Guarding the Princess

chapter 5



Jacob gently fingered the swelling on Jock’s muzzle, looking for the cut where he’d been kicked in the face. Jock whimpered as Jacob found the wound. It wasn’t too bad, and the bones didn’t appear broken.

“It’s all right, boy,” he whispered in his local Shona dialect, the love in the touch of his gnarled hand conveying all to the animal—he was not alone, even though his owners had been murdered. Jacob was also certain the attackers had slain his wife. He and the dog were in this together now. Both afraid. But not broken.

“Soek,” he whispered softly, holding his palm down to the soft red earth that was still dry under the fat branches and old canopy of the nyala tree—it was his indication for Jock to start a search.

Amal shot Mbogo a quick glance and raised an eyebrow.

“Lodge owners were Afrikaners,” Mbogo said quietly. “Guess they spoke to the dog in Afrikaans.”

In his peripheral vision Jacob was keeping an eye on the one-armed Arab and his big bull of a comrade, Mbogo. Jacob was a skilled hunter, trained to observe, to listen, without appearing to do so.

Mbogo cradled an AK-47 in his meaty hands. Bandoliers filled with ammunition crisscrossed his broad chest and a giant panga was sheathed down the side of his tree-trunk-size thigh. In contrast, the Arabic man at his side was slender with a narrow face and wild eyes. Even so, Jacob felt the Arab was the more dangerous one. He spoke English with an American accent and he also carried a panga, the blood of the delegates and lodge employees still black on his blade. A smaller curved and bejewelled dagger was hooked into his belt.

At Jacob’s boots, Jock sniffed the soft indentations in the earth where the man who took the princess had crouched. The dog was circulating air through his nasal passages with soft snorts, cataloguing the scent. Behind where Amal and Mbogo stood on the raised wall of the lapa, bodies lay among overturned chairs, broken glass. The fire in the circular pit had died, food in the pots burned, the scent of it all pungent. Ants had already found the slain. There would be flies later, and when the sun rose, the cadavers would begin to rot fast. Vultures would circle up high and silent on thermals above the camp as the heat of a new day pressed down.

Jacob was going to kill that one-armed bastard and his big bull. He’d kill them or die trying. But if he was going to stay alive long enough in order to make the attempt, he had to prove his worth and lead them close to their quarry. Jacob could do this. He was one of the best. The dog would help him—they were both born of a land that knew hardship and betrayal. They knew how to be patient.

“Good boy,” he whispered to Jock as the dog locked onto the scent of his quarry and began snuffling toward the outer fringe of the nyala grove, heading toward thick kikuyu grass wet with rain.

“Boss, over here!” Jacob called as he moved quickly after the dog into the grass.

“Bring the lights!” Amal yelled to his men.

Two men came running with game spots taken from the lodge. White light flooded the ground where Jock worked, shadows darting around the periphery.

“Do you have his scent?” Amal said, appearing behind Jacob’s shoulder.

“Yes, boss.” He moved faster after Jock, who was heading out onto the lawn. But as the dog entered more dense vegetation, he lost the track, began scouting for it again. He got it, and tail wagging like a metronome he snuffled forward.

“Good boy,” Jacob whispered, running after the dog again. But out near the high riverbank where there were no trees and rain fell heavily, pooling on sand and running in little rivers, Jock lost the scent again.

“Too much running water in the grass over here, boss,” Jacob said as he crouched, motioning for a handheld spotlight to be brought closer. A man handed him a spot, and Jacob put his cheek almost to the ground, shining the light at an angle. He saw faint depressions under the water—the man’s tracks. By the depth and spacing between his prints, the man who made these was big—over six feet. Strong. Moving fast. There were no woman’s tracks nearby. He was still carrying the woman at this point.

Jacob doused the spotlight and peered silently into the raining darkness.

“What is it?” Amal snapped impatiently.

“They went that way,” Jacob said quietly. “Toward the Tsholo.”

“The border!” Amal said to Mbogo. “They’re heading for Botswana!” He turned abruptly and barked at his men. “Saddle up the horses! Get the jeeps fueled! Take whatever supplies we need from the lodge. We start moving within the hour!”

* * *

The air was growing thick with smoke. Brandt wiped rain from his eyes and quickly positioned the jack under the front bumper of the jeep where he’d dug out sand. Dalilah stood at his shoulder, rifle in her good hand as she nervously watched the advancing fire. He began jacking fast. Rain hammered down relentlessly, pocking the sand. Across the riverbed on the Botswana side, brown water was beginning to flow faster and deeper.

“Get some of that driftwood,” he barked at Dalilah, jerking his chin to a pile of bone-white branches in the center of the river. Brandt hated asking her. She had to be in serious pain, but she was right about one thing—they’d get out of here faster if they worked as a team. And she’d shocked him with her ability, her resilience. Instead of being the whining, pampered hindrance he’d expected, Princess was a trouper, and he could use her.

The flip side was that if the Tsholo did come down in a flash flood, as he’d seen happen before at the beginning of the wet season, they’d both be swept to their deaths.

I’d rather face a flash flood than be raped by Amal’s men and have my head cut off...

She was right about that. It would be better for her to die with him than be left alone at the mercy of Amal and his men. Determination fired into Brandt at the thought of what that jackal and his band of rabid dogs might do to Dalilah, and he held on to that, pumping the jack fiercely, shirt plastered to his back. He’d tear those bastards apart limb from limb before he allowed them to lay one hand on her.

The image of another woman slammed suddenly into his mind—her throat slit. Her body brutalized. And for a nanosecond Brandt was blinded. He froze, hearing Carla’s screams in the wind.

No. Not now. That was the past. History did not have to repeat itself. And it wouldn’t—not if he stayed focused, if he refused to allow himself to get too emotionally vested, or distracted.

He bit deeper into his determination as he continued to work. Thunder boomed above, the sound rolling into the kloofs and hills. He could hear the crackling of fire in branches now. Smoke burned the back of his throat and his eyes watered.

Finally the jeep chassis began to lift from the sand.

Dalilah returned with a bundle of dry wood under her right arm. She dropped the driftwood to the sand at his feet, exhausted, hair sticking to her cheeks as she bent over to cough and catch her breath. Compassion speared through Brandt. He quickly started packing the wood under the front wheel then he lowered the jeep, removed the jack and tossed it into the backseat. He hopped into the driver’s seat and fired the ignition. Slowly, he pressed down on the gas. The front wheel turned, whined, almost edging up onto the wood, but the vehicle fell back into the ruts

“Dalilah, can you push? We need something extra so the wheel can find purchase on the wood.”

Shoving wet hair back from her face, she went round to the rear of the vehicle. Again, he carefully pressed down on the accelerator. The wheels whined as Dalilah leaned into the rear, using her good arm.

“Easy, easy,” Brandt whispered as he felt the jeep beginning to move. “Please, baby, come on, come on, you can do it.” The headlights panned ahead, illuminating the white river sand. Brandt had no idea whether the rain was packing it hard, or turning it into quicksand—soft and dangerous. Even if they did get the jeep unstuck, they still might not make it across all the way now. But it was the rising pools on the far side that really worried him. Then there was the steep wall of a bank. He glanced at the dashboard clock—3:23 a.m. If this didn’t work—if they couldn’t get this jeep over the Tsholo border and into Botswana within the next fifteen minutes, he was going to abort the attempt, take what he could from the jeep and hightail it out on foot. But that would lower their odds of survival on the other side tenfold.

Suddenly, the front tire bit. Brandt’s heart lurched as the jeep kicked forward. Dalilah fell with a smack to the sand as the vehicle shot out from under her. She let out a cry of pain as she hit the sand, then scrambled to her feet and ran after the jeep. Brandt could not apply the brakes now. They’d sink. So he kept going, slow, steady as he leaned over and flung open the passenger door.

“Run, Dalilah! Jump in!”

She leaped in, scrambling up onto the seat as he increased gas, steady, steady, until with relief he felt the sand turning solid beneath the tires. Behind them on the Zimbabwe side from which they’d come, the riverine fringe was now completely ablaze. Even if they wanted to return, they couldn’t. There was only one way, and that way was forward.

He blew out a breath, dragging his hand over wet hair, his heart thumping. He shot her a glance. “You okay?”

She nodded, but she was white with pain, her eyes huge. Brandt felt a sudden punch of affection. Quickly he turned away, concentrating instead on driving. They were reaching the brown pools and water was flowing in widening streams between them. Tension wound tighter.

“How deep do you think that water is?” she said.

“Don’t know.” He entered the narrowest part of a stream between two of the deep-looking pools. Water swirled dark in his lights. The front tires went into the water, then the back ones. As he drove, the jeep went deeper, water coming up over the wheels now. Brandt kept the forward motion steady. Then suddenly the jeep plunged abruptly forward, water sloshing up over the running boards and flowing in under the door. He could feel it soaking into his boots. His mouth turned dry and he quickly changed direction, steering upriver instead, trying to keep the jeep level and keep it from becoming immersed even more deeply. Water churned around the wheels.

“You know how to swim?” he said.

She gave a snort.

“That’s a yes?” He was worried now.

But she didn’t reply, her gaze fixated on the water still rising around them, her knuckles white as she gripped the top of the door. A wave rolled suddenly over the bonnet. Water leaked under the fold-down windshield, wetting their knees.

The engine burbled strangely and Brandt swallowed. He knew as long as he could maintain forward momentum, the diesel engine would be fine. But if the sand turned to mud, and the wheels slipped just once, the engine would take in too much water and seize. He wondered about crocs—these pools were a lot deeper and bigger than he’d thought.

The engine gurgled again, and Dalilah shot him a hard look. He said nothing, kept his attention on driving. Suddenly he felt the jeep wheels levelling out. The tires found harder purchase and they shot up the other side of the pool. He kept revving until they slid onto firmer ground, then he gradually eased up on the accelerator. Slowly Brandt breathed out the air he’d been holding in his chest—they were out of the water.

But now they were sandwiched in a V of sand between the rising flood on one side, and the high-bank cliff, and the only way was north, even farther upriver, where the bank seemed to rise even higher.

“We’ll keep going,” he said. “Until we find a way out.”

Ahead in their headlights the rain was silvery, and the strip of white sand between cliff and water grew narrower and narrower as the river continued to swell. Urgency bit into Brandt.

They could be trapped.

“If a full flood comes down,” he said, trying to keep her positive, “it’ll keep Amal and his men on the other side for at least a day or so until they find a way to cross.”

Dalilah’s gaze flicked to the high bank on the Botswana side. “Yeah, and at least we’ll be driving head-on into the wall of water if it does come down,” she said. “Always nice to face what’s coming.”

Brandt laughed, a great big booming release of tension. He loved that Princess had a sense of humor on top of her bravado.

“Hold tight, Princess!” he yelled as he veered left and zoomed through more water that was closing them in. It splashed up the sides of the vehicle, higher, higher. Then something hit them with a hard thud.

Oh, Jesus.

“What’s that?” she hissed.

Then he saw—the carcass of a bloated cow, floating down. For a minute he’d feared it was a croc. Relief rushed out his chest once more and he laughed again. But this time she remained wire-tense, her fist clutched with a death grip on the bar.

Brandt drove fast, denying the first stirrings of panic licking through his gut as his headlights kept illuminating more and more cliff. The clock was ticking—they had to get out of here.

Dalilah reached suddenly forward, grabbed the hunting spot off the dash, flicked it on. She panned up the river, farther than his lights reached. All caution about being seen was now completely overridden by a desperate urge to get out of the riverbed, away from rising water.

“Over there!” she yelled. “A gap!”

Sweet heaven—she was right. A break in the cliff wall, a gentle incline up onto the high bank. Sweat dripping into his eyes, Brandt raced for it, water chortling at the wheels. He swung the jeep up onto the banking incline, and the jeep stuck. He revved, hard, tires spitting out wet sand. The engine cut, and they stalled. Brandt cursed viciously as he tried to restart it, praying there was no water damage somehow. The engine coughed, turned, then died again. He tried again, slower on the gas. The jeep growled to life. He said a silent prayer as he began carefully edging the four-wheel drive up the bank, all the way up. They shot out over the top onto hard grassy ground fringed with tall fever trees.

He hit the brakes. Put his head back and inhaled deeply.

“Oh, God,” she said at his side.

He shot her a fast glance, worry spurting through him.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, tears of relief pouring down her face, and she smiled. “We made it,” she whispered. “We actually made it!”

Her emotion made his eyes prickle, too.

“Yeah,” he said, placing his hand on her knee, his throat going tight. “We bloody well did. We make a good team, Princess.”

She bit her lip to stop it from trembling, and nodded.

Brandt maneuvered the jeep a little higher onto the hard ground and into a grove of tall fever trees, where he parked under the canopy. They sat for a few minutes in silence, mentally regrouping as drops of water from the leaves plopped onto the canvas above their heads. There was a sudden shaking of the ground and an explosive roar. In their headlights they saw a wall of chocolate-brown water streaked with foam come crashing down the river, swallowing up logs, fallen trees spinning, dead cattle bobbing, along with an old tire and other unidentifiable debris. Waves licked and churned and danced up the banks, pulling in great blocks of sand that crumbled away into the flood. On the far side of the river, the flames ate at the blackened trunks of trees, the orange glow of the fire casting a coppery sheen over the churning brown water.

Finally Brandt doused the headlights.

Neither spoke as they listened to the roar of the floodwaters, watching the strange interplay of ghostly orange light on the raging river. A few more minutes and they would have been swallowed by it, too.

In silence, Brandt reached into the backseat, found the whiskey bottle, uncapped it. He held it out to her. Dalilah hesitated, then took the bottle from him. She took a deep swig and coughed, eyes watering.

She handed the bottle back to him, and he took a deep drink himself.

For another few seconds they sat like that, stunned, the adrenaline still humming through their bodies as the severity of what had almost happened sank in. She reached for the bottle, took another sip, put back her head and laughed. Husky, deep, real gut-laughter, a little crazy.

“Dalilah?” He touched her, worried. “You okay?”

She wiped tears from the corner of her eyes. He wasn’t sure whether they were tears of laughter or not. Or both.

Then she looked at him, really looked at him, her eyes black and luminous in the faint coppery light being cast by the fire on the opposite bank.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alive as right now. Even though the pain is killing me.” She took another swig, handed him the bottle, wiped her mouth. Then closed her eyes as she let the whiskey do its thing.

Brandt was startled by a dawning realization—this woman was fired by adrenaline, adversity. It fueled instead of cracked her. He got this. He got her—she was like him. And the knowledge gave him a deep twisting feeling in his chest, a sense of kinship. A bond he didn’t want. With it came a whisper of fear—they had a long way to go yet.

She laughed again, softly, more sadly, her eyes still closed. “God, when did drinking get to be so good?”

And now all he wanted to do was kiss her, so badly he thought he’d burst. He wanted to feel her lips against his, rip her out of that torn, wet cocktail dress, hook his fingers into that scrap of a G-string and just bury himself in her, have those firm dusky thighs wrapped around him. Become one. Defy death, affirm life—an urge as old as time.

Her eyelids fluttered open as she sensed a shift in him, and something in her features stilled as she registered the look on his face. Their gazes held as something dark swelled between them, the pent-up emotion almost tangible. Raindrops plopped onto the canopy above. Brandt could smell the smoke, the mud in the churning water, the heat of the jeep’s engine. And he leaned forward, inexorably pulled toward her by some undeniable force. He could detect the faint scent of coconut in her wet hair. Their mouths were so close he could taste the whiskey on her breath. Her lips opened.

The water rumbled and there was a dull boom as a tree thudded into the bank below. Another grumble of thunder growled far over the plains.

He began to throb, ache, in places so deep he didn’t know they even existed anymore. His vision narrowing, he leaned in closer and gently cupped the side of her face. She tilted her chin to him.

Their lips touched, brushed, lightly as feathers. A volcano of lust erupted fierce into his belly, molten desire firing into his chest, quickening his breathing. She arched up into him, her hand touching his waist as he pressed his mouth to hers and her tongue found his. Brandt stroked his palm down the length of her arm, his fingers softly covering hers, kissing her harder, deeper. Then he felt the rock on her hand, the diamond. Christ, what were they doing!

He jerked back, shocked.

She stared into his eyes, just as stunned. Silence—heavy, loaded with crackling tension—filled the space between them. Words defied Brandt.

Sorry didn’t cut it. Because he wasn’t sorry. He’d do it again in a heartbeat.

And that’s when fear plunged its blade really deep into his heart—this woman scared him. She made him want. In a way that was raw and deep and very dangerous. A way that he hadn’t wanted in years, not since a time when life still held possibilities and dreams. She’d reawakened a part of himself he thought long dead. Dalilah really was too hot for him to handle. And for the next few days, it was going to be his job—to handle her.

“Brandt,” she said.

“Don’t,” he said. “Please, don’t say anything, Dalilah. It... Nothing happened.”

Her mouth went tight, and he saw something heavy and sad in her eyes. He also saw her complexion was suddenly wan, and she was starting to shiver again.

He cursed himself, resenting the erection still hard and hot in his pants—a mocking reminder he was a damn fool. He was supposed to be taking care of her, not satisfying his own lust.

Self-recrimination slicing like ice through him, he flung open his door. “Let’s find you some dry clothes, take a look at that injury, get some food into you.”

He put the Petzl headlamp back onto his head, clicked it on, and rummaged around in the back for a second headlamp, which he’d taken from the bush camp. He looped the strap of the second lamp over the roll bar, under the jeep’s canvas roof, so that it cast its light down into the interior of the vehicle.

Survival lust. That’s all it was, he told himself as he tossed things out of the backpack. It was normal. Survivors could become euphoric in the face of cheating death. Humans were hormonally primed to jump each other’s bones after times of war. This ensured propagation of the species, survival of the tribe. There was a design to nature, and that’s all this was. Humans, at the base level, were programmed no less than other mammals.

Focus. Get over it.

But Brandt knew he was fruitlessly trying to justify his actions. Actions that were inexcusable, the same kind of actions that had gotten Carla tortured, raped and murdered while he’d been forced to watch helplessly.

He tossed a pile of clothes into the front seat beside Dalilah. “Put those on.” His words were brusque, and he knew it. He saw a glimmer of hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t care—couldn’t afford to. It was best this way. She gathered up the clothes, and her gaze held his for several beats.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing.” Her words were just as terse.

“Dalilah,” he said, then hesitated. “It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

She bit her lip and turned away from him.

Brandt cursed again to himself as he dug a kikoi out of the backpack. He held up the woven African sarong. It looked brand-new—those poor German tourists must have bought it at some market recently. He draped it over the roll bars that divided the front from the backseats, making a curtain to afford Dalilah some privacy while she changed.

From behind the curtain he said curtly, “If you need help changing, tell me.”

“I won’t,” she said crisply. “I’m fine.”

Silence.

Brandt scrubbed his brow and blew out a chestful of air. He’d crossed the line, but she was just as guilty. She was engaged to another man, and Brandt held on to that. Women could not be trusted. They broke promises.

Especially women like her.