by Lisa Harris
“I might have to watch my job.” Samuel laughed. “You know as much as I do about these animals.”
“I’d say you’re safe, Samuel. You’ve got me beat by a long shot when it comes to tracking and actually finding the animals. In the end, that’s what counts.”
The tracker beeped on the seat between them. Meghan picked it up. “Kibibi seems to be moving. We need to head slightly more west, Samuel.”
An eerie screech sounded behind them as they started moving again.
Alex looked behind him, but all he could see was blackness. “What was that?”
“Probably a baboon. They’re known to scream when they don’t get their way.”
Something crashed through the bushes, then jumped onto the back of the Jeep. This time the scream was definitely human.
Alex shone his flashlight at the figure scrambling to get into the back of the Jeep. It was one of the guards. “Oscar?”
“They’re after me! Please. Help me.”
Gunfire ripped through the darkness, and a bullet hit the back of the Jeep.
“They’ve got weapons,” Meghan shouted. “Hang on tight, Oscar. Samuel, get us out of here.”
Samuel pressed the accelerator, and the Jeep roared down the trail. Brush whipped against the side of the truck as Oscar clung to the back of the Jeep. They might not be able to see who was behind them, but hopefully, they could outrun them.
Instinct took over as Alex handed his camera to Meghan. “I want you to get down and stay here. Turn off your flashlight. If they can’t see us, they’ll have a harder time hitting us.”
He climbed over the seat, careful to keep his head low. He might feel out of place working on a documentary, but facing an emergency head-on was how he was wired.
A second shot pinged off the back of the Jeep, then a third shot was fired. It sounded louder. Closer. Whoever was back there was gaining on them.
Alex gripped the metal side bar, trying to keep his balance as Samuel negotiated the rough terrain from the driver’s seat. Grabbing one of Oscar’s hands, Alex braced himself and attempted to pull him into the Jeep. Oscar lost his footing and slipped. Alex lunged for the man’s shoulder, gripped his jacket and managed to drag him into the Jeep.
Oscar fell against the backseat, still gripping Alex’s hand. “I think…I think I’ve been shot.”
“Alex?” Meghan’s voice was edged in panic.
“Hand me your flashlight and tell Samuel we need to get to the hospital as fast as possible.”
He took the flashlight from her and, keeping the light beam low, searched for the wound. Blood soaked through his side. Oscar dropped his head back and groaned. Alex grabbed a blanket from the floorboard and pressed it against the wound. The Jeep bounced, forcing him to lose his grip.
Alex pressed harder. He wasn’t sure how they were going to deal with whoever was chasing them, but from what he could see, if they didn’t get Oscar to a hospital immediately they were going to lose him. Oscar cried out in pain, his eyes rolling back. Alex needed to keep him talking and awake.
“Tell me what happened out there, Oscar.”
“They’re going to kill me.”
“Not if I have anything to say about.” Alex checked the man’s pulse. His heart was racing. “Who are they?”
“Poachers. They…they were carrying rifles.”
“Did you see a rhino down?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t already got to one of them.”
Which meant that it might already be too late for the poachers’ intended prey. But it didn’t have to be too late for Oscar.
A bush smacked Alex in the face as Samuel headed for the reserve’s front gate. Another shot rang out, sounding even closer than the last one. Someone else getting shot wasn’t the only danger. With limited visibility it would be easy to badly damage the Jeep, leaving them out in the darkness with no way to get back to the lodge.
“What were you doing out there?”
“I…I was out making my rounds. They…they saw me and shot at me. I yelled and started running. I stumbled through the dark until I…until I saw your Jeep.”
It sounded as if the poachers were trying to eliminate a witness.
There might not be an immediate connection to Meghan, but he still needed to know what they were up against.
“Could you identify them?’
The man was going into shock.
Alex shook him gently. “Oscar, could you identify them?”
He opened his eyes. “It was too dark to see them.”
He knew that poachers had no qualms butchering the rhino, and often no qualms killing anyone who got in their way, either. Being the ambassador’s daughter wasn’t the only threat to Meghan’s life at the moment.
Another shot ripped through the night, hitting the back of the Jeep.
“How far are we from the front gate?”
Megan turned around, still crouched low. They were surrounded by bush and few visible landmarks. “I don’t know. Samuel…how far to the gate?”
“Five minutes.” Samuel shifted the Jeep into a higher gear. “Another fifteen to the hospital if we hurry.”
The moon peeked out from behind a string of gray clouds shedding narrow beams of light against the unpaved road. Blood was beginning to seep through the blanket. Alex pressed harder against the wound and started praying.
*
Meghan held up her phone in the hospital waiting room to check that she hadn’t missed a call. Forty-five minutes ago, they’d arrived at the small rural hospital that served the surrounding towns and watched as Dr. Archer and a handful of medical personnel rushed Oscar toward the operating room.
Meghan stopped beside the window of the waiting room, quiet after a busy day of patients seeking treatment for everything from malaria to tuberculosis to HIV. At this late hour, the only other people in the waiting room, its walls covered in chipping blue paint, was an old man and couple with a child. The medical team hadn’t told them what Oscar’s chances of making it through surgery were, but Meghan hadn’t missed the serious expressions on their faces as they’d whisked him away.
She turned to Alex, frustrated. “I left a message for Ian, but can’t get him to pick up.”
“Do you want to go into town and get something to eat while we wait?” Alex stood up from the cracked plastic chair he’d been dozing in and stretched his back. “I hear there’s a pizza place that stays open late.”
“I don’t think I could eat anything.” Poachers were back, a man had been shot and a rhino was possibly down. They’d planned to eat a late dinner after filming, but at the moment, eating wasn’t exactly on the top of her to-do list.
“Maybe not.” Alex glanced at the floor. “But pacing like this is only going to wear a hole in the tiles and there isn’t anything we can do until Oscar gets out of surgery.”
“I know, but—” Meghan’s phone rang. Finally. “Ian?”
“I got your message about Oscar. How is he?”
“He’s in surgery, so we don’t know much yet, but it’s serious. The bullet slammed through his side. The doctor said they wouldn’t know what kind of damage had been done until they opened him up.”
“You did the right thing taking him straight to the hospital.”
“Dr. Archer said it was a decision that might have saved his life.”
“Listen, I’m planning to come into town as soon as I can, but I’m waiting for the final reports on the rhinos.”
“I understand.” Finding another butchered animal would be a blow to the reserve that would be made even worse if Oscar died on the operating table. “There isn’t anything you can do here right now, anyway. How many rhinos have you located?”
“So far all but two of the rhinos have been accounted for, but they found a cut in the fence where the poachers came in. We’ll have to check again once it is daylight to see if it was the only one.”
A moment later, Meghan hung up the phone, wondering if she should take Alex up
on his offer of dinner. Samuel had gone to visit a friend in one of the wards, Ian wouldn’t be here for a while and, in the meantime, Alex was right. There wasn’t anything either of them could do but wait.
Meghan was about to say as much when the doctor walked into the room. She tried to read his tired expression, praying he had good news.
“How’s Oscar?”
The doctor dropped his hands into the pockets of his scrubs. “The surgery went faster than we expected, but the bullet did a lot of damage, and he’s still in critical condition. In fact, the only reason he is still alive is because you were able to slow the initial bleeding and get him here as fast as you did.”
Meghan’s hands clenched at her sides. Losing Oscar would be yet another senseless death. “Can we see him?”
The doctor shook his head, fatigue clear in the shadows beneath his eyes. “Not until tomorrow. We’ll watch him closely during the night but know that, at this point, the odds are very low that he’ll live.”
NINE
Two police officers met them back at the lodge for questioning, looking to gain new information about the poachers. An hour after that, Alex stood beside Meghan in the lodge kitchen, heating water for the rooibos tea he remembered his mother drinking, hoping it would calm both their nerves. They’d missed dinner hours ago but, like Meghan, he wasn’t particularly hungry.
The electric kettle clicked off, and he poured the hot water into the two mugs, then handed Meghan the pink polka-dot one. Her hands shook as she tried to take it from him.
“Whoa.” He set the mug back down on the counter. “You okay?”
She looked up at him, her lashes laced with tears. “Yeah.”
“No, you’re not.” He grasped her hands, which were trembling. “It’s okay to be upset. Today was traumatic.”
“I know.” Meghan let him hold them for a moment before pulling away. “I can’t stop shaking, and unfortunately it’s not from the cold.”
She dropped a tea bag into each of their mugs.
“Milk and sugar?” she asked.
She was changing the subject, but he didn’t blame her. She grabbed a canister from one of the shelves, clearly working hard to pull herself together.
“Have you ever eaten a rusk?”
He eyed the hard, rectangular-shaped biscuit. “I don’t think so.”
“Think biscotti with a South African twist. You dip them in your tea. I like them so much I’ve seriously thought about taking a suitcase full back to the States with me when this project is over.”
He laughed with her, knowing she was searching for a way to cope. And wishing he could whisk her away somewhere safe where there were no poachers and no threats against her life.
Ian walked in from the dining room. Lines of fatigue were etched across his forehead. They weren’t the only ones feeling the stress of today. “I know the two of you missed dinner. There’s some homemade butternut soup and roasted chicken I can warm up if either of you are hungry, along with a couple slices of milk tart.”
Meghan dipped a rusk into her tea. “This is all I want. Well…this and a good night’s sleep.”
Alex leaned against the counter and took a sip of his tea. He didn’t want to sound like an interrogator, but he needed answers. “What did you find out there tonight?”
Ian helped himself to a slice of the cinnamon-dusted tart. “One of the rhinos had been darted in his side, but thankfully, Oscar’s security team scared off the poachers before they were able to kill him or saw off the horn.”
“What about Oscar’s family?” Meghan asked. “Were you able to get ahold of them?”
Ian nodded. “I spoke to his wife. She’s been visiting her mother for the week and will return tomorrow.”
Alex nodded, praying that Oscar would make it through the night to see his wife and daughter tomorrow.
Ian rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m frustrated because we’re not doing enough to stop them. Frustrated because one of my men was wounded—possibly fatally—tonight. Losing an animal is devastating, but to lose one of my men…”
“How do you stop them with the demand—and high-profit margins—continuing to fuel the traffickers?” Meghan asked.
“You can’t. Which puts no end to this battle anytime soon.” Ian turned to Meghan. “What about you? How are you doing?”
She shrugged a shoulder and took another sip of tea. “What you said is right. Seeing the rhinos affected by men’s greed is difficult. But seeing a man shot over a rhino horn… It’s hard to comprehend how something like that could happen.”
“It is hard to understand,” Alex said.
Meghan drank the rest of her tea, then washed the mug in the dish in the sink, fatigue clear in her eyes. “I’ll see you both tomorrow. I’m going to check in on Kate to make sure she’s okay, then crash.”
“If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll walk with you as soon as I finish this last piece of milk tart.” Alex still wasn’t particularly hungry, but the tart was calling his name.
He tried to keep his voice even as he spoke so it didn’t sound as though he was worried, but from the look on her face, he hadn’t succeeded.
“Tonight scared me, Alex, but nothing’s going to happen to me on the way to my chalet. Whoever was behind tonight’s shooting is long gone.”
“Maybe, but those three armed men were willing to not only butcher the rhino but to shoot anyone who got in their way.”
“Security is tight,” she argued, “and I’m not the one they’re after.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean—”
“I’ll be fine, Alex.” She zipped up the front of her jacket. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”
He watched her walk out the kitchen door. Tonight had stretched both of their nerves, but she was still his responsibility.
“I really don’t think you have anything to worry about, Alex,” Ian said once Meghan had disappeared from view. “Meghan’s careful and, as she said, security’s tighter than it’s ever been.”
“I know. It’s just that…” Alex took a bite of the tart but could hardly taste it. It was his job to keep her safe, but somewhere over the past few days her safety had become personal to him. Too personal.
“When are you going to tell her why you’re really here?” Ian asked.
Alex dropped the fork onto his plate. He’d asked himself the same question a dozen times over the past week. He didn’t want to put her life in jeopardy by not making her fully aware of the danger she was in any more than he wanted to be responsible for sabotaging her relationship with her father.
“I’m trying to find a balance of following her father’s request and doing my job to keep her safe.”
“How many more days until the election is over?”
“One week.”
“I’ve doubled the number of guards, which means staying here is probably about as safe as you can get.”
“You’re probably right.” He glanced toward the door.
“Why don’t you just go after her? You’ll worry all night, until you’re certain she’s made it to her chalet safely.”
It was irrational to worry—he knew that Ian was right about the lodge being the safest place for Meghan, especially in the hours after an attack when the poachers would be keeping their distance to avoid detection. But irrational or not, he couldn’t stop himself from worrying.
He’d been determined not to let this job affect him emotionally. Determined to keep his heart buried and safe. Meghan might be smart, pretty, funny…but none of those were reasons to get his heart involved. He’d done that once before and lost.
She’d died in his arms.
He had no intention of losing someone else on his watch. Or losing his heart again. All he needed to do was ensure her safety for the next seven days, then finish his contract while she finished up the project. Then he’d go visit his grandparents’ farm and forget about the girl with the dark brown eyes and straw-colored hair that was trying to weave her way
into his life without even knowing it.
“So you don’t think I’m being paranoid?”
“Normally, I’d say yes. But tonight, one of my men was shot. One of my prize rhinos was almost killed, and the men behind it got away. Paranoid doesn’t seem to factor into the equation right now. We’re all going to have to be careful.”
*
Meghan tried to shake off the terror that had moved down her spine and settled in her belly. Her hands were still trembling. Her breathing was still shallow. Poachers had already struck twice and now it had happened again. Except this time, she’d somehow stepped into the line of fire just by being in that Jeep. But even that reality seemed to pale beside knowing Oscar might not make it through the night.
And Alex’s constant worrying didn’t help. Somehow, he was convinced she wasn’t safe, which only ended up adding to her fear. She shouldn’t have walked out on him, but the combination of fatigue and out-of-control emotions meant she didn’t have the energy to deal with his concerns. So she’d managed to convince herself—and him—that she was fine. Tried to convince him that what had happened tonight hadn’t completely terrified her. That she could walk back to her chalet and no boogeyman was going to jump out of the bush and take her off into the night.
The only problem was, she was jumping at her own shadow.
If she believed she had no reason to be afraid, why was her heart racing and her palms sweating as if she’d just run a marathon?
Do not fear, for I am with you.
She hurried down the path toward her chalet, thankful Kate was finally feeling better, repeating the verse from Isaiah. Giving in to fear wasn’t the answer. She knew that. But she wasn’t sure she knew how to let go and trust.
I don’t know how to do this, God.
No matter what had happened over the past couple weeks, what transpired tonight couldn’t be ignored. The poachers might not be after her, but it showed how easy it could be to simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Meghan, wait!”
She stopped outside her chalet at the sound of Alex’s voice. Part of her had expected him to come after her…had even wanted him to come after.
