away, in case for some reason Ian wasn’t around to protect her.
He swung a punch.
She deflected like he’d shown her earlier in the week.
She got nearly everything on the first try. Her brain was as quick as her limbs.
“That’s good,” he said when she nearly swept his feet out from under him. “Let’s try that again. Give it everything you got.”
And she did.
They practiced until even he grew winded. Then they cleaned up and went to bed in their separate rooms. The next morning, they did everything all over again.
They settled into an easy rhythm.
By the end of the month, Daniela grew pretty good at self-defense and could speak English even better. She picked up everything insanely fast.
The boy who’d watched the house before still hadn’t come back. Ian kept asking around town, but he couldn’t find a single lead on Finch. He should have gone back home, but he didn’t want to leave Daniela alone in Santana, not until he was sure she could fully take care of herself.
He stopped detoxing. His head no longer hurt; his hands no longer shook from lack of alcohol. He felt better all the way around, maybe because of the food she made from fresh ingredients every day. He hadn’t felt this healthy and clearheaded since his army days. Staying was easy.
Another month went by.
He called his mother every other week, reassured her that he was doing well and was safe. And he promised, upon his return to the States, a quick visit to Connecticut.
“A long visit,” she negotiated, then said, “I know you’re down there on serious business, but try to live a little.”
“I’m living.”
“I can still hear the sadness in your voice. I’m never going to forgive Linda. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Ian stayed silent. He didn’t want to talk about Linda. Linda and his mother had never gotten along. They were too different: Linda high-strung and a perfectionist, assistant director of accounting at one of DC’s top firms; his mother as laid-back as they came, living on an organic farm in Farmington in a trailer she named Robert Redford, so she could tell everyone at the farm shop at the end of the day that she was going home to Robert.
She’d had a couple of good boyfriends over the years, but she’d never married. Ian’s father hadn’t stuck around past Ian’s birth. Ian knew nothing about the man beyond his name.
“I want to talk to Daniela,” his mother said. She knew about Finch’s death too. She’d known and liked Finch.
Ian handed the phone to Daniela, and she chatted on with his mother, mostly about cooking and the weather. Daniela ended the call after ten or fifteen minutes, with a grin.
“Iris said I shouldn’t let you boss me around. And if you do, you’ll answer to her.” Her eyes danced. “She said next time she’s going to tell me some embarrassing stories about you.”
He knew what his mother was doing, making friends with Daniela so she’d have one more chick to care about besides Ian, and she was mothering Daniela because she knew Daniela had lost her own mother.
Ian reached for the phone. Daniela didn’t flinch.
She no longer cringed if he stepped too fast in her direction. She stopped expecting him to beat her if she as much as dropped a spoon. And, thank God, she started to believe that he wasn’t going to expect sex from her. Ever.
If he had needs, he worked off the extra energy. He swam in the river. He got used to the heat and humidity. He even got used to the bug bites. Damn if the town wasn’t growing on him.
The fishing was great, and he found walking in the jungle with Daniela oddly relaxing. When they hiked through the jungle, he couldn’t think about anything else, not Linda and the twins, not the van in the river. His mind had to be on his surroundings one hundred percent. He had to watch out for poisonous spiders, snakes, plants, drug runners, and poachers. He couldn’t afford to get distracted by the losses of his past or worries about the future. He had to be in the present.
In the jungle, Daniela was a revelation. She walked differently, talked differently—with more confidence—could literally run circles around him. The roots he tripped over, she seemed to be able to avoid without even looking.
She spotted flowers and animals that completely escaped him. One time, she found an orphaned baby monkey that had fallen from a tree.
Her face lit with joy as she picked up the small animal. “Can we take her home, senhor?”
And it hit Ian all over how young she was, how, of course, she’d want to play. All he did all day was go about his business, grumbling along, then force her into hours of self-defense training in the evenings. She spent her free time cooking and cleaning. She needed a playmate.
He considered the monkey. Cute little bugger. “You think you can train her into a pet?”
Daniela blinked at him. “Oh no, senhor. To eat. I could cook her so good, it’d be the best thing you ever ate.”
He politely declined the offer.
Daniela was a ferocious eater. Once she figured out that he put no restriction on food, she ate whatever wasn’t nailed down. But she moved around so much, she didn’t seem to gain an ounce. While he studied the rain forest, wanting to learn this new environment, she spent their jungle trips foraging.
Ian didn’t mind. Not even when she filled her pockets with grubs, then when hers were full, she asked to fill his.
The incredible variety of sounds and colors around him—playful monkeys, noisy parrots, stunning displays of orchids—seemed like the very dance of creation and filled him with a new kind of energy.
It was that energy that drew him down to the Rio Negro before dinner to watch the barges, tugboats, and the tourist boats that carried sunburned and bug-bitten foreigners with their too-large backpacks on the river.
A hundred or so feet from him on the do
ck, two fishermen were fighting, fists flying, the men shouting in Portuguese too rapid for Ian to understand.
Drunks and fights were pretty common in town. Yet Ian hadn’t exchanged blows with anyone since he’d arrived here.
He could have gotten rough with a couple of pickpockets. He hadn’t.
Maybe his boss in DC had been right. He’d fought as a punishment—punishment and distraction—to numb the pain. He picked up women for the same reason. He’d probably followed Finch to Brazil for the same reason too. And he’d stayed with Daniela because she distracted him.
Because if he didn’t distract himself, then what?
Would he go into the river after Linda and Connor and Colin?
There’d been a time when he’d wanted to. But as he stood on the bank of the dark waters of the Rio Negro, it was just a river, not a solution.
He considered his current situation.
His only clue in Finch’s murder was a guy who wore a white suit and had a scar on his nose. He could be anywhere in Brazil by now. Anywhere in the world.
Maybe the boy Ian had caught watching the house at the beginning hadn’t meant anything. Certainly nothing had come of it. Nobody came.
And Ian couldn’t stay in Brazil forever. For one, his visa would be expiring soon.
But before he left, he needed to fix Daniela up with an honest job that would support her. He decided to buy the house for her as a gift. A steady home would be good for her. Ian had looked into it, and Finch had been paying month by month, was currently past due.
Real estate was dirt cheap here. Ian had combat pay tucked away. He wanted to make sure Daniela wouldn’t be anybody’s victim again. She should have a bright future. She’d gone through an incredible change already. As she learned to defend herself, she gained self-confidence. She smiled more often, and not just because she thought it was expected of her.
So, Ian went back to the house, and, over dinner, he said, “I’ll need to go home at one point. What do you think you’d like to do after I leave?”
She paled and shrank back as if he’d slapped her.
“You’ll be safe,” he promised. “I’m going to get you this house and see you settled. I’ll help you find a job. I’ll teach you how to shoot. I’ll leave Finch’s gun here with you. You’ll be all right. You can make a good life here.”
“I don’t want to, Ian.”
He stopped moving, his fork halfway to his mouth. She said no to him for the first time. And called him Ian instead of Senhor Ian.
He was so damn proud of her, but at the same time, he couldn’t understand why she chose this moment to disagree with him. His plans for her future made sense. She’d be as safe as possible under the circumstances.
He set his fork down. “You’ll be fine. You’re strong, and you’re smart. And I’ll always be just a phone call away.” Shit, even to his own ears, that sounded lame.
He’d be thousands of miles away.
Hurt filled her eyes.
Christ.
“You are not going back to Rosa,” he emphasized.
She lifted her chin. “Rosa couldn’t make me.”
He didn’t bother hiding his smile. “Damn right. You’d ice the old hag.”
Daniela’s voice gained confidence as she said, “I don’t want to live in this house alone.”
“What would you like to do?” If he could, he’d help.
She held his gaze, her clear green eyes steady. “I want to go with you, Ian.”
And then the front window exploded.
Chapter Six
Eduardo
“Get the girl too,” Eduardo Morais shouted the order as he sent his men into the house.
He’d seen Finch’s friend. That guy wasn’t going to respond to torture any better than Finch had. But the man seemed to have grown fond of the little whore. Maybe if they tortured the whore in front of him…
Eduardo wasn’t going to fail his brother, Marcos, this time.
He stayed outside, at a safe distance, listening to the sounds of fighting, furniture crashing. A gun popped. Then another.
Few people were out on the street after dark, and those who were weren’t bothered by the sounds of violence. They weren’t much interested either. They took a look at Eduardo, dressed as an important man, in a suit, the silver of his gun glinting in his hand, and they hurried by.
The crashing and yelling continued inside.
Eduardo had brought six men from Rio. If he lost one or two… He was a businessman who understood the cost of doing business. And there was no way Finch’s friend would fight off all six.
As if to underscore that thought, the house fell silent. No more crashes, no shouting, no gunfire. Just the sweet silence of success.
Now that’s how you take care of business. Eduardo smirked to himself as he strode in. Then… Meu Deus. For a moment, he faltered.
Bloodied men covered the floor.
Six.
All his.
Fernando, the bald one, was shaking his head, coming to, his nose broken and bleeding. His shoulder stuck out at the wrong angle, dislocated.
Merda.
Fury burned through Eduardo. “What the hell happened?”
“They went out the back.” Fernando gasped out the words in a nasal tone. “The whore can fight like a freaking ninja.”
“What the hell are you talking about, you useless piece of shit?” Eduardo kicked him. “Get up. Get after them.”
He finally had to help the guy up—carefully, so his suit wouldn’t get bloody. Then the two of them, with guns drawn, hurried out back into the darkness together. Or, more correctly, Eduardo hurried, and the idiot Fernando limped behind him.
Something in the river caught Eduardo’s eye as soon as they were down the backstairs. A white fishing boat chugged across the black water.
Monte de merda.
He ran to the end of the dock and knocked the sole fisherman coming home from the night into the water, jumped into the man’s ancient motorboat, waited for Fernando, then headed after the people he was chasing.
Nothing but jungle waited on the opposite side of the river. The foreigner and the girl weren’t going to escape him there.
* * *
Ian
Ian looked up from under the tarp that covered Daniela and him as they lay pressed together on the bottom of a small canoe stuck in the mud on the riverbank.
They were a tight fit lying down like that, but lack of room was the least of his worries. He was more concerned about poisonous snakes or spiders that might have bedded down for the night in the canoe. He hadn’t had time to check.
“We’ll go upriver.” He whispered because water carried sound a little too well.
They climbed out and pushed the canoe into the water. He did look for other occupants in the moonlight then, but they lucked out. Nothing too scary save a few bugs here and there.
Daniela smashed the biggest one with her rubber flip-flop without missing a beat. “The bite makes you hear things that are not there,” she whispered.
He gave her an appreciative nod. Tonight would be a bad night to start hallucinating.
They climbed in, then paddled hard, keeping to the river’s edge where the current was much slower and more easily overpowered than in the middle. And here, near the bank, the shadows of overhanging trees would soon hide them.
Moving upriver in a canoe required hard work, but between the two of them, they managed.
Once the bastards who’d attacked them realized that the fishing boat Ian had sent across the river for twenty US dollars held only a lone, local fisherman, they would search for Ian and Daniela downriver. People fleeing nearly always went downriver. Easier. Just like on dry ground, people fleeing went downhill, nine times out of ten.
When you ran from someone, instinct said to get as far away from your pursuers as quickly as possible, so you picked the fastest path. Of course, most professional trackers knew that. Doing the opposite was a basic evasion tactic Ian had learned
in the army.
He paddled hard, and the canoe made decent progress. They both put muscle into it, as much as they each had.
Daniela didn’t burst into tears, didn’t freak out, didn’t go into shock.
He hadn’t been sure she wouldn’t. Being tough while training was wholly different from reacting to a live, armed attack where bullets flew at your head.
He respected the hell out of her for the way she’d responded. But at the same time, he hated that an armed ambush wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened to her in her life. Being attacked by killers was something she could take in stride, and it hadn’t been only because of the training he’d given her.
They passed two sleeping villages, each no more than a smattering of huts. Hours passed before they reached the next town, smaller than Santana. A brightly lit-up house sat at the edge of the water, sounds of music floating from inside.
“That’s Rosa’s house,” Daniela whispered.
Ian’s blood boiled. His paddle stilled in the water. He would have liked to have a few words with Rosa, or, say, set the damn place on fire. But now was not the time to cause that kind of disturbance. He began paddling again.
He wanted to know what Daniela was thinking, but she didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t see her face.
“How far is it to your village?”
“Another hour, I think.”
She sounded winded. So was he. But he was willing to get more winded to get her to safety.
“We’ll go there.”
If the men behind them did search for them up this way, they’d search the first town they came across. They wouldn’t think anyone would want to go farther, against the current, on the night river.
He didn’t like doing it either. A floating log could easily capsize them. But Daniela sat in the front, and she had excellent night vision. He trusted her. He ignored his aching muscles and kept working against the current.
They reached Daniela’s village in a little under an hour and a half. Fewer than a hundred huts scattered on a hillside, nothing but shadows in the scant moonlight. The village slept.
Ian and Daniela pulled up the canoe and got out. They didn’t stop to rest.
