The Games (Private #11)(17)

I got in and we pulled away from the docks and motored around Sugarloaf Mountain, through the harbor mouth, and out to sea. We stopped about a mile off Copacabana Beach, where we had a panoramic view of the remarkable landscape and design of the south side of Rio, from Leblon to Sugarloaf and the jungle mountains soaring in and behind the ever-growing city.

“Just breathtaking,” I said.

Tavia laughed and threw her arms wide as if trying to embrace it all.

“I think God was in the mood to celebrate when Rio de Janeiro was made,” Tavia said, and she laughed again. “God made Rio so crazy beautiful that it’s impossible not to be happy here. I love it. I’ll never leave. If I die, bring me to this spot so my spirit can look at her, love her, and be a part of her that washes ashore.”

She’d smiled at me and then gazed all around in wonder, as if she were lost in paradise.



That was the moment when I felt I could get lost in Tavia. That was the moment that stirred and sweetened my dreams now and for the next couple of hours until the real Tavia kissed my lips and woke me up for good.

“Time is it?” I grumbled.

“Quarter of five,” she said, getting out of bed. “We want to be in Alem?o before everyone leaves for work.”

I groaned, rubbed my eyes, said, “I’ll phone room service for coffee.”

“I ordered it last night,” Tavia called from the bathroom. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re a superwoman,” I said, entering to see her climb into the shower. “I saw that about you from the start.”

Tavia smiled sleepily. “What took you so long to say so?”

“A complicated life,” I said, and I climbed in after her.

I’d sworn never to get involved with an employee again. I had had a relationship with Justine Smith, a psychologist who works in the L.A. office. I still love Justine and believe she still loves me, but we both know it will never work for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, after we broke up, I’d vowed never again to mix business and love.

Because of that vow, a long time passed before I acted on the spark I felt constantly between Tavia and me. We had a special chemistry, as if we were always riffing on each other’s thoughts. And since I had to be in Rio for repeated, extended periods, first with the World Cup and then with the upcoming Olympics, we’d spent more and more time together.

It felt inevitable in a way. Tavia was smart, funny, experienced, and tough, and like most Brazilians, she genuinely loved life. Study after study has found the people of Brazil, and especially Rio, are among the happiest on earth.

That was certainly true of Tavia. Despite the difficult things she’d been forced to deal with in her early life, first as an orphan, then as a police officer, Tavia still went through every day thinking life was one miracle after another, which was refreshing, comforting, and, well, enjoyable.

Back in January, I’d flown in for a pre-Olympic security meeting and couldn’t believe how desperately happy I was to see her waiting at the gate. We’d gone out to eat and had a bottle of wine. It had been two months since we’d last seen each other. We caught up. We laughed. We talked shop. She looked fantastic.

About halfway through the evening, I realized that I wasn’t just smitten with her. She’d turned into a good friend, the kind of person I could and did confide in.

Someone very wise once told me that if you want love in your life, you have to go looking for it. So I broke my vow, and over a bottle of Malbec I’d let it slip that I loved working with her and, well, just being with her.

Tavia had cocked her head. “What are you saying, Jack?”

“I’m saying it’s wrong for all sorts of reasons, but I can’t tell you how much I’ve grown to hate being apart from you.”

Tavia hesitated for several beats, but her moistening eyes never looked away from mine before she said, “Then don’t be apart from me ever again.”

Now, standing in her shower, I looked at Tavia washing herself and felt happy and whole, ready to face any challenge. I could do anything my heart desired with this woman by my side.

Tavia rinsed off, looked at me, and smiled. “That’s quite the grin.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. What were you thinking about?”

“True love,” I said, and kissed her.





Chapter 16



WE WALKED UP to the Alem?o favela, rather than taking the gondola, shortly after dawn. The slum was wide awake and throbbing with life. Dads and moms heading off to work. Moms and dads cleaning clothes in buckets or lounging in their doorways to smoke and watch their children dart with the chickens along the haphazard paths.

After the surreal experience of seeing the slum from the sky at night, I was engulfed by it in the daylight. Yes, there was squalor, but the people seemed to make the most of their lives, and so many were smiling and genuinely happy that I kept having to remind myself that it was a dangerous place, the kind of place that could swallow two missing girls.

Everyone we stopped to speak with asked suspiciously if we were cops. Tavia explained again and again that we had been hired by the parents to look for their girls. We got people to look at photographs of the twins. No one recognized them in that part of the slum, more than a mile west of the school yard where my men had been murdered and the twins taken.