When I closed my eyes, I felt a hand grab my shoulders.
“Hurry up, Senhora Bennett. We don’t have much time.”
I tilted my head upward and, against the bright sun high in the sky, I saw his beautiful face.
Chapter 10
Renato had parked his car a few steps down the street, but instead of a black sedan, he now had a compact vehicle much easier to fit into parking spots. It’s small size was a powerful asset in Rio’s congested streets. The windows were tinted in a dense black, like those in his other car. I thanked god for that. After getting inside, we spent another whole minute waiting for the light to turn green, while officers Paulo Pinto and Roberto Rôla went back and forth along the sidewalk searching for my face in the crowd, without ever noticing me inside the car.
“I only found you because of your pink suitcase, Senhora Bennett. Lucky shot,” Renato said.
“Someone stole it from me.” I sighed. “I wouldn’t call that a lucky break.”
“If I didn’t find you in time, you’d be dealing with those two police officers. Having your suitcase stolen is nothing compared to that.”
Renato was right. Like many things in life, we evaluate tragedies by comparison. Getting robbed was much less of a problem than being falsely accused of a crime and getting locked up in a Brazilian prison. But I had been robbed, and that created one of the most disgusting feelings in my life, almost as intense as being cheated on.
When we started cruising along Copacabana inner streets, I leaned my head against the back seat and saw a movie of what had just happened flash through my mind.
I lost my money, my credit cards, my clothes and my passport, in a country where I didn’t speak the language.
I had beside me a man that by all means was gorgeous, but also controversial, and who seemed to be aware of every step I had taken in Rio.
I was living in the moment—in the worst aspect of it—but at least inside that car, I had a small sense of security. Renato was less of a threat than the two police officers I had just escaped.
I needed answers.
“How did you know I had come back to the hotel?”
He glanced at the side mirror.
“I’ve been taking care of you.”
Renato drove the car and paid attention to the mirrors, the people crossing the street outside of crosswalks, the cars cruising past, and the motorcycles winding among the most impossible gaps between vehicles.
I felt emptied of all my strength. Renato acted as a predator on top of its stamina, awaiting an imminent aggression. He gave signs of being concerned about my situation—truly worried about me.
But after Marlon, I’d grown smarter.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
Renato plunged the car into the blackness of a long tunnel that would take us to the neighborhood of Botafogo. Yellow spotlights shining from the ceiling brushed past his body, dropping shadows into his sockets, as the amplified sound of engines reached my ears.
“Okay, your Sim card.”
“What about it?”
“It’s busted. I can hear, track and access everything that you do on your phone,” he said.
Renato was a liar. He had a plan since before he picked me up at the airport.
After going through so much, I wasn’t surprised.
“Well, should I call the police, then? What do you want from me, Renato?”
“Senhora Bennett, I—”
“Stop addressing me as Se . . . Senora Bennett! I can’t even speak that shit properly.”
“All right, Emily. I’m going to tell you everything, but you must promise you will trust me no matter what I say.”
“You’re bold, aren’t you? Now I have to trust you?”
He kept eyes riveted on the street ahead.
“Just understand that no matter what I chance to say, I am here to protect you. As I’ve always been, since the beginning,” he said.
He seemed embarrassed and I considered that a weakness. I had to use it in my favor.
“Since you took Carlos’ job and offered me a busted Sim Card?” I replied.
“Well, not exactly. I’ve been protecting you since we . . . merda, since I first saw you. And you better be glad it was I who delivered the Sim card to you, otherwise you might . . .”
He swallowed hard before finishing his sentence, and scratched the nape of his neck in anxiety.
He got me unprepared.
“Otherwise I might, what?” I said.
“Otherwise, I don’t know what could’ve happened to you. But it certainly wouldn’t be as nice as it has been.”
I said, “Should I also be glad for not having my passport anymore, for getting stuck in this country?”
“What?” he said, startled. “Of course not.”
“Well, I just wondered if you might have something to say about that.”
He frowned his eyebrows.
“Hell no. I want you well, Emily. You’ve been robbed by roaming pickpockets. I saw when they approached you, but I thought it’d be better to help you escape the police, instead of running after them.”
I let everything sink in. How come could the police be more hazardous than roaming pickpockets in a place like Rio? If such, I had no one to trust here, except for the only man that seemed to care for my safety: the one on the wheel.
All of a sudden, I felt as though his words, hovering in a cloud of letters over my head, had collapsed upon me. I gasped for air, sobbed, and tears flooded my eyes.
“We’ll fix it,” Renato said. “Everything will be alright. There’s a US Embassy in
