That decided, she set off again toward the entrance to Rio Scenarium, a famous samba club, trying to imagine what her new lover had planned for the evening. He’d said that after drinks and dancing he would take her someplace gostosa, someplace hot.
Luna hoped it was a first-class love motel. Rio was peppered with facilities that catered to couples in need of a discreet meeting place. Some of these were spectacular, just like the finest suites in the finest hotels in Copacabana and Ipanema, except you paid by the hour.
The year before, with her old lover, Luna had been in one that had its own pool, sauna, and all sorts of accoutrements that made her... well... very satisfied.
The bouncer at the samba club leered at Luna as he opened the door for her. She didn’t give him a hint of encouragement. She would never cheat on Antonio with such a man.
Luna had a high standard for lovers. They had to be educated, well spoken, and within ten years of her age. They had to be physically fit and more than capable in bed, and a sense of mischief and daring helped immensely.
Her new lover met all these requirements and more. He was frankly gifted in affairs of the flesh. Luna shivered as she entered the club. Pounding samba music played. Lights flashed over a packed dance floor. The ceiling soared two stories up. The second floor was more like a balcony where partyers drank and commented on the skills of the writhing bodies below.
Luna sniffed at the sweet smell of sweat and raging pheromones in the club and got even hornier. She scanned the eclectic interior, paying scant attention to the suits of medieval armor on one wall, clock collections on another, and mirrors and paintings on a third. She wasn’t seeing her man.
Luna got a double caipirinha this time, sipped at it, loving the way the mint, ice, sugar, and rum slid down her throat and made her feel like someone else indeed. She moved closer to the dance floor. In the strobe light, the mob of dancers looked like one sensual creature and—
Luna felt strong hands on her hips, felt a man press himself just hard enough against her bunda that she knew he was as aroused as she was. Purring with pleasure, Luna threw her arm up, back, and around his neck, delighting at the way he nuzzled her.
She gasped softly at his slow, grinding embrace and then pivoted to press her breasts and hips against him.
“Doctor,” she said, pouting. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming to see me tonight.”
Dr. Castro let his eyes go dreamy, kissed her passionately, and said, “How could a man ever stay away from a woman like you, my little orchid?”
Chapter 25
As the music beat faster and the dancing became more and more frenzied, Luna throbbed in his arms. Doctor was a master of samba, of offering and denying, of sweating and sliding against her until she was drunk with wanting him and then changing to cold and removed, which drove her passion to flames.
Doctor was a mystery and that made him all the more alluring to Luna. She had no idea what his name was; she called him Doctor, and he called her Orchid. They’d met two weeks before at another dance club and there’d been this immediate physical connection that didn’t require details like backgrounds and names.
The music wound down into a slow bossa nova that made her want to press into him all the more. But Doctor held her at bay, a brush of hips here, a moment chest to chest, but no delicious melding of bodies.
Luna said, “Sometimes I see you staring off, Doctor. Are you thinking of your other lover?”
“There is no other lover,” he assured her.
“Wife?”
“I had one. She passed.”
“So sad for you, but a pleasure for me. Where are you taking me?”
“That’s a surprise,” he said. “Shall we get our drinks and go?”
Luna just wanted to go, but he’d ordered them glasses of wine. He got plastic cups, poured the wine into them, and they left the club arm in arm to join the rest of the mob drinking and partying in the streets.
“To pleasure,” Doctor said, touching his cup to hers.
“To no strings,” Luna said saucily, and she downed the wine.
In his car, she rubbed her hands all over his chest, said, “I can’t wait to be alone with you.”
Castro kissed her, said, “It won’t take long for my little orchid to bloom.”
He drove. Luna felt pleasantly hammered, not thinking a bit about her husband, only about Doctor and how unbelievable he’d made her feel their first time together. She prayed she was going to feel even better tonight.
“Where are we going?” she asked once she realized they’d gotten onto the highway. “There are excellent sex motels around Lapa.”
“But nothing like this one,” Doctor said, and he rubbed her thigh.
Luna purred, realized she was drunker than she’d thought. Not sick drunk, but stripped of any and all inhibitions.
Free to do what I want.
She squirmed her hips in protest when his hand left her leg.
“You torturing me?”
“There’s a fine line between pain and ecstasy.”
Ecstasy. When was the last time Antonio spoke of such things? Maybe I should leave Antonio before I do something stupid like get pregnant. Maybe I should... just...
Her vision blurred and distorted. She was aware they were driving through an industrial area she didn’t recognize.
“Where you taking me, Doc?” she slurred.
Luna’s eyes drifted shut. She felt as if she were spinning slowly off a cliff, like a bird hovering on updrafts.
Far behind her, from back on that cliff as she twirled and glided toward nothingness, she heard Doctor reply, “My lab, Luna.”
Chapter 26
Sci and Mo-bot arrived in Rio around eleven that night, and Tavia and I took them to see Andrew and Cherie Wise in their suite at the Marriott. We brought the couple up to speed on what we’d learned in the past five hours and gave them an overview of our strategy to find their daughters.
Maureen Roth typed on her iPad, linking it via Bluetooth to the flat-screen on the wall. A satellite image of Rio appeared, the mountains, the canyons, the beaches, and the sea. Mo-bot typed a few more commands, and six flickering pins appeared, three red, three yellow, superimposed on the image.
“These three in red are the charities where the girls worked in the past three weeks,” Maureen said. “The yellows are the hostels where they stayed. And now, I’ll filter out all areas more than two miles from a train or Metrô track, and...”
Large pieces of the image vanished, and it was like we were looking at Rio as an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. But it was clear from the pins that the hostels and all three charities were within our search area. So were the Spirit and Alemão favelas.
I said, “We’ve got people working the tracks near the abduction site first and then expanding out. In the morning, we’ll be at those charities and hostels.”
“How can this help?” Cherie asked. “I mean, look at the density. Millions of people live in those parts of the city.”
“True,” Tavia said. “But at some point, Mrs. Wise, your daughters appeared on someone’s radar. Likely at the hostels or the charities. If we can figure out where and how they were targeted, we can figure out who has them.”
Wise said, “A search is your only strategy, Jack?”
“It’s the one that seems most promising at the moment.”
“You’ve got less than forty-two hours,” he said. “I’ve arranged to withdraw thirty million dollars’ worth of Brazilian reais on Sunday.”
“They said fifty million,” Cherie said.
“I can’t get fifty,” he said. “And they’ll never know the difference. It will be a big stack of money all strapped down, and that will be enough. Why? Because they won’t stop to count it and we’ll put newspaper cut like cash deep in the pile. They’ll give us the girls and take the money at the same time or no deal.”