Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology

by Violet Vaughn

  Vultures had already been at the eyes, but the real scavengers hadn’t found the eland carcasses yet.

  “The meat’s still good,” I told Steve. “Take Peter with you into the village and gift it with our blessing.” The tribe was poor by Western standards if not their own, but like any community there were those poorer still who could best benefit from the donation. At 2000 pounds apiece, the bull elands were the size of larger beef cattle. Someone should get use out of them and, frankly, I didn’t have the stomach to eat any of the sanctuary animals myself.

  “What about the men who did this?” Peter stepped in front of the constable, staring the man down from the 4-inch height advantage he had.

  “We’ll file the report and look for them.”

  “Without getting pictures of the tire treads at least? Or taking the bullet casings? What if these are the same men who shot Abasi?”

  I gave a lot of credit to the constable for keeping his cool, even though I was right there with Peter on the frustration scale. But I’d heard the police rhetoric before, so wasn’t surprised at the lack of diligence, due or otherwise, here today.

  “How will taking a picture of tire treads help us find these men? Can you track them by such a picture? A picture may help convict them but that presupposes we can find them in the first place. And if we can find them, no doubt given the profession they’re in there will be evidence enough on them to convict them without your picture. You want to help us? Catch them for us. Preferably with the stolen horns on them.”

  “Surely you have some idea how these animal parts are being trafficked.”

  The police constable, probably in his mid-twenties and still young enough to harbor at least a memory of idealism, sighed. “There’s some British syndicate out of Kilwa Kivinje. They operate half on the white market, half on the black. Anything black market they can produce white market papers for. They don’t own the poachers out here, but they deal with them. That much we know.”

  “What’s the name?” Peter’s eyes were steel, his tone quiet and commanding.

  “WildLot Enterprises.”

  “Brandon Briggs?”

  “That sounds right.” His eyes narrowed. “You know him?”

  “Not as well as I’m going to.”

  19

  Peter

  “Do you honestly think the guy you flamed a bridge with is going to hire you back?” Nicky asked.

  I couldn’t be sure whether she was onboard with the overall plan and was just objecting to the details.

  “You’re underestimating my talent for eating crow.”

  She studied me with a critical eye. “Or you’re vastly overestimating yourself. You’re really so not a crow-eating type of guy.”

  I decided to be flattered by that. “One shot. What’s there to lose?”

  “What if this Brandon guy is into worse than trafficking horns and tusks and a few live animals? Have you considered what that might mean to your general health?”

  “I’d pull out well ahead of that time.”

  “Can’t say I’ve known you to be a pull-out-early kind of guy either.”

  I took her innuendo to be a sign of relenting.

  “Uh, guys, not alone here,” Steve reminded us. “TMI.”

  I nodded. “Back on point then. I’d need, what, a week—two at the most—to dig up their dirt? What kind of evidence do we need?”

  The constable wasn’t looking any happier than Nicky. “You really need to talk to the sergeant about this.”

  “I’ll swing by and let him know what I’m doing. If I haven’t gotten anywhere after a couple of weeks, I’m out. No harm, no foul. Can you spare me that long?” I asked Nicky.

  “Your main job here is to stay on top of the poaching, so for this, sure.”

  I grinned. If I could win hardnosed Nicky to my side, Brandon would be a shoe-in.

  * * *

  “A ranger, in one of the sanctuaries—jumbe at that—I thought I’d get to stretch myself some. But Nicky kept me neutered—in more ways than one, if you know what I mean.”

  By the look in Brandon’s eye, he was getting a fairly clear picture.

  “I made a mistake. I’d like back on with you. Not that I can get you that elephant, but anything else, from anyone else…it’s yours. And if I can carry a rifle instead of a pencil, all the better.” I threw him my best alpha equivalent of a puppy-dog look: a contrite glare with a few shreds of hope all ground up into a pair of balls that dared the recipient to even think the word cute.

  It was, of course, irresistible, and I walked out of the meeting with a job, the keys to a logo’d SUV, and $100 a month less than what we’d originally agreed to prior. What mattered most, though, was walking out of there with the opportunity to take the son-of-a-bitch down.

  “Hey Peter,” Brandon called after me, “I heard what you said, but there’s a $500 bonus in it if you can swing that elephant my way.”

  “The buyer’s still waiting?” That surprised me.

  “No, we shipped him a bull out of The Congo yesterday. All I want from your lady’s ellie is the tusks.”

  “What about the calf?”

  “Not my problem. Don’t make it yours either.”

  “But you’d pay the same price of a live ellie just for its tusks?”

  “For these particular tusks, yes. You’ll find, Mr. Lawson, I really…really…don’t like to be told no.”

  * * *

  “You took a shower after being with him, I hope.” Nicky shivered as she lay by me that evening by the boma listening to me recount my success in hiring back on at WildLot.

  “An extra-long one,” I assured her.

  News about Jasiri wasn’t as good. No one had seen her leave the thicket either for water or for the grain bagged and stacked beside the fence. We only knew she was on her feet and moving by the occasional snap of a twig. Whether she was browsing or not we didn’t know. It looked like it would be a long vigil before we earned her trust again.

  I brushed my fingers along the smooth inner skin of Nicky’s arm. “Remember how we drew her to us the other night?” I whispered. “This may be my last night here this week. As far as Brandon knows I’m staying in Kilwa Kivinje, and until he can trust me he’ll be keeping me in the office. Helping come up with the double books for the black market stuff of his, I suspect. If I’m going to sleuth, I’ll need to do it at night, and I’ll need to pick up that motel room Brandon already thinks I have.”

  “I knew you’d have to be there, I just didn’t think about you not being here. Know what I mean?”

  “Will you think about me when I am—gone?” I asked.

  Her hips shifted subtly in my direction and her shoulders followed a moment later.

  “Give me a reason to.”

  That direct stare inviting me to share the night, an embrace, myself with her settled square in my cock even though her eyes never left mine. My hand slid from her arm to undo two buttons, then slipped under her shirt and over the swell of her breast, gathering it to rest in my palm. What else felt so warm and soft and perfect in a grown man’s hand? After a moment, my thumb found the peak of her and circled it, brushed it, encouraged it to rise.

  She turned into me, taking my lips with hers. One hand, slim and cool, cradled my neck. The other hand slipped down to unzip my shorts and cradle the strength of me there that lengthened in her grip.

  “Mmm.” She hummed into my mouth, not a private sweet nothing for my ears alone but meant to be heard by ears far larger than my own.

  Neither of us had been particularly noisy in our foreplay before. The goal tonight, though, was to extend and amplify every reaction. To call Jasiri to us. To make every joy of our mating hers.

  At first, I was self-conscious. Quiet lovemaking was a learned behavior, practiced when needed—which seemed to be most of the time—since my first encounter with a partner in a college dorm room after curfew, when only my shattered breathing would indicate my building ecstasy.

  But here by
the boma with only the hyenas and antelope and one particularly curious elephant to hear, what reason was there to hold back? What reason for Nicky not to know just how talented a lover she truly was? What reason to not express every note, every syllable in the song of lust?

  Was our lovemaking more feral for it tonight? Or did it just feel that way? Did shunning the proprieties of civilization in one sector open up the primal memories in another?

  Whatever the mechanism, with Nicky straddling me and one hand filled with her breasts, the other with her hips, my cock thrusting wildly for her womb and my crying out with every stroke, when the orgasm hit it stretched me from throat to calf, every muscle stiffening in its wake, wringing out the ecstasy one nerve at a time, a rolling tsunami, building, building…

  Teeth clenched, the guttural cries kept on. And then Nicky was shuddering over me, her own squeals and gasps ripped from her throat as she fought to stay on that precipice of starfire with me. We rode it, rode it, rode it till it collapsed beneath us, wrenching one last cry from our ravaged passion and carrying it away.

  Nicky fell over me, gasping raggedly. Beneath her, I blew great draughts of breath between my lips.

  I felt the turn of her head on my chest. “Look.” The word was little more than a heavy breath.

  I followed the line of her gaze…and grinned.

  A trunk and two great ears tuned our way hovered in the open just outside the thicket.

  Our quite singular elephant call had worked.

  20

  Nicky

  Peter left again the next day determined to ratchet his involvement with WildLot up another couple of sprockets over the next handful of days. His duties were turning out to be more administrative than either of us had hoped, and while we knew the invoicing, shipment arrangements and meeting scheduling he was doing on the white market side had to be covering up similar activity on the illegal side, the trade he was handling was, so far, all legit as far as he could tell. There were, however, layers to the company he’d yet to discover and men he’d only heard and seen in reference who he had yet to meet.

  Making those connections was next on his agenda.

  Meanwhile, that left Abasi to handle the ramped-up security. With strict orders to keep his men away from the boma, Abasi played his hires like chess pieces, moving them randomly—although he would point to his head, nod and deem it strategically—throughout the night.

  In the boma, after much cajoling, Jasiri would stand by the safety of the trees but come no closer to where I camped each night. During the day we’d find a feed bag or two broken open, the grain scattered and only a few mouthfuls of it half-heartedly scarfed up. The fresh fruit offerings we left would wither, untouched, in the heat.

  Jasiri was losing weight again. And the little time I saw her each night when she deigned to show herself, she spent swaying on those great big feet of hers. I knew ellies would sway when they were contented—a slow and graceful cadence that imparted the same peace and serenity to anyone lucky enough to be an active watcher. This swaying, though, was quick and irritable. Like a way to deal with long and chronic pain.

  And to top it off, her body language reverted back to the classic pose of dejection and grief—shoulders slumped, ears hung low, and trunk dragging the ground.

  That she had regressed so very much right before calving made my heart sick. Desperate, I called Rasheda at the Liparamba Game Reserve to see if she had any advice.

  “Only to hope the calf is born soon,” Rasheda said, the sorrow in her tone genuine. “The baby will be a joy to distract Jasiri from her depression. Though some will claim an elephant cannot die from grief, I know better.”

  “And until the baby comes?”

  “Prepare yourself to let her go. Commend yourself for giving her this much of a chance.”

  “No. Unacceptable.”

  Rasheda sighed. “There are many elephants that need help. Always more than there are facilities to handle them. When we lose one, another is there to take its place, to be given its chance. And if not an elephant for your boma, there are others in as desperate need. A mother rhino and her yearling calf right now have to be relocated from a coffee farm they managed to wander into. If your boma was empty, they could be yours. As it is…

  You can’t save them all. I repeated my well-worn mantra to myself. And what do you do to yourself when you start caring about those you know you can’t help? I gave my head a mental shake. Leave it. Don’t go there. Don’t open yourself up to the heartbreak you can’t control.

  No. I won’t ask. I—“What’s going to happen to them?”

  “Remember the man you asked me about? The one who wanted your elephant?”

  I went cold. “Brandon Briggs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he certain to get them?”

  “It’s not my transaction. If it were, you could bet he wouldn’t. I understand for them, though, he’s paying top dollar. They’re prime, just nuisances where they are.”

  “They have to be introduced in a boma first?”

  “It’s best practice.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “Nothing has to be out here, although there are regulations and regulators to enforce them. Most either don’t care when it comes to emergency relocations or they want what’s best for the animal. I’m looking at the rhinos’ profiles now. Nothing in their history to indicate they’d be any more problem than, say, a water buffalo.”

  “Why hasn’t another sanctuary already snatched them up?”

  “Space. Timing. Budget, more than likely. The National Park wants 65 million in shillings for them. That’s about 30 thousand American dollars.”

  My heart sank. “I could maybe do half that. Or all of it if I weren’t about to build a tourist lodge. Maybe in six months after my patrons come through and more funding is available. Capital is tight right now.”

  “Which is why WildLot thrives. Brandon’s got the most money, the best capital to access on a tight timetable. In almost any auction for an animal he truly wants, he’s going to win. Simple economics.”

  “I’ll need rhinos,” I said. “I just don’t think I can handle them right now.”

  “Pole.” Sorry, it meant. “I didn’t know about your plans to build or I wouldn’t have brought the rhinos up. There’ll be others available when you’re ready. That’s an unfortunate fact. If not with these today, you can be a hero with others tomorrow.”

  You can’t save them all.

  “Listen, if you hear of other deals like this that WildLot’s got going, let me know, okay. I’m…working on something.”

  “Something mbaya for Brandon?”

  Something bad? I mentally translated. “I sure to hell hope so.”

  “Then I’ll sure to hell tell you whatever I hear.”

  “You’re the best, Rasheda.”

  “I have my moments.”

  I was pretty sure two white market rhinos weren’t going to blip in anything but the legit column of the WildLot ledger, but I passed along what I knew to Peter later that evening. It was the straw principle I was playing. As in you never knew which straw would be the one to break the poor camel’s back, so just keep loading them on till one eventually does.

  That only worked, of course, when you wanted a certain British camel’s back not just broken but bankrupted and jailed for the rest of its natural life as well.

  “Any luck otherwise?” I asked.

  “Still getting the lay of the land. A few sketchy hints, but until I’m clear on just what is legit and what isn’t… Did the horns or hide come from an animal legally targeted to be culled? How was it tagged? Was an endangered animal sold to intentionally overstock a reserve so hunters can be invited in later to participate in sanctioned culls? There are so many ways any of these deals can go south, and it’s never…never…in the animals’ best interests.

  “Careful there, Peter. Sounds like you might be starting to care.”

  The line went very quiet for a mome
nt. Then, “I never stopped caring. I just…put my heart on hold for a little while.”

  I didn’t press him. The past might shape us, make us who we are, but I cared most about who Peter was today, and who he would become tomorrow.

  “Tell Jasiri something for me, will you?”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Be brave.”

  * * *

  The little boy and girl duo that stood barefoot in the clinic’s waiting room the next day were going to break my heart. I knew it the minute I walked out of my office and saw the eight-month-old pup the boy held in his thin arms. The long-legged mix that should have weighed somewhere close to 50 pounds looked to weigh maybe 30, the boy probably 70. He had to have carried the dog for at least two miles to get it here. Beside him, the girl, around six or seven and maybe two years younger than him, carried a well-chewed red rubber ball.

  The black dog was trembling. While it could have been the involuntary shiver so many dogs developed at the door to a vet clinic that seemed a ubiquitous response the world over, I knew it wasn’t.

  The boy held the pup out to me, his big eyes solemn, his cheek unflinching even when the pup tried to give it a lick and failed. Just as solemnly, his sister held the ball out on the palm of her small hand.

  “Shikamo. Kufanya yake bora. Tafadhali,” the boy said, and I only understood the catch in the thin voice.

  “He wants you to please make her better,” Melea translated quietly behind me.

  I lifted the dog from the boy’s arms and motioned them to follow me into the exam room. The space was filled mostly with second-hand equipment either already here or that I’d purchased in Mtwara from their hospital’s supply room and doctors’ back rooms. It was far from the slick technology I’d left in Illinois, but to these children it probably seemed overwhelming…and frightening.

  “Get a blanket,” I asked Melea. There was so little flesh on the pup’s bones I didn’t want to put her directly on the cold steel table, both to protect her from the pain and to maintain what little warmth was left in her body. I didn’t need a thermometer to know the pup was an easy 8 to 10 degrees cooler than she should be.