by Lisa Harris
“It’s not the first time he’s received threats.” Meghan pressed her hands against her pounding temples. “Why would he hide it from me this time? Why would you lie—”
“I never lied to you. I just didn’t tell you the entire truth. I took this job to keep you safe.”
“You left out a huge chunk of the truth. The fact that you’re a Texas Ranger, for one. The fact that you’re here working for my father. The fact that there had been threats on my life. Don’t you think I deserved to know those things?”
“Your father asked me not to tell you. He thought he was protecting you…and your relationship.”
Meghan blew out sharp breath of air. “Because it always comes back to what is best for him, doesn’t it? Instead of just talking to me, he made the decision without even consulting me. Just like he always does.”
She knew she sounded selfish and she hated it. She’d never stopped loving her father, but there were things Alex didn’t know about their relationship.
“He just wanted you safe.”
“He wanted to deal with the problem without having to interact with me at all.”
Meghan shook her head. She knew her father. It had never been about her and her safety. Even as she thought that, the guilt surged. Maybe she wasn’t being completely fair. Her father worked hard to represent his country, but work came far before family. Opening up to her about his thoughts and feelings—or even talking to her more than a handful of times a year—never seemed to make it onto his agenda.
Nothing had changed. Not when she was fourteen and her mother left, causing every emotion in her father to simply shut down. Not now.
Her gaze shifted to Alex with his apologetic expression, suddenly feeling embarrassed. He’d come to Africa for one reason and one reason only. Any ridiculous romantic thoughts that had surfaced on her part had clearly been nothing more than a figment of her imagination.
“The story of your mother,” she began. “Is that true?”
“Yes. Everything I told you is true. She was raised in South Africa. I grew up on the family ranch back in Texas. I haven’t changed anything about who I am.”
Except for the reasons—those had changed, now that she knew the truth. All his attention and worrying over her was suddenly explained away into nothing more than a job. His questions, the reason he’d been out at night that time they’d laughed in the rain…his habit of always ensuring she was okay. She’d even noticed him making friends with the guards. It had nothing to do with him wanting to look after her because he cared for her. He’d just been doing his job. She shoved her plate toward the middle of the table. She’d have to deal with those feelings later.
“This video proves that they can get to me,” she said. “Which means they’re here.”
“That’s why I’m telling you. There is only so much I can do when you’re unaware of what’s at risk. I told your father you had to know.”
“I still don’t understand. Why hire you? What’s your connection with my father?”
“Our fathers are friends. Forty years ago they went up against rebel troops in Guatemala. Your father took a bullet for my father.”
“So my father convinced yours to have you become my bodyguard.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you agree?”
“My father’s health isn’t good—when he told me it would ease his mind if I’d do this favor for his friend, I was inclined to say yes. Besides, I’ve always wanted to visit my mother’s homeland again. It’s something that’s been gnawing at the back of my mind.”
She wanted to be mad at him, but he looked at her with those blue eyes that made her head spin. What right did she have to be angry? He’d just been doing his job. If she’d read something more into their interactions, then that was her fault, not his.
She stared out across the gardens and the lily pond, listening to the water tumbling over the rocks and trying to push away the implications. He wasn’t falling for her. Just like she wasn’t falling for him.
A bright red bee-eater with its black mask landed on the edge of the balcony for a moment. One of the children at another table ran toward it, scaring it away. It was vulnerable. She was vulnerable. This wasn’t just about poachers or her being accident-prone. This was her life hanging on the line, making her feeling completely out of control.
Which was what really scared her.
When she was out in the Jeep watching the wildlife, she knew the risks. Stay within the safety parameters and chances were she’d be fine. A lion’s behavior might not be predicable, but as long as she was careful, she felt relatively safe.
This situation was entirely different. Whoever these men were, they’d been inside her room. Proved she was vulnerable. Proved they could get to her whenever and however they wanted and there was nothing she could do.
They were here. And she had no idea who they were.
But she had no plans to live in fear. She couldn’t let them win.
“Why not just tell me what was going on from the beginning?” she asked.
“You’ll have to talk with your father about that. He told me he was afraid you’d resent him if you knew why I was here.”
“And that I’d send you on the next flight back to Texas?”
“I have a feeling you almost did.”
She chuckled, because he was right. All her doubts as to whether or not he could actually make a documentary hadn’t just been her imagination.
“I tried,” she said, “but my boss didn’t agree. My father clearly has connections.”
“And he can be very convincing.”
There were still so many things she wanted to know, but for now there was one thing she needed to know. “What exactly is at stake here? Clearly they were behind the attack on my chalet, but what else do you think they’ve done?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. At first I bought into the idea that the threats were just hot air and that your string of accidents were just a coincidence. Some of what happened could have been due to lack of repairs around the lodge or, like the missing camera, somehow related to the poaching. But this video is proof that it wasn’t a troop of baboons involved in trashing your room. And they sent the link straight to your father, so it must be connected to the threats he’s been receiving.”
The collapsing hide and even the Jeep she could explain away, but he was right. Someone had threatened her, that someone was here, and those threats were far from empty.
“Your father told me to tell you he loves you, Meghan. He wanted you to know that.”
She looked away, the unwanted emotions of her and her father’s relationship surfacing.
“Tell me about your father,” Alex pressed.
She frowned at his persistence. “My father’s career always came first. He lost my mother…”
She wasn’t going to cry.
“And now he’s afraid of losing you?” he asked.
“Maybe he already has. He’s never been good at showing emotion, even before my mother left. We rarely talk. Rarely see each other.” She struggled to put her feelings into words. “On some level I know he loves me, but…I don’t know. He’s never seemed to know how to show it. There was always something urgent, and I—I always felt like I was in the way.”
“I don’t know all the ins and outs of your relationship, but I know he loves you. He wouldn’t have sent me here if he didn’t.”
“Maybe.”
She wanted to believe him but wasn’t sure she could.
“I think you should leave here, Meghan. Not permanently, just until the election is over, which means you could be back in a week or so.”
She shook her head. “I can’t leave.”
“Why not? Put off the project temporarily and return with me to my father’s ranch in Texas. Or we could stay in this country if you’d prefer. My mother has some relatives near Cape Town. You’d be safe there. No one would be able to connect you to them.”
She understood his concerns, felt them her
self, but eight months of footage and research were at stake. “If I leave now, everything I’ve invested over the past year will be lost. Any day now, Kibibi will begin the process of introducing the cubs to the pride. I know it sounds petty, and maybe even foolish, but it’s important to me that I finish this project.”
“Is it worth losing your life over?”
“Even with the break-in, these are still simply threats, Alex. Nothing more. No one has tried to harm me.”
“What about the fallen hide and the brakes?”
“We can’t know for sure they are connected. Surely if someone wanted to kill me, they could have already done that by now. What would be the point? With me dead, they wouldn’t have any leverage. So they threaten. Make sure my father knows that they are there. Which simply means that, yes, I need to be careful, but I’m not ready to run.”
“I can’t protect you every moment.”
“I know.”
He sounded so worried that she had to remind herself that his protecting her wasn’t personal. This was just a job to him. Which stung. Because no matter what her heart wanted to deny, Alex had become her anchor in the storm. She shook off the thought. She had to focus on the problem at hand.
“Because of the poaching, security at the reserve is high,” she said. “It’s got to be safer than most places.”
“Even with all the extra security, they got into your room.”
“I can move in with Kate temporarily so at least I’m not alone. Besides that—” she shot him her most persuasive smile “—I’ve got a bodyguard who’s a Texas Ranger. Personally, I’d hate to be the one coming up against him in a dark alley.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Alex. This is important to me.”
He hesitated. “Fine, but as your bodyguard, I’m going to lay out a list of rules.”
She nodded. “Whatever you say.”
But she caught the doubt in his eyes and felt her resolve waver, hoping she’d made the right decision.
TWELVE
Meghan was still contemplating whether or not she’d made the right decision to stay as she parked in front of the hospital. Maybe Alex and her father were right. Maybe she should leave. Disappear until the elections were over. But running seemed like the coward’s way out. And she wasn’t ready to throw away almost a year’s worth of work because of a handful of threats. Being brave wasn’t really a part of the equation, but giving in would mean the bad guys had won and she’d lost.
Besides spelling out his list of rules, Alex had said little on the drive from the restaurant, making her wonder if he was regretting agreeing to let her to stay. But Oscar getting shot had nothing to do with her or her father. It had simply been a matter of him being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And while watching the video of her room being trashed had scared her, it didn’t mean that her life was in danger. At least, that was what she wanted to believe.
Alex had made his position clear, though, with his list of rules. One, she wasn’t to go anywhere alone. Two, every night she would stay with Kate with a hired night guard outside the chalet. Three, she wouldn’t go out filming without Samuel or another approved armed guard with her at all times.
She knew he was doing his job and not just being paranoid, but she’d yet to wrap her mind around the fact that her “gofer” had just become her bodyguard. Or rather, that he’d been her bodyguard all along without her knowing. She glanced at his profile, wishing Mr. Cowboy—or should she say Mr. Texas Ranger?—didn’t cause her heart to stay in such a constant state of flux.
Meghan grabbed the potted yellow orchid she’d picked up at the local florist’s in town and headed into the hospital with Alex. Once inside, they found the room Oscar was sharing with three other patients, glad to see him awake. The latest report from the doctor was that while Oscar was finally out of the woods, a complete recovery was going to take several weeks.
She set the plant on the small table beside Oscar. “How are you feeling?”
“I am in some pain, but I know I’m lucky to be alive.” Oscar looked at Alex. “They told me you saved my life.”
Alex shook his head. “I’d call it teamwork. Samuel drove us here, Meghan arranged the medical care, and God looked out for us along the way.”
Meghan nudged Alex with her elbow. “It also helped that Alex is actually a Texas Ranger from the Lone Star state. Something I just found out today.”
Oscar smiled. “Like Chuck Norris?”
So even Oscar had heard of Chuck Norris’s famed TV show from the nineties.
“Just like Chuck Norris,” Meghan said.
Alex groaned at her response, but she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily.
“Something like that,” he said. “Though I’m not nearly as famous.”
“You will be famous now.” Oscar’s grin broadened. “You saved my life. My family will be here soon. They will want to thank you.”
“We’re just glad you’re going to make it,” Alex said.
Tears pooled in the man’s eyes. “Last night I believed I would never see my family again.”
“We wanted to come see how you were doing, but there’s also another reason we’re here.” Meghan pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down. “I know you’ve already spoken to the police, but Alex would like to ask you some more questions about the shooting.”
Oscar shifted gingerly in the bed, careful not to pull on the IV connected to his arm. “The police must find whoever did this, but I don’t know anything.”
“For now, just go over what happened again with us,” Alex said. “How much do you remember of last night?”
“Only small things.”
“Let’s start slowly, then.” Alex grabbed a second plastic chair and sat down beside Meghan. “Last night, after we pulled you into the Jeep, you kept saying that someone was after you. We want to figure out who was out there and who shot you.”
Oscar’s smile faded. “I had gone out on night patrol with three other guards. We split up into pairs so we could cover more territory. It is our job to check the perimeter, ensure the safety of the rhinos and watch for any signs of poachers.”
“And last night?”
“We saw one of the fence lines had been cut. When I rang Ian, he told us that one of the rhinos hadn’t moved in four hours so he wanted us to go check on it.”
“Did you find the rhino?”
“Yes. Thankfully, it was sleeping and seemed fine.”
“What happened next?”
“We were headed back out on patrol to check on a second rhino when we heard another vehicle. One of the security teams had been having trouble with their radios so we thought it could be them, but with all that is happening, we follow up on everything.”
Meghan caught the grimace in his expression. “Are you hurting?”
“The medicine is wearing off.”
“Do you want me to get the nurse?” Meghan asked.
He shook his head. “They’ll be in soon with more.”
“So did you go off on your own?” Alex asked.
Oscar nodded. “The brush was too thick to drive through at that point so I left my partner with the truck. I didn’t plan to go far. Just far enough to see who was there. I was careful, as rangers have been shot, mistaken for poachers, in the past. We always identify ourselves and keep track of the security teams as well as who is out on the game drives for the evening.”
“But it wasn’t one of the security teams you found out there.”
Oscar shook his head. “It was three men carrying rifles, but there wasn’t enough moonlight for me to catch more than glimpses of their faces.”
“And they saw you?” Meghan asked.
Oscar nodded. “And shot at me, but at first, they missed. I ran, but in the confusion, I ran the wrong direction, away from my partner.”
“What did you do next?” Meghan asked.
“I stopped for a moment, knowing I had to figure out where I was. Knowi
ng I needed to get to the lodge. Then I saw your vehicle. I knew the men chasing me were still behind me and that my only chance was to make it to your vehicle.”
Which was when he’d been shot, once he’d left the protection of the bush for the open road.
“There is one other thing I’ve been thinking about since the police left.” Oscar tugged on the bedsheet covering him. “I might be wrong, but…”
Alex leaned forward. “Sometimes it’s the smallest detail that ends up turning a case around.”
The ranger nodded. “I worked in Zambia for many years, where there was a problem with poaching elephants. It was a challenge for us then, but things are different today.”
“In what way?” Alex asked.
“Poachers used to go in, shoot the elephant and steal the tusk with little risk of being caught. But today, the risk is much greater.”
“Because of all the security in place?” Meghan asked.
“Yes. In our reserve alone, we have GPS trackers, armed rangers and security guards, with plans of implementing dog handlers, thermal-vision goggles and tracking chips. But in a number of killings, it’s being reported that these security measures can be used to kill the rhinos instead of protecting them.”
Meghan shook her head. “How?”
“Take the two rhinos who were killed on our property, for example. No matter what we do, the poachers always seem to be one step ahead.”
“Which points to the possibility that someone on the inside is feeding the poachers information,” Alex said.
“Exactly. To find a rhino without inside information would be almost impossible, but they can pay a ranger three or four thousand dollars to use a cell phone to alert a poacher to an unguarded rhino or simply look the other way. It makes their job a whole lot easier.”
“Do you have a name? Anyone who you suspect could be passing on this information?”
Oscar’s gaze dropped. “It’s only a feeling. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“Who do you think it is, Oscar?”
“His name is Dominick. He’s one of the rangers, but he is not always where he is supposed to be. I could be wrong, but he buys things none of us can afford.”
