He took a deep breath, and turned his face to the sunlight.
There was a flash of red on the chair by the window, and he focused on it. Claire’s diary. He had, perhaps intentionally, forgotten about it. He picked up the book, fingering the leather binding thoughtfully.
The phone rang again, and he dropped the book back onto the chair. “Yes?”
Again, silence.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ross said into the receiver. Was the line malfunctioning? They had frequent problems with the telephone system, but he would swear that he was connected to someone. He could almost, barely, hear the caller breathing over the normal background hiss of the line.
“This is Ross Bradford,” he said irritably. “Can I do something for you? If not, then stop tying up my damned phone.”
He didn’t expect an answer, so it was a shock when he got one.
Ross had moved the receiver away from his ear, about to hang up again, when a low, muffled voice floated out of it.
“I can do something for you.”
He snatched the phone back, his fingers tightening around it. “What did you say?”
“I can help you.”
The voice was soft, but male, with a Kenyan accent, and the words were almost lost in the static on the line.
“What makes you think I need help?”
“I can tell you something about Jake Wyatt.”
“Fine,” Ross said. “Tell me.”
“Not like this. I must meet you.”
“Meet me? Why? Who are you?”
There was only silence and static on the line, but Ross could tell that his strange caller was still there.
“What do you want?” he asked, more gently. This was probably a dead end, but just in case...
“I want to help you. I have something important to show you.”
“All right. Come to my office tomorrow morning, and we’ll—”
“No!” The voice was suddenly urgent. “I must meet you right now. It is very important.”
Ross frowned. “Where are you?”
“I will come there. Wait for me.”
With a click, the caller hung up.
Ross put the receiver down hard. “What the hell is going on?” he muttered. He was supposed to sit here, waiting for this mysterious caller to appear with his mysterious information?
He picked up the phone again and dialed. Otieno was also in town today, closing out the last of the ranch’s accounts with local suppliers.
“This is a day for strange things,” Otieno said, after hearing Ross’s account of the odd phone call. “I’ll come there. It’s not safe.”
“No, I can handle it. What did you mean, ‘this is a day for strange things?’ Have you heard from your cousin Joseph?”
Wyatt had been scheduled for another government meeting that afternoon, and Ross was anxious to get a report on what had happened.
“Yes, I spoke with him. He was asked to leave the meeting.”
“What?”
“Jake Wyatt refused to discuss the project with Joseph in the room.”
Ross sat forward in his chair, stunned. “Just Joseph? No other aide?”
“Jake Wyatt pointed to him and said, ‘You. Out.’ The other aides stayed for the meeting.”
“That’s crazy!” Ross said. “He knows that Joseph’s been talking to us?”
“It seems so.”
“How? How could he have known that? Joseph is only a distant cousin of yours, and we haven’t discussed this with anyone. This is bad, Otieno. Wyatt may be smart and influential, but he’s not psychic, for God’s sake.”
This wasn’t the first time Wyatt had pulled an uncanny move. Ross could remember Lilah’s amazement that he had known about the latest development in her excavation. What had Jake told her? “I have my ways of knowing” or something like that.
Something was tugging at the back of Ross’s mind, and he was determined to pin it down.
“I’ll talk to you tonight,” he said to Otieno, and hung up.
There were too many bizarre coincidences piling up. The ransacking of the archaeologists’ camp, that was another one. Someone had known that the camp would be empty that night.
Lilah had been positive that he was the only one who had known about their group’s trip to Nairobi. Ross even remembered the night she had mentioned it. It was when she’d come up to the house, late, and found him in the library. She had been sitting on the chair, and he had been at his desk.
His desk? Wait. He had been on the phone, at the desk, when he called the Park Bureau to set up a meeting to discuss Lilah’s research permit. Jake had known about the new discovery immediately afterward.
And Jake had known about Otieno’s cousin, not before last week’s meeting, which Joseph had attended without a problem, but later, after Ross and Otieno had discussed him in that room.
The prowler, the faint tracks beside his desk—Ross had assumed that the man had run away before he did his intended job, but in truth, he had done it.
“Damn it!” Ross said violently, slamming his hands down on the scattered papers. How could he have missed this? There was a bug in his desk, a tiny wireless microphone transmitting to a recorder hidden nearby on the ranch. The prowler had probably been back and forth many times, switching tapes.
What else did Jake Wyatt know? Ross frantically tried to remember any other conversations he had had in that room, and managed to pull up only an ominous sense that Wyatt had heard far, far too much.
Lilah. A cold rush of fear grabbed him, sharp as a knife in his heart. Jake would know now that she had been lying to him. Enough had been said and done in that room to make the deception very clear. If she went to his house, not knowing that he knew everything...
There wasn’t time to think about what could happen. He had to find her and warn her before it was too late.
Lilah leaned against the table in the lab tent and made herself take a slow, deep breath.
She was back in camp, and she was safe, so she had to calm down and figure out what to do. An itchy, crawling feeling, as if hostile eyes were burning into her, had turned her flight from Jake’s ranch into a mad escape just on the edge of panic.
She had driven straight to Ross’s house, only to find it empty, with the only phone for miles locked inside. Ross was still in Nairobi, and even the askari was nowhere to be seen, so Lilah had come down to camp to find a safe place to hide the film and the document.
The others were still down at the site, so camp was deserted except for the birds chirping in the trees, and Lilah fidgeted as the camera’s noisy little motor finished rewinding the film.
Even if Jake discovered the opened crates and got rid of the ivory, her pictures and the shipping document should be enough to bring him down for good. A roll of film and a piece of paper had suddenly become worth the cost of the Bradford ranch. If she sealed them in a plastic bag, she could hide them outside in the tall grass—
“Hello, Lilah.”
The voice behind her was as cold and sharp as a razor blade.
Lilah gasped, and turned to see Jake Wyatt framed by the doorway of the lab tent.
“Jake,” she said unsteadily, and attempted a smile. “I didn’t hear you coming. You surprised me.”
“Really.” He stepped into the tent, and the ice-cold blue of his eyes glowed out at her. “That shouldn’t have happened. You told me you were always careful.”
She couldn’t read a thing on his face, and it scared her. “You must want those maps,” she said. “They’re in the car. I’ll—”
“No. I want your camera. Give it to me.”
Lilah stared at him, losing hope that this visit could be a coincidence. He knew. She couldn’t give up those pictures! They were her only proof of his guilt.
Jake snapped his fingers. “Now.”
She had to stall. Her friends would be coming up from the site soon. “M-my camera?” she said weakly, still holding it. “Why?”
A dark flash of ange
r twisted Jake’s face, and he stepped closer to her, holding out his hand. “Do you think that I’m stupid?” he said in a low voice. “This game is over. Give me the bloody camera or I’ll take it from you.”
Lilah froze as the gray metal of a gun suddenly gleamed in his hand. Jake motioned to the camera, and she silently handed it to him.
“Thank you.” He snapped open the back and pulled out the roll of film. “Did you find anything interesting in my storage building, Lilah? You left in a hurry.”
She shook her head, and he laughed.
“There’s a liar hiding behind your pretty face. You found my white gold.”
With a jerk of his hand, Jake began to expose the film. “So,” he said, as it fell to the floor in loops. “You thought that you’d snap a few photos and ruin me? Wrong. You’re a beginner. I’ve been in business longer than you’ve been alive.”
The end of the roll dropped onto the canvas floor, and Jake kicked it away. “I don’t like beginners wasting my time, and I don’t like pretty liars!” He threw the empty camera down, smashing it against the ground, and beckoned. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Terror glazed her voice. Was he planning to kill her? She had to keep him here until someone came. It couldn’t be long now.
“We’re going to Ross’s house.”
“W-we can’t. Ross is there.” Please, someone, hurry.
“No, he isn’t. He’s at the office and he won’t be back any time soon. One of my men just called and dropped him a little bait, so it’ll be an hour before he realizes that he’s been stood up. Until then, he’ll be waiting in his office while I get what I want from his house.”
“There’ll be an askari.”
“Not anymore. He’s been removed from duty. Now walk, or I’ll carry you.”
Jake reached out and grabbed the front of her shirt, jerking her forward. She stumbled, and he stepped beside her, his fingers digging into her arm. “Move.”
When they arrived at the ranch house, one of the windows had been broken in, and the front door was unlocked.
“Now,” Jake said. “Find me the book.”
Lilah looked blankly at him. “What book?”
“The diary,” he snapped. “I know you gave it to Ross, because it’s not at your camp. Where is it? I don’t want to waste my time tearing this house apart.”
“I don’t know,” she said automatically, trying to understand what she was hearing. Jake was the one behind the devastation at their camp, and all because he’d wanted Claire Bradford’s diary? She was secretly pleased she’d had it in her backpack that evening.
“Lies!” Jake’s voice cracked sharply in the quiet house. “You gave it to Ross, so it’s here, and we’re going to find it.
“Start looking through those shelves,” he said, shoving her roughly toward them. “And remember, I’m right next to you, so you won’t be going anywhere. The sooner you find me that book, the better for you.”
Lilah stumbled forward toward the cluttered shelves, and made a show of searching through them while she desperately tried to think. The gun hovered in her peripheral vision, glinting menacingly in the low light.
“I don’t know what Ross did with the book,” she said. “What if I can’t find it?”
“I wouldn’t think about that if I were you,” Jake said coldly. “Plan to find it. It’s here somewhere.”
“Why do you want it so badly?”
“That diary is a loose end. I didn’t even know the bloody woman kept one, until you turned it up. She knew all about my ivory business, and I’m not taking any chances on whether she wrote about it, too.”
“It’s not here,” Lilah said, facing him.
“Fine.” Jake stepped forward and prodded her with the hard barrel of the gun. “We’ll search Ross’s room. Move.”
Chapter 18
The archaeologists were sitting around the fire when Ross jerked his car to a stop at the edge of camp and jumped out. His first feeling was of relief at the normal dinner scene in front of him, but a moment later he realized that Lilah wasn’t there.
“Hi, Ross,” said Elliot. “Want some spaghetti?”
“Where’s Lilah?”
Elliot blinked, surprised, and Ted began to glare. Ross ignored them both. “Is she here?”
“No, she’s been gone since four.”
“Where?” Ross’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. Elliot frowned. “She said she had some business to take care of...at someone’s house? Mr...White?”
“Wyatt,” Denise interrupted. “She went to Jake Wyatt’s, but—”
Cold fear clenched Ross’s stomach, and before Denise finished her sentence, he was running for the car. He pulled open the door of the Land Rover, and was about to jump in when he heard the slap of feet behind him.
Denise had dashed after him, and she grabbed the edge of the window, breathing hard, and looking faintly green. “Ross, wait! Where are you going?”
“To find Lilah.” Ross started the car.
“Do you need help? I’ll come.”
“No. Stay here in case she comes back.”
The Land Rover’s strong diesel engine roared as he pulled fast out of camp, with a vague impression of Denise standing at the bottom of the road, staring wide-eyed after him.
Every instinct in Ross’s body screamed for him to drive straight to Wyatt’s house and demand to know where Lilah was, but he knew that it would be dangerous and useless to go unprepared. He needed to get to the phone in his house and call the police, and he needed his rifle, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around waiting for the police to arrive.
There was a strange truck parked outside the ranch house. As soon as he’d seen it, Ross had left his car by the side of the road and approached the house on foot.
He moved quietly up the lawn, only to find the new askari sprawled facedown in the grass, all of his weapons missing except for his rungu, the short wooden club tied to his belt.
“Damn it,” Ross muttered, kneeling down. The man had an ugly bruise on the side of his head, but he was alive, his pulse and breathing steady.
He took the club from the fallen askari, and stepped through the open front door, a prowler in his own house. The living room was deserted, but he could hear a voice at the far end of the hall.
Wyatt. There was no mistaking that snarl. What the hell was he doing here? And where was Lilah? Ross moved carefully down the hall. The door to his room was open, and through the space, he could see Wyatt’s back.
“...where he’d have put it,” Wyatt was saying, anger hardening his words. “Go through those boxes. No, damn it, do it fast. Dump them out.”
Ross ducked into the adjoining bathroom, and leaned out carefully, watching as Wyatt flashed a handgun. “Hurry up!”
“I am hurrying,” said a new voice. Ross inhaled sharply, a shock of relief coursing through him. Lilah! What had started out as a detour had been the very path he wanted. Thank God she was all right...for now.
“What if it’s not here?” Lilah said. “What are you going to do?” There was an edge to her voice. She sounded tired, scared and mad as hell.
“Shut up, and don’t ask me stupid questions.”
“Everyone knows that I went to see you today. They’ll know it was you who—”
“They won’t know anything. You came to my ranch, and left. Any trouble you ran into after that has nothing to do with me. I’m completely clear.”
“The ivory—”
“Will be on its way in a matter of hours. If anyone comes to ask me questions, that shipment will be long gone. You’ve got nothing, Lilah.”
Ivory! Ross recoiled, shocked, as the events of the past few weeks suddenly snapped into place. Of course. The money for the factory. The mysterious crates. Jake’s access to and use of high-tech eavesdropping devices. It was out of place for an average rancher, but it fit the portrait of a well-connected ivory dealer.
“If I find the diary, will you let me go?” Lilah asked.
“You said yourself that I have nothing. It’s true, there’s no evidence now. I can’t do anything to you.”
Wyatt wouldn’t care, Ross thought grimly. He would shoot Lilah without a second thought. So help me God, if he hurts her, I’ll kill him myself.
He weighed the club in his hand. It was heavy and solid, but no use against a gun. His only other weapon was surprise, and everything would depend on his ability to get quietly into position behind Wyatt before the man knew he was there. It was the only chance he had, and Lilah’s life depended on it.
He held his breath, and stepped forward.
“You’ve been looking in there long enough,” Wyatt snapped. “You’re stalling. Get up.”
“I’m not done,” Lilah said, and gasped as Jake stepped forward quickly and grabbed her, his fingers knotting roughly in her hair.
“You’d better hope that I’m feeling kind when you find me that book,” Wyatt said through his teeth, “because otherwise...”
Slowly. Ross choked back violent fury as Wyatt threw Lilah toward the desk. Quietly, he moved through the doorway.
At that moment, Lilah looked up through the hair that had fallen loosely around her face and saw him step silently behind Jake. She choked back a gasp, and ducked her head again.
“What?” Jake said, standing alert. “What was that?”
Ross froze. He was too far into the room to back out unnoticed. And if he went forward, Jake would turn and fire before—
“It’s here!” Lilah cried. “The diary! I found it!” She began to shuffle papers wildly.
“Give it to me.” Jake stepped forward. “Where is it?”
“I just saw it,” Lilah said frantically. “Right here. Wait, it’s right here.”
Jake leaned down over her. “There’s no diary there! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He cuffed her hard across the face. “I’m warning you, you bitch, don’t try to—what?”
The wooden floorboards creaked as Ross stepped quickly behind him.
Jake straightened fast, realizing what was happening, but he was seconds too late. He began to turn, and Ross brought the club crashing down on his arm.
A Hard-Hearted Man Page 20
