Guarding the Princess

chapter 11



The sky was a riot of violent pinks and the evening sun was sinking fast in a giant orange ball to the horizon. Already Brandt could feel the cool fingers of the coming night in the air as they traveled along the rim of the cliff. He began to move faster over the scrubby, rocky ground hoping he hadn’t made a mistake, praying the old airstrip was here somewhere.

Relief washed through him when he caught sight of what used to be a wooden arch that marked the entrance to the airfield. The old customs building—essentially a one-room square—stood in ruins in the middle of empty scrubland not far from the old archway. As they neared, Brandt saw that burned and blackened rafters were all that remained of the thatched roof. Coppery-orange streaks from mud and rain stained the sides of the once-whitewashed walls. Windows and doors were long gone. But it had been built from brick and the four walls stood solid. It would keep them safe from night predators.

As they reached the ruins, the sun slipped below the horizon and the sky turned a soft pearly gray. They’d made it just in time. The paving around the building had crumbled into chunks as tough roots pushed through. Alongside the building were parts of an old bench where people had once waited for bush planes, supplies and guests arriving for safari.

Brandt could still read part of a sign that had been painted onto one wall—Welcome to... The rest of the phrase had fallen off in a chunk of plaster.

“Welcome to the airport hotel,” he said wryly.

“What is this place?” Dalilah asked, turning in a slow circle.

“Abandoned airstrip. This building was once a customs office.” He jerked his chin to the surrounding bush. “Lots of dead wood out there—we’ll be able to keep a fire going all night, keep predators at bay.”

“Customs? Out here?”

He dumped his pack inside the doorway. Dirt had blown into the building and small rocks, crumbling brick and plaster, dead leaves, insect husks littered the pocked concrete floor. “They put customs posts in places that saw a lot of tourists flying in,” Brandt said, unsheathing his panga. He made sure his voice remained cool and distant.

“There’s a safari outfit not far from here called Masholo, but mostly this airstrip was used to service guests coming from Zimbabwe, until that market dried up. Masholo also built their own private airstrip.”

He left Dalilah standing next to the hut while he strode off into the scrub, and with his panga he lopped off a branch with leaves. He used the branch to start sweeping out the interior of the building, checking for spiders and scorpions while there was still enough light. “We’ll clean this up, build a fire there, and there.” He pointed to each doorway. “Smoke will be vented straight out the top, and we can get some good rest until dawn. I could see no sign of Amal coming over the plain, not tonight. Our only worry should be wildlife, and there’s enough wood out here to keep the curious at bay.”

“Here, I can do that,” she reached to take the branch from him.

But he moved away. “It’s fine—relax.”

“Brandt!” She snatched it from him, skin connecting. Both stilled. Their eyes met—the knowledge of what had happened on the cliff, still unarticulated, simmered intimately between them. Both had an edge of anger to them.

Anger suited Brandt. Anger was the only emotion he knew how to handle right now.

He let go of the branch and let her have at it.

He went to collect wood while the princess swept out the interior with a stick broom—ironic in some fairy-tale way to be sure, but Brandt was not in the mood to be sardonic.

After stacking wood into small pyres inside the crumbling doorways, he went to gather more logs and branches, which he piled within reach just outside the window.

“Here’s the rifle,” he said, propping the gun against the interior wall. “It’s loaded and good to go if you need it.”

She stopped sweeping. “Why, where are you going?”

Avoiding her eyes, ignoring the concern that had entered her voice, Brandt said, “To get some hay for insulation. With these clear skies temps could drop below freezing tonight. You’ll feel it through the concrete.”

Hiking out to an area of long, dried grass, Brandt lopped off enough thatch to make a giant bushel which he hefted back to the ruined building. He laid the straw on the floor in a corner of the room, sealing in the warmth of the sun trapped inside by the concrete. He laid out the sleeping bag on top.

“Take a load off.” He nodded to the bag.

Dalilah hesitated, then lowered herself slowly to the bed in the corner. She sat with her back against the wall, knees propped up, watching him.

When the sky turned charcoal-gray—too dark to see telltale smoke from afar, Brandt lit the fires.

Orange flames crackled to life, instantly throwing out warmth and casting a dancing glow on the walls. It made the room feel safe, comforting. A little too intimate. Up through the rafters the Milky Way flickered slowly to life and the occasional bat fluttered overhead.

The chirrup of settling birds grew to a cacophonous crescendo, backed by whistles and rustles, the beat of wings in the dark and the stirring whooop yeee whooops of hyenas beginning to move for the night hunt.

Brandt placed two old bricks and some stones at the edge of the fire, and he raked some of the coals between them. Filling the kettle with enough for one cup, he set it atop the rocks.

He opened the bag of biltong, offered it to Dalilah without meeting her eyes.

“Brandt.”

He glanced up. Her eyes were inky bright and there was a look of need in her features. She wanted to explain, talk. He didn’t. He just wanted this over.

“What is it?”

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

“What? Now?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should have told me before I lit the fires.”

Her cheeks flushed.

“Look, you can’t afford to be all ladylike and coy out here, Dalilah. If you need to take care of business you take care of it.” Irritated, he jumped back to his feet and put the headlamp on. He handed her the other lamp. “Put it on.”

While she adjusted the Petzl, he swung himself easily out through the old window, clicked on his light, then helped her through. The scent of her freshly shampooed hair washed over him before he could put her to the ground and the image of her naked in the mountain pool sliced back into his head and firmly imprinted itself in his mind.

“Go behind those trees,” he said as he walked her down to a clump of acacia, their twin beams flickering over grass. “I’ll stand guard and wait right here.”

Dalilah went alone behind the clump. Shadows lunged and darted as she moved, as if dark hands of night were clawing at her, hungry. She hesitated as she heard a scurry of nails over rock, then a rustle through the grass. Heart thumping, she turned in a slow circle, and tiny green pairs of eyes glinted back at her.

“Brandt—there’s something out there!”

“Just duikers. Hurry up. Watch for snakes and scorpions.”

Dalilah struggled with one hand to undo her pants and balance as she squatted. She’d barely had to go all day—dehydration seemed to be taking care of that. She scrunched her eyes, forcing herself to relax enough to relieve herself, but having trouble, knowing he was listening, the lack of privacy.

This man was getting to know her more intimately than she’d dared allow any other man. Once she was done, Dalilah did up her pants and inhaled deeply, pressing her hand to her stomach as she gathered herself.

She came out from behind the tree.

“See?” Was that a glint of his teeth, a grin in the dark? “It gets easier each time.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Dalilah retorted, cutting slightly ahead of him, reasserting some personal space and dignity as she aimed for the warm, flickering light of their little ruined building. But he was right. It was a little easier each time.

This man was pushing her into new spaces, bit by bit, minute by minute, tilting her paradigm of the world, forcing her to let go of the reins she seemed to have been holding too tight over too many years.

Did that constitute true freedom—not caring what others thought? Doing things you wanted, not what others expected of you? Or was that just selfish?

The kettle was boiling by the time they were settled back into the building. Brandt poured water over a tea bag and handed her the sack of dried meat.

“It’s all we have right now.”

She declined, but accepted the mug gratefully.

The stars turned bright and a moon started to rise. But a bitter cold also began to press down.

“You need some protein, Dalilah,” he said, poking at the flames. “We could be out here for days.”

Silence.

He glanced at her. “I’m serious. My job is to ensure your survival—and you need proper fuel. The only way to get it out here right now is to eat that biltong.”

She snatched angrily at the bag, took out a dried twisted cord of meat encrusted with spices. She ripped at it with her teeth, chewed.

He was watching her intently.

“Don’t worry—I’m going to swallow it. I’m hungry, not stupid.”

Brandt snorted and turned to stare into the flames as she chewed.

“Ethical choice?” he said after a while.

“You mean vegetarianism?”

He grunted.

She nodded. “Pretty much. I used to hunt once—my father made all us kids learn to shoot, kill. Live off the desert the old way,” she said. “He wanted a royal family who was still in touch with our Bedouin roots, with the citizens of Al Na’Jar.”

“Omair told me he’d learned to hunt and shoot with his father.”

She glanced up sharply. “He did?”

“Never told me his sister did, too.”

“You were close to Omair?”

“Close enough.”

“Did he also tell you we used sight hounds to hunt—salukis? My brother Zakir uses the salukis now because he’s blind.” A sad, wistful softness entered her voice, which made Brandt look up again.

“Those dogs are his eyes,” she said. “So is his wife.”

Brandt threw another log on the fire. Sparks shot up to the blackened rafters.

“The lessons with your dad clearly paid off with that leopard. You’re a fine shot. Especially with one hand, under that kind of pressure.”

She was silent for a long while, cradling the mug of tea with her good hand as she sipped. “That cat was so beautiful. Probably as afraid as I was—just protecting her cub and herself. I made myself her enemy by sitting in that tree.”

Every minute more he spent with Dalilah, the deeper Brandt was being drawn in, and she was doing it again now, burrowing under his skin, into his chest, probing a way to his heart. He really needed this to be over.

He jabbed irritably at the fire. “It’s an acknowledged survival trait, Dalilah, being able to see beauty even when your own life is under threat—it stops you from giving up, despairing.”

“I didn’t like the killing as a kid,” she countered crisply. “I don’t like the idea of killing animals for consumption now. And I don’t like handing it off to big agribusiness that denudes the environment, either. So if I can help it, I don’t foster it.”

“Is that how you got involved with ClearWater, solar power, sustainable farming?”

She puffed out a lungful of air. “I suppose. I’m from the Sahara—I understand how precious a commodity water is to most of Africa.” Her eyes went distant. “I guess my father taught us well on some level. There were some real values that came out of the desert forays he forced us on.”

Respect for Dalilah deepened, but at the same time Brandt couldn’t understand why, if this ethic was so ingrained in her, she wanted to give it all up for a restrained life trapped behind palace walls with Sheik Hassan of Sa’ud. And this dichotomy in her personality niggled at him because he’d glimpsed sadness, resignation, in her eyes when he’d confronted her on her choices. And in spite of her engagement to another man, she was clearly attracted to him—there was something developing between them, even against both their wills. That told Brandt she wasn’t fully committed on some level. Because when you truly loved someone, in that first heady blush when you decide to marry and spend a life together, you have eyes for only that person. At least, that’s the way it had been for him.

But it wasn’t his concern, he thought, turning to poke at the flames.

“I’m impressed you maintained your shooting skill,” he said. “For someone who hasn’t used a gun since you were what, five, six?”

“I shoot for relaxation.”

His brow crooked up. “Relaxation?”

“At a range, clay-pigeon shoots. That part of shooting—the sporting aspect—I did enjoy as a kid. I liked the focus, controlling my breathing, getting into the zone.” She gave a soft laugh. “I was better than my brothers at it. They were after the kill and got too pumped up. I had far more control.” She paused. “I always wanted to do better than my brothers.”

He grinned in spite of himself, then laughed. “Your brothers are not an easy act to follow, let alone trump.”

She smiled, a little rueful, and stared into the flames for a while, mug in hand. “My whole life has been a struggle to get out from under their shadow, to prove myself, to carve my own niche in the world...” Her voice faded. Brandt could see that look of sadness entering her features again, of resignation. It puzzled him.

He shook himself, grabbed a stick of biltong, ripped off a shred with his teeth, chewed in silence. Flames crackled and popped.

She broke the silence. “In winter I do biathlons and practice my shooting that way. I travel to a ski resort in Norway, usually. Sometimes Canada.”

“Does Haroun travel with you?”

Her eyes shot to him, the sudden tension in her body unmistakable. Brandt’s curiosity deepened in spite of himself.

“Well, does he go with you? Does he ski?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t ski? Or doesn’t travel with you?”

She fiddled with her bootlace, her complexion looking drained. “You know, I’m really exhausted. I...I need to sleep, if you don’t mind. I can keep watch for you later if you like.”

“Go ahead. Get in the bag. It’s high-tech stuff—will keep you warm.”

She hesitated. “Would you mind helping me with my laces?”

Brandt put his mental walls back up and quickly untied her boots. She snuggled down into the sleeping bag and closed her eyes, resting her head on the rolled-up sarong.

Brandt fed the fire, listening to the hoot of owls. And when her breathing changed, he watched her sleep—freshly washed hair fanning around her exotic face, glimmering ebony in the coppery firelight, her skin smooth, lips slightly parted.

Quietly, Brandt lifted the camera, stealing something small for himself as he clicked.

Her eyes flared open.

“What are you doing?” she said, edging up.

“Do you mind?” he said, gesturing to the camera.

She sat up sharply “What—why?”

He held the camera to his eye again, adjusted the lens. “The image is perfect.”

“Brandt, no!”

He lowered the camera.

“I... Please, don’t.”

He said nothing.

“I can’t have that kind of photo of myself out there, Brandt.” Her voice was crisp, her eyes hard.

Coolness settled in his gut. “You think I’m actually going to sell these to some cheap tabloid?”

Something crossed her face, and the cold in his stomach hardened. He snorted harshly when she didn’t reply, and he put the camera down. “Even out here, you’re managing your image.” Brandt couldn’t keep something out of his voice. Bitterness—jealousy. He didn’t even know himself what was suddenly biting, eating at him right this instant. Maybe it was the fact she’d chastised him.

“Brandt—”

He jabbed a stick into the flames. The fire exploded a flurry of hot orange sparks that shot up into the night.

“Brandt! Look at me.”

He turned his head. Those eyes—God, those smoky, sensual eyes, lambent in the firelight—were boring into him. And those lips.

He knew what those lips tasted like.

The memory of her naked rose in his mind, luminous skin shimmering with water. The dark wet delta between her thighs. His groin went hot at the thought. Good thing she didn’t know what photos he’d already stolen like a thief in the night.

“What?” he said when she didn’t speak.

“Tell me why you wanted to take photos. Tell me what you were planning to do with them.”

“Keep them,” he said simply. “It’s what I do, Dalilah. These days I shoot with a camera, not a gun, if I can help it. I shoot rare and beautiful things, things with meaning to me. Images I return to so that I can be reminded of what I value in life. Or what stands to be lost.”

Her eyes shimmered, nose pinking slightly.

“And for God’s sake,” he snapped, “give me some credit. The last thing I’d want is His Royal Highness of Sa’ud, or his lackeys, finding these and hurting you because he thinks you’ve tainted your image by being out here with me or something. What in hell do you think I am? I don’t want anything to goddamn do with the world and all its tabloid crap out there!” He flung his arm out wide gesturing toward the window, the night, anger rising irrationally in him as he lost the battle to tamp it down.

Like that bloody bull elephant, he needed to go take it all out on a tree or something.

He sucked in air, deep, and attempting to moderate his tone, he spoke more quietly. “And you know what, that’s why Omair trusts me with you. He knows I’m not going to blab my mouth about saving your ass from Amal.”

Brandt realized the irony as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Yeah, maybe Omair trusted him to save Dalilah and keep quiet about it, but no doubt Sheik Al Arif also trusted his old merc buddy Brandt Stryker to keep his big grubby hands off his engaged little sister.

“Because, believe me, Dalilah, Omair is going to want to keep this whole damn mission quiet. When he comes to pick you up, he’s going to ship you somewhere safe while he goes after Amal himself, now that he has a lead on him, and he doesn’t want international authorities stopping him while he metes out his own kind of desert justice. That’s my bet. You’re the bait that has finally lured Amal Ghaffar out of the African woodpile.” Brandt reached over, took her empty mug, and tossed the dregs onto the fire with a sizzle.

A strange look crossed Dalilah’s face, as if he’d hit something raw and close to the bone.

“Is that what you think—that, my brothers are using me as a lure? And that’s why they never told me about Amal? Because that’s bull.”

He shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t plan it that way, but it works now that Amal has been flushed out. Omair can end this war once and for all.”

She stared at him, eyes big, shining, then she swallowed, looking vulnerable, overwhelmed.

And suddenly Brandt felt bad. He wanted to hold her, protect her. But an image of Carla curled into his mind. It was a night like this. Just Carla and him. Her big dark eyes searching his—that same look of smoky allure and vulnerability. So feminine. So sexy. It pressed all his male buttons. Heat prickled over Brandt’s skin.

He winced suddenly as the memory of Carla’s screams sliced through his brain. The memory of her naked body, being tortured as he was forced to watch. He swallowed, his pulse beginning to race, claustrophobia biting at him.

And for a nanosecond, Dalilah’s face was Carla’s. Past and present began to collide—walls seemed to be closing in. Amal and his men coming, just like those men had come for Carla. Sweat began to pearl on his brow.

Dalilah was watching him oddly. Brandt lurched to his feet, grabbed his gun and the headlamp.

“Get some sleep,” he snapped, desperate to fight the PTSD nipping at the corners of his brain. He didn’t want her to see him like this. He didn’t know how far he was going to be pulled back this time. “Where are you going?”

“To get more wood. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

Outside, in the endless, cold dark, Brandt relieved himself then went looking for more wood. He dumped a fresh bundle outside the window, and peered inside.

She was bundled up in the sleeping bag, face turned into the corner, fast asleep. Good. She needed it.

He slid his back down the outside wall, knees propped up, gun at his side. Switching off his headlamp, he dug into the pocket of his cargo shorts for his flask. He took a shot, then another, then a third, his eyes watering as he put his head back against the wall and stared up at the velvet sky spattered with stars.

He knew why he was getting these flashbacks again. He was falling for Dalilah, and it scared the crap out of him. It was also pathetic—the princess and the pauper? He gave a soft snort and took another drink.

Even though she was obviously physically attracted to him, too, so what? They had sexual chemistry. That’s all it was. She might as well be attracted to the palace manservant. He was simply the wrong side of the proverbial tracks.

After another swig from his flask Brandt cared a little less, and a nice soft buzz blurred the edges of his mind. He allowed himself to slip into the comfort of the whiskey’s warm embrace.

Then suddenly he heard her voice again in his mind.

What are you seeking alcoholic relief from, Brandt...why do you take pictures, Brandt...?

He hated the hypocrisy in himself. Yes, he sought relief from his memories, from the flashbacks. Through mindless sex. Plenty of drink. Death-defying adrenaline highs. But still, he’d been compelled to shoot photographs in war zones—needing to keep touchstones, to remind himself why he’d done what he had in the past. And why he had to stop killing. The photos still hung on the walls of the house he’d built on his farm.

It was his private hell—this dichotomy inside him.

But the images that truly haunted him were not captured on film. Those he would never escape.

They rose now from the dark depths—Carla’s beaten, abused body. The pierce of her screams, like knives in his heart. The image of men raping her as the buildings around them burned. The pain, the impotence, of being shackled to a pole, bleeding, forced to watch, to hear, to smell. That was the thing he’d tried to kill with whiskey. But it didn’t work like that—you couldn’t just go in like a surgeon and blot out one part of a whole.

And there were other images, going further back, also burned onto his retinal memory, but deeper, as if he’d shot them on film himself. His ex-wife, caught naked with his own brother in their marriage bed.

Their mauled son lying in the grass. His brother shooting Brandt’s dog.

This part of Brandt’s past had been buried very, very deep, and he didn’t like to let it surface. Ever. But Dalilah had opened a fissure, and slowly it had been oozing to the surface.

Brandt drank some more, watching the sickle moon rise higher, the stars move over the heavens like a giant celestial timer. He emptied the flask and allowed bush sounds to embrace him, like a familiar and safe lover—crickets, frogs, the rustle of a porcupine not far from him. The distant cackle of a hyena. The whoosh of an owl hunting overhead in the darkness.

Then suddenly, a soft, guttural huff.

Brandt went from drunk to stone-cold sober so fast it felt like an electric shock zapped his body. Quietly, he clicked the safety off his rifle, chambered a round, reached slowly up for the Petzl lamp on his forehead, clicked it on. Shadows leaped and shimmered as he scanned the darkness.

A pair of eyes glowed green, looking right at him maybe twelve feet away. The wide-spaced eyes of a big predator. Jesus. A chill washed over him and Brandt pushed himself slowly to his feet, his light and gun trained on the animal. It moved across the beam and he saw a ghostly pale pelt. Dark mane. Lion. Male. Huge. Every nerve inside him screamed to flee. Brandt swallowed, holding dead still—facing the animal square, his brain racing. The lion’s tail swished and the beast gave another soft warning cough. He was unafraid. Alone, which was unusual. Dangerous.

Slowly Brandt reached for the windowsill behind him.

The animal came closer, jaws slack. It was breathing him in, testing the air around him, getting his scent.

Brandt eased up onto the sill.

The lion’s tail swished again.

Ever so carefully, Brandt dropped back into the room.

He paused, keeping the beam of his light on the male’s face.

It edged a little closer. Too curious. Brandt saw scars on side of its face, across the top of an eye. It was an older male, with no pride. Exiled. Hunting alone. This was trouble.

Brandt’s gaze flicked to the fires inside. He eyed a glowing log. Should the lion leap and his first shot not hit true, he’d grab that log as a next resort. Finger curling around trigger, he hissed softly.

“Yaaa.”

The lion moved its head, flicking its tail.

“Yaaa!” Brandt yelled louder, waving his arm. Then he released a huge imitation roar.

The lion’s tail swished as the beast licked its jowls. Then it broke its gaze with Brandt, and like a ghost, slid back into the night, ceding territory.

Goose bumps chased over his skin as Brandt tried to swallow. His heart was hammering, mouth bone-dry.

The bush night sounds filtered back into his consciousness but he continued to glare into the blackness where the lion had vanished.

Had he even seen it? A solitary old male lion, doomed to prowl the veldt alone. Never mate again. Never be part of a pride. Never watch over a territory for his own family of felines. Destined to live out the rest of his life around the fringes of others’ existence.

Tautona.

The hair on the nape of his neck prickled. The animal had chased him back inside where he should’ve been all along, close to his principal. The weird feeling down his neck intensified and Brandt’s gaze slid over to the dying embers in the fire. He became conscious of how bitter the cold weighing down from the night sky had become. His attention flicked to Dalilah.

She was curled in the sleeping bag, hair a thick soft fall over her cheek. Brandt inched over to look at her face.

Her skin was bloodless. Lips the wrong color. She was shivering. He dropped quickly to his knees, setting the gun beside him.

“Dalilah!” He shook her shoulder.

She was unresponsive.

Brandt felt her skin with the back of his fingers. She was ice-cold, and her pulse was weak. Hypothermia. Brought on by the sudden freezing temperatures. Compounded by injury, shock, dehydration, exhaustion—it had all been creeping up on her, a perfect storm of triggers that he’d missed. His fault.

“Dalilah!” Brandt slapped her face lightly.

Nothing.

Panic licked through his gut.

Hypothermia could kill in a situation like this. He shouldn’t have left her! He hadn’t noticed how cold it had become—he’d allowed the fires to burn too low, been too absorbed in the resurfacing of his own nightmares.

For an instant he was paralyzed, hurtling down, down, down, back into the black tunnel of his Carla nightmare...caring for his principal so much that he’d been blind to the danger signals that had led to the loss of her life. Then in his mind’s eye, suddenly, the green eyes of Tautona gleamed back. Predatory. Powerful.

Yes. Power. Focus. Do this.

Brandt’s mind turned razor-sharp. Just because something terrible had happened once before, it didn’t mean he was doomed to repeat it. He could not allow the past to stop him from securing this woman a future.

“Dalilah!” Brandt slapped her face again and he began urgently rubbing her arms. “Come on, girl, stay with me. I am not going to let you do this! I will not let you die!”