“Yeah, I guess.” Her attention is distracted and I see we’ve drawn up to the embassy.

“We’re here,” I say with relief, but she makes no effort to get out. “This is it.” I wave my hand out the window. “Consulado General dos Estados Unido.”

Four

Regan

HOPE FLARES IN MY HEART at the sight of the embassy. I am free. I am steps away from going home. Soon, all of this will be a bad memory and I can return to my previous life. Then, I want to laugh at the thought. I am a scholarship student; all of my grades will be torpedoed by my absence. I’ll have to figure something out. Maybe Mike will let me move in with him.

If he can stand to touch me after what I’ve been through. If he hasn’t already moved on and found another girlfriend after my absence. I like to think he’s waiting for me, but Mike has never been particularly emotional. I cling to him more than he clings to me. I have no illusions about our relationship.

I stare at the embassy through the dirty taxi window. Once I step out of this car, everything goes back to normal. I’ll return to the normal world, a slightly dirtier version of the girl who left it. For some reason, that scares me.

“There you go,” Daniel says at my side, voice dry with amusement. “I told you I’d take you to the embassy, and there it is. Don’t act so excited.”

I look over at him, hiding my uncertainty. “Thank you,” I say, hugging my jacket closer. “You don’t know what this means to me.”

“I can guess.”

I give him a faint smile, and I think for a moment that he’s a good-looking guy. I don’t know what he’s doing in Rio in whorehouses, but he’s saved me. Impulsively, I lean in and kiss his cheek, feeling the stubble under my lips. I want to recoil immediately at the touch, but I know it’s the right thing to do. He likes my touch. His sarcastic gaze softens as he looks at me and he nods. “You stay safe, okay?”

“Okay,” I breathe, and turn to the window again, my hand on the door. I can do this. I’ll introduce myself as Regan Porter. I’m an American who was taken from my home country, and a nice stranger rescued me from a brothel, and I’d really, really like to go home.

I tighten my grip on the handle and look out the window.

The breath dies in my throat.

There at the front of the embassy is the big bruiser. Mr. Freeze’s bodyguard. It’s dark outside, but he’s standing near the door, and I recognize that bald head and big shoulders. If it was light outside, I’d see those awful hooded eyes.

He knows I’m gone. Someone’s called and let Mr. Freeze know that his favorite dentally-perfect whore has flown the coop without his permission. I know as soon as I enter that embassy, I’ll be right back at the whorehouse.

I tremble, and then hate myself for it. He hasn’t seen the taxi yet. He doesn’t know that I’m here. I think for a minute and then turn back to Daniel, the nice-looking American man that has somehow, for some reason, tried to help me escape. I turn to him and give him a faint smile. “Can I ask a question?”

“Shoot.”

His words remind me that Daniel is carrying guns. He killed two men tonight that tried to take me back to the brothel. Whoever he is, he’s not with Freeze. That automatically makes him safer. “Who sent you?” I asked this earlier and he’d danced around the question.

He gives me a serious look, then glances at the cab driver, as if to point out that this isn’t a safe place to talk. Then he looks me over again. “Mutual friend.”

I don’t know who he means. I can’t think of a single person who would know a killer who hangs out in Rio brothels. I glance up at the embassy doors again. The bruiser is gone, but I know I saw him. I know he’s there, waiting for me.

I look over at Daniel again. He’s trying not to look at my legs. Trying, and failing. He’s clearly attracted to me. I’ve seen appreciation flash across his face a few times, quickly hidden. He’s trying not to be, but it’s hard for him.

If he’s attracted to me, I can use that. Sex means nothing to me now. Whatever intimacy it might have meant before has been beaten out of me. I can have sex with this man. I can use him to keep me safe from Freeze. This man killed two men tonight. He’s dangerous.

“You said you won’t touch me unless I want you to,” I whisper in a low voice and then bite my lip in a deliberate manner. I notice his gaze flicks there, to my mouth. He’s definitely attracted. “Is that true?”

“I’m not a monster, sweetheart,” he tells me, and looks almost insulted at the question.

I slide a little closer to him in the car, and my fingers touch the front of his jacket. “Then . . . can I stay with you?”

Daniel looks surprised at my suggestion. No, shocked. His brows draw down, and he flicks a glance at the embassy. “You can’t stay with me. This is as far as I go. I’m dropping you off here. I have other work in Rio. Come on.” He reaches over my lap for the door handle. “They’ll be good to you in the embassy. You don’t have to worry.”

I press my body closer to his, letting the fear I feel tremble through me. It’s not faked; I’m terrified that if I get out of the car, I’m heading right back to the brothel. “Please, Daniel. Please let me stay with you for just a bit longer.” And I cling to the front of his jacket and look as helpless and lost as I can. When he still looks doubtful, I try a different tactic. “I don’t want to go there looking like this.”

He examines my outfit; his eyes narrow as he considers me, then glances out the door. He leans in close. “You scared of something, sweetheart?”

I nod, my eyes wide and pleading. I don’t want to say it aloud because the taxi driver is watching us in his rearview mirror. For all I know, he works for Mr. Freeze, too. If the bruiser can be at the embassy waiting for me, no one is safe.

Except maybe Daniel.

Daniel, who has guns on him. Maybe I can take one of them while he sleeps. Maybe I can seduce him into giving me one or showing me how to shoot them. But I need more answers from him. I want to know who sent him, so I can know if I’m truly safe or if I’ve jumped into more danger.

But Daniel is the devil I know at the moment, and he can’t be as bad as Mr. Freeze. He hasn’t looked at my teeth once, after all.

Daniel seems to consider my frightened snuggling. It’s hard for me to do because I don’t want a man touching me, but I fight back my bile and continue to try and look helpless and innocent. I paw at the front of his jacket. “I . . . can we go to a nice hotel room somewhere? I’d really like a bath and some real clothes. Then maybe we can go to the embassy tomorrow morning, okay? Once I feel human again.”

But my mind is already whirling with new plans, new options. The embassy isn’t safe. I need some other way to get out of this country. Once I figure out how Daniel knows who I am, maybe I can use that.

“All right,” Daniel says reluctantly, then wearily scrubs a hand down his face. “Shit. Fine. One night, and then we’re going back to the embassy. I have a schedule I have to keep.”

“One night,” I agree with relief and force myself to hug him, pressing my breasts against him.

I’m going to use this man.

I’m going to flirt with him, and seduce him, and suck his cock if I have to. Whatever it takes to get him to take me with him and keep me safe. If he’s willing to shoot men for me, he’s a better bet than anyone else I have available at the moment.

I refuse to be abandoned again.

Daniel

I KNOW BETTER. I REALLY do. I should push open the door and haul Regan’s fine ass up to the embassy. There have got to be people inside who can handle this situation better than me. I’m bound to fuck something up. Hell, I can’t even stop looking at her legs like some goddamned pervert. First thing I’m going to do when we get to the apartment is start knocking my head against the floor tile, in hopes that some sense is pounded into my head.

But she looks damn scared and so I give in to her pleading even though I’m on my last fumes and I need some serious sleep so I can move on to my next goal—finding my sister—and then find the hacker Petrovich’s got a hard-on for.

Weirdly all three roads—Regan, my sister, and the hacker—lead straight to Rio. It might be due to the increase in economy Brazil has seen due to the impending World Cup and Olympic games or the rise in overall global prominence. More money means more dickheads willing to spend it on illegal things. The banking industry here is becoming huge, as is the biofuel market. It makes some kind of weird sense that there’s a corresponding rise in the demand for female flesh. It’s not a puzzle for me to figure out. I’m a weapon. Point me and I’ll shoot.

When I learned that Naomi might be here, I entertained the idea that she was the hacker. Naomi’s smarter than half the continent. Running a deep web ring would be something she could do in her sleep. But she’s so smart that I have to believe she would have found some way to contact me. I’ve never used an alias, wanting the word to get around that Daniel Hays was looking for his sister. But she’s never once sent me an email or a text or even a smoke signal.

Letting Regan stay the night with me isn’t going to delay my hunt because I’m in desperate need of sleep. Maybe she’s embarrassed about how she looks in her tiny coat and even tinier bikini. I’ll take her back to my temporary residence and fix her up. We’ll both sleep, and in the morning she’ll be begging me to return her to the U.S. diplomats. I can keep my hands off of her.

“Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana,” I tell the driver to take us to an address down by the beach. He gives me a quick nod and we take off again. The trip from the embassy takes less than fifteen minutes and it’s a beautiful drive along the Guanabara Bay. The pavement and the high rise hotels give way and for a few minutes we drive along the bay, where sea waters pelt the rocks. In the distance, Sugarloaf Mountain rises like a stone torpedo.

Regan has her face glued to the window. “What is that?” she asks, pointing to the mountain.

“It’s Sugarloaf Mountain. When the Portuguese were transporting sugar from Brazil to Europe, they’d press the sugar cane into these cone shaped molds called sugarloaves, and one day, I guess, someone said, ‘hey that bump in the sky looks like a sugarloaf.’ The Portuguese name is Pão de Açúcar.” I found myself leaning close to her, almost whispering the native name in her ear. Another Portuguese phrase comes to mind. Eu quero te abraçar agora. I want to touch you.

I force myself back against the seat. The taxi drivers smirks at me.

“A mulher e a sardinha querem-se da mais pequenina,” he mutters merrily. He’s lucky he’s driving and that Regan doesn’t speak Portuguese.

“What’d he say?”

“That the cable cars are packed like sardines,” I lie. He really said that women and sardines should always be small, which I guess is a reference to Regan’s tight ass he saw waving in his mirror, but I’m not telling her that. Trying to distract her, I point to the wires running from the mainland to the mountain. “There’s the cars that take you to the top of Sugarloaf.”

“Huh.”

I can’t tell if she’s intrigued or whether she can’t wait to get the hell out of here. I’m guessing the latter. I have the taxi driver pull over on the corner. He doesn’t need to know where we are staying. I wish it were Carnivale because Regan in her spangly bikini wouldn’t look out of place during the festival. But as it is, she’s going to draw attention in her black socks secured by zip ties, the thin tan jacket covering the swimsuit. Nothing to do but brazen it out.

“There’s no hotel here,” she notes with worry. The buildings along Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana are nothing like the favela. Here we are on level ground and it looks like any other metropolitan area near a beach. Touristy and a tiny bit rundown. Rather than hotels, I always stay in these apartments, which are run by individuals who are trying to avoid government regulations and extra taxes. These folks aren’t running to spill to anyone who their guests are. Pay them in cash and they are even more thrilled to pretend like the place stood empty for the entire time you were there.

“Walk like you own the place,” I mutter under my breath as I lead her past two large apartment complexes and down an alley to a three story thin building that houses three flats. Mine is the top one.