The man walked toward Ian. "I thought of a few more questions."

He looked confident about getting answers. He had every reason to be. A four-man crew stood behind him, with weapons drawn.

Daniela Ian hadn't returned by midnight. He wasn't answering his phone either.

Daniela called Iris after dinner to check in, but hadn't told her about her missing son, just that Ian was out investigating. She didn't want to worry Iris. Iris was having enough trouble with her bingo partner, who was lording five grandchildren-and a sixth on the way-over her.

Exhausted from scouring the worst slums of the city, Daniela finally went to bed, to his bed-to make sure she couldn't possibly miss Ian if he came back. But she couldn't fall asleep.

By five in the morning, she was on a GOL Linhas Aereas flight and reached Rio by noon since she only had one quick stop in the city of Braslia-the seat of the Brazilian government, the federal capital of Brazil. She made herself sleep on the flight so she wouldn't be completely beat when they touched down. In Rio, she rented a car because she was pretty sure someone had taken Ian, and she was going to rescue him, so she'd need a getaway car, not a cab.

The thought that, like Finch, Ian was dead, killed, floated at the edges of her consciousness no matter how hard she fought to beat it back. The possibility of this worst-case scenario made her chest feel crushed, as if a water buffalo had sat on her.

Images of Finch lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor flashed into her mind, and she broke out in cold sweat. She refused to accept that she was too late to save Ian.

But she couldn't believe the best-case scenario either, that Ian had simply lost his phone and missed his flight last night. She hadn't had the kind of life that gave her that kind of optimism.

She settled on the most likely scenario: Ian had run into trouble.

She could track his cell phone with hers through GPS, same as he could track hers. He'd insisted on that years ago. At the time, she'd rolled her eyes and called him overprotective. Now she was glad she'd agreed.

As far as she could tell, he was in a large building at the edge of the industrial district. A sugar refinery, she realized when she finally reached it. Two men stood at the gate, two more security guards at the entrance of the main building.

If they thought they could keep her from Ian, they had another think coming.

Ian "Where are the diamonds?" Marcos Morais asked.

"At the diamond mine?" Ian guessed.

The man pistol-whipped him, knocking his head to the side.

Ian stood against the whitewashed cement-block wall, his hands tied to steel pipes on each side of him.

Marcos and he had spent the previous evening in a conversation exactly like this. Then Marcos had left for the night, leaving Ian alone in the small utility room to the rats and his worries about Daniela. He'd spent a couple of hours trying to undo the ropes, but Marcos must have been some Boy Scout extraordinaire. The ropes held.

And first thing in the morning, Marcos was back, fresh and ready for round two.

Ian braced himself against the wall behind him, as if nothing but the wall was holding him up. His nose was bleeding. Stars danced in his vision. He didn't have to pretend hard that he was in bad shape, about to fold.

Marcos finally stepped closer. Ian was careful not to grin. The idiot was now close enough for a head b.u.t.t or for having his legs swept from under him. Once Marcos was on the ground, Ian could crush his scrawny neck under his boots, finagle Marcos's knife away from him, and then Ian would be out of there.

He decided to wait a little longer. He was still hoping Goat Man would show up. Marcos wasn't Goat Man. He didn't have a scar on his nose. Ian wanted both b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. He hoped to hang in there as long as he could, just in case.

He figured Marcos might call in reinforcements for the final beat down. Come on, Goat Man.

But instead of Marcos calling anyone, he drove his fist into Ian's stomach. "You tell me where the diamonds are, or I'm going to take you apart into small little pieces. Have you ever seen the machines that grind up the sugarcanes?"

Ian hadn't, but he could easily imagine. He tried to suck in air. At least yesterday's lunch was long gone, so he wouldn't vomit again.

"Who killed Finch?" he asked, more breathless than he liked, but at least he could still talk.

"f.u.c.king idiots." Marcos drove his fist into Ian's stomach again.

He doubled over. Coughed. Several seconds pa.s.sed before he could straighten. "Tough having partners...who don't know...not to kill a man...before he gives up the information."

Marcos punched him in the ribs next. "Don't worry. That's not going to happen here. First you talk, then you die. I'm clear on the order."

Ian spit blood. "It's a pleasure...doing business with a professional."

To h.e.l.l with waiting for Goat Man.

Ian prepared to lurch forward, but the door opened, and a man in his early twenties hurried in, dressed in a security uniform.

The guy didn't look at Ian but kept his gaze studiously on Marcos Morais. "Senhor."

Marcos snarled at the interruption but went out to talk to him. After a moment, the lock clicked.

Which meant Marcos had been called away for a time.

Ian tried to blink away his double vision. His head swam.

Time to blow this popsicle stand. He just needed a minute to recover. He slid to the ground into a sitting position, his back to the wall, his arms stretched to the side, suspended by the ropes.

He tried to catch his breath as he scowled at the door-solid steel, and not a d.a.m.n thing in here to pick the lock with. He glanced at the small window. That had potential.

Except, the window darkened even as he watched. Someone moved past.

A guard?

Okay, one guard he could handle.

As pain pounded through him, Ian focused on his ropes again but didn't get more than three seconds. Then the gla.s.s was kicked in, and the second after that, Daniela's head appeared in the gap.

For a moment, her face was a study in tension, then she relaxed and smiled at him. "Hey."

G.o.d, let this be a hallucination. She could not be here.

"Are you okay?" She examined the room, then slipped in, careful of the broken gla.s.s, landing on her feet with a small bounce like a cat, looking more curious than scared. She wore black hiking boots, tight black shorts that ended mid-thigh, paired with a black tank top, her hair in a tight bun at her nape.

He growled at her. "What are you doing here?

"Isn't it obvious?"

She was saving him. He was supposed to be her protector. How in h.e.l.l had they ended up with their roles reversed?

She walked up to him. Stopped. Took in the ropes.

"Can you untie me?" The pain in his ribs was abating at last.

"How badly are you hurt?"

"Not enough to stop me from getting out of here."

"Good."

Instead of cutting him loose, she straddled his lap, one knee braced on the ground on each side of him. "Just give me a moment to be relieved, okay?"

She put her arms around his chest and lay her head in the crook of his neck.

He couldn't move away, nothing but wall behind him. "Marcos could come back any second."

"If you're talking about the guy who just walked out of here, he jumped into a car and drove off. I think he'll be a while." She pulled back to examine every inch of Ian's face.

"Daniela?"

She brushed back his matted hair from his temples with her slim fingers, her green eyes filled with concern. "I was afraid that they killed you."

Her voice was tender and...s.e.xy, and he couldn't think about that, couldn't think how intimately they were pressed together.

"Untie me. Please."

She lifted up his shirt and carefully wiped the sweat and blood off his face. And then she lowered her head and brushed her sweet lips over his in a move so erotic and so innocent at the same time, that hot need shot though him out of nowhere, so strong that it made him dizzy.

Thank G.o.d, his hands were tied. Because there was no way he would have been able to keep them off her.

He held completely still.

She brushed her full lips back and forth over his. She was smiling as she whispered, "You're mine now, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Right, because he so wanted to run. But he said nothing. He absolutely could not encourage her.

He didn't have it in him to reject her yet again either. He hated putting pain in her eyes.

She nibbled his bottom lip gently. Then she licked the corner of his lips. Ian was glad Marcos had focused on his midsection. His face was all right, other than what he thought was a split eyebrow.

He was harder than the steel pipes he'd been tied to, and she had to feel it, sitting on him as she was. He didn't dare move a muscle.

She licked a slow, delicious line across the seam of his lips. Not kissing her back took every ounce of strength that he had.

She had pa.s.sion. He was glad in a way. He'd been worried it might have been brutalized out of her-but he really wished she pointed her newfound pa.s.sion somewhere else.

Of course, then he'd want to murder the guy.

She kissed him a little harder.

And then his control was gone, as fast as if it'd been shot from a cannon. He was probably going to h.e.l.l, but he didn't care, because he would happily spend all eternity burning in flames for the chance to kiss Daniela back.

So he did, taking her sweet mouth, feeling as if he'd been underwater for years, and was just now coming up for air. All the pain of his body was gone. He could barely even remember it. He couldn't remember anything but her.

And that thought pulled him back to sanity.

This was not the time and place.

There was no time and place for anything between them.

He drew away, both of them breathing hard.

She folded against him once again, her arms around his torso, her head coming to rest on his shoulder as she softly whispered, "Ian," her warm breath tickling his skin.

His heart stumbled in his chest.

"Could you please untie me now?" Even to his own ears, his voice sounded strangled.

She took one last second. Then she moved off him and untied him, without looking at him, focused on the ropes.

While he strode to the chair in the corner to pick up the phone that Marcos had taken from him the day before, she hurried to the window. She was up and out before he could offer her a boost.

He had a harder time. His shoulders were wider, so he sc.r.a.ped against some of the broken gla.s.s, ended up losing a little more blood, not that he cared at this stage. Daniela was in the middle of enemy territory. He needed to get her the h.e.l.l out of there.

Except he barely had a chance to brush the gla.s.s off his shirt before they were discovered. The security guard who'd interrupted Marcos's questioning was running toward them, gun in hand.

Chapter Fourteen.

Daniela As more guards followed the first one, Daniela and Ian ran for the chain-link fence at the back of the factory lot.

Panic rattled Daniela as she stumbled on the loose gravel, then caught herself. Her lips still tingled, her heart a confused mush, but she had no time to think about that now.

The fence is too far.

They wouldn't be able to get away before the men caught up with them.

Rain had begun to sprinkle while she'd been inside. She prayed it wouldn't turn into a serious downpour. At least the guards weren't shooting. But why? Had they been ordered not to kill the prisoner?

To avoid getting caught halfway up the chain-link fence, then being dragged down by their ankles, Daniela and Ian stopped short of the fence and stood ready to take down the four guards who were quickly catching up, shouting at them to halt.

"The two on the left are mine," Ian said.

Which implied the two on the right were hers.