Girl in the Water Read online

  Daniela took his hand and drew him forward. “I’ll show you my home. We can spend the rest of the night in the hut.”

  Had that been excitement in her tone? She walked fast, clearly happy to be here. He followed her, ruled by entirely different emotions: anger and protectiveness.

  He wanted to go from hut to hut and shake people. Why in hell had nobody protected her?

  A couple of dogs ran up to them, but they were friendly—small jungle dogs to keep houses free of snakes and rats. They sniffed the visitors, then licked their hands, tails wiggling in greeting.

  Goats bleated in their pens.

  Daniela led the way up an overgrown path to a small hut that was leaning off its stilts, the roof in tatters.

  The spring went right out of her step. She came to a lurching halt and stared at the ruin. And in the moonlight, Ian saw tears roll down her face for the first time ever. He’d seen her with tears in her eyes, seen her with tear streaks that one morning. But she had never once cried in front of him.

  She cried silently now, her slim arms wrapped around her.

  First he thought, What the hell is here to cry over? But then, in another minute or two, he began to understand. This had been her home. The hut symbolized her mother and what little childhood she’d had. This was where she’d come from, and it was just about erased, would be erased in another year. The jungle would claim the hut; the vines and weeds would simply overgrow the small ruin.

  She’d had a hard upbringing, and yet…

  Her past was a part of her, as Ian’s past was part of him. Neither of them could divorce themselves from the things that had happened to them. And if they couldn’t erase the past…

  We will have to make peace, the thought came to him. But can we?

  As he watched her, something in his chest began to ache—the first time in years that he felt he might still have a heart.

  He didn’t care for the feeling.

  He liked his chest numb. Hell, he’d drunk barrels of whiskey to make sure his feelings were good and drowned and nothing could make them surface again.

  Daniela wiped her eyes. Sniffed.

  Ian wanted to give her a reassuring hug. He didn’t. He’d put a distance between them for a reason, and he meant to keep it. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to help her.

  He moved over to the nearest tree, kicked the ground clean, and sat, leaning against the trunk. “If you want to leave the country, if you want to come with me, you’re going to need some kind of papers.”

  He’d never seen anything at the house in Santana.

  She walked over to him, stopping in front of him and looking down. “What kind of papers?”

  “Passport?” He doubted she had that. “Birth certificate?”

  She sighed. “I don’t think so.”

  Looking at the village that could have come straight out of the Bronze Age, he believed her. “Did you ever see your mother with any papers?”

  She sat down next to him, pulled up her knees, and wrapped her arms around them as she thought. For one minute. Two. Three. Then she jumped up.

  “My mother kept a metal box buried in the ground at the back corner of the hut.” She hurried over.

  A metal box had potential.

  “In the morning,” Ian called after her, relaxing. He closed his eyes. “Let’s sleep.”

  After a moment, she returned to the tree and sat back down. “Are you really going to take me with you?”

  “We’ll see.”

  She stayed silent for a while, but not for long. “You are not going back to Santana to take revenge for Senhor Finch?”

  That was the question of the day, wasn’t it?

  He’d been a right idiot about that. He’d gone around town, asking about Finch. How in hell had he thought he was going to bait a bunch of killers and not have Daniela hurt in the process?

  He could go off on his own, go after whoever killed Finch, figure out what in hell Finch had died for. But he’d have to leave Daniela here in the village alone, or send her off to some other place she’d never been.

  Buying Finch’s house for her to live in after Ian had gone back to the US wouldn’t work. Ian cursed himself for being stupid enough to have ever thought of that as a solution. Finch’s enemies knew the place.

  Now that Ian thought about it, he hated the living shit out of the idea of sending her off alone into the great unknown. Which left one option: give up on taking out the bastards who’d killed his friend, and get her out of here.

  Ian hated that option too.

  But when it came right down to it, bottom line was, he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice Daniela. For anything.

  “We’ll go someplace safe,” he said. “To the United States if we can.”

  Then he could find her a safe place to live, set her up with a safe life. And then he could return to Brazil and take care of business.

  In his pocket, he had a cell phone he’d picked up as they’d run from Finch’s house. The phone had to have been dropped by one of the attackers in the fight. That cell phone would have numbers in its memory. And those numbers would lead him to names.

  Daniela shifted next to him. She blended into the shadows of the tree, a part of the jungle.

  Would it be a mistake to take her someplace else?

  “If you could be anything, what would you be?”

  She didn’t have to think about it. “A teacher.” Then she asked, “Did you always want to be a soldier?”

  He’d told her that was how he’d met Finch.

  Ian looked up into the starry sky. “When I was young, I wanted to be an astronaut. Someone who flies in a spaceship to the moon,” he explained, in case she didn’t know the word.

  She thought about that for a moment. “But you didn’t go.”

  “Turns out I have dyslexia. It’s something in your brain that makes it hard to learn. Mine is not bad, just enough so I couldn’t pass the test.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t go to the moon,” she said. “I think it’s better that you came here.”

  He closed his eyes.

  With jungle sounds all around him, he slept. And didn’t dream about the van going into the Potomac. He rarely had that dream anymore. And thank God for that.

  He woke up with Daniela’s head on his shoulder. The sky was lightening over the village, some people already out and about. Even after two months in Santana, the village was something else, an alien landscape, the kind of place he’d only seen on TV before, on the National Geographic Channel.

  He nudged her. “Wake up.”

  She blinked at him slowly, sleepily. It was the first time they’d slept together, since that first night he’d met her. A fine mist drizzled on and off, and the moisture had clumped her eyelashes together.

  Ian pushed up and away from her, walked into the trees, then stepped behind a wide trunk to take a leak. Wished he could take a shower and have breakfast. He stayed there for a while, giving Daniela time to do whatever she needed to do this morning.

  By the time he went back, she was digging at the corner of the hut with a bamboo stick.

  He helped her and got himself good and muddy in the process. “Let’s hope we’ll find what we need.”

  In ten minutes, they had the box. It hadn’t been buried deeply. Rope held it to one of the stilts, probably so the river wouldn’t steal it if the floods reached all the way here and washed away some of the dirt.

  They crouched behind the ruins of the hut, and he pried the cookie tin open. Its lid decorated with a picture of the Manaus Opera House, the box was a little rusted, but whole—it hadn’t let in water.

  Inside was a copper ring, and a medal carved from some kind of bone, hanging from a string. Next to the medal, they found a small wooden cross. And under it all, one piece of folded paper in a plastic bag: Daniela’s birth certificate, stained but readable.

  Ian released the breath he’d been holding.

  He still didn’t know much Portuguese, but he didn’t ne
ed to know much to read the date.

  “You’re eighteen years old.” Surprise pushed the words from him. “Your birthday was a month ago.” He grinned. “Hey, happy birthday.”

  Daniela’s eyes lit up, as if he’d given her a gift.

  He glanced back at the paper and found another line that needed no interpretation. “This says your father is William Wintermann. Do you know who that is?”

  He handed her the rumpled birth certificate and thought about how little the last name Wintermann fit her. Even Ian’s last name fit her better. Slaney was a large river in the southeast of Ireland and the name of a Celtic goddess.

  Daniela read through the sheet of paper, then, as fat raindrops began to splash all around them, she carefully put the paper back into the plastic bag and into the safety of the metal box.

  She dropped the box on her lap, then blinked at him, rubbing her thumb over the tan skin on the back of her hand, as if trying to uncover another layer. “He’s the village missionary.”

  The man who wouldn’t let Daniela’s mother be buried in the cemetery?

  Daniela had told Ian the story. He wanted to choke the Wintermann bastard.

  Before he could decide if they had time for that, and before Daniela could recover from discovering the identity of her father, a man plodded up the path, drawing their attention. He walked with the ambling gait of a water buffalo. And he looked like one too.

  “Pedro,” Daniela whispered.

  Talk about people Ian wanted to strangle…

  The man was watching the path in front of his feet and hadn’t seen them yet. He was about two decades older than Ian, in his fifties, larger than the average Amazonian, and not a weak man. According to Daniela, he owned a store. He probably hefted plenty of crates.

  The man who sold Daniela to Rosa.

  Ian clenched his jaw so hard, his teeth hurt. He pushed to his feet.

  Pedro looked up, startled, then his gaze slid over Daniela, once quickly, then once again, more slowly. His face lit up. “Querida!”

  “We leave now,” Ian whispered to Daniela, “or I’m going to start beating up people. Your choice.”

  She shook her head and stepped forward, a hint of unsteadiness in the step and in her voice as she said, “Olá, Pedro.”

  Ian shot a look that warned clear and present danger up to and including murder at Pedro, but the bastard only had eyes for the woman in front of him.

  “Daniela!” Pedro reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, ran his palm down her arm. And said something Ian thought might have been a question about why Daniela was here, followed by a statement that Senhora Rosa would not be happy.

  As Pedro reached for Daniela’s waist, Ian stepped forward, but Daniela was faster. Pedro hit the mud, flat on his back the next second. Oomph. He flopped in a quickly forming puddle like a trapped fish, yelling at Daniela, or trying, the air knocked out of him so the words came out wheezy.

  Daniela stood over him, rain streaming down her face, and the scene reminded Ian of the first time he’d seen her, as she’d emerged from the river with that giant black eel. He half expected her to pick up a stone and bash in Pedro’s head.

  And maybe Pedro did too, because he stopped struggling and lay still on his back in the mud, staring up at her, his gaze reflecting surprise and confusion, then flickers of fear. The balance of power had shifted, and he knew it. The victim was victim no longer.

  Ian wasn’t going to stop her if she wanted to kick the shit out of the son of a bitch. He had a hard enough time stopping himself from doing it for her.

  But instead of kicking Pedro in the face, Daniela grabbed Ian’s wrist and drew him away, back toward the river, the metal box held tightly under her arm. “He’s just an old man.”

  Because she wouldn’t kick a man who was down. She was bigger than that. She was bigger than anyone in the small village who’d looked the other way while she’d suffered through hunger and worse.

  She let go of Ian to walk in front of him on the narrow path.

  Pedro rose and moved to grab after her.

  Ian hit him. Just once. Hard enough to break the man’s jaw.

  Pedro went down again with a keening sound.

  Daniela looked over her shoulder.

  “He’s overcome with remorse,” Ian said as he followed her, the deepening mud doing its best to suck off his boots, but he kept up.

  She walked barefoot toward the Içana, straight and tall, all that black hair streaming down her back past her waist, her steps graceful. A river goddess. She didn’t look back at the hut or her village.

  * * *

  Carmen

  Carmen stood in the middle of the empty house in Santana, her gaze returning to the bloodstained floors. Nobody seemed to know what had happened. But people in the neighborhood confirmed that a young woman fitting the description of the girl who’d gone missing from the brothel upriver had lived here, having shown up in the middle of the dry season. The timing matched.

  “I think she was sold to someone that same morning that we wanted to rescue her.” Carmen’s voice rang hollow even to her own ears. “If only we’d acted a day sooner.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for this.” Phil shoved his fingers through his spiked hair. “God, I hate that we’re late again.” He looked like he wanted to punch a wall, but, Phil being Phil, he wouldn’t.

  Late.

  The neighbors said the house had stood empty for at least a week now. The girl and the foreigner who’d lived here had up and disappeared.

  Carmen looked away from the rust-color stains on the floor. “Do you think the man who was with her killed her?”

  They kept bouncing the same questions between them, and kept coming up with the same infuriating lack of answers. But there was no one else to talk to.

  They’d called the police. One officer came. Looked in. Said maybe someone had cleaned fish in here. Then he left. He couldn’t have been less interested. The people who’d disappeared hadn’t been local anyway. How was this his problem? his parting expression asked.

  Phil drew Carmen into his strong, capable arms. “We couldn’t help her, but we’ll help others.”

  Carmen needed to believe that. She looked up at the man she loved, hot tears rushing into her eyes. “Promise?”

  “Promise.” Phil brushed a gentle kiss over each teary eye. “This is what I want to do. For the rest of my life. With you by my side.”

  If she wasn’t head over heels in love with him already, she would have fallen right then and there.

  Phil led her out of the house. Led her into town. Next to the market square stood a two-hundred-year-old Jesuit church. He stopped in front of that, pulled Carmen into his arms, and kissed her. “Let’s get married.”

  “I told you I can’t—”

  He silenced her with another kiss. And he kept her silent for a good long time before he pulled back and said, “I told you I don’t care about that. I love you. Everything else is negotiable. Marry me no matter what.”

  She stared at him, dazed, her heart filling with love and joy. “Here?” She still couldn’t grasp it. “What? Now?”

  “As soon as it can be arranged.” And then he kissed her again. “Marry me, and then we’ll tackle everything else that comes our way.”

  PART II

  Chapter Seven

  Four years later.

  Daniela

  “What are you doing later, Dani?” Bobby Olson asked Daniela as they walked across the George Washington University campus that buzzed with life, a jungle in its own way. “How about lunch?”

  He’d been a graduate assistant in one of her classes—international human rights law. Since then, every time they ran into each other, he asked her out.

  “Got lunch plans already.”

  Crystal, on her other side, snorted, “Get real, Bobby boy. She’s got Ian Slaney to go home to.”

  Bobby bristled like a capuchin monkey whose papaya had been stolen. “Okay, I’m going to say it. It’s weird
that you’re living with a middle-aged man.”

  Bobby was a full foot taller than Daniela, blond and fair, with the lean body of a college athlete—he’d been on the tennis team. Boy-band material. Except that he was also seriously smart. He’d finished law school since they’d first met and was now working at a law firm, but still showed up on campus periodically. He liked GWU’s law library.

  “Ian is not middle-aged,” Daniela grumbled, while Crystal said dreamily, “I’d live with him.”

  Bobby kicked the gravel walkway, sending a spray of small stones flying in front of them. “You’re not related to him, and you’re not going out with him.” He shot her a look he’d perfected for making people on the witness stand squirm. For when he got that far in his career. “Are you?”

  “No way,” Crystal cut in. “Ian Slaney is saving himself for me. I’m going to have his babies.”

  Daniela rolled her eyes. All her girlfriends were in lust with Ian. He’d come on campus to drop her off or pick her up often enough that they all knew him. During the academic year, she’d lived on campus, but she spent pretty much every weekend, summer, and holiday at his apartment. Now that she had graduated, she was going to live there permanently. And, hopefully, be paying half the rent soon.

  “Hey, you know how the copper wire was invented?” Bobby angled for a change of subject, trying to cut Crystal off at the pass before she could launch into an ode to Ian’s manliciousness.

  Daniela shook her head.

  “Two lawyers fighting over a penny.” He grinned. Then asked again, “So lunch?” all charm and lighthearted fun. “Come on, Dani.”

  “Can’t. I just popped in for my transcripts. I’m applying for a job.”

  “Why don’t you take the summer off? Hey, a friend of mine is renting a house on Virginia Beach. Want to come?”

  “Thanks. But I really need to find work.”

  She had a driving need to learn, to do, to help. Sometimes, in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep, memories from Senhora Rosa’s house pushed into her brain. How many of the other girls were still alive? Half? Less than half?

  But Daniela was. And she was filled with gratitude for that, and a burning need to make her life count. As corny as it sounded, she wanted to make a difference. She volunteered with homeless kids, but handing out food and clothes and playing games wasn’t enough. She wanted to do more.