Perhaps it had even been his life, but they had lost it somewhere.
He dozed without dreaming. When he awoke, she lay at his side, leaning on an elbow, studying him. He loved the look of her, the beauty of her every line and curve, the way her hair, just beginning to dry, curled around her shoulders and her breasts.
“I have to sketch you,” he said. “You won’t move?”
She grinned. “I will try not to move—that’s the best I can promise.”
He found his sketchpad and began to draw. She was stunning. It seemed that her life and vitality went into every movement of his pencil.
When he was done, he showed it to her.
“That’s how you see me?”
“Yes. Perfection,” he told her.
“But I’m not perfect. I have a funny little mole.”
“In my eyes, you are perfect. You are a dream. You’re life itself.”
She rolled her eyes and shoved him playfully. “Now I’ll draw you,” she said, crossing her legs in front of her, natural and uninhibited. She took the pad and began to draw.
“Let me see,” he said, when enough time had passed.
“Wait, wait…”
He forced himself to be patient. Then he looked. She burst into laughter.
She’d drawn nothing but a stick figure.
“Worth waiting for?” she teased.
He laughed, caught her by the shoulders, and bore her back down to the ground. He kissed her but then held his face above hers as he whispered, “You’ll always be worth waiting for.”
She caught her breath for a moment. “If you’re ever looking for me … the statue. The statue of Christ the Redeemer. It’s my favorite. I always go there.”
“I don’t need to look for you. I have you here, in my arms,” he said.
She smiled and told him, “There is nowhere I would rather be.”
They made love again. Slowly. As if they had all time in the world.
And then they made love again.
When he fell asleep next, it was the deep sleep of someone truly, utterly at peace.
*
River woke slowly to the sound of birds chirping. He felt the grass and earth beneath him and opened his eyes, squinting at the sunlight shining through the trees.
And there was a boy there—a kid of about ten—staring at him.
It occurred to River that he was stark naked, lying by a lake. He leapt to his feet, looking for Natal, trying to cover himself and find a way to cover her too.
But Natal wasn’t there. He quickly scanned the entire area.
Her clothing was gone; she was gone.
He grabbed his clothes and quickly stumbled into them—pants first. The kid continued to stare at him. River waved a hand in the air.
“Hey, leave me alone, will you?” But the boy didn’t move.
Dressed once more, River grabbed his backpack and his drawing pad.
He saw the last drawing done—the stick figure, by Natal. He grinned. He loved stick figures. He had once drawn them for …
The thought eluded him and it didn’t matter.
Because printed on the drawing were the words Christ the Redeemer.
Had she written it? Was it a message to him—to come and find her?
He thought about his train ticket. He could buy another.
“Hey, kid, show’s over—scram!” he said, packing the sketchpad in his pack and throwing it over his shoulder.
Without warning, the kid screamed something. River fought through the blurry scramble of his mind to translate the Portuguese.
“Here—he’s over here!” the kid had called.
River looked up. Halfway around the lake, he saw a man. A man wearing a blue suit—and a blue hat.
He turned and started to walk in the other direction, his heart quickening.
He quickly came to a dead halt, staring straight ahead in disbelief.
Another man in a blue suit was right in front of him. There was more than one?
It was impossible for it to have been the same person—absolutely impossible that any man could have come around so quickly, impossible for one man to be in two places.
He couldn’t go forward and he couldn’t go back.
River hopped past the kid and tore onto one of the pine-needle-laden trails through the trees.
CHAPTER 16
What the hell? Was the damned man a clone?
No, he had to be logical and not be so panicked that he went off and got himself caught by letting facts confuse him. There were two of them. They were both tall and well-built—muscled—River thought, diving through the trails. He didn’t know how, but he was determined to lose both men and find a place a study them.
Eluding them came first—and he managed that easily enough. He could hear them thrashing about but they were at least a quarter of a football field away from him. Dodging behind a tall, thick tree, he paused to breathe, adjust the backpack, and watch them.
They weren’t wearing identical suits—and neither were they clones or identical men—but they were damned close. Only one was still wearing his hat. The other was clean-shaven and bald. They both appeared to be in their early thirties or a little older.
Hitmen? Henchmen? Did they work for Tio Amato?
Or were they just a branch of the Brazilian police that he didn’t know? Why would they be—why would a special police force be after someone who had beat up a lowlife like the man who had tried to kill him?
He didn’t know—he just knew that he needed to get the hell away from them.
The park, he saw by daylight, had a number of entrances—he could see that none of them had closed gates now that morning had come. He walked away from the direction the men were searching and hurried out into the street. With only a couple of days to go now to Carnaval, the streets were bursting with humanity—the population having grown incrementally every day of the last week. In a number of the city squares in all the bairros, River quickly saw the entertainment was just about nonstop.
It was easy to blend in with the crowd.
But then what? he wondered. Would the men in the blue suits be after him forever now?
He could feel his train ticket in his pocket. He still had all day to catch the train. Except that he wouldn’t be catching it until that night.
He would head up to the Christ the Redeemer statue.
Because Natal might be there. And he knew he’d let his ticket go—and that he would go there every day until either she came or the men in blue managed to catch up with him and subdue him.
Who the hell were they?
So far, at least, it didn’t seem that any of the city’s regular officers were after him.
It was just these men in blue. Two of them now.
How many of them might there be? he wondered.