The Turn Series Box Set

by Andrew Clawson

  “Where is he?” Pinda asked.

  “Here,” Wallace said, his voice low. “He didn’t tell me where.”

  What the hell? Reed’s stomach drew tight, but when Effie Palmer and one of Pinda’s men walked out of the grass toward Pinda and Wallace, the ground seemed to fall from beneath him. Effie walked like a free woman, leading her supposed captor to the path.

  “Are you certain?” Pinda asked, taking no mind of the approaching woman. “He is still here?”

  “Yes,” Wallace said. Effie stopped beside him, but Wallace scarcely noted her. He too searched the hillside, his flashlight moving across the grasses. “I did exactly as you said.”

  Reed’s cold blood now turned to lava. Wallace was in league with Pinda, and he’d taken Effie along for the ride.

  Reed raised his 9mm, aiming for Pinda’s chest. Take him out first, then deal with Wallace’s treachery. Fingering the trigger, he fired.

  From fifty yards, no pistol shot was certain, no matter how good the shooter. Reed’s aim was better than most, but even he couldn’t have known Pinda would turn when he fired. Black, inky blood flashed in the moonlight and Pinda grunted, twisting around and falling, one hand clasping his wounded bicep. Effie screamed.

  Reed stood and ran toward the fallen gangster. Effie kept screaming, never moving aside to give him a clear shot at Pinda. Before Reed could get Pinda in his sights again, the man clambered to his feet and wrapped an arm around Effie’s neck. “Do not move!” he shouted. A pistol jammed against her head. “I will kill her!”

  “No you won’t.” Reed tried to find an angle to shoot from and failed. Pinda had an arm around Effie’s neck and was using her as a human shield. “All of you set me up. You think I care if she dies?”

  Every step brought him closer to Wallace Palmer, who stood rooted to the ground, his mouth hanging open. “What are you doing?” Wallace asked, his words directed to Pinda. “She’s your sister!”

  That stopped Reed in his tracks. “His sister?” The entire situation came crashing into place. Wallace asking him to help find Effie. How Wallace finally seemed to be stunned by things, with Effie now truly in danger. He’d bought it all, the entire thing. “You set me up because you’re married to his sister?” When Reed glanced to Wallace, the man’s head fell. White hot rage filled Reed’s head. “I should kill you now.” Except he couldn’t, not with Effie’s life in the balance.

  Pinda’s arm shot out, and Reed ducked as a bullet went whizzing past his shoulder. Pinda snarled, but Reed was hidden in the grass, out of sight.

  “Let me go!” Effie shouted. “You are crazy! This will not help the children.”

  “Shut up.” Pinda looked to Wallace. “Go to Reed and take his gun. If you do that, this will end.”

  Wallace didn’t respond, unable to take his eyes from his wife, from the forearm wrapped around her throat. “Jakaya, let her go. This isn’t part of the deal.”

  “The deal has changed. Shoot Reed Kimble, and I will set her free.”

  A pistol appeared in his hand.

  “No.” Wallace aimed the gun at Pinda. “Let my wife—”

  Pinda’s gun flashed, and Wallace dropped, hands clutched to his stomach. He tried to stand, but then moaned and fell.

  “Stand up and drop the gun,” Pinda said, turning his weapon in Reed’s direction.

  Effie thrashed in his arms.

  “Stop it!” He slammed the pistol against her head, hard enough to reduce her screams to whimpers. “Show yourself or I kill her.”

  “You’d kill your own sister?” Reed shouted from behind the tall grass. He immediately rolled away, but Pinda didn’t fire.

  “If I must.” Wild eyes backed his point. “I will find new people to help, and you will not interfere. If you do as I say, I will let her go.”

  Effie spoke up. “You must do it, Reed. We are only helping the babies.” Through her sobs, she fought to speak. “The children must be saved.”

  “Saved? You’re kidnapping babies, and you call it saving them? Both of you are Maasai. You’re murdering your own people to steal their children.”

  “We are not Maasai!” Effie shouted. “They are evil.”

  “The Maasai aren’t evil. Kidnapping babies is.”

  Effie responded through a clenched jaw. “Maasai are the devil. You do not know. To be Maasai woman is to be dead before the grave. They are treated like animals, meant only to have children and care for the men. They have no life. If one dies, she just is replaced by another. My mother died when I was a child.” Anger blazed on her face. “My father took a new wife, and we were told to forget my mother, told that she was weak. Every child we take will not suffer as I did.”

  “You sell them for money.”

  “To a better life,” Effie said. “To white people who cannot have children.”

  “The boys will be safe,” Pinda said. “They all find good homes.”

  “You know nothing. The babies are sold to anyone who will take them.”

  “What do you mean, the boys?” Effie asked.

  “Girls bring more money to us when I sell them off,” Pinda said. “Not to the white families, but to others. It does not matter, because we can save more of the boys with this money. The girls are expendable.”

  Effie’s jaw dropped open. “You sell the girls to anyone? You cannot do that! We must save them all.”

  “Did the Maasai care for our mother?” Pinda said. “No, our father forgot about her, as he should.” Passion inflamed his words, and as Reed risked a glance up to find Pinda still holding his struggling sister, Reed caught a touch of confusion in them as well. “The girls would die without us, so I use them to make better lives for the boys, to continue the bloodline. You must understand.”

  Reed sensed an opening. “Listen to him,” he shouted from his hiding spot. “He shot your husband. He’s using you to kidnap babies, and he’ll kill all the girls. You can’t let him do it.”

  “Be quiet!” Pinda shouted.

  “You used me to steal the girls, only to sell them into slavery or worse?” Effie twisted in his grasp, struggling to break free. “I kidnap them for you, and you lie to me!”

  He smacked her in the head with his gun again. When he looked up, a chilling grin spread across his face. “I do not need you.” Pinda fired the gun next to Effie’s head and then shouted into the night. “Come out now or she dies.”

  Staying silent in the grass, Reed crept to one side until he finally had an angle. Now. His pistol lined up with Pinda’s face and he fired.

  The shot missed, and Pinda ducked behind his sister, firing wildly toward Reed to send him rolling away. As he came up on one knee and caught sight of them again, Effie’s hand went to her hair. Before Reed could move, he saw a flash of white in her hand as it arced into her brother’s neck. Pinda fired, and the bullet sailed harmlessly over Reed’s head.

  Effie’s hand came down again, and Reed realized she had used the decorative bone stick in her hair like a knife, ripping Jakaya Pinda’s neck open. Blood gushed like black water in the moonlight. He dropped the gun, clutched at his wound. For a moment everything stood still, but then Effie pulled away and ran toward her fallen husband.

  Reed jumped up and took aim at the gangster.

  He never fired. Jakaya Pinda lay where he had dropped. The white bone stick jutted from his neck, and far too much blood flowed from two jagged holes. Behind him, Effie sobbed softly, whispering her husband’s name as Wallace’s chest rose and fell with ragged breaths.

  “It’s okay,” Wallace said. “I’m still here.”

  Reed ran past them, toward where Godfrey had been hidden. Before he reached the hilltop, Reed’s foot crashed into something solid, something which made a sickening squelch. The air froze in his lungs when he looked down and saw a body.

  It wasn’t Godfrey. This man was too big. It was Pinda’s henchman who had come after Godfrey, lying motionless with dark stains on his shirt. He wasn’t breathing.

  Reed ran ahead
and nearly stumbled over Godfrey’s body. The kid was buried in the grass, and when Reed reached down, his fingers trembled before they touched Godfrey’s neck.

  He still had a pulse, and as Reed searched for wounds, his eyes opened, glowing in the dark night.

  Epilogue

  One month later

  Clouds hovered over Wallace Palmer’s former property, the remnants of a storm fading in the thirsty dirt as a line of blue widened across the horizon. Standing on the front porch where he’d visited Wallace several times, the door behind Reed creaked open and footsteps vibrated on the floor. Reed turned to see one of Wallace’s old employees with a loaded cardboard box in his hands.

  “This is the last one, boss.”

  “Sounds good,” Reed said. “Go ahead without me. I have to make a phone call and then I’ll see you at the camp.”

  As the man who was now his employee headed off, Reed watched him until the man’s truck disappeared from view, headed for Kimble Safaris. Strange how far things had come since Jakaya Pinda’s last breath.

  After confirming Godfrey was alive, albeit with a bullet in his shoulder and another graze on his forehead, Reed had patched him up. Effie had been a mess after killing her brother, but she and Wallace revealed where to find the stolen babies. Reed delivered Godfrey to the hospital and then took the recovered babies to the orphanage where he had secured spots for them.

  While this happened, Wallace and Effie had skipped town, but not before Wallace left the deed to his land and buildings on Reed’s doorstep, along with a letter signing over possession of everything to Reed Kimble. Not that it made up for what he’d done, but Reed suspected Wallace had stashed away a tidy sum over the years, enough to start he and Effie on a new life, far from the troubles they’d left behind in Mwanza. Nixon Ereng questioned Reed for hours, but Reed couldn’t tell him where to find Wallace, and eventually the policeman had dropped the matter.

  Now Reed looked over the buildings one last time before a demolition crew arrived tomorrow. Getting rid of the buildings would return this land to nature, and give more space for the big game in this area to roam, hunt and forage. Good for the animals, and good for Reed’s business. He had sold the house contents and given the proceeds to Godfrey, who now had a modest apartment in the city and enough cash to stay out of trouble. Or so Reed hoped.

  Metal clinked by his feet, and a wet nose rubbed his leg. Reed looked down and scratched a furry ear. “Hey there, Cinder. How’s it going?” The newest canine member of his crew barked before falling to his rear and looking up with warm, expectant eyes. “Want a treat, buddy?” Cinder clearly did. After snagging the treat Reed tossed to him in midair, Cinder settled back on his haunches and watched as Rico came running up. It seemed he was determined not to miss out on any chance for food.

  Adopted on the night Reed and Godfrey ended Pinda’s reign of terror, Cinder now belonged to Reed, and his two dogs were best buds. The dogs trailed Reed to his Land Rover, jostling for position outside the vehicle’s door. “Hop in, guys. We’re headed home.” With Rico and Cinder each positioned by a rear window, Reed got behind the wheel and drove, headed back to his camp to get ready for the next set of guests, and to make sure Paul wasn’t driving everyone else crazy. Contrary to what the first doctor had thought, Paul was expected to recover fully from his wounds and regain total use of his arm. But his top employee faced a long road of rehab before he could return to his former duties. Until then he made due with supervising Reed’s team, smiling all the way.

  His pocket buzzed, and when he pulled his phone out, a number with the prefix 1 appeared on the screen. An American number, one he didn’t often see, but knew well. Reed connected the call. “Sarah Hall,” he said, one corner of his mouth going up. “How’s my favorite veterinarian?”

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  One of the topics touched on in this tale is the collision between humans and nature, specifically the animals who call the wild their home. As the human population increases, the inevitable tension arising from our world overlapping the animal kingdom has created terrible consequences, almost all of which have disproportionately impacted wildlife. Seven billion humans need places to live, food to eat, and water to drink, all of which in some way impacts wildlife. Elephants and lions used to dominate the African landscape. In 1930 it is estimated the elephant population in Africa was 5 – 10 million. Less than 1% of that number remained in 1989 when elephants were added to the international list of the most endangered species. One example pertinent to this story is the Selous reserve in Tanzania, which has lost over 90 percent of its elephants to the illegal ivory trade over the past few decades, resulting in large scale job losses on the reserve and a marked decrease in tourism revenue. On a larger scale, up to 35,000 African elephants were killed in 2016. Poachers kill lions for their ivory, which is carved into jewelry, utensils, religious figurines and other trinkets. As much as 70% of illegal ivory is sold in China, where a pound goes for $1,000 on the streets.

  Lions are now extinct in seven African countries. Habitat loss has brought lions in closer contact with humans, and the lions are now being killed by farmers in retaliation for preying on livestock. Every hour 240 acres of natural habitat is destroyed due to the growth in human populations, pushing these cats ever closer to the brink of extinction due to factors brought about by humans. Ten years ago the African lion population was 50,000, but today only 10,000 – 15,000 free-roaming lions remain.

  The answers to how humanity can reverse these catastrophic losses are nuanced and will require immense effort and dedication on the part of many nations, but one thing that is not in question is that if humanity does not act soon and change the growing tide of destruction, lions and elephants may soon be relegated to the pages of history books, a cautionary tale for future generations about what happens when species collide. If you take anything from this book, please let it be an understanding of what is happening to these magnificent creatures and an open mind when considering the issues. It will take all of us to make sure our children are able to see the elephant and the lion roaming their natural habitats as they have for millions of years.

  Acknowledgements

  Crafting a novel may be lonely at times, but sharing it with the world is far more of a group endeavor. My deepest thanks to everyone involved, beginning with the fearless beta readers who offered invaluable advice. Debby Clawson, Rob Dolan, Holly Bisceglia, Savannah Hayes, thank you for all the wonderful suggestions and ideas which made this a stronger tale. Victoria Mixon did an amazing job editing, pulling the story apart and putting it back together in a much better way. Leslie Watts and the team at Writership cleaned up the text with a fantastic copyedit, and Chereese at Grammar Rules A to Z did a wonderful proofreading job. Thank you all.

  Of course, I couldn’t have done this without the support of my wife Kelsey and our favorite little cat, the indomitable Graham.

  TURN: A New Dawn

  Epigraph

  Nature doesn’t need people – people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.

  Harrison Ford

  Prologue

  Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania

  May 20th

  A deep growl filled the air as a shadow flashed across the street, there and gone in an instant. Jake Hayes blinked hard, squinting bloodshot eyes against the dark. What the hell was that? Was he imagining things? Could be. The number of beers he’d consumed tonight didn’t help a man think straight. Hell, he’d barely been in Africa for twenty-four hours. Hard to know what to expect. He shrugged. Probably a stray dog searching for food.

  Going out drinking on his first night in Tanzania had sounded great when the pretty girl at his hotel suggested it. Of course, that was before he realized she really did just want a dancing partner and nothing else. Joke’s on you, Jake, old boy. Either way, the bars had been fun, the music loud, and the drinks flowing. Goo
d times, except now he had to stumble home in the middle of the night. Wasn’t having much luck getting there either. And where had everybody else gone? Empty sidewalks stretched ahead and behind, dark alleys cutting between buildings that hung over the street.

  Weak pools of light stretched ahead, scarcely denting the darkness before being swallowed. Half the streetlights flickered as he passed. His phone battery had died before he left the last bar, leaving him dependent on the occasional street sign hidden in shadow for direction. Right now, his hotel in a quieter part of town didn’t seem like such a great idea. It was only a couple of blocks from the bars and restaurants, but it was like a different world. I should be there by now.

  Metal crashed behind him. Jake twisted around, nearly tripping over his own feet. Arms waving, he righted himself as the shadow vanished again, lost in an alleyway. No doubt this time: something was trailing him.

  Chill out. Probably a dog, a stray pillaging trash cans. Or a family pet that had hopped a fence and gotten itself lost. No need to get worked up. He must be close to his hotel. Unless he was going the wrong way.

  He shouldn’t have drunk that last shot. Nightcaps were never a good idea. Jake turned and looked behind him again, then bounced off a fire hydrant and nearly staggered against a darkened window. Careful, Jake. No need to go tumbling into somebody’s living room. He peered this way and that, found a street sign and blinked through the booze until it came into focus. A stray newspaper flitted past his leg, crackling as it twisted on the warm breeze.

  Footsteps cut through the alcohol haze clouding his thoughts.

  No, not footsteps. A clicking noise. Like nails on concrete.