by Dana Marton
Since there was a fried food place at the end of the street, they walked. Neither of them felt like taking a bus deeper into the city.
They bumped into Carol, coming out of a small convenience store.
She wasn’t shopping for the girls at See-Love-Aid this time. She was carrying a bag of diapers.
“Getting ready for the baby?” Daniela asked.
Carol laughed. “Two weeks left, but you know how these things go. The baby could be early.”
“Want me to take that back for you?” Ian offered and surreptitiously checked her ankles, relieved that they weren’t swollen.
Carol waved him off. “Doesn’t weigh anything. You two have fun out on the town.” She winked at them as if they were going on a date.
Ian paused.
Was that what everybody thought?
He scowled as Carol moved on, and he and Daniela resumed their walk. Did the other aid workers think he and Daniela were a couple? Did they think he was some fricking old lecher who’d take advantage of a young woman?
All right, they were sharing a room. But they were partners!
And he’d never even…
All right, except for that one kiss.
He filled his lungs. He wanted this op to be over. Hell, he wanted to run for the hills.
Next to him, Daniela marched along happily, walking fast to keep up with his long strides. When she caught him looking at her, she grinned.
She pointed at the busy, grimy street, the air filled with car exhaust and the fishy smells of the river. “Hey, isn’t this great? We’ve put in a good day’s work, and now we’re going on a date.”
Swear to God, Ian wanted to jump in front of traffic.
* * *
Daniela
The call came just as Daniela and Ian got back to their lodgings. She was in a good mood, even if Ian had worked the word friends into the dinner conversation no less than half a dozen times. She didn’t buy it. He had kissed her back in Rio. And there’d been nothing friendly about that kiss.
For the first time in her life, she felt desire, felt like a normal woman. She wanted. And she wanted to be wanted back. That kiss gave her so much hope, she’d been on the verge of breaking out in song every time she remembered Ian’s lips on hers.
As Daniela watched, he answered his phone, then mouthed to her, Gustavo Santos.
The local detective.
Ian said, “Yes” and “Thank you” a lot, then hung up.
She was holding her breath. “What is it?”
“You know the gang that’s been involved in illegal adoptions before? One of the women in the gang has been seen around with a baby. And nobody remembers seeing her pregnant. The police are tracking her down. Once they have her, they’re going to bring her in. We are invited, as a courtesy, to the questioning, but the detective asked that we don’t say anything to the Heyerdahls until it’s certain that they have the right child.”
Relief filled her down to her toes. “Thank God.”
Please let this be baby Lila.
She wanted to rush straight to Carmen and Phil, but she understood Santos. If they were wrong, the Heyerdahls would be devastated.
As Daniela lay in bed that night, she thought about the case, and she thought about Ian. She cared about baby Lila more than she could put into words. And she was focused on the case. But her awareness of Ian was like constant background music these days. Or as if the TV was left on in another room. You did your business, but the sounds were there, woven into the fabric of your day.
And night.
She could never have imagined that sleeping in the same room with him night after night would be this disappointing. He didn’t even kiss her good night.
How could Ian keep ignoring her?
Even after the kiss in Rio.
The kiss!
She couldn’t believe she’d worked up the guts to do that. But, God, how good it had been. If they hadn’t been in danger, she would have kissed him over and over again. She wanted to. Even now. Still. While he…
Out of the darkness, his growly voice said, “Thank you for coming to Rio for me. But, please, don’t do anything like that ever again.”
She turned to stare at him in the semidarkness. That was it?
Chapter Fifteen
Ian
Gustavo Santos conducted the questioning in a large but plain conference room on the ground floor of the police district headquarters. Maybe the interrogation room was too small for all of them. Or maybe they had floggers hanging on the wall that he didn’t want the Americans to see. Ian didn’t know and didn’t care. He watched the suspect.
She held a blond baby, nothing but hatred and contempt toward the police in the woman’s drug-hazed black eyes that matched her stringy black hair. Tattoos covered her neck and both of her skinny arms. She could be anywhere between twenty or forty, impossible to tell. Too many years of hard living had left deep marks on her.
“You take my baby away over my dead body.” She spat the words at them and looked ready to fight.
She didn’t have a lawyer present.
“When did you have the baby?” Gustavo Santos asked.
The questioning went on in Portuguese. Ian didn’t understand every word but got enough to know what they were talking about. And if he missed anything, he could always ask Daniela.
He sat back while Santos worked the suspect. He and Daniela were here only to observe.
The woman gave the baby’s birthday, and the detective made a note. The date was seven months ago, so the timing matched. The baby was the right age.
“Where?”
“At the Hospital Adventista.”
The detective produced a printout from the folder in front of him and pushed it over to the woman along with a pen. “I need you to sign the release of medical records form.”
“No way.”
“Then we’ll take the baby for a DNA test, and you won’t have her back until we get the test results.”
Shooting them a look of murder, the woman scribbled what might or might not be a signature.
The detective walked the piece of paper to the door, called over a secretary, and instructed her to obtain the records immediately, have them emailed over. Then he strode back to his chair and sat.
“Is your boyfriend blond?”
The woman’s chin came up in defiance. “What’s it to you?”
“You don’t see a lot of blond kids running around here.”
“Maybe his father ain’t from around here.”
“Where is he from?”
Her eyes shot sparks of anger. “He’s a fucking prison guard down in São Paulo. I got knocked up while I was in the can. Now you happy?”
The detective didn’t look happy.
Neither was Ian. While the baby was the right sex, age, and coloring, she didn’t look like the pictures Carmen Heyerdahl was showing around. Not that you could necessarily tell much from baby pictures. Fuzzy hair, no teeth, chubby cheeks—babies looked a lot alike at that age, at least to Ian.
The detective kept asking questions.
The woman answered, but with thorough contempt. You could tell from her tone that if she thought she could get away with scratching all their eyes out, she would have gone for it. She certainly had the nails for aggravated assault: long, ragged, with plenty of dirt packed underneath.
Should an altercation happen, Ian was happy to know that he’d had his tetanus shot just last year.
Santos moved on to questions about other gang members, to which the woman responded with stony silence. They went on like that for about twenty minutes.
Then the email finally came in from the hospital, and everything matched up. The little girl was hers.
She left with her baby, cursing them all the way out of the station, ending with a hearty vai se fuder! to Gustavo Santos. “Go F yourself” in Portuguese.
“I’m sorry.” The detective looked ready to curse too, scratching at the hair that was graying at his temples.
“I really thought this was going to be it. We’ll keep looking.”
Ian shook the man’s extended hand. “We’ll do the same.”
He was grateful for the cooperation. The woman with the blonde little girl had been a long shot, but it could have worked. Better to try and fail than to leave any stones unturned.
Daniela was thoughtful as they got on the bus. “I’m glad we didn’t mention anything to Carmen and Phil.”
Ian held on to a plastic handle as the bus rattled on. He could have rented a car, but he wanted to get a better feel for the city and the people. For now, the buses and the cabs would do.
The traffic was crazy chaotic. If he drove, he’d have to keep his attention on that. This way, he could freely look around, watch the hustlers, the people selling drugs, the prostitutes, the shady element he was interested in. If he ended up needing a car, he could always rent one later.
Talking about the shady element… Ian watched as a pickpocket headed for them. Daniela stared the guy down. She could be seriously fierce when she wanted to be.
He’d always known she was tough, but on this trip, away from everything DC, he was beginning to see her in a new—or maybe old—light. Every once in a while, the river goddess came out, and he didn’t know what to do with her.
Part of him couldn’t wait until this mission ended. While the rest of him…
He was going to ignore what the rest of him wanted.
When they got off the bus in front of See-Love-Aid, the first person they saw was Pierre the French Casanova, fixing the front steps, filling the cracks with wet cement from a bucket. He immediately hurried over. He was watching Daniela as he asked, “Any news?”
“Not yet.”
As the bus pulled out, a beat-up pickup truck with See-Love-Aid’s logo pulled up to the curb in its place, and Henry, in the driver seat, lay on the horn before jumping out and tossing the keys to Pierre. “All yours, bro.” The big, blond English teacher from Ohio paused. “Hey, and I fixed that knocking in the back. Loose exhaust pipe.”
He seemed to be a jack-of-all-trades.
He turned to grin at Daniela, his gaze dipping to her purple sandals. “Nice shoes.”
She smiled back. “Thanks.”
Ian scowled. Henry was close to his age. What the hell did he mean by looking at Daniela like that?
As Henry disappeared inside, girls ran from the building to pile their crafts in the back of the pickup.
Pierre used up the last of his cement and stood, then stepped toward Daniela. “Want to come with me to the shops to drop off the goodies?”
She glanced at Ian.
He did his best not to grind his teeth. No way to tell her no without looking like an idiot. “Fine with me.”
He wanted to canvass the neighborhood again anyway. He could do that alone. Daniela deserved a couple of hours off. It wasn’t as if they were joined at the hip.
So she went, with Pierre the French Casanova, while Ian stayed behind.
Mrs. Frieseke invited him to lunch with her. She was alone at the staff table, the others already having finished. The older girls were back in their workshop, the younger girls in their classes.
“Oh, your poor face,” the woman cooed, her plate of rice and fish nearly empty. “It hurts to look at you. Those thugs in Rio did a number. I was a nurse back home. Did I tell you that? In San Francisco. Nurse for a while, then when my back gave out, I became a social worker. Are you sure you don’t want a butterfly bandage for that eyebrow? You’ll have a scar there.”
“My own stupidity,” he said. “When they asked for money, I shouldn’t have resisted.”
“They didn’t know you were the law. They don’t respect the law anyway. Not in Rio and not Manaus. With the economy slipping, crime is going through the roof. I worry that, if it gets worse, we won’t be able to get enough volunteers to come here.” She sighed. “Where did you and Daniela go this morning in such a hurry?”
“Police station.” Ian dug into the rice, cooked in coconut milk and flavored with a spice he couldn’t name.
The woman brightened. “Do they have anything?”
“Thought they did, but it didn’t pan out.”
She stared into her soup, guilt filling her eyes. “I hope you find that child.”
“We’ll do our best, ma’am.”
She looked up. “Is Daniela still out?”
“She’s gone to the shops with Pierre.”
Mrs. Frieseke raised a sparse eyebrow. “Heather won’t like it.”
Ian stopped eating. “Why is that?”
“They’re an item, as they used to say in my day. Heather is already plenty jealous of Hannah. Pierre had a fling with Hannah last year. He’s a handsome young man. The women enjoy him.”
And it sounded like he’d enjoyed half the staff.
And he was out with Daniela.
A dark mood enveloped Ian and turned him off his food. He didn’t even touch his fish. He waited politely until Mrs. Frieseke finished her lunch, then said good-bye and moved on. He went to see the few neighbors who hadn’t been home the first time he’d checked out the small wooden houses out back.
He went from home to home, asked his questions, got plenty of answers, but nothing that helped. All the while, he kept an eye on the window of the room he shared with Daniela, but he didn’t see any movement. She wasn’t back yet.
Three hours had passed. How could going to the shops to drop off a load of souvenirs take three damned hours?
They were going to have a talk about the French Boy Wonder when she got back.
Chapter Sixteen
Daniela
Pierre took Daniela to lunch after the shops, so they didn’t return to See-Love-Aid until midafternoon. The time hadn’t been wasted either. Pierre seemed to know everything about everyone and wasn’t afraid of sharing.
He was twenty-two, her age, fun, entertaining, handsome. And still, for most of the time they spent together, Daniela had been thinking about Ian. She was glad when they were finally returning to See-Love-Aid.
Pierre looped his arm around her shoulders as they walked inside, and she let him, as an experiment. But neither Pierre’s nearness nor his touch made her feel like Ian did. Her heart didn’t race; her skin didn’t tingle.
She was about to move away from him when she spotted Ian in the rec room, talking intently with Carol, the pregnant staffer, on the sofa in the corner.
“We’re back,” Pierre said. “Did we miss any fun?”
Carol and Ian turned toward them at the same time.
A quick look of annoyance flashed across Carol’s face.
What’s that about? Does she like Pierre?
Her husband had died seven months ago. Maybe Carol was lonely. If she was ready to move on, Daniela wasn’t going to blame her.
But while Carol was annoyed at Pierre’s hand on Daniela's shoulder, Ian’s gaze was completely emotionless and flat.
Nudged by some little devil, Daniela stepped closer to Pierre.
Ian’s expression grew tighter.
And even though Daniela knew she was being juvenile, she couldn’t resist whispering to Pierre, “Hey, let’s go tell the girls how much money they just made.”
Pierre winked at her and steered her out of the room.
She didn’t look back at Ian, but she hoped he was having a stroke. He deserved it. If he refused to admit that he wanted her, why shouldn’t she have fun with someone else?
But as they found the girls out back and delivered the good news, Daniela soon became tired of Pierre’s joking and messing around. He did a French mime imitation, then demonstrated some break-dancing moves to the girls’ great amusement.
He was like a kid. He was immeasurably immature compared to Ian. Honestly, Pierre was even immature compared to Daniela.
She used the opportunity to chat with some of the teenagers she hadn’t talked to before.
“Do people who don’t work at See-Love-Aid ever come here?” she asked a sweetly disposit
ioned sibling pair, Gabriela and Fernanda, who took the initiative to show her the vegetable garden.
“Of course,” Gabriela, the older sister, said. “We have foreign visitors, donors. Some of the shop owners come to negotiate with Mrs. Frieseke. Lots of people come here. Some girls have relatives who visit.”
“Does anyone ever go upstairs?”
The girls shook their heads simultaneously, ear-length brown hair swinging around their tanned cheeks. “Visitors aren’t allowed to go upstairs.”
But then the younger girl, Fernanda, giggled.
The older sister, Gabriela, flashed her a warning look.
Daniela got an idea. “Has a boy ever snuck up?”
The girls took great interest in their matching red rubber sandals.
“It must be hard that there’re only girls here,” Daniela said, although it seemed pretty good to her.
Fernanda bit her lip, then asked, “Did you go to school with boys in America?”
“I went to college with boys, yes.”
“Did you have a boyfriend?” The girl’s eyes sparkled with mischievous curiosity. Both sisters watched her with rapt attention.
“I had friends who were boys.”
The younger girl giggled again. “Gabriela has a boyfriend,” she whispered.
Her sister shoved her. “Fernanda!”
And Daniela said, “I won’t tell.”
Gabriela shot a warning look at her sister. To Daniela, she said, “He only came upstairs once. When I was sick and I couldn’t go down to work. He brought me fried piranhas.”
Daniela remembered fried piranhas fondly. “Seems like a good guy.”
Gabriela allowed a shy smile. “He is. He wants to marry me when I graduate from here.”
Daniela smiled back, grateful beyond words that places like this existed.
She fanned herself with her hand as they stood out under the sun. She’d gotten used to the cooler climate in DC. Manaus was even hotter than the jungle village she’d grown up in. In the village, they had the tree canopy above to cast shade. The city was little more than streets and buildings. The blacktop radiated back the sun’s heat, and the buildings trapped the sweltering air, kept it from moving.
