by Nikki Logan
Her fingers traced patters on the canvas, half hypnotizing herself. “So being a Special Services brainiac is better?”
“As if you can talk, Ana Phylaxis. You were a straight-A student. Except for that one year.”
Her head came off her pillow, chest tightening. “How do you know that?”
“Your grades are in your file.”
She’d been half joking about that file. “What else is in there?”
He didn’t answer but he hedged, “I…had a lot of time to go through it.”
He was embarrassed by his interest. He had been checking on her after the farmhouse. Her smiled broadened.
“So what happened that year?” he wondered aloud.
The smile died. “I had to repeat fourth year.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “It’s a long story.”
“You have somewhere else to be?”
No. “I’m sure it’s spelled out in my record.”
“You were suspended.”
“I didn’t cheat.” God, how many times she’d defended herself with that vow.
“I know.”
That tiny show of faith was more than most of her friends had given her. Or her father. “How do you know?”
“Because I know you’re not a cheater. Who was Craig Orr?”
“He was my—” She didn’t even like to call him her boyfriend. She’d loved it at the time, but not now. “We were involved. He was a sophomore when I was a senior.”
“And he was stealing your material?”
Her eyes fell shut. “He got my password. I didn’t know. Turns out he was taking my old papers and submitting them as his all year.”
“I’m surprised he got away with it as long as he did, given there were only two years between you.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “The syllabus barely changed from year to year. Of course I’d gotten top grades, and I’d kept every single one on my hard drive. I think that’s the only reason I wasn’t expelled like Craig. The school shared culpability. It took a while for anyone to notice. By the time I was cleared, I’d missed too much of fourth year. I elected to re-do it.” She paused. “And I couldn’t face any of my classmates. The only way to prove I wasn’t party to Craig’s plagiarism was to admit, publicly, that he’d only been with me so he could steal my work.”
The pause stretched out. “That must have been rough.”
Which part? Discovering his systemic betrayal or discovering that he was sleeping with her for access to her assignments? Lord, how he’d laughed at her shock.
And laughed.
And laughed.
She cleared her throat against the old shame. “I got to speak with him briefly after he was expelled. The only thing he regretted was stealing from the school’s best student. He said if he’d gone with someone more middle-of-the-road he might not have been caught.”
Actually what he said was academically middle-of-the-road. Because he’d made it more than clear she was very middle-of-the-road in every other way.
“Maybe karma got retribution where you couldn’t.”
Her head came up off the pillow again. “What do you mean?”
“He’s divorced. With a hefty alimony. And the closest he got to working in the veterinary field was a job breeding rats for research labs.”
She gazed at the ceiling of the tent. Her battered heart healed over a tiny bit more. Because he’d told her, and even more because he’d looked into it at all. That he was interested enough to. “Am I a terrible person to find that so very satisfying?” she whispered.
He chuckled. “It makes you human.”
She turned her head again, pressed it closer to the canvas. “Thank you, Simon.”
“You’re welcome,” he said softly. Then after a long pause, “McKenzie needs me. Have a good nap.”
“I will,” she murmured . She was already half there. Something about the tone of his voice was so soothing…
And then he was gone, back to his job. Back to his partner. But Clare wrapped the special feelings he’d left behind tightly around her.
The feeling of being wanted.
The feeling of being respected.
The feeling of being safe.
Chapter Thirteen
By the morning of the following day, ten dogs were in the yard, including the two pups. As predicted, they’d come to investigate the distress calls of their leader and had been lured as a group into the yard by the carcass pieces. The sounds of the six new adult dogs vocalizing and the instinctive begging whines of the two youngsters created a racket that woke the entire camp. At dawn, Musai went out to investigate the four missing dogs and found them heading away from camp, back in the direction they’d come.
They’d split away from the main pack and, with no tracking collars, would soon be lost if the team didn’t act quickly.
Clare assembled a darting detail and they headed out right after breakfast to meet Musai. It galled her to ask for Agent Amazon’s help, but it was imperative each shot be carefully taken to avoid injuring the dogs, and taken quickly enough so the group couldn’t scatter too much. Having both trained operatives would be a real advantage.
They loaded themselves, three dart guns, and Clare’s medical kit into a jeep and headed out to meet Musai at the location he’d radioed in to them.
She and Simon had managed only moments together before the darting expedition—a short, breathless, frustrating private liaison in the mess tent that was interrupted before it could become anything more. He’d slipped out the tent’s rear flap, sexy and regretful longing on his handsome face. Since then they’d been reduced to covert glances and tiny, secret smiles.
Christmas had never felt farther away.
“It’s imperative you target their flank, their shoulder, or their neck,” she said, taking great care not to make eye-contact with Simon. “There’s not enough meat on a wild dog to risk a shot anywhere else.”
He and McKenzie tested out the unloaded guns, getting a feel for the weapons. They practiced raising, aiming, and firing in quick succession. Even in practice, evidence of their expert training was irrefutable.
“I’ll prepare the darts and load them,” she explained. “Mitch will stand by with the recovery agent.”
“What’s that for?” McKenzie asked.
“It’s for us.”
McKenzie froze. “Excuse me?”
“Immobulon is also designed for larger animals, like rhinos and elephants. An accidental spill or prick could knock any of us cold. The recovery agent can be used to revive us if that happens.”
McKenzie nodded, trying not to appear relieved. “How long will the dogs be unconscious?” she asked.
“Hours. Long enough to get back to camp, load them onto the transporter, and drive up to Kasanka.” She cleared her suddenly nervous throat. That chilling feeling from the day before hadn’t entirely left her. “Unless something unforeseen occurs, of course.”
There was an awkward pause as everyone froze. There wasn’t any doubt what she was alluding to.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Simon said at the exact same time as his partner queried, “And how will the dogs feel when they recover?”
Clare gave herself a mental shake and glanced at the tall blonde. Was that a loaded question? “They won’t be happy, but there’ll be no permanent side effects. Just grogginess and…some nausea.”
Across from her, Simon grunted at the use of the words ‘just’ and ‘some.’
In a few hundred meters, Mitch killed the engine. “We’re here.”
Carrying the weapons and drugs, they all jogged to where Musai lay in the grass monitoring the four missing pack members. Clare could see immediately their level of stress was high. Nothing freaked out a wild dog more than being separated from its pack and its alpha.
Clare loaded the darts with sedatives while Simon and Agent Amazon practiced their shots with empty weapons. When they were ready, Clare handed Simon the first loaded gun. T
heir eyes met for less than a breath, but that momentary connection warmed her through.
In the distance, the four stressed dogs trotted in circles. Fortunately for the darting party, the animals weren’t running—yet—but sticking close together. On the count of three, the two sharpshooters fired at the outer pair of dogs. Before Simon’s silent shot had even registered on its canine target, he thrust his gun to Clare and she slammed a dart into it, tossing it on to McKenzie for her second shot. Simon reached back for another reload, his focus fixed on the final dog running in nervous circles as his pack mates began to stagger and fall. The final shot went pfft and the fourth dog was darted.
Thirty seconds…
Thirty seconds and all the dogs were sedated, the stress minimized by the incredible speed. They’d have no idea what had hit them, they’d just wake up back with their pack in their final home. Clare had never experienced anything like it. But then again, they’d never traveled with two elite spy types before.
Simon and McKenzie exchanged a look of satisfaction before turning to Clare and Mitch. Mitch was staring at McKenzie with a new kind of awe. The blonde stroked absent fingers down the darting rifle. Color stained her cheeks and her eyes glittered as she dipped her gaze away from him. Was she turned-on by Mitch’s admiration, the excitement of the kill or the targets on the ground? Or maybe all three?
“Just another day at the office.” Simon pushed himself back to his haunches, dusting some loose grass from his shirt. His smile was brilliant and genuine.
A burning, intense, insane, awful desire to be naked with him right here on the grass hammered through her, primal and raw. She wanted all that proficiency—all that man—over her and on her and in her, and she wanted it now.
His tongue slipped out to dampen his lips, as though he’d caught a whiff of her errant craving. She fixated on it until he turned away.
It took three deep breaths to wrestle the unfamiliar urges and sensations under control. She forced herself to walk away, followed by the speculative interest of McKenzie.
“Can we drag you guys along every time we do this?” Mitch joked, collecting the three dart guns and passing them to Musai to hold. Clare loaded the sedatives back into the safe case and stood, the heated blood still singing through her veins. She needed to get hold of herself.
Mitch and Musai brought the vehicles closer to where the dogs now lay twitching, nearly unconscious in the grass. Clare and the others took up comfortable positions to wait until they were certain the last of the dogs had slipped into a deep sleep before approaching.
Simon stretched out in the grass, casual as you like, not a foot away from where she’d just sat. He was without a doubt the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. It would be so easy to simply lean over and—
Damn.
She rose abruptly. She needed to get away from him and the undignified direction of her thoughts. She was a professional, too. She had a job to do that was at least as exciting and interesting as the target practice she’d just witnessed.
If only she could keep her mind on it.
Ten minutes later, she led the way down to where the dogs lay, checking each one for deep sedation and strong respiration. She demonstrated for the others how to safely lift the dead weight of the dogs into the jeeps they’d pulled around to get them back to camp for the necessary health checks, fitting of the collars and final loading into the cumbersome transporter.
Unaccustomed to moving animals and wary of causing any harm, McKenzie wrapped her arms almost fully around the dog’s shoulders, bringing her face in close quarters with the rank smelling animal.
“Oh, my God, that’s revolting,” she wailed.
Clare allowed the tiniest of grins. “You get used to it.”
“No,” Simon said, hefting the largest dog, rump first, up onto the pallet in one of the jeeps. “You really don’t.”
He glanced at Clare, who was supporting the dog’s head. For a heartbeat it was just them, recalling the time he’d carried her into the farmhouse, complaining about how bad she smelled. But she’d been in his arms. And even though she’d been angry and terrified, she also remembered feeling that electric surge arc between them for the first time.
She turned away, her pulse throbbing along with the rest of her. But hormones she could deal with. It was her admiration that she struggled with most. That high-octane mix of attraction and respect. A sensation that filled her heart…and felt dangerously like love.
Love.
That was going to be much harder to ignore.
…
“You are possibly the worst showoff in the world, deVries,” Mac said back in camp as she followed Simon toward the tents. “‘Just another day at the office,’” she imitated his deep bass. “Oh, please.”
He grinned. He couldn’t say he wasn’t happy to have done so well for Clare. The undisguised admiration and gratitude—not to mention the naked lust—in her eyes had been absolutely worth any ribbing he now had to endure.
“Whereas you didn’t enjoy yourself one little bit,” he taunted.
“Well, it’s nice to have some live target practice where the target doesn’t end up dead.”
“And nicer to have a hunky South African look at you like he wants to throw you over his shoulder and drag you into the bushes?”
“Yeah, that was good, too. Give me five, I just need to find some clothes that don’t stink of dog,” Mac smiled and ducked into the tent.
So, this was the halfway mark. The dogs were recovered and the convoy to Kasanka could begin later in the day. His stomach tightened at the thought the project would be over in just a day or so. His best reason for being near Clare was rapidly expiring.
Yet with it, the risk to her was dissipating, as well.
Across the clearing Musai hovered meaningfully. Another local stood tense nearby.
“Musai,” he nodded, approaching.
Simon and the older man had formed a comfortable kind of truce since the crisis of his unexpected arrival. Clearly he’d passed some kind of African character test, because the wise old man had warmed toward him. A lot.
Musai turned and spoke in low tones to the man next to him, then nodded, stepping forward. “This is Osayamwambor,” Musai said in thick, slow English. “He’s seen something.”
Simon looked from one man to the other. Neither was smiling.
“Tell me.”
Musai interpreted the rapid-fire Shona. “A man. He set up camp. But hides it. This man, he does not want to be seen.”
Osayamwambor turned and pointed east then held up the only fingers on his left hand.
“Three days east, or he’s been there for three days?” Simon asked. He prayed silently for the former.
“He come three days ago,” Musai clarified.
Simon’s stomach knotted. The same day Clare arrived. The same day someone did such a bang-up job of not ransacking her tent while searching it. Such a professional job. “None of the locals recognize this man?”
Musai translated and the taller man shook his head. Musai turned back. “Stranger. Not from here.”
The tall guy had used the derogatory slang for someone from Zimbabwe and Simon didn’t need it translated. He’d heard it plenty of times throughout his months undercover when Corby was whining about the big Zimbabwean, Mbuutu, behind his back.
A thick layer of apprehension settled in Simon’s gut but he masked it carefully, as if the intel wasn’t all that much of a newsflash. As if his heart wasn’t beating hard enough to break a rib. No sense alarming them. And no sense alerting the stranger if Musai went after him himself out of loyalty and losing the momentary advantage he suddenly found himself with.
He thanked them both for their vigilance, said he’d take care of it, and walked back to camp as casually as he could.
So a stranger from Zimbabwe was covertly surveilling the team’s activities. He may even have witnessed that whole conversation just now—complete with sign language for the geographically challenged. In which
case the stranger would have a fair idea he’d been spotted.
Fuck.
Best case scenario, it was someone out here hunting for bush meat or an opportunist looking to supplement his below minimum wage with stolen equipment.
Worst case scenario…
Yeah, worst case scenario was why he was here. Why he’d negotiated his way back onto the job despite his section chief’s extreme displeasure. Dyson and Sergeant knew a British prison was a better end for them than any world in which they’d narked on someone higher up the criminal food chain. SIS’s best chance for closing this case was that one of the perps would make a move on the same evidence Simon was here to recover.
Someone like Corby or Mbuutu. Or another flunky sent by their employer.
The trouble was, stray witnesses, like stray evidence, had a way of pissing off their breed of filth. He couldn’t assume they were only here to recover the evidence to fulfill their job before the government did. They had a score to settle with him. And maybe with Clare.
He pulled out his close-range and texted two words to his partner.
Code Two.
Her reply came just a few seconds later.
Check yr msgs, Simon. So sorry.
His stomach lurched. Mac never apologized—ever. And she never called him Simon. He thumbed his mail app and punched in the code to unravel the encryption. Within seconds he found himself staring at the subject line of a communication from Vauxhall.
Witness Status - Delaney [upgraded].
His whole body sagged as he scanned the message. His chief wanted more than just a written statement from Clare, they now wanted an in-person interrogation. At Vauxhall.
Which meant not only confronting her about the evidence they had, but persuading her to come back to London with him to be interviewed. Escorted back like a criminal. It meant they were on opposite sides again, and his conflict of interest had just gone from inadvisable to insupportable.
He had to treat her like she was any one of her WildLyfe colleagues. Like she was nothing to him. Bringing her in was orders.
Across camp, Clare worked with Mitch to prepare one of the sedated wild dogs for its medical exam. She’d stripped off her grimy hooded sweatshirt down to the spaghetti-strapped tank beneath it. He watched from the cover of his dark glasses as she bent toward him to pick up one corner of the Hessian blanket, and then straightened to gently move the dog to where the main activities of the day would begin.