“I can hear them from where I am,” she said; she wasn’t leaving that bathroom.
“Janet,” he pleaded. He was so damned persuasive. Such a sexy voice—all golden peaches and heavy cream.
“Whatever talking you want to do, you should have done a long time ago,” she said. “We’ve gone beyond the talking stage. I can’t trust you. That’s what it boils down to. That’s why I’m not opening the door until you’re gone.” She didn’t trust herself, either. She was vulnerable and had been all along. He would mutter some lie about how it wasn’t lust that brought him back to her, and she would convert to putty in his hands at just that suggestion of love.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I am.” She needed Craig right now, not unfelt apologies. “I’ve been thinking of you all the way from Johannesburg,” he said, “and suddenly there you were. I wanted to say, ‘Janet, let’s sit down and talk,’ but you looked too damned beautiful to resist. I couldn’t help myself. You weren’t beating me off, either,” he reminded after a pause. He wanted to shift the blame onto her. It wasn’t the first time he had insinuated she was a tease.
“Get out, Christopher!”
“You can’t stay locked in there for the duration,” he said. She was lucky he wasn’t breaking down the door, no doubt. That would have been more in keeping with his caveman style.
“I have no intention of staying locked up in here much longer,” she informed him. “I have every intention of coming out when you leave, and/or when Craig arrives. He’ll be here any minute.”
“I’m not leaving Great Zimbabwe until we have our talk, Janet,” he said grimly. “I haven’t run all of this way like a lovesick calf to leave things unsaid.”
“Don’t you dare mention love!” It was what she had expected from him. He was pulling out all the stops, sinking to new depths. At least in Johannesburg he had been honest enough to admit he wasn’t capable of love. But no. All he had admitted was that he didn’t fall in love at first sight, or in two days’ time. The third day was some kind of charm, was it? “The only one you love is Christopher Van Hoon,” she said angrily. It was sad but true. “I will not be fooled by anything you have to say!”
He was laughing at her. She had given way in his arms once too often to be believable. She cursed her weakness. She cursed childhood memories that contributed to that weakness. She cursed the fantasies of Christopher that had made her life bearable for so many years and now made it a living hell.
“If you’re so sure of yourself, why are you afraid to hear me out?” he asked. He was good with words. He was good at playing with emotions. She was dealing with a pro—out of her league. Damn it, she should be capable of holding her own.
“I’m not afraid to hear you,” she said. She was furious. “I’m afraid of you. You’re ten times stronger than I am, you know.”
“Come on, Janet,” he said. “Don’t be so dramatic. All I’m asking is that you listen to me.”
“You expect me to believe that?” she demanded sarcastically. He didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. Christopher was irresistible. He was the Greek god every woman dreamed would descend from Mount Olympus to take her in his arms and into bed. He was good-looking, physically superb, powerful, and wealthy—each factor alone a potent aphrodisiac. Together, they were an elixir no woman could resist. Until now. “I’m saying no, damn it!” she said. “No, no, no! Accept it! I have more important things to do with my life than fight off a lecherous egotistical child.”
“We’ll talk when you’re less hysterical.” His patronizing attitude made her livid. “It won’t be a conversation through a closed door, either,” he promised. His footsteps faded as he made his way to the outside door that opened and closed.
“I promise you it won’t be in any bed!” she screamed. She was shaking. She needed to get control of herself. She shouldn’t let him affect her this way. She shouldn’t have gone to Lionspride. What a mistake that had been!
She looked in the mirror over the sink. She didn’t like what she saw. Her hair was mussed, her lipstick smeared. Her blouse was open, her breasts tingling from the horror she had endured in the other room. She resented how much she had reveled in it.
Re-buttoning her blouse, she tucked it into her skirt. A tissue removed her smeared lipstick. She combed her hair. She looked too good after such a trauma.
There was a distant knock. Thank God. Craig! At the bathroom door, she paused without opening it. Christopher hadn’t left. He was waiting beyond the barrier. It wasn’t Craig knocking. It was Christopher, trying to trick her.
“Janet?” Muffled through two doors and the length of the room, the voice sounded as though it could be anyone’s. The outside door opened. “Janet?” It was Craig.
She came out, checking to make sure Christopher was gone. She smiled a warm welcome. Christopher wouldn’t try anything stupid with Craig there. Craig was a match for him.
“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized. She was sorry, too. “I thought you may have given up on me and gone for some fresh air and sunshine. Ready?”
She was as ready as she would ever be, and delighted to feel safe. She hooked her arm through his gratefully as they walked toward the parking area, the afternoon sunshine bright and hot. Its heat might explain the flush that gave Janet’s skin its special glow, but she knew better. Her blood was rushing furiously through her as a result of her latest encounter with Christopher.
“They found five more dead elephants yesterday,” Craig said. “Dr. Nhari and his team stumbled across them.”
“It’s all so horrible!” Janet exclaimed. Concentrating on the plight of the Great Zimbabwe elephants could take her mind off Christopher, she thought. But she was wrong.
Christopher was waiting in the Land Rover. Janet stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him. “Hello, Janet!” he called, waving.
“You know each other?” Craig asked curiously. The answer was obvious. What else did her expression tell him?
“Unfortunately yes,” Janet said. She tried not to sound bitter. Craig would ask too many questions.
“He wanted to come along. If you’d rather he didn’t.…”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. Christopher should see those dead elephants. It would shake him out of his lethargy as far as wildlife preservation was concerned. “I was surprised to see him, that’s all.” She tightened her hold on Craig’s arm. Christopher had better watch his step. She wasn’t undefended any longer, and he had more than tried her patience for one day. “I interviewed him in Johannesburg. His family has a huge ivory collection.”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” Craig said. He spoke with the right degree of disgust. His family was concerned with saving animals, not killing them and tacking their heads on trophy boards.
“Janet, what a surprise!” Christopher greeted her. No one would have known they had parted only minutes before under less than congenial circumstances. “A pleasant one, however,” he added quickly. He could save his gentlemanly claptrap. He was no gentleman, and she knew it.
“The surprise is mine,” she assured him. “You didn’t mention you were coming to Great Zimbabwe.”
“Didn’t I?” He was all innocence.
“Definitely you did not!” she said icily.
“Odd. It was a well-thought-out decision,” he said, a wide grin making his handsome face even more appealing. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Fat chance of that!
“Is it all right if I sit in front with you, Craig?” she asked sweetly. “I’m sure Mr. Van Hoon wouldn’t mind getting in back.”
“The front seat it is!” Craig obliged. Christopher got in the back without protest.
Two more Land Rovers arrived, filled with armed soldiers. In the lead, Craig took a dirt road for a couple of miles before veering into the bush. Janet moved closer to him. She was isolating herself from Christopher as best she could. Forgetting he was there was impossible.
They disturbed a herd of zebras that spurted into a wild
gallop before deciding the Land Rovers were no direct threats. There were wildebeests among the herd. The two species were often found together. Wildebeests ate the leafy parts of young grass that were more difficult to digest than the young shoots preferred by zebras. The wildebeest was a survivor. It managed to proliferate against all odds. Possibly it was left alone because it was so ugly, and ugliness was never in demand. Its tail and hindquarters were horse-like, its shoulders those of an American bison, its head an ungainly appendage that was long, flat, bearded and horned. When it ran, it was far from graceful, its bucking gait awkward beside the smoother movements of the zebra.
The caravan flushed out two ostriches, which ran beside the Land Rovers for a mile before peeling off. The male bird was over nine feet tall and must have weighed close to three hundred pounds.
“They were clocking over thirty,” Craig informed her as the flightless birds disappeared among the distant trees. The Land Rovers weren’t always that fast over the rough terrain. Janet’s spine ached from continual jarring.
She searched the sky for circling birds but didn’t see any. Distances were deceptive in Africa where ground travel seldom went in a straight line. The route snaked around clumps of underbrush and trees, detoured around dry gullies and rugged outcrops. Craig knew where he was going. Janet was lost in the maze, but it couldn’t be much farther. The sun was dropping toward the horizon, and they probably wouldn’t stay out after nightfall.
Janet was daydreaming about the luxury of the shower-tub combination waiting for her in her hotel room when the Land Rover came to an abrupt stop. Janet was strapped in with a seatbelt and shoulder harness, but Craig’s arm automatically extended in front of her as a further safety precaution.
“Melissa and Suzy,” Craig said. His index finger was at his pursed lips, signaling for silence. Janet didn’t understand at first. But when she spotted the rhinos, she wondered how she had missed them. The one was as big as a Sherman tank. It wasn’t just the size of Melissa that made her unique, although two tons of animal, standing six feet at the shoulders, was impressive enough. It was the size of her horns. There were two, one behind the other on her snout. The first was three feet high, the other almost as large. “Take a good look,” Craig said, “You don’t see horns like that very often, certainly not around here. Melissa might as well carry a sign saying, ‘Shoot me!’”
In the Far East, it was believed powdered rhino horn restored sexual potency, Janet knew. That superstition had played a big part in bringing Asian rhinos to the brink of extinction. African rhinos were seriously threatened; their horns used more and more to fill the Asian demand. “We try to keep a close watch on her, especially now that she has Suzy,” Craig said, “but a twenty-four-hour guard in the wild is impossible. And with rhino horns bringing in twice their weight in gold on the black market.…” He shrugged in helplessness.
Suzy’s horns weren’t nearly as impressive as those of her mother. They were small nubs that hardly seemed attractions for poachers—except that anyone who shot Melissa might decide the smaller horns of her daughter were frosting on the cake. Janet shuddered in disgust. Once there had been thousands of rhinos in the area, some with horns that dwarfed those of Melissa. A pair of rhinos in Masai Amboseli, a famous reserve in Kenya, were of record length. Tourists had flocked to see them. Both animals were killed by poachers, their popularity more an invitation to slaughter than an assurance of protection.
When her father had been the director of the Seattle Zoo, one of the black rhinos had died during difficult labor. A team, of which a far younger Janet was a part, worked around the clock to save the calf. Despite their efforts, the animal died. That childhood sadness made Janet particularly sensitive to Craig’s pessimism for the survival of this calf. Living under normal conditions was hard enough for these animals without their worrying about two-legged killers sneaking up on them in the bush.
“Funny what people pay good money for,” Craig said, shaking his head in disbelief. The horns were similar to animal hooves and human fingernails in texture. Nothing scientific verified the substance as being the least aphrodisiacal, but superstition died hard… like memories. All the rhinos would be dead before the last man stopped believing his virility could be restored by swallowing what was knocked off the snout of a dead animal and ground to fine powder.
Melissa and Suzy were white rhinos, although both white and black rhinos were actually the same dirty gray. The whites were merely bigger with wide mouths. Blacks had lips that were narrow and pointed. Both had bad vision and were known to charge trees, termite mounds and an occasional Land Rover. Meeting the charge of a two-ton animal could do a good deal of damage to a vehicle. To avoid frightening mother and daughter, Craig put the Land Rover in low gear. Melissa and Suzy watched nervously, seeing a disturbing blur as the caravan moved slowly by them.
“Mr. Van Hoon has several rhino trophies with horns bigger than Melissa’s,” Janet said when they were out of attack range. “Don’t you, Mr. Van Hoon?” She cast an accusing glance in his direction.
His gaze greeted hers without flinching. “Yes,” he admitted without pause. “Killed, I might add, when the species was more abundant than it is today. Or doesn’t such a small fact matter? I’ve never heard of a Van Hoon shooting one animal after it was added to the endangered species list. Maybe you know something I don’t? Maybe I kill them while sleepwalking. Do I, Janet?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t think of a reply. He was right. She was blaming him for animals killed in his father’s and grandfather’s time, a time when most animals were so abundant that few hunters thought there could ever be an end to them. She had no proof Christopher had gone off on any recent big-game hunts—with or without a gun. He was too busy with Van Hoon Afrikaner Minerals to be bothered—one way or another.
Craig gave her a sympathetic smile. It embarrassed Janet that he knew Christopher could get the best of her. She must reason things out more carefully before saying them. She needed to get her facts down pat. Around Christopher, it was her unreliable emotions that controlled whatever she said or did.
She concentrated on getting comfortable but was unsuccessful. Besides the bumpiness of the ride, thoughts of Melissa’s and Suzy’s dismal future disturbed her, not to mention the grisly sight awaiting them by the waterhole. Christopher’s disrupting presence in the back seat didn’t help matters.
“We’re close, aren’t we?” she said. She didn’t see the circling birds but knew it couldn’t be long before they reached the ugly scene. For a moment she was sorry, very sorry, she had decided to return. Yet it was her job to understand exactly what was happening to the animals she was so determined to save. She pulled herself together. She was a professional, and it wouldn’t look good to act like anything less.
“The waterhole is through there,” Craig said, pointing straight ahead. The Land Rovers entered a cluster of flat-topped acacias. With umbrella branches, the trees rose to forty feet on all sides, displaying thorns often three inches long.
As if on cue, the birds became visible through a break in the leafy canopy of branches. Silently the aerial deathwatch progressed. Large-winged vultures hovered on warm air currents until satiated diners below made room for them.
“You okay?” Craig asked Janet.
“I’m fine,” she said. She appreciated his concern. She resented her obvious squeamishness.
The Land Rovers broke into the clearing that separated the cluster of surrounding trees from the water. Their emergence was a catalyst. Startled vultures rose like swarms of giant flies. Some took full flight. Others resettled immediately, reluctant to leave what wasn’t finished. The nakedness of their heads and necks, easily exposed to the cleansing rays of the hot sun, was nature’s hygienic protection from the bacteria rampant within carrion. They were grotesque as they eyed the approaching vehicles. Their flapping wings stirred the smell of death, making that sickening perfume more distinctive.
Hyenas with sloping backs and bare faces, al
so feeding off the carnage, were spooked. But they retreated only as far as the tree line. Like the birds, they were reluctant to leave their meal. Their stares were malevolent. Two of them harmonized exceedingly dismal and melancholy notes of protest. Their crackling affected “laughs” were indescribably wild, sending shivers up Janet’s spine. Her skin went rough with goose bumps. Even the usually nocturnal jackals were out, made skittish by the interruption; small coyote-like carnivores, they stood about a foot and a half at their shoulders and weighed about twenty pounds each. Their attractive gold color was incongruous in a setting worthy of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.
Craig drove the Land Rover upwind and parked it. “This won’t take long,” he said encouragingly. Soldiers spilled out of the other Land Rovers. They knew what to do; they had been this route before.
“Here, this might help if the wind turns,” Christopher said. Janet was startled to realize he was still in the Land Rover with her. She took his offered handkerchief. It was blessedly scented with the same lime-based fragrance she associated with him, and she put the handkerchief over her nose. She didn’t wait for a further assault of the far less pleasant aroma riding the warm air.
More birds scattered. The interruption of their feeding wasn’t as temporary as they had hoped. A soldier shot off a quick round of ammunition that sent even the most reluctant bird skyward. Jackals and hyenas disappeared among the trees.
“Well, I must admit this is grisly,” Christopher observed behind her. Janet was too busy combating nausea to bask in the victory of hearing his admission.
After what seemed an eternity, Craig returned. “They used machine guns,” he said “They waited in hiding and picked them off en masse when the herd came in for water. They had a truck ready to transport the ivory.”
“Surprisingly close to your main camp, isn’t it?” Christopher asked. Janet wasn’t feeling well enough to say anything.
“No one said they weren’t brazen bastards,” Craig observed. “They timed it to perfection, knowing my teams were on the other side of the reserve at the time.”
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