Page 28 of Girl in the Water

Relief won, and the next second, she was kissing his hand, grabbing it so tightly, he could barely get away from her.

“None of that either.”

She dropped his hand immediately. “Yes, Senhor Ian.”

“Call me just Ian.”

She flashed a cautious smile, the first he’d seen on her. “Yes, Senhor Ian.”

He sighed. What the hell, they could work on that.

“We’re going to take a walk around town, see if you can spot this Goat Man,” he said.

“I will.” She couldn’t promise fast enough.

The top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulder. Her straight black hair hung down to her waist. She had large eyes and a small nose, a mouth that someday might grow into generous. Small hips, small breasts.

“Before we go…” He cleared his throat. “Can you do something to make yourself look older? Put your hair in a bun or something.”

She looked puzzled. “Like Rosa?”

He nodded.

And while she disappeared into her room, he searched the cupboard for tequila again, just in case he’d missed something the day before, all the while wondering what in hell he was doing here. Anyone seeing the two of them together would think she was his fricking concubine or some such shit.

But the only alternative to keeping her with him was sending her back to Rosa, or setting her loose so some other fucker could take control of her. So when she came out in a longer dress and her hair in a bun, still not looking a day over seventeen, he bit back a curse and decided he didn’t care.

But shit, he couldn’t even remember being this young. At thirty, he felt ancient next to her.

He moved toward the door, but then something popped into his head, and he looked back at her again.

In the army, he’d known recruits as young as eighteen, some almost as petite as her. They’d fought fine. So why not Daniela?

He cleared his throat. “We’re going to look for this Goat Man. Then we’ll come back here and eat lunch. And then I’m going to teach you how to fight.”

And when she learned that, he was going to teach her how to shoot a gun. She was done being anybody’s victim.

Daniela looked at him, bewildered. But she said, “Yes, Senhor Ian.”

He stifled a groan. They were also going to work on thatsenhorbit. But first, he wanted to find the man in white and see what the guy had to do with Finch’s death.

* * *

From the shadows between the two houses across the road, the very spot where Ian had spent the night before last, a boy watched as the newly arrived foreigner and the girl left the house.

The boy grinned. Good thing he’d come today. The man who paid him for watching had given him the job a month back, but after the first week, when nobody showed up, the boy didn’t watch all day, every day.

Luckily, he did today, which meant he would get the promised bonus.

He followed the foreigner and the girl from a safe distance. They walked around Santana, sat outside a café across the road from the police station and drank coffee, watched the policemen come and go for hours. Then they walked around some more. Nothing interesting.

The boy kept track of them until they returned to the house. Then he ran off to find someone with a phone he could borrow to call in the news. He had the number on a piece of paper in his pocket.