1

  Even before checking out of the hotel, Isaías sent a message to Pablo: he'd found the man's hideout. At that point, both knew that finding that guy meant finding the woman.

  "Are you sure?" Pablo insisted. He wasn't some chick fresh out of the egg. If a chocolate cake were left at his door by a stranger, he'd know it had poison or was a setup.

  "Absolutely. They haven't had time to run. Not yet, at least. They don't even know we've found their trail. But we need to act fast."

  Plans had changed because the professor's face had been broadcast to the public. Her features were more well-known than many an influencer's. The client expected a tip to be made, just had to wait. Now that they had Isaías's lead, the bosses might change their minds. So Pablo couldn't dismiss the finding. He warned:

  "I'll talk to the commander. Don't do anything until I call back."

  The wait was long and difficult. Isaías paced back and forth, blood buzzing in his ears. When the phone finally rang, he answered before the first ring finished.

  "Orders are clear," Pablo announced. "The woman must be captured alive."

  "And the guy?"

  Pablo paused briefly.

  "Kill the son of a bitch as soon as he shows up."

  Finally some good news. He'd finally have the chance to prove his worth. He ran to the car right after ending the call. He'd never received an order before that he took more pleasure in carrying out.

  Settling into the passenger seat, he passed the coordinates of Imbituba to the driver. Santa Catarina had just become the stage for the hunt. With luck, it would be the last act for that thorn in his side.

  2

  As soon as he entered, Daros felt the change in atmosphere, a charged tension in the room's air. Greta was dressed, wiping a tear with the back of her hand. The gesture was in vain. Another tear soon took the first one's place. He sat beside her on the bed, noticing how small the woman seemed now. When he tried to place his hand on her back, Greta recoiled to repel the touch.

  "Who is Inácio?" she asked with no emotion in her voice.

  "My partner. He's also my friend. Why? What happened?"

  "Are you two in this together?"

  Daros opened his mouth to answer, but changed his mind. The question's tone was accusatory, and her eyes were red. He focused on figuring out what she might have deduced from this and, when he formulated a theory, closed his eyes with regret. His fingertips massaged his forehead before he answered.

  "It's not what you're thinking, Greta. Inácio is my friend. My only friend. He's an internal affairs investigator. He has nothing to do with Valério, nothing to do with the dean. He found you on the beach by accident. I know, looking back now, it seems too convenient. A coincidence too big to be real. But it's true. It was just a coincidence."

  She still hesitated to make eye contact. Daros took a deep breath and decided to tell the whole truth. There was no other path. He continued:

  "That night, he came to my house and asked me to look after you if I saw you again. I didn't say anything about me capturing you, or he would have killed me. Seriously, Inácio would have been pissed. I'm pissed at myself looking back now. I know you're confused right now, and I understand. It's a mess. You've been through a lot. Your trust has been betrayed many times, but you need to believe me."

  "You are right, I don't need to," the answer was a low growl. "I don't know what to believe."

  "I never lied to you, Greta. Never. I didn't tell you about Inácio because I didn't think it was important. But I should have told you, I was an idiot. Because finding out about my connection to him this way makes the whole thing suspicious, indeed."

  Daros got up from the bed and went to the other side of the room. He thought giving Greta some space was the best thing to do at the moment. He took the opportunity to breathe some of the fresh air coming through the window.

  He was furious with himself for not foreseeing this. He wanted to punch a wall, break something, be primitive. Maybe doing one of those things would help dissolve the lump in his throat, but it wouldn't help at all with Greta. She would just feel more frightened, maybe even threatened. He ran his hands through his hair, not knowing what to do for the first time in a long time.

  That woman had been beaten by her husband. She'd found the body of a murdered person at a gas station, had been held captive by a stranger, and then discovered that the environment where she worked was a den of perverts. Her world had collapsed in a space of a few days. Absolute paranoia was more than natural: it was a necessary defense of the mind to keep from crumbling. What could he do to reverse this?

  "I'm going back to Porto Alegre." Her voice assumed that monotone timbre again.

  "I don't think that's a good idea."

  She looked at him with pursed lips. Anger didn't show in her words when she shifted her attention to the floor.

  "I'm tired of running. I want to have a normal life again."

  Daros thought about the impossibility of that, but didn't verbalize the sentence. There was no normalcy for her in Porto Alegre or anywhere else at the moment. However, offering any resistance now would only push her away. He decided to take another path.

  "I'll go with you."

  "No. I want to go alone." After a pause, she added: "And I want you to leave."

  He put his hands in his jeans pockets and shook his head. He crossed one foot in front of the other before saying, without letting the shake show in his voice:

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I won't allow that, Greta."

  She slowly turned her head toward him, her features seeming sculpted in stone. The same darkness he'd seen the day before, when the sound of the glass shattering dragged her somewhere else, had returned to her eyes, threatening.

  "Won't allow?" Greta repeated, through clenched teeth. "And what are you going to do about it? Hit me? Tie me to the bed?"

  She rose from the bed to face him, crossing her arms over her chest.

  Hit her? Something broke inside Daros hearing that. She was like that shattered glass now. And he had played an important role in destroying her, in proving what a horrible place the world was for her.

  He wanted to scream. He wanted to say he loved her, but that would only make everything worse. It would sound like an attempt at manipulation, like the scumbag she'd left behind. And maybe he wasn't so different from her husband. He'd kidnapped a vulnerable woman, had abused his own strength. Now, it was more than fair that he pay the price.

  Trying to force the woman before him to do anything again was unthinkable. His chest burned, his eyes stung, but he finally found voice to speak:

  "I'm not going to hurt you anymore, Greta. I…" he thought about everything he wanted to say.

  He wanted to say he'd felt alive for the first time since burying his own childhood in his friend's grave. He wanted to say he'd discovered an optimistic side in himself, a side he didn't even know existed. That this side believed happiness had long brown hair and very dark eyes, that this part imagined the future beside a woman, with peaceful days, where he would learn to plant and have a garden, and his companion would do only what she wished. But what right did he have to speak of affection? What right did he have to make plans after everything he'd done to Greta? Giving up on making that stupid declaration, on playing the fool, he changed angles:

  "Can I ask a favor? It's a small thing."

  There was no response, but there was also no hostile gesture. He interpreted the silence as confirmation. Daros hurried to the living room, grabbed her new phone and typed Inácio's contact into the device. He returned to the bedroom and placed the phone on an armchair, so his approach wouldn't startle her. He pointed to the device and explained:

  "Here. I saved Inácio's number on your phone. Call him if you need anything. Anything at all. He's good at helping people. Actually, he's much better than I am, which isn't hard. He's better than me in every way. I just know that… Well, I always manage to destroy everything."

  And to think that one day he wanted to fix the world. He'd been an idiot for many years. It was time to stop.

  The woman remained motionless. Daros gathered the few belongings in his backpack. He couldn't find his cap. He was going to look in the living room when he remembered one last instruction.

  "I'm leaving the car. You need it more than I do. The key is on the kitchen counter."

  He didn't wait for an answer this time, content to look at her again, contemplate as much as he could.

  "Goodbye, Greta."

  So this was where, he thought, the two of them said goodbye.

  3

  Isaías asked the driver to park far from the lakeside cabin area. They had to be at a sufficient distance not to be heard. The target's high level of training was more than enough for him to remain alert to the sound of any approaching vehicle. No cars passed. No people, no animals. Life seemed to have forgotten that piece of land and that late afternoon. With weapon in hand, he controlled his breathing while searching for a hiding place in the woods.

  An imbuia tree, with an old, wide trunk, revealed itself as the perfect shelter. From that point, Isaías had a good view of the three cabins near the lake. Only one of them was fenced. If the woman had any sense, she would have chosen that one: a wall would make it harder for anyone wanting to watch her. Therefore, the residence behind that green wooden gate received his full attention. Through the gap in the planks, he could see a two-seat wooden bench and part of the stone wall of the house.

  It wasn't a good idea to approach from the front of the residence. Even with the gate just pushed closed, it would be risky to arrive like a street vendor. If the target were inside, he'd be watching the entrance, the only access point. Slowly, he approached the side wall, using the trees along the way as a shield.

  Advancing a few meters, he craned his neck to peek. He did this at the right moment, as if God's hand had given the green light.

  That's because the cap was the first thing he saw. For a second, he thought it was his imagination, almost as if his brain had fantasized it. But it was him. The man was there, in the flesh, just a few steps away. He circled a dark Jeep Compass as if considering whether to get in the vehicle or not.

  Isaías advanced in absolute silence, close to the wall, a predator about to attack. Fat drops of sweat soaked his shirt collar. Closing his eyelids, he said a brief prayer. May the Lord grant steadiness and precision.

  4

  If Greta had made the right decision, why did it hurt so much? The sound of Daros closing the door as he left had triggered the terrible machinery of separation. His absence was solid, dense, filling the entire cabin with loneliness. Her ear buzzed with the memory. The heart-wrenching sound of his departure cemented the most alive and newly awakened part of her: the part that had dared to trust again.

  She thought about going after him. She thought about reconsidering. She thought about saying that, meeting him, she'd discovered she wasn't complete before. She thought about saying that, by his side, she no longer felt alone.

  But she was alone. She always had been.

  She needed to learn to trust only herself. The world was a wild place for women like her. Actually, it was wild for any woman.

  The photos of those young women confirmed the fact. There's no safe place for those born with two X chromosomes. A university should be, first and foremost, a place of welcome. It was cruel to transform what was born as achievement into a sexual trap.

  The thought broke the inertia in which she'd plunged. Greta closed the bedroom windows and walked to the living room to lock everything there too. Without Daros around, the feeling of vulnerability grew. She boiled some water and prepared chamomile tea, adding a little cinnamon.

  Guilt began to swell in her chest. How hadn't she noticed anything? How, instead of just being surprised by Valério's consecutive promotions, hadn't she asked herself how he achieved prominent positions so easily? Part of her had always questioned that, but Greta ended up not investigating deeply.

  She also had no idea how her husband had gained access to that material. He wasn't a hacker. He was an ordinary computer user. He used email, social media, and basic text editing tools, and occasionally accessed one news site or another.

  She imagined Valério finding those photos and feeling nothing but fierce joy at the opportunity. He, who had wanted children once. No one has control over a baby's sex. Any of those girls could have been the fetus she lost. But Valério didn't see in the girls a fetus that became a child, then an adolescent. He saw only prey.

  If before she felt contempt for that man, now she felt disgust. He could only be described as human by social convention: inside, he was an abyss of cruelty.

  Driven by indignation, she returned to the bedroom to get the new phone. She let her body collapse onto the armchair facing the door, unconsciously waiting for the door to open and Daros to arrive. She couldn't keep waiting. Greta had remained inert for too long. Both there, sitting in that armchair that still exuded a faint aroma of men's deodorant, and in her marriage.

  It was time to be the woman who survives. The one who faces. The one who denounces, even if not in the most favorable position possible.

  If Daros had told the truth about Inácio, the man was indeed a kind of detective. Working in internal affairs or not, he would know to whom to send that material so the truth could begin walking the path to justice. On the other hand, if Inácio was part of that sordid scheme, nothing would happen. And nothing was exactly what was already happening. So Greta had nothing to lose.

  She stood up, raising her phone to the ceiling to increase the signal. She accessed the only two contacts and contemplated the name "Inácio Mancini" for a few seconds before touching the green button. The ringing sound played once, twice. Until a shot muffled everything.

  By instinct, Greta grabbed the abandoned knife from beside an apple on the side table, crouched down and slid the phone under the coffee table. Then she threw herself behind the sofa to decrease the chances of being hit.

  She was too far away to hear anyone on the other end of the line. And more shots being fired outside the house didn't help with the task of hearing anything either.