by Dana Marton
“I’m not certain,” the man said. “You would have to ask See-Love-Aid.”
“Then you don’t mind if we stop by their offices this afternoon?” Ian asked in a deferential tone that was a lot more subdued than his usual growl.
The man flashed a photo-op quality smile. “Not at all. We have investigated thoroughly, you understand. But we would be, of course, very happy if you found something we hadn’t. The United States has our full cooperation.”
Daniela liked the sound of that.
Brazil and the US were negotiating some kind of a trade treaty, Ian had told her on the airplane, so they would likely get the full benefit of the spirit of cooperation. Looked like he hadn’t been mistaken.
They talked with the delegado for another amicable half an hour before Daniela and Ian left.
“That was a waste of time,” she said in the cab. “We didn’t learn anything new.”
“Courtesy meeting.” Ian looked at his phone, probably to see if anything new had come in from the office. Two seconds later, he put his phone away. “We just needed to check in and have the federal commissioner’s approval. Now the real investigation begins.”
They didn’t wait until that afternoon to visit See-Love-Aid. Ian gave the cab driver the address, and the man took them straight to the organization’s headquarters.
A graying woman in her fifties met them, Cristina Luiza Sousa, Vice President of Operations. She spoke perfect English, with an accent only slightly heavier than Daniela’s. She had warmth in her smile, fierceness in her eyes, and toughness in her carriage, the kind of woman who could rule the world given half the chance.
When Daniela got around to posing her question again about children on the tours, the woman said, “We do have children in nearly every group, but usually teenagers. Toddlers or younger children are pretty rare. Lila Heyerdahl was the youngest we’ve ever had. Her parents are experienced. They’ve worked both in Africa and South America before. This is their second time in Brazil, actually. They missed the work after the baby was born, from what I understand, but didn’t want to commit to something more involved, so they decided to do two weeks with us. We anticipated no problems.”
“And they’re still in Manaus?” Ian asked.
“Yes. They don’t want to leave without their daughter. Understandably.” The woman smoothed down her skirt. “We put them up at our See-Love-Aid lodging. We’ll do whatever we can to help them and the investigation.” Her voice wavered. “We are all heartbroken.”
Daniela thought she was telling the truth. That haunted look in her almond-shaped brown eyes couldn’t be faked. Cristina Luiza Sousa really did care, wasn’t just concerned with how it looked for her organization or how she could fend off a lawsuit.
Daniela liked the woman on the spot. Senhora Sousa was a strong, self-possessed female who’d dedicated her life to helping others. Daniela had very similar plans for her own future.
Ian asked a few more questions. Senhora Sousa answered all of them.
He treated the woman with respect and deference. And Daniela thought, Is this what I would have to achieve for him to see me as an equal?
They didn’t uncover any great clues at See-Love-Aid headquarters, but Senhora Sousa gave them a list of everyone in the group the Heyerdahls arrived with, and the three-page application each volunteer had filled out. She already had signed releases from the volunteer visitors to hand over to the local police. Everyone had agreed to fully cooperate with any investigation that might recover the baby.
Ian and Daniela also received Senhora Sousa’s permission to visit the See-Love-Aid project in Manaus and interview the employees. Senhora Sousa would call ahead and make sure that the US investigators had everyone’s full cooperation.
“How do you feel about going up north?” Ian asked in the cab on their way back to the hotel.
Daniela shrugged. “I knew we’d end up in Manaus. That’s where baby Lila disappeared.”
He half turned toward Daniela, his full attention on her, his voice soft as he said, “We’ll be close to your village.”
“I don’t want to go there,” she answered his unspoken question.
Maybe she should want to. Maybe he’d expected her to want to go home. But to her, home was Ian’s condo.
“I’m not the same Daniela that Pedro took down the river to Rosa’s.”
“I know.”
“I just feel…” How could she ever explain this? “It’s as if my mother’s hut and the people I grew up with…they belong with a different Daniela in a different world. If I go back, then I’ll be that Daniela again, the one that did all those things.” She rubbed her arm, her skin feeling too tight and dirty. She pressed her thumb into a spot below her elbow until it hurt.
“You haven’t done a thing wrong.” Ian’s tone was certain and fierce. “Wrong was done to you. You are as good and pure as anyone I know. There’s not one thing wrong with you or bad about you.”
“You don’t know all that I—”
“I don’t need to.”
They both had topics they never discussed, and never even thought about if they could help it. Ian never brought up Linda and his twin sons, Connor and Colin. He’d told Daniela about them once, briefly, just the facts. And refused to have any kind of conversation about them since.
Daniela felt the same about her life in the village and at Rosa’s. Growing up, she hadn’t understood what she’d done was bad. She’d simply grown up in that life. Her mother, Ana, had been…what she’d been. The village had accepted them that way. And all the girls at Rosa’s had been the same as Daniela.
When, in her childhood, the missionary had talked about “sin” during sermons, Daniela hadn’t truly grasped the concept. Only after she’d moved to DC did she discover that most people would find her past shocking and wrong and shameful. Thinking about her childhood made her feel…if not worthless, then certainly worth less than others. So she’d locked her past away. All that had happened to someone else, someplace far away.
Except, now she was returning.
There is not one thing wrong with you, or bad about you, Ian had told her probably a dozen times a day at the beginning when she’d shared her doubts with him. And he made her repeat the words, There is not one thing wrong with me, or bad about me, until she’d believed them.
In the cab now, in Rio, the memories of those days with him made her heart swell. She smiled.
He raised an eyebrow. “What?”
I want you to see me as a woman. “Nothing.”
Was this what lust was, this unbearable ache, this need to be with another person, the need to have him see her, truly see her, all the way to her heart?
An odd thought, because, as it was already, Ian saw her more truly than anyone ever had. How could she want more?
She set that question aside to concentrate on the kidnapping case.
Once they were back in their room at the hotel, she connected to Wi-Fi and tried to get them on a flight to Manaus, but the last flight for the day was sold out, so she arranged for tickets on the first flight in the morning.
The thought of spending another night together in the small hotel room had her stomach doing cartwheels.
They had a working lunch in their room, organizing notes, reading through the visiting volunteer profiles they’d received. Who knew, maybe one of the Heyerdahls’ fellow travelers had something to do with the baby’s disappearance.
“Just because human trafficking and illegal adoptions are a large problem in South and Central America, it doesn’t mean that’s the only possibility,” Ian said as he looked up from the printouts he was holding. “Plenty of little kids disappear in the US every single day for a whole bunch of reasons.”
She nodded. “We just need one clue.”
“We’ll find it. And then we’ll find the baby.” Ian’s eyes held a fierce glint, his entire being focused.
Six months old. Daniela’s breath caught. Baby Lila was the same age as Ian’s sons had been when he’d lost the
m. That knowledge had to cut him.
“Ian? If you ever want to—”
He held up his left hand to stop her, while flipping through the printouts with the right.
Of course, he wouldn’t want to talk about it… Daniela watched him for another few seconds, then turned back to her laptop.
They worked until six, until they squeezed every ounce of information from the material they had.
If any of the visiting volunteers had anything shady in their pasts, they hadn’t put it on their application forms. Zero clues there.
“What do you want to do with your evening?” Ian asked.
She wanted to get out of the room for a while. “Can we go down to the beach?”
Chapter Eleven
Ian
Ian had a bad feeling about the beach, and his premonitions were justified. As soon as their feet hit sand, Daniela’s yellow summer dress flew off, leaving her in nothing but an indecent bikini that turned an alarming number of male heads.
Ian looked at the blue water of Guanabara Bay instead, at the hulking shape of Sugarloaf Mountain in the distance. But then he stole another glance.
Okay, fine, the scraps of golden fabric she wore actually covered more than what most women had on around here, the bottom not a thong—thank God, or they would have had to take him out in an ambulance. The top too covered…everything.
Yet somehow, Daniela still managed to draw every eye within a square mile. Or at least that was how it felt to Ian.
He dropped to the sand. Burned his ass. Welcomed the distraction.
“Aren’t you coming into the water?” She came to stand right in front of him.
He looked at her small feet. Did not raise his gaze above the ankles. “I didn’t bring my swim trunks.”
He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt, as undressed as he planned on getting.
The small tanned feet turned. She ran away from him into the waves and laughed in delight as the warm ocean hit her.
Now that she was far away, it was safe to look.
She was something in the water, always had been. Water was her element. All her insecurities melted off her there. In the waves, she was still and forever a river goddess.
She frolicked. Carefree like this, she was more beautiful than ever. Ian couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Neither could any other man.
A blond surfer yuppie made his way over to her to chat, trying to talk her onto his surfboard from the looks of it. The guy was tall, with some muscle, and bronzed skin.
Without a single glance back at Ian, Daniela headed farther into the waves with him.
Now Ian wished he’d brought swim shorts. Because the little bastard was putting his hands on her. Maybe the help was necessary to get her on the board, maybe it wasn’t. Christ, the guy knew her for what, half a minute?
Is this how pickups work now? “Hey, wanna ride my board?”
Ian felt about a hundred years old all of a sudden, and pissed enough to want to drown surfer dude in toilet water.
He wanted to go back to the hotel, but no way in hell would he leave Daniela alone with the guy. And if noodle dick put his hand on her one more time, Ian swore to God…
She laughed, the water carrying the sweet sound straight to Ian.
He closed his eyes. Drew a deep breath.
The guy with her looked to be in his early twenties. Daniela needed this, to be around boys her age. Back when she’d been in college, Ian had hoped she might bring home a boyfriend eventually, but she never had. He’d been prepared to be completely open-minded.
She was twenty-two now. She deserved romance in her life, someone who adored her, treated her the way she deserved to be treated. And Ian was not to get in the way when that young man showed up. But no way was it going to be this surfer dude. No way.
This one grinned like an idiot.
Daniela was way more mature. She could do better than this one. Hell, ten times better would still not be good enough for her.
She’d been sharp as a whip today at both interviews, asked all the right questions, paid attention, took notes. The op was going to go a lot easier because of her presence. Under different circumstances, Ian wouldn’t have minded being partnered with her permanently. They complemented each other.
He was more the silent type, better at action then interaction. She was all smiles and able to pop out one question after the other. People responded to her youthful eagerness.
He watched her play in the waves, happy. Idiot boy’s hand on her lower back now, dammit. Ian glared. Once she was back in the room with him, they were going to have a talk about touchy-feely little bastards.
Ian kept a close eye on the guy.
When they came out of the water, they sat on the sand some distance from Ian, chatted. Too far to hear. Then they went back into the water again.
This went on until the sky turned dark.
Ian's mood was darker.
Finally, surfer dude said good-bye. Then asked something. Daniela shook her head. He kissed her on the cheek.
That brought Ian to his feet.
But the guy was walking away already, and Daniela ran up to Ian, laughing.
“You didn’t have to wait here. You could have gone back to the hotel.”
“I like looking at the water. It’s relaxing.” His jaw hurt from being clenched for the past hour. His blood pressure was probably in the stratosphere.
Daniela kept grinning, falling in step next to him as they walked off the beach. “He asked me to go and have a drink with him. I told him I have to get up early in the morning.”
The truth. They did have an early flight. But was that the only reason she hadn’t gone with the boy? Did she want to go?
If she’d decided to go, could Ian let her?
Those questions and more like them buzzed around in his brain all the way up in the elevator.
Since she’d been wet when she’d pulled her yellow dress on, the fabric clung to her. Ian looked straight ahead, at the doors. Was this elevator smaller than the one they’d ridden down earlier?
He was ready when the damn doors opened, practically jumping out into the hallway. He strode into their room, then into the bathroom, straight into a cold shower.
When he came out, Daniela went in.
Ian moved to the window and stood in front of the air conditioner as he looked out over the city. He turned his thoughts to the actual reason why they were here.
Baby Lila. Kidnapping.
He tried to remember as much about Manaus as he could from his one previous visit. The biggest city of the Amazon stood on the banks of the Rio Negro, the black river, bursting with two million people. A sizeable crowd in which they had to find one six-month-old baby.
And Ian was also going to keep investigating Finch’s death. Finch had spent some time in Manaus—a major port for ocean vessels, fifteen hundred kilometers from the ocean—on his way up the river to Santana, where he’d finally, fatefully, settled.
Ian checked his phone. Nothing from Lavras Sugar and Ethanol. No missed texts, no missed calls. Early days. Probably nobody had even read his application yet.
Now that Ian was back in Brazil, Finch was on his mind all the time. Not that he’d forgotten his friend these past years. He just hadn’t been able to take off from work. The assignments kept coming, one after the other, and he was glad for the pay. His larger, two-bedroom apartment cost more than his old shithole of a place. And he insisted on helping Daniela with college, which she swore to pay back the second she finally got a job that didn’t pay minimum wage. She’d been working at the campus bookstore for the past four years.
A perfectly safe job. Instead of moving on to CPRU, she should have tried working for a library.
Ian didn’t care about the money. He wanted her to be safe and happy.
He kept his back to the bathroom door so he wouldn’t have to see her come out in her skimpy nightgown. But he couldn’t not hear the water running.
He shoved his ha
nds in his pockets and stared intently out at the city, at the million lights.
I want us to be lovers. She’d actually said that.
Christ.
Ian squeezed his eyes shut. They were going to bring him out of the Amazonian jungle in a straitjacket.
* * *
Carmen
Seventeen hundred miles to the north, Carmen Heyerdahl sobbed in Phil’s arms, her heart breaking. “We should never have brought Lila here.”
The night bugs bounced off the window screen. They had the light off, but the bugs knew where they were anyway and seemed determined to breach the barricade. Ping, ping, ping.
The room had been a little too small for the three of them, but now without the baby, it seemed oddly smaller yet, suffocating, like being trapped in a coffin.
Phil wrapped both arms tightly around her, as if afraid that if he let her go she too might disappear. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s not your fault. See-Love-Aid was supposed to be safe. Nothing like this has ever happened here.”
“I’m not going to give up until I find her.”
“I know.” He kissed her again. “You’ve never given up on anyone in your life. I know you’re not going to give up on Lila. Neither will I. We’ll find her. The police are looking.”
“And we’re getting help from the US.” She glanced up at Phil in the dim moonlight. He looked black and white, a shadow image of himself.
“That will make a difference,” shadow Phil said. “And we’ll keep searching on our own.”
She laid her head back down on his chest as she nodded. His chest was reassuringly real. He wasn’t really fading.
They’d been out every day, walking the city, walking the various harbors, the markets, looking at every child, hoping to see that sweet familiar face. They showed Lila’s picture around tirelessly, put out printed posters, offered a reward.
Any day now, something would bear fruit. Any day now, they would have Lila back.
* * *
Daniela
Since Ian was sitting by the desk with the laptop when Daniela came out of the bathroom, she went straight to the makeshift bed on the floor by the window and lay down.
