Page 24 of Girl in the Water

Chapter Four

Daniela

The Rio Negro rushed on outside, the sounds of the water filling the night, along with the sounds of the bugs in the trees. In Senhor Finch’s giant bed, Daniela held her breath as she folded her body until her fingertips could reach the belt buckle.

She had to escape.

She’d waited too long. She should have run away right after Senhor Finch had been killed.

She hadn’t, because here at least she had a roof over her head without having to entertain men. Living in Senhor Finch’s house, people assumed she belonged to Senhor Finch, and nobody tried to take control of her, tried to sell her again. They didn’t know Senhor Finch was dead.

But now, Senhor Slaney knew.

He had eyes like a jaguar, like he was lord of life and death, eyes that pinned her and saw even her thoughts. He’d looked at her, and she told him everything. She didn’t think he was a bad man. But he was the most dangerous man she’d ever known.

Senhor Slaney was going to send her back to Rosa tomorrow.

“I’ll let you go,” he’d said, meaning Daniela was done here. Time to go back.

He hadn’t meant he was setting her free. He would have to buy her from Rosa for that, and why would he do such a thing? Paying good money, then letting Daniela go would be the same as just throwing his money in the river. What would he benefit? Nothing.

In the morning, Senhor Slaney might give her to a fisherman going upriver and ask Daniela to be delivered to Rosa. Or simply give her to a policeman. Rosa knew all the police.

Daniela had to run and trust fate that she wouldn’t be caught. She had to run now. In the morning, it would be too late. So with trembling fingers, she tried to loosen the belt without waking the man next to her.

A beam of moonlight, softened by the mosquito net, fell over his face.

He had hair and eyelashes almost as dark as hers. He was the most physically powerful man she’d ever met, and he moved like the jungle hunter. Like a jaguar.

She’d seen a jaguar once.

They rarely came out of the forest as far as her village, but Daniela had seen one the night her mother had drowned, the night of the flood. All the village had run uphill, into the jungle, looking for high ground. When Daniela had realized that her mother wasn’t there, she had run back, and met the jaguar on the path.

The roar of the river and the people in the forest had probably disturbed the beast’s night hunt; he’d come to check out the clamor.

As Daniela had rushed around a bend in the path, a dark shadow separated from all the other dark shadows in front of her. She froze. Precious little moonlight filtered through the double canopy, but that dim light glinted off sleek black fur.

Daniela held her breath.

The jaguar sniffed.

Keen tension stretched in the air, strings of tension so taut they could have been played as a musical instrument. Her heartthump, thump, thumpedin her chest, louder than it’d ever beaten, and still not as loud as the blood rushing madly in her ears.

Then a goat cried in the distance, maybe caught in high water.

And in a blink, the jaguar had disappeared.

Daniela had fallen down, dropped like a monkey shot out of a tree. She gasped for air. All that time, she hadn’t breathed.

When she recovered, she was too scared to continue on toward the village, so she ran back to the people huddled together in the jungle. She hadn’t found her mother until morning, tangled in tree roots at the edge of the flooding river.

Ana’s long hair streamed out around her face, the locks half-covered with mud, as if reaching into the earth, as if she was growing roots herself and would now simply transform into another form of being, but still very much part of the rain forest.

That image often returned in Daniela’s dreams. But not tonight. Tonight, she wouldn’t sleep.

She shifted on Senhor Finch’s bed. Senhor Slaney’s bed now.

The jaguar was here for her again. And again, he would let her go. Yet she’d still be trapped. Just as she hadn’t been truly safe in the village after her mother’s death. The jaguar had let her go, but then Daniela ended up in Senhora Rosa’s clutches.