by Amber Hart
He doesn’t doubt me. He shouldn’t. I will find their weaknesses, even Mr. Tondjii’s. And then, only then, can I have the things waiting for me.
I reach out. Tear the painting to shreds. Because there will be no evidence here.
—
My hands are still marked with paint when Clovis and I return to the house. Conversation quiets as I enter the room. Eyes sharply dart to me. I could not care less right now. A few quick paces and I’ve put distance between myself and the poachers gathered in the living room. I take the steps two at a time. I’m almost to the room I share with Clovis when Mattius emerges into the hall and makes a move toward me, as if to grab my arm.
“What are you doing?” Clovis asks, blocking Mattius’s hand.
“Just sampling,” Mattius replies with a sly smirk.
“She’s mine,” Clovis growls.
Clovis is a barrier between Mattius and me.
“You sure about that, brother?” Mattius asks. “Because she’s been here over twenty-four hours and I haven’t seen you make a serious move yet.”
I don’t know where Mattius’s hostility stems from. This morning at breakfast he seemed okay. I’m beginning to wonder if he is simply skilled at manipulation, a trained liar. I can’t read him right, which, if I’m being honest, frightens me.
He doesn’t wait for a response. “That’s unlike you,” he says. “Very unlike you.”
I don’t like where this is going. I don’t like the challenge in Mattius’s stare.
“She’s mine and I don’t want you touching her,” Clovis says, authority in his voice.
Mattius defies his brother and takes a step toward me. “Can’t blame me, can you? We’ve never been allowed to have fun with the habitat workers. She’s so different from everything we know.” A wicked gleam hits Mattius’s eyes. “Just one taste?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing right now,” Clovis says, teeth gritted. “But it needs to stop. You’ve never acted like this before. What’s wrong with you?”
Mattius doesn’t back down. “Something isn’t right,” he says. “Jospin betraying us? You bringing a habitat worker here? Claiming that she’s yours and then barely touching her? I know better.”
I wait for Clovis’s reaction. Study the way he tenses. His hand reaches for mine. Wraps protectively around it and doesn’t let go. He pulls me closer. I wonder if the men below can hear us, or if the volume of their conversation—they resumed talking the moment I moved out of sight—is enough to drown out this argument.
“If she’s yours,” Mattius says, “then prove it.”
Clovis smiles and eases into our disguise, leaning down and pressing his lips to mine. I’m glad he towers over me, his back to Mattius, covering my reaction, or lack of one. I’m paralyzed. Clovis is kissing me. He’s cupping his hands to my face. He’s protecting me. He’s giving Mattius what he wants so that no one suspects we’re the liars that we are. He’s lying to his own brother to help me. Clovis is saving my life again.
And his lips are searing.
I kiss him back. Wrap my arms around him. Not because I want to, but because I have to.
I wasn’t prepared for how it would make me feel, though. I hold back tears because, even though Clovis’s kiss is sweet, I don’t want to be kissing him. It feels wrong. The way Clovis drags his lips along my jaw. How my head tips back and his hands tangle in my hair.
“Raven,” he whispers.
I keep my eyes closed. I’m too scared to open them. I need to not, for even one second, open them, or else Mattius might see the sheen of my tears.
“Enough,” booms a voice.
I blink furiously. My eyes dry almost instantly. Clovis lets me go and turns to the source of the voice.
Jospin’s father.
He walks toward us, flanked by his closest adviser. They stop just at the end of the hall.
“Take it to your room, Clovis,” he instructs, then turns to Mattius. “I need you to check out a lead. That is, if you’ve decided to stop provoking your brother. He’s obviously attached to this one.” A cruel smile plays on Mr. Tondjii’s lips. “Which I find very interesting.”
I keep my expression blank, but inside I am a mess.
I don’t want to be interesting to him. The more he notices me, the more difficult it will be to destroy the compound.
Mattius lingers a moment longer—raking his eyes up and down my body—before walking over to Mr. Tondjii.
Clovis leans in for another kiss and whispers, “Come to bed.”
It’s a loud whisper. Meant for more than my ears.
Clovis hauls me into the room, just as the first tear falls. There’s this pain in my chest, like an iceberg splitting in two, my insides coming apart. It’s crushing.
It’s maybe, probably, the breaking of my heart.
Chapter 8
Jospin
Restlessness seeps into my bones. I crack my spine. Pop my knuckles. Try to find a way to let it free. Nothing works.
“Are you ready?” Chloe asks.
“Sure,” I say.
I’m ready to do something. I’m ready to not wonder how many more days I’ll sit here until I can risk venturing deeper into the jungle. One week, I’ve decided. I’ll recheck the jungle in one week. I’ll go farther than the habitat’s surrounding trees. But, really, even that plan could change. Depending on how long Father wants to have his men watch for me.
For three days I’ve listened to the trees. They’ve let me hear noises. Proof that poachers are on guard. Father will have them on high alert, looking for any sign of me. But I also know that he has other things to do. He needs to protect his kingdom. Sending too many men out for too many days in a row leaves him vulnerable at the compound. It’s a delicate balance. He needs to be careful.
I’m giving it a week before he calls troops off. He simply doesn’t have the manpower to search for me and protect the compound for longer than that. Hopefully he assumes I’m dead, though I’m not sure that he will with no proof. It’s true that without the habitat I wouldn’t have survived a week in the jungle. Father wasn’t wrong when he said that the other poaching packs would kill me. But he was wrong about why. They would eliminate me because I’m their competition, not because I’m an ally who could no longer feed them information.
“The gorillas are this way,” Chloe says.
As though I don’t already know. As though they aren’t whooping and barking and making the loudest noises in this enclosed space.
I’m used to hearing apes in the jungle. Here, their sounds are amplified by the fact that they’re in captivity. A sanctuary, Chloe likes to call it. Rehabilitation, she likes to say.
Prison is more like it.
At least they’re alive, she says. I wonder if they’d rather be dead than caged. It’s not really a cage, Chloe corrected me when I called it that once. We let them go free again, she notes. Are they ever the same afterward? I don’t ask. What does it do to their minds to be locked in there? I want to say. My point is, You let them look at a jungle they can’t enter. That must be torture.
I know exactly how they feel.
“You’ll be feeding them and cleaning the droppings,” Chloe says. “Can you handle it?”
If it’ll help my cover. “Yes.”
Chloe leads me to the small room I saw the other day. The one with buckets and an island. The buckets are full of fruits and seeds and everything gorillas love to eat. They’re fed well, it seems.
We pass a few workers. Chloe stops to talk with them.
“I’m Loriant,” one says, holding out his hand.
“Kirk,” I lie.
We shake. He smiles. I’ve taken a good look at every worker we’ve passed, Loriant included. I don’t recognize a single one of them, which is a relief. Betters my chances that I won’t be recognized either.
“It’s good to have you here. How long will you stay?” Loriant asks.
I shrug.
As long as it takes to get Raven back.
/>
“I’m Winnie,” the American lady next to him says.
I shake her hand too.
Winnie is older than the other workers, in her sixties, I’m guessing. Gray hair and a natural smile. She’s slight, but there’s something steely in her stare.
“Have fun with your first feeding,” Winnie says.
Not a chance.
“See you around,” Loriant says.
“Stay on the outside of the gate until we’re ready to go in,” Chloe instructs as we walk away. “We’ve sectioned the gorillas off to the right side so we can clean the left side. Then we’ll move them over and do the same for the other half.”
It’s strange to learn little things like this about a habitat.
We approach the gate. Gorillas eye us. Instinct tells me to reach for my gun. Shoot. Cut them up to pieces. Does Chloe understand how much revenue she has on her hands? What a waste.
“You good?” Chloe asks under her breath, quiet so the others don’t hear.
“Yep,” I answer, eyes on the gorillas.
They seem to understand. Many of the apes come to the gate. Reach hands through the bars, wanting food.
“Sometimes I feed them by hand,” Chloe says. “Other times I let them grab the food.”
I don’t care.
“We also pour the buckets out when we’re in a hurry. Let the apes eat from the pile on the ground,” Chloe says.
“Let’s do that,” I suggest.
I’m not here to hand-feed gorillas, and Chloe knows it.
“Do you want to go in with them?” she asks.
I shoot her a hard look. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Of course I don’t want to go in there. I know what she’s doing. I know exactly what Chloe is doing.
I glance around. Winnie and Loriant have left. There is no one in sight.
“Don’t do this,” I say to Chloe. “Don’t even try this with me, okay? I don’t love the apes like you do. Do you even realize—” I pause. Try not to raise my voice. “Do you even know how much money we’re looking at? Do you even care that you’re stealing from the poachers by keeping gorillas here? They could kill you for this.”
I never realized that the habitat has this many apes. I wonder if Father knows.
Chloe shoots daggers with her stare. “If you ever,” she says, voice angry, “say anything like that to me again, I will kick you right out of here. I don’t care who you are. I swear to God, if you didn’t know where Raven was, I would make you leave this second. So don’t,” she continues, taking deep breaths, “ever bring revenue up again. Are we clear?”
Crystal.
I drop the bucket at her feet. “You feed them.”
I go to the other side of the gate—the one with the open door, no apes inside—and pick up a shovel. Never thought I would be so happy to clean. Anything to get me away from these animals that I was born to kill.
I shovel ape droppings into a big garbage can. I’m thankful for the manual labor. It’s hard work, such a big enclosure, and this is only half of it. Sweat drips down my shirt, down my back, all the way to my cargo shorts. The smell of manure is awful. I shovel more because it’s better than interacting with the gorillas or Chloe.
Four more days, I tell myself. That’ll make one week since my banishment.
Only four more days and then I will seek out Raven.
Chapter 9
Raven
“Tell me about your arm.”
I decide to go with short and precise. “I was attacked, mauled by an ape. I was sewn back up but left scarred.”
Mr. Tondjii stands next to me in the kitchen, watching me take generous helpings of meat, veggies, and soup. Clovis stands by my other side, seemingly unfazed, collecting food on his plate as well. As at every meal for the last three days, an assortment of items sits on the island, a buffet for everyone who lives here.
Tonight is the first night I’ve seen Mrs. Tondjii since the day I arrived. She’s by her husband’s side. I can’t help but notice that she’s not accepting Mr. Tondjii’s hand as he tries to place it in hers. She pushes his fingers away, a look of anger in her eyes. Her whisper sounds suspiciously like Don’t touch me. She’s also not reaching for a plate. Today she wears nothing elegant, just cotton pants and a shirt. Mr. Tondjii ignores her dismissal.
“Is that all?” he asks jovially.
Other poachers gather around the massive dining table, chattering in French. Except for the one who sits at the end of the table, watching us intently, seeming to always be wherever Mr. Tondjii is—his closest adviser.
“That’s all,” I say. Does he expect more?
“I think,” says Mr. Tondjii, “that you should join me in my study.”
I pause, my hand, which holds a roll, hovering in midair above my plate.
“We’d love to,” Clovis says with a smile.
Mr. Tondjii settles his gaze on Clovis. “My wife isn’t feeling well. Why don’t you keep her company while I eat with Raven.”
He’s not actually asking a question. And Clovis knows it.
“Of course,” Clovis says. He brushes a kiss against my temple, but I don’t look away from Mr. Tondjii.
“Follow me,” Mr. Tondjii says.
His adviser stands and walks closely behind us. I don’t like the idea of going anywhere with these two. But I ignore my nerves, because Mr. Tondjii is taking me to his study. His personal study. A glimpse of his private quarters.
How foolish of him.
How unbelievably careless.
Because if I know anything, it’s this: People hold their secrets close. Especially the dangerous ones.
So I’m wondering, desperately wondering, what in the world Mr. Tondjii is thinking right now, bringing me to a place that most likely will hand me clues. All this time I thought I’d have to find a way to his secrets, but he might be leading me to them. They’re probably not clearly in sight, maybe locked away in drawers, maybe in hidden corners, perhaps tucked where I wouldn’t suspect.
Or maybe, if he’s taking me to his study, the clues aren’t there. Would he bring me face-to-face with what I need to incriminate him?
If they aren’t in his study, then where would they be?
Mr. Tondjii stops at a door thick as the trunk of a tree, the wood ringed like a tree trunk too. He removes keys from his pocket. I watch the way his muscles move beneath the material of his cream button-down shirt. The way he leaves the sleeves long because he has plenty of fans and curtains, because his house is surrounded by trees and shade—no chance of being hot in here—because he can do that, though we’re in a jungle. His pants are starkly black and fit just right.
The moment the door is unlocked, he drops the keys back into his pocket and beckons me inside. I casually glance around, though I am dying to inspect every nook and cranny. I try to copy everything to memory. An orange couch with a honey-colored throw. Walls of bookcases, the most beautiful library. A large desk topped with a pen holder, a laptop, and a stack of papers. I’m jealous of the laptop. I want to know what it knows.
I take a seat across from Mr. Tondjii and set my bowl and side plate on his desk. His adviser stands in the corner of the room, arms crossed, watching us. I wonder if he is a bodyguard for Mr. Tondjii or if he’s just in on everything he does.
Mr. Tondjii must see me looking because he says, “Have you met Simon, Mattius and Clovis’s father?”
I try to hide my shock. This is the man Clovis spoke of.
“No,” I say. “Can’t say I have.”
Simon remains quiet, his stare scrutinizing me.
Mr. Tondjii waits for me to meet his eyes, then says, “Please, eat.”
I taste the soup first, thick with cream and some sort of root vegetable. I’m thankful for its heartiness. I’m so used to habitat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, quick food, rarely fresh-cooked meals.
Mr. Tondjii watches me eat. I act as if I don’t mind.
“Your arm,” he says. Reaches out a hand. “May
I?”
I don’t hesitate.
He takes my hand. Turns it over. Eyes where the scars stop, just above my wrist. I try not to be disgusted, try not to think about what his hands are capable of.
“Can you use it completely?”
I want to lie to him. I want to tell him that I see what he’s doing, forcing me to admit my weakness.
So I smile and give him the truth. “No.”
He nods. Lets my hand go. Looks at me as if I’ve just passed some sort of test. Mr. Tondjii asked a question that he already knew the answer to. And I didn’t lie to his face, didn’t pretend to be perfectly strong.
I continue eating my soup.
“What’s the real story with your attack?” he asks.
And I think I understand. Maybe I misjudged him earlier. Maybe he didn’t want to-the-point. It seems like what he actually wants is what I wasn’t prepared to give him yet.
The whole truth.
“I was in the forest alone,” I say between bites. “A silverback didn’t like the compass I was holding, so he attacked. Obviously not to kill, because here I am. The habitat workers found me. Took me to the hospital. It’s been months, and my arm still isn’t right. Chances are, it never will be.”
This is the most honest thing I’ve told him since I arrived.
He nods slowly. “I want to know more about you, Raven,” he says, eyes narrow. “I need to know who you are.”
His tone isn’t friendly.
I try for level ground. “You don’t like the idea of a habitat worker here, in your home. You don’t trust me. The feeling is mutual. You are not someone to be trusted, and I think you would agree. Especially for me—someone who didn’t grow up in this jungle, who wasn’t born into the tribe. But what you do need to know is that I am here for Clovis and I will do whatever he wants.”
Nothing I’ve said is a lie. Mr. Tondjii should sense at least that much from me.
He smiles. Mr. Tondjii actually smiles. In a way that is neither friendly nor menacing. Just open. Real.
“Observant” is his only response.
I eat the meat next. Flavors burst on my tongue. Spicy mostly, but also salty, making me wish I’d brought a drink. I sip the leftover soup to wash it down.
