by Amber Hart
In one of the drawers, I remember a picture of Raven and her father, but that does me no good. I take the picture back to the chair and study it. Raven is maybe thirteen, with her arm around her father. Her father is looking down at Raven as Raven looks at the camera and smiles. It’s a perfect moment. And then it hits me.
That’s it.
The picture is where time stands still.
I race back to the chest and begin dumping drawers onto the floor. I find more photos but nothing else. All I’m left with is the shell of a chest. That’s when I notice the top is thicker than it needs to be. I tap on it and realize instantly that it’s not solid wood. Though the chest is heavy, I edge it away from the wall. Please, I’m thinking, as I tilt it toward the ground. And then a long, thin drawer drops out of the top. From the front, it is completely hidden. I stand the chest back up and grab the drawer. There is only one thing inside: a folder.
Inside are several sheets with annual totals: how many pounds of gorilla meat from how many kills, and the average yearly revenue from said meat.
I’ve found what Ransom hid, the beginning of his quest for evidence. I only hope it’s enough to convince Raven to leave the compound.
Chapter 31
Raven
At dinner, Clovis wears a carefully neutral expression while he talks with other members of the tribe. Across the table, Mr. Tondjii watches me, Mrs. Tondjii on one side of him and Simon on the other. I eat greedily—potatoes and greens and pig meat cooked to perfection. I am not shy about taking advantage of the food the compound provides. I never know when I will have to leave, and I don’t want to do it on an empty stomach.
“Enjoying your food?” Mr. Tondjii comments.
“Yes,” I say.
Clovis doesn’t stop his conversation, but I feel his foot move next to mine under the table—the only indication that he is aware of Mr. Tondjii addressing me.
“And you?” I ask. Seems like the polite thing to do.
Mr. Tondjii smiles. It is not friendly. “Always.”
He turns his attention from me, back to the table. He clears his throat. That’s all it takes for everyone to quiet down and focus on their leader.
“Translate,” he says to Clovis. Then he starts speaking in the tribe dialect.
“Have you heard the latest news?” Clovis whispers into my ear.
There is a murmuring among the members at the long kitchen table.
“Well, it’s true,” Clovis continues translating. “There’s a Cameroonian official who is shutting down jungle poaching packs. Just recently the pack on our northern boundaries was eliminated. True, they were much smaller than we are and therefore much weaker, but they are gone now, which leaves the focus on the other two packs in the area: our pack and the pack to the south. The southern pack has already withstood one attempted raid, but just barely.”
Someone asks a question that Clovis translates to “Are they coming for us?”
“There has been no attempt yet, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be. We need to be on the lookout,” Clovis whispers to me. “The situation is dangerous. We cannot afford a slip-up. We’re already at peak patrol. Be ready.”
After his message is delivered, Mr. Tondjii leaves the table.
Mrs. Tondjii catches my eye from across the table. “Raven, would you like to help me serve the dessert?”
“Sure,” I agree, assessing the reactions of the others. No one seems to notice or care.
“The kitchen staff just brought it out,” she continues, pushing her chair away from the table and leading the way to the island. I follow her. “Mango pudding and fruitcake with whipped icing.”
It isn’t until we are out of earshot, until she is handing me a serving spoon to place in the pudding and she herself is picking up the cake platter, that Mrs. Tondjii whispers something to me.
“The evidence is at the warehouse, Raven,” she says, catching my stare with a small smile. But in her eyes there is a slight sadness. She has chosen between her husband and her son. I imagine the choice must not have been an easy one.
—
I’d love to use my free time with Clovis to go see Jospin, as we agreed—but after Mrs. Tondjii’s news tonight, we cannot meet him. I try not to think about what Jospin will feel when I don’t show up. But we need to use our time to search the warehouse.
The workers are long gone, and the tall steel twin doors are locked with a thick bolt. I stand by the entrance and watch Clovis use bolt cutters. There is no going back now. If we do not find the evidence we need, we will have to somehow stage this to look like a break-in.
I can only hope that this mission will be successful.
“Quick, Raven. Patrol passed by only minutes ago, which means we have less than a half hour before they make rounds again,” Clovis reminds me.
Clovis opens the door. At first I see nothing. It’s not until the door clicks softly shut behind us that Clovis turns on a flashlight. There are no windows. Four walls lined with shelves from top to bottom hold boxes of cans and jars. All of the labels list some sort of fruit or natural jungle food.
I don’t know why any papers would be stored here, but we get to work looking anyway. First I check the boxes that are already open. Try not to cringe when a large spider crawls out of one of them.
“Careful,” Clovis warns as he stomps on it. “Venomous.”
He moves to the other side of the room, the small flashlight clamped in his mouth so he is free to use both his hands. I decide to do the same. I cover one wall in a matter of minutes, but there is nothing to find.
On the next wall I find jars labeled as containing exotic flavors of jam and juices, and cans with the word PULP. The only surprising thing thus far is that occasionally the labels are in English. I leave the nontransparent containers for Clovis to check, since those labels are in French.
Close to ten minutes later, we have searched the entire room.
I survey the damage we’ve done. It’s not terrible, but Mr. Tondjii will know someone has been through his warehouse. We’ve opened boxes, toppled cans.
“Downstairs, quickly,” Clovis whispers.
He moves shelves aside to reveal a hidden door leading into an underground abattoir. I learned from Clovis that this is where the real illegal work takes place. And considering that we didn’t find anything upstairs, this is our last hope.
We descend the stairs into a dank room that smells like wet soil. As I shine my flashlight around, I see why: The walls are made of packed dirt. Shiny metal tables sit in the center of the room. But, surprisingly, it’s clean.
“It won’t be here,” Clovis whispers.
I check the underside of the tables anyway, the legs too.
Clovis is right. There’s nothing.
“I used to come down often,” he says. “It gets too bloody to keep anything here.”
I don’t understand what they even use to cut the meat; I see nothing but the tables—until Clovis shines a light above. I drop my flashlight as I slap a hand to my mouth in shock. Saws, knives, and machetes hang above us from chains attached to the ceiling.
Clovis picks up my flashlight and hands it back to me. “We need to go, Raven.”
But I cannot move.
“Now,” he says, more urgency in his voice. “We only have five minutes. Think of your father. He would not want you to get caught here.”
At the mention of Dad, I snap out of it. Swallowing bile, I follow Clovis to a door, which he opens with a strong tug.
Here, the walls are sheathed in wood, lined with weapons. Thin shelves, only inches wide, hold artillery. Clovis works at moving boxes around on the ground; most of the boxes are packed with ammo.
My flashlight scans everything from small guns to shotguns to blades to razor-sharp traps.
“What is that?” I ask, stopping my beam on a small handgun.
“A gun, Raven,” Clovis says. “Look faster; we’re running out of time.”
I step toward the gun. Something i
s strange about the way it hangs on the wall—a little crooked, where everything else is in perfect order. I eye it longer and notice that the wood seems off too. I carefully remove the gun from the wall.
“Clovis,” I whisper in wonder. “There’s a keyhole.”
Clovis abandons his search through the boxes on the ground and comes to my side.
“We don’t have the key,” he says in exasperation. “We’re so close and we don’t have the key.”
“We don’t need a key,” I say, hoping that I’m right.
I run out of the room, up the stairs, and remove a crating wire from one of the boxes before rejoining Clovis. Hurriedly, I work the lock. It takes longer than I’d like, but finally I hear a click. Clovis wrenches the hidden slat free to expose a small compartment, no bigger than a vanity drawer. There are papers inside. I scan the pages, but I cannot understand any of it.
“It’s French,” Clovis says, pulling me out of the room.
“What does it say?” I ask as I follow him through the abattoir.
We take the stairs two at a time and rush out of the warehouse into the cool night air.
“It says,” replies Clovis in a whisper as he places the bolt back on the steel doors, “everything we need it to say, Raven.”
In the dark, from the outside, the warehouse appears normal. As long as no one shines a light directly on it, the broken bolt can pass as whole. If we’re lucky, no one will know what we’ve done until morning, when Clovis and I don’t show up for breakfast—or until workers do show up at the warehouse.
We take off, running away from the compound. Flicking our flashlights off, plunging ourselves into the darkness of the forest. As I follow closely behind Clovis, his whisper makes me smile.
“We’ve got them now.”
Chapter 32
Jospin
Outside, in the cover of trees, I hear a noise that sounds like an ordinary birdcall, but I know that it’s anything but ordinary. It’s the call pack members make to alert someone to their position in the forest.
So close to the habitat.
I thought that being near the habitat, blending into the leaves, would be the safest route. But it turns out I was wrong, with Mattius retrieving a package and now this only a quarter mile out.
I keep myself still, my breathing measured, as a silhouette comes into view. I perch on a tree limb, waiting to see his face. The man is Simon, Mattius and Clovis’s father. A minute later, another man from the pack, Clement, joins him.
I listen in as they greet each other. I concentrate on not making a sound. The slightest shift in movement could attract their trained eyes to the spot where I’m camouflaged in the trees. I’ve seen them, on several occasions, fire a shot just to be sure there’s no one eavesdropping. I cannot take that risk.
So I stay still and wait while they engage in small talk.
Hopefully the bird balanced near the clump of leaves and moss that I’m disguised in doesn’t give me away. One call from him and the men will know. Because no matter how good I am at becoming part of the jungle, there’s always the risk of an animal seeing through my façade.
The men pull out a couple of beers and take a seat on a large tree stump. Thankfully, the fizz of the can opening causes the bird to fly away. And again I’m alone in the tree, waiting.
“Do you think we’ll find him?” Clement asks.
Simon shrugs. “I don’t think he’s dead, that’s for sure. He knows this jungle too well. We would have found a body if he’d died. The other tribes would have made a spectacle out of it. To kill the son of the poaching alpha? That, they could not have passed up bragging about.”
They know I’m alive.
“Where would he be, though?”
Simon waves an arm around. “Here. In the forest, of course.”
“You don’t think he’d go to the city?”
“Do you?” Simon laughs. “Come on, you know better. This jungle is all he’s ever known. He won’t leave it. Not after living here his whole life. People like us are not meant to be in cities. He would rather die than live in civilization.”
“Have you heard anything else about the raid that shut down the northern pack? Will more raids be run against us or the other remaining pack?”
“I’m not sure,” Simon replies. “But we know the last remaining tribe still hopes to overthrow us.”
“What about the new official who’s running these raids?” the man asks.
My ears perk up. Another threat to them, a new one that I haven’t heard about.
“I’m not worried about him,” Simon says. “Our money should buy us safety.”
I don’t know which official they’re talking about. I make a mental note to ask Chloe if they have a television anywhere in the habitat. Surely the act of shutting down an entire poaching pack will have made the news. I am happy to hear it, though. One less pack to watch out for.
On the other hand, it’s yet another way in which Father is now stronger.
Simon takes a gulp of his beer. The way he’s sitting leaves his machete visible.
Clement speaks up. “And what of the girl?”
“She’s provided some information. Not enough, though,” he answers. “Clovis is attached to her, but that’s not reason to keep her around. Jean has ordered her execution, no matter the information she has on the habitat.”
At the mention of the habitat, both men’s eyes shift toward the building, which also happens to be in the direction where I’m hiding. Thankfully, they don’t look up.
Jean has ordered her execution.
The words echo in my mind, and all I can think is: no.
Not my Raven. But of course Father would have let it come to this. I knew he would. I hoped he wouldn’t. I warned Raven, beautiful Raven with her perfect smile. She definitely tricked Father. But she didn’t convince him that her life was worth sparing. I have to get her out of there.
Clement smiles. “About time. Surprised he let her stay in the first place. A habitat worker? That’s a first. Maybe we can have a little fun with her before she goes,” he adds.
Simon laughs. “Excellent idea.”
My muscles tense, and I focus on not losing it.
I’ll kill them. If they touch her, I’ll destroy them with my own hands.
Clovis’s father would betray his own son, which is not surprising. He’ll do whatever it takes to stay at the top of the pack, to prove his loyalty to the alpha and no one else.
It takes everything I have not to put a bullet in him right now.
“Might break your son, though,” Clement says.
“Who cares if it does?” Simon replies, disdainful.
I clench my teeth and command my breathing to stay neutral.
“Maybe it’ll actually harden him into the man he needs to be to continue in our tribe.”
Or maybe he’s smarter and stronger than you think. Maybe he’s already betrayed you behind your backs, and you’re eating his lies every day. You don’t even know it.
I don’t know where the thoughts come from. I shouldn’t be defending Clovis. But it’s true. He has lied to them, set them up, stolen from them, and they have no clue. They talk about him as if he’s the weakest link. I wonder if it will ever come to light that he’s actually one of the strongest.
“If he were more like Mattius,” Clement says, “we wouldn’t have this problem.”
Simon sighs. “They’re both weak. Most of the men are.”
I remember the time Clovis nearly died under the knife of a rival poacher. His father saw the whole thing and ordered me not to help Clovis. Simon hasn’t changed a bit since that day. If anything, he’s worse. His being at the top of the chain of command is no mistake. Father saw potential in Simon and gave him the power he now has. Including the power to end the life of the girl I love.
If I thought that putting a bullet in him would save Raven’s life, I’d do it. But I know better. If it’s not him, it will be someone else following Father’s orders. Maybe
even Father himself.
For the second time, I will have to put myself between Raven and death to save her. And I’m more than willing to do it.
I need to locate her and convince her to run with me. It’ll be harder than it sounds, because, for Raven, her father’s dream is at stake. She’s taking on an entire poaching empire to do what she thinks is right. And, God, I love her for it. For her tenaciousness and the audacity to believe that she has a chance, and for the fact that she has found her way into that compound and worked her way through the cracks in the armor, the same armor that took the pack years to build. I admire her strength and willingness to sacrifice herself for what she believes is the betterment of this jungle. I’m not sure that I agree with her, but I love her determination to make a difference—even though her bravery is overshadowing her better judgment.
For some reason, my mind goes to Raven’s family. I wonder what they’re like. I know she has a mother back home, but does she have cousins, aunts, uncles? Does she have friends who miss her? I wonder what her family would think of her throwing herself into the line of fire. Maybe they would think it’s noble. Maybe they would worry about her. Perhaps they don’t even know. I mean, how could they? She’s had no way to reach anyone while stuck at the compound. But if they did know, would they care?
I think about my own family. The only person in my family who probably even cares where I am—out of genuine concern and not to further her own personal gain—is my mother. But she would never stand up to Father.
That’s the difference between Raven and me. I feel sure that she has a family and friends back home who care about what’s happening to her. Whereas I don’t have anything like that.
And here these men are, talking about her life as though it doesn’t matter. As though she doesn’t have people who love her.