Hearts on Fire: Romance Multi-Author Box Set Anthology

by Violet Vaughn

  “If it is, we can’t return it to its colony,” Melea told me. “We have to hope it’s not a new epidemic.”

  “Epidemic?”

  “Doctor Nic says the same strain that affects the badgers affects canines and many other species too. So it’s not just the badgers at risk. If it is distemper and not just an isolated incidence. But yeah, whole colonies could be wiped out by an epidemic. It happened in a reserve in northern Zambia last year. And not only the wild animals, but all the unvaccinated domestic and feral dogs around.”

  The dark, silver-backed body curled up in the corner of its cage looking suitably miserable didn’t seem to care it might be the harbinger of a widespread epidemic. It only wanted comfort for itself.

  Zuri, nose to the ground, patrolled the cages, looking for stray bits of grain that might have fallen through. She’d be weaned soon—unless Melea prolonged the bottle feedings that brought them both pleasure.

  “Zuri and Crocket, they’ll be OK?”

  “Oh yeah. They have enough diseases of their own to worry about.”

  Sometimes it amazed me any animal on earth, us included, could ever simply die of old age.

  Outside, the zebra filly limped around the small corral that opened out from her stall. Her back foot was still curled up, the tip of the hoof only barely touching the ground, but she was grabbing mouthfuls of hay as she hobbled along. And eating, I was fast learning, was generally a good sign of recovery. She went still as I approached, though, a wisp of hay dangling from the corner of her mouth as she peered at me from under long, black lashes.

  “You’re one lucky little zebra,” I whispered her way, thinking about the foal that had become leopard lunch and feeling a pang of sorrow for the herd who no doubt thought they’d lost two of their own yesterday.

  So much grief everywhere.

  “It doesn’t really matter how far you run, does it?” The zebra’s ears twitched at the question. “It’s never far enough.”

  * * *

  That night, although we were no longer on pregnancy watch, Nicky and I camped again by the boma. It felt grimmer now, more akin to a suicide watch. I noted Kapuki had packed whiskey for us.

  “Jasiri’s really gotten to you, hasn’t she?” Nicky asked.

  I took a long sip, and then another, before answering. “She’s a…kindred soul. I see a lot of myself in her. The devastation. The pain. The wound in the heart so deep all you can see is blackness and despair beyond.”

  Nicky sat on the other side of the picnic blanket from me tonight. It was a small blanket, and the distance not so great, but there seemed to be another gulf opening between us. One perhaps I should encourage, I thought. I didn’t know where this relationship with Nicky was going, but one thing experience had taught me well—everything ended in loss. Only if I didn’t let myself grow close could I avoid more devastation. Because any more pain and I feared I’d be Jasiri, with only two options before me—a fast and disastrous rampage or a slow and pitiful wasting.

  “I should thank Brandon,” I confided. “He’s given me a way to wage a controlled rampage. One that doesn’t end in self-destruction.”

  Nicky shifted around till she was sitting next to me, her fair arm brushing mine, the smell of fresh soap and shampoo and a hint of clinic disinfectant she could never completely scrub away undermining my determination to put more distance between us.

  “Tell me,” was all she said.

  How could I tell anyone about the years of death and danger that been every moment of my waking life? Or about Sameera and her chubby-cheeked daughter, Danah, who I loved like she was my own? How in the midst of killing and special missions that were all about more killing, I’d found a fountain of life and hope in the depths of Sameera’s eyes and the sweet embrace of her arms. How the Taliban had gone through her village one night, razing and shooting everything in sight. How in the morning there was no more village, no more Danah, no more Sameera.

  How in the firefight that followed, half my squad was lost. Men who’d become as brothers and family to me—James and Marcus, Taylor and Nathan, Dre Boy and Trigga B, and a dozen more in whose place I would have died if God had cared.

  I muttered a few shallow words to Nicky. Surface words that conveyed what had happened but only hinted at what those days had done to me, deep, deep down where they’d scarred the essence of me in a place where none could see.

  “And the kicker?” I swirled the last few sips of whiskey from the bottle into my plastic cup. “There was a leak from our own side. The Taliban knew exactly when and where and how many were coming for them. We orchestrated our own death. And yet I escaped unscathed—on the outside anyway—while everything I loved and cared about was lost in a hail of bullets and rocketfire and flames. Two days and my world was gone. Two weeks later my tour was over and I didn’t re-up. I headed south, on foot mostly, across southern Asia, then into Africa. That was nearly a year ago. And you know what? Time by itself doesn’t heal the pain.” I raised my cup toward the gray shape somewhere in the dark. “Right, Jasiri?”

  Nicky’s lips on mine were warm and tender. Maybe if I hadn’t drunk so much other parts of her would have been warm and tender on me as well. But I was too wasted for pity or for sex. Or even pity sex.

  I closed my eyes and hoped to God I wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.

  27

  Peter

  I was glad to be returning to WildLot and the possibility of doing something that was good in the world other than special ops work. Nicky needed to know about that part of my past at some point. I realized that, but right now all I felt was the pity in her eyes, even if that pity was only in my imagination. I hated to leave Crocket, but she was doing well and would still be in her corral in five or six days when I returned.

  As for Jasiri… Nicky would keep me posted on her progress—or lack of it. As it was, my own emotions were too tied up in her. I couldn’t be rational about any decisions made about her, and my own mental state was compromised being around her. I wanted to be there to support her, but it was really far better for both of us that I wouldn’t be.

  I could have waited till the next morning to leave and struck off before dawn. Instead, I left late in the afternoon with an admonishment from Nicky to once again “Be careful.” We hugged, but didn’t kiss our good-bye.

  On the way back to Kilwa Kivinje, I stopped at the police station to be sure the sergeant would be expecting my texts once I knew myself what our targets were and where they were located.

  “You’ll have our support,” the sergeant assured me. “This is personal to this whole department. Just give us as much lead time as you can.”

  “When I know, so will you,” I agreed.

  There were still a couple of hours of daylight left when I found my way back to the building where I was renting my efficiency apartment by the week. Bad timing on my part. There were far too many hours in a night to be spending them alone with memories I was trying to forget. No, not to forget. I never wanted to forget Sameera or Danah or my squad. I was who I was because of the hand each of them had in shaping me. Losing them would be losing me. Even the pain was a vital part of me now. Something Jasiri would need to learn and need to embrace.

  So no, I never wanted to forget. But sometimes—like now, when faced with interminable night—it would be a kindness to not remember for a time. And even better if that meant resorting to mind-numbing quantities of alcohol.

  So I worked out, showered and took a walk around the squalid neighborhood that, in the important ways, looked little different from maybe a million old and weary urban hoods across the globe. The port city of Kilwa Kivinje had been founded by the Arabs in the century before last and heavily influenced by German colonialism. It was a historic, multi-cultural city—more a large town really—solidly split between the haves on the coastline where the monied tourists came to stay, and the have nots who struggled day-to-day in the shadow of the faded, concreted buildings that had stood for decades on the city�
��s inner streets, crumbling now into relic and memory.

  Today though, it wasn’t the global similarities in the faces and expressions of the men, women and children who I passed, or in the “making do” conditions of the houses and half-paved warren of alleyways that I noted.

  It was the sharp contrasts to the life at Kulinda.

  Here in this African city there were leopards and crocodiles, too—they just walked on two legs. And even then the motives of the ones in the sanctuary seemed purer somehow, requiring no footnotes or apologies for their behavior.

  Back less than two hours and I was already being sharply reminded of where I belonged. I was like a kid at camp, homesick for comfort and familiarity.

  Homesick already for Nicky.

  No, that couldn’t be. More precisely, I couldn’t let it be. I was already too close to an elephant that might soon be lost. Already bracing myself for another crater in a heart too ravaged to bear more strikes against it. How could I have let such a giant animal slip past my guard like that? What was she—no, it and the elephant, not her from now on. I needed that distancing. Too late, perhaps, but any cushioning was welcome now.

  As for Nicky…. She was a distraction, nothing more. Casual and fun. A way to ease back into the world. Because the moment I admitted she was more to me than that, then she would become capable of destroying me, of ripping out the last shreds of my heart when I lost her too.

  And lose her I would, just as I had lost everything else that was important to me.

  I was barely surviving as it was, still teetering on the edge of that darkness that threatened to swallow me. Another loss and I would either become a bull elephant on an unstoppable rampage or sink into depression so deep only a bullet could ease it.

  So no, I wasn’t homesick for Nicky.

  Even if that was a lie.

  * * *

  I worked through the handful of invoices on my desk in the morning, and arranged for a second rhino cow and calf pair to be shipped to a reserve in Shanxi Province in China. I didn’t want to think about what such a trip in a cargo hold would be like or what kind of animal would come out on the other side. Since Nicky had asked about a mother/daughter rhino pair earlier, I did some follow-up investigation on this pair while waiting to meet up with Hodari later in the day. I called Nicky during lunch when I was outside the office to share the information.

  “The reserve they’re going to is less than 100 acres. WildLot’s shipped at least 30 big game animals there over the last five years.”

  “So either they’re over-crowding the space or they’re catering to hunters. Damn it.”

  “The rhinos mean something to you?”

  “No. Yes. They could have.”

  “Well, that’s clear.”

  “I was told about them. Or at least one of the pairs WildLot bought. Probably too late to put in a bid, but I doubt I could have afforded them anyway. Not until I can get some revenue going here. How much did WildLot pay, just out of curiosity?”

  “In US dollars, right at 26.7 thousand. And sold them for 38 thousand plus another two thousand in shipping charges.”

  “All white market, though?”

  “As long as WildLot can claim it sold them to a reserve via one of the requisite conservation permits, Brandon’s hands are clean.”

  “Corruption breeds corruption.”

  “Yep.”

  “I want him, Peter.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. “So do I, Nicky. That’s why I’m here.”

  * * *

  Hodari showed up 15 minutes late and met privately with Brandon before hooking up with me.

  “Boss is starting you off easy,” Hodari told me as he slid into a chair across from me and propped his feet on my desk. “Ever hunt eland before?”

  I shook my head, realizing with surprise that Hodari’s earlier reticence hid a decidedly Western dialect just as incongruent with his tribal ancestry as those black snakeskin—mamba was my bet—boots he was sporting.

  “They’re the biggest antelope we’ve got out here. Heart shot. If you’ve ever hunted deer, same thing. We only care about the horns, so if you need practice on these first targets, take it, because it may be the only chance you get. We just need the two eland tonight. Selous Reserve’s got some excess. They have camera hunts only in the north, but legal hunts in the south, so we’ll go in on the south and be out in 10, 15 minutes. Just riding around, getting to the targets is what takes the most time.”

  “Sounds almost too easy. How often do you run into trouble?”

  “Once, twice a year at most if our locators do their job properly. Tomorrow night we’ll be hunting government land with permits. You just never know what orders will need filling.”

  “Do you ever take anything live?”

  “Not me. Although once they needed a shooter to dart a lion. That was kind of a rush. But too many people involved, right? I like working alone.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  He laughed, an easy practiced sound. Something I bet he’d used to charm his share of women. “Brandon gives me a trainee two or three times a year. That’s OK. I just don’t want a habit of working with people. And there are always at least three or four others on a live catch for one of the Big Five.”

  “So, what now?”

  “I’ll pick you up here at 10 o’clock. I’ve got an extra Winchester. If you want to use some other rifle, bring it with you. Otherwise, the truck’s loaded. A little over an hour to get there, then back—should be back here by 1 o’clock. Unless you feel like a few beers after. I don’t think Brandon’ll mind you getting in a little late tomorrow. In fact, you can probably knock off early today.” He eased his boots off the desk and stood. “Wear something dark.”

  I nodded, and Hodari was gone. Taking his advice, I wrapped up early and made two phone calls as soon as I was back at my apartment in town. The first was to Sergeant Cheboi with details for him to set up a stake-out, and the second call to Nicky to let her know we were one step closer to bringing Brandon down.

  I didn’t realize just how bad those words would taste when I had to eat them later.

  28

  Peter

  I had only been in Tanzania a few weeks and was still no more than passingly acquainted with the Kilwa Kivinje area. That evening, I had looked up information on the Selous Game Reserve, finding to my chagrin that it was a fairly massive chunk of land well to the northwest of WildLot’s warehouse. A few minutes out and I knew that wasn’t the direction we were headed.

  “Change of plan,” Hodari said when I broached him about it.

  “And you planned on telling your partner here when?”

  He shrugged. “You know now.”

  “Your idea—or Brandon’s?”

  “The range change, or me not telling you?”

  “Try either.”

  “Brandon’s. Both.”

  “Got a reason?”

  “Trust.”

  “As in breaking it?”

  “As in Brandon don’t trust you.”

  “What the hell does he think I’ll do? I’m out here with you driving, for God’s sake.”

  “Figures he’ll be sure you won’t do anything this way.”

  “I happen to be big on being able to trust the people I work with to not screw with me. Call it military privilege.”

  “You saying you’re out?”

  “I’m saying I’ll call this one a misunderstanding. I’m saying there won’t be a next one. Clear?”

  Hodari shrugged. “That’s between you and Brandon. I just do what I’m told and collect my paycheck at the end of it. What’s that saying about the means and the end?”

  “The one about not having a moral compass?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t think that’s it.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes. “Where are we going? Can you tell me that now?”

  “Kulinda Sanctuary. Brandon says you know it.”

  I went cold. “Yeah. Do you?”


  “Sure. I’ve been there a few times.”

  “Recently?”

  The man might not have been the sharpest knife in the proverbial drawer, but he was sharp enough to feel when he was being hustled. His suspicion was almost palpable in the truck’s cab. “What’s it to you?”

  “I know the place well enough to know they’ve had a change-up in security. But hey, if you don’t think I have anything to contribute, I’ll just sit over here and keep my mouth shut.”

  “Nah. Security, huh? I can see that. I was there…been at least a couple of weeks. We saw a little action. Must have scared the crap out of them.”

  “Action?”

  “Exchanged a few rounds. One of them took a leg shot. Nothing serious.”

  “That’s the last time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They were hit a week ago.”

  “Maybe. Wasn’t me. They got something new going since?”

  “Randomized patrols. Stepped-up frequency.”

  Hodari shrugged. “They’ve got a lot of land. Odds of us and them being in the same place again… We do our job right and we’re in and out before they can even tell where the shots are coming from. Just have to work fast. No admiring the scenery.”

  I nodded. What the hell was I going to do now? This was clearly a set-up on Brandon’s part. A test of my loyalty. A way to put to rest any lingering suspicions he might have. There was no way Sergeant Cheboi could recall his men in time and set up a new sting at Kulinda tonight. And even if I alerted Steve and Abasi, we still needed police presence to make the proof stick in the Tanzanian courts.

  Damn.

  “Pull over a minute, would you? I gotta take a piss.”

  Behind a tree, my back to Hodari, I pulled out my phone, shielding the light from the display with my hand. I sent two short texts, all that I dared with Hodari waiting for me.