Page 32 of Girl in the Water

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 bastard, then go the hell 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, nobody 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 sonuvabitch. 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 passed 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 bastard 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’llpretendto 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.