Page 59 of Girl in the Water

He treated the woman with respect and deference. And Daniela thought,Is this what I would have to achieve for him to see me as an equal?

They didn’t uncover any great clues at See-Love-Aid headquarters, but Senhora Sousa gave them a list of everyone in the group the Heyerdahls arrived with, and the three-page application each volunteer had filled out. She already had signed releases from the volunteer visitors to hand over to the local police. Everyone had agreed to fully cooperate with any investigation that might recover the baby.

Ian and Daniela also received Senhora Sousa’s permission to visit the See-Love-Aid project in Manaus and interview the employees. Senhora Sousa would call ahead and make sure that the US investigators had everyone’s full cooperation.

“How do you feel about going up north?” Ian asked in the cab on their way back to the hotel.

Daniela shrugged. “I knew we’d end up in Manaus. That’s where baby Lila disappeared.”

He half turned toward Daniela, his full attention on her, his voice soft as he said, “We’ll be close to your village.”

“I don’t want to go there,” she answered his unspoken question.

Maybe she should want to. Maybe he’d expected her to want to go home. But to her,homewas Ian’s condo.

“I’m not the same Daniela that Pedro took down the river to Rosa’s.”

“I know.”

“I just feel…” How could she ever explain this? “It’s as if my mother’s hut and the people I grew up with…they belong with a different Daniela in a different world. If I go back, then I’ll be that Daniela again, the one that did all those things.” She rubbed her arm, her skin feeling too tight and dirty. She pressed her thumb into a spot below her elbow until it hurt.

“You haven’t done a thing wrong.” Ian’s tone was certain and fierce. “Wrong was done to you. You are as good and pure as anyone I know. There’s not one thing wrong with you or bad about you.”

“You don’t know all that I—”

“I don’t need to.”

They both had topics they never discussed, and never even thought about if they could help it. Ian never brought up Linda and his twin sons, Connor and Colin. He’d told Daniela about them once, briefly, just the facts. And refused to have any kind of conversation about them since.

Daniela felt the same about her life in the village and at Rosa’s. Growing up, she hadn’t understood what she’d done was bad. She’d simply grown up in that life. Her mother, Ana, had been…what she’d been. The village had accepted them that way. And all the girls at Rosa’s had been the same as Daniela.

When, in her childhood, the missionary had talked about “sin” during sermons, Daniela hadn’t truly grasped the concept. Only after she’d moved to DC did she discover that most people would find her past shocking and wrong and shameful. Thinking about her childhood made her feel…if not worthless, then certainly worth less than others. So she’d locked her past away.All thathad happened to someone else, someplace far away.

Except, now she was returning.

There is not one thing wrong with you, or bad about you,Ian had told her probably a dozen times a day at the beginning when she’d shared her doubts with him. And he made her repeat the words,There is not one thing wrong with me, or bad about me,until she’d believed them.

In the cab now, in Rio, the memories of those days with him made her heart swell. She smiled.

He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

I want you to see me as a woman.“Nothing.”

Was this what lust was, this unbearable ache, this need to be with another person, the need to have him see her, truly see her, all the way to her heart?

An odd thought, because, as it was already, Ian saw her more truly than anyone ever had. How could she want more?

She set that question aside to concentrate on the kidnapping case.

Once they were back in their room at the hotel, she connected to Wi-Fi and tried to get them on a flight to Manaus, but the last flight for the day was sold out, so she arranged for tickets on the first flight in the morning.

The thought of spending another night together in the small hotel room had her stomach doing cartwheels.

They had a working lunch in their room, organizing notes, reading through the visiting volunteer profiles they’d received. Who knew, maybe one of the Heyerdahls’ fellow travelers had something to do with the baby’s disappearance.

“Just because human trafficking and illegal adoptions are a large problem in South and Central America, it doesn’t mean that’s the only possibility,” Ian said as he looked up from the printouts he was holding. “Plenty of little kids disappear in the US every single day for a whole bunch of reasons.”

She nodded. “We just need one clue.”