Page 37 of Girl in the Water

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.”