Girl In The Water Part 9

But now... Was she safe? The idea took time getting used to. She hadn't felt safe since she'd been a small child. She tried to relax into the thought, into the night, little by little. She couldn't.

Her thoughts kept returning to Senhor Ian.

He had pain deep in his eyes that had nothing to do with the pain of his headaches. Hidden pain. The pain of things he tried not to think about. Daniela recognized the look from the mirror.

Senhor Ian...

Senhor Ian acted friendly toward her, but Pedro too had been her friend once, then he'd given her to Senhora Rosa.

So maybe Senhor Ian was telling the truth about wanting to help her, and maybe he wasn't. But if he was...

Even if he was, he would leave someday. He'd only come to find his friend. And only stayed to find his friend's killers. When he did, he'd leave.

Daniela thought about that, and whether it'd be best not to help him.

Ian Ian hated the bugs and the humidity and the heat, and the way Daniela would shrink from him if he spoke too loudly or moved too fast, as if she expected him to start beating on her any second. He wanted to find out who killed Finch and why, have his reckoning with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, then go the h.e.l.l home. After he made some sort of safe arrangements for Daniela.

He spent his second full day in Santana going around town asking about Finch. Other than Daniela, n.o.body knew that Finch had been killed, so Ian was playing it as if his best friend had simply disappeared, and Ian had come to find him.

That might bring the bad guys out.

His head hurt like a sonuvab.i.t.c.h. His insides felt jiggly. His hands trembled. He wanted a drink more than he wanted the rain to halt, the bugs to quit biting, and pickpockets to stop targeting him. Only Daniela's jungle tea, when they finally returned to the house that night, made life bearable. Without the nasty brew, he was pretty sure he would have caved.

But the next day, he went back out and kept asking his questions. Then the next day, and the day after that.

Wherever he went, he took Daniela with him. He didn't want to leave her behind alone, not when he wasn't sure what the boy he'd seen watching the house was about.

Ian kept an eye out for the kid. If someone had paid the kid to watch the house and report, maybe Ian could pay more and the kid would talk to him, tell him where he'd gone to give his report. Unfortunately, the boy disappeared.

A full week pa.s.sed like that, nothing but an exercise in futility. Sunday night, after spending hours in town yet again, spreading the word about who he was and what he wanted, Ian finally returned home with Daniela just as empty-handed as he'd begun the week.

She cooked, something coconuty this time, and the meal went down nice and easy. Sure beat the fast-food burgers he would have had back home. After a week of her cooking, he barely even had acid.

She also made more jungle tea, for which he didn't know whether to bless her or curse her.

He watched her as he sipped his tea, trying to hold his nose. She was drying dishes. She kept the house in meticulous order. He usually fried some eggs for breakfast, and they grabbed lunch from a street vendor while they were out, but she cooked dinner every single day.

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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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, rea.s.sured 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, a.s.sistant 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 embarra.s.sing 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 G.o.d, she started to believe that he wasn't going to expect s.e.x 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. d.a.m.n if the town wasn't growing on him.

The fis.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.g.g.e.r. "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 dock, 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. n.o.body 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 d.a.m.n 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 circ.u.mstances.

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." s.h.i.+t, 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. "d.a.m.n 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."