When Amal found him, he was going to disembowel the bastard, hang him from a tree for the jackals to tear at his innards while he was still alive. He’d make him watch what he was going to do to the Al Arif woman.
“There’s a bridge,” the old tracker was saying quietly at his side.
Amal spun to glare at him. “How far?”
“North, maybe half a day or more in the jeeps. But sometimes the first flood of the wet season washes parts of the bridge out. And there’s border control there, on the Botswana side.”
Amal glowered at the old man. He hated Jacob’s eyes, the way they seemed to harbour a quiet, secret knowledge. Amal didn’t trust him, but he needed him. Once he sighted his quarry, he’d kill the old man and that dog in a flash.
“Screw border patrol,” he snapped. “It’ll be sundown soon. We drive through the night, fast.” He marched over to Mbogo.
“Mark that spot over the river on the GPS,” he said, pointing to the high bank on the Botswana side. “If we make good speed we can be there by dawn tomorrow. We’ll pick up their tracks there. They won’t get away.”
*
Halfway up, Dalilah looked down. Mistake. Far below, the plain stretched—brown and gold, grasses, acacia scrub, stunted Mopani. Dizziness swirled, heat and dehydration taking their toll. Her muscles began to shake and sweat dripped from under her hat.
She slipped, rope digging into her skin as she jerked out and crashed back into rock, breath slamming out of her chest. Above her, Brandt braced, taking the brunt of her drop with the rope. He held still for a moment as she hung there, small stones skittering out from under his boot heel as it began to slip. A shower of stones clattered down on top of her.
“Grab that branch near your face!” he yelled. “Dig your toes into that crevice above your knees—just feel your way. And don’t look down!”
She groped for a piece of twisted old root. Grasping it, she found purchase with her boots, dug her toes in, and took some of the weight off Brandt. He hauled her up as she helped by pulling on bits of bush and roots. Once over the ledge of the rock, Brandt grabbed her and held her body tightly against his. Dalilah’s heart jackhammered. She could feel his heart, too, pounding against his ribs. Their bodies were drenched with perspiration.
“I got you,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear. “Take it easy, okay? Calm down. Just relax. If anything kills a person out here it’s panic, got that? You’re in control of your own mind.”
She nodded, mouth tight, trying to tamp down the wild fear rampaging through her, blinding her focus, narrowing her vision. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take.
“Did I mention,” she whispered against his neck, “that I really do hate heights?”
“And did I mention,” he whispered in return, his breath feathering her cheek, “that you never cease to surprise me, Princess?”
“I hope you mean that in a good way.”
She felt him smile. It made her feel better. Calmer. As if she had a partner.
“We’re a team, remember? No man left behind.”
She nodded, and it felt good to know that this guy had her back—the kind of guy who could be hard on her when she needed to push herself, but tender when she needed a soft touch. A man who’d push her to follow her passion and be the best woman she could be.
And as Dalilah held on to this scarred lion of a man, she realized that’s what she wanted out of a marriage. And it sunk like a cold knife deep into her chest—she’d never get that with Haroun.
I’m not seeing a clear picture here…
Neither was she. Not anymore.
He held her steady until her heart rate lowered, until she could focus and think properly again. Then he cupped the side of her face and made her look up into his eyes.
“Remember,” he said firmly, “looking backward serves zero purpose, understand? Only think of the future.”
“Is that what you do, Brandt?” she whispered. “Never look back?”
Surprise flickered through his eyes. Then his lips twisted into a slow, wry smile. “Touché, Princess. But let’s keep this about the cliff, all right? We’ll save my past for later.”
She held his gaze, his lips so close, his arms so strong. A team suspended between sky and earth, and for an upside-down moment Dalilah was oddly grateful to be here right now, with him, to have been afforded this tiny window of reprieve, even under these circumstances. A chance to rethink her future before she made a terrible mistake from which she could never turn back.
*
An hour later, wet through and caked with red clay, muscles screaming with exertion, Brandt reached down his hand and hauled Dalilah over a big slab and onto a wide ledge of rock that ran almost fifty yards along the cliff face. Dalilah caught her breath as she heard water and felt a waft of cooler air kissing her cheeks. They were almost at the top of the cliff, and through a crevice above, cascading into a pool carved by time and pressure into rock, was a fall of gloriously clear water. Thirst rose fierce and sharp. She shot a look at Brandt. A grin split his rugged face, his teeth stark white against skin that had turned an even darker bronze from a full day under the baking sun. The dancing light in his eyes reminded her of a summer swimming pool with its surface recently broken by a swimmer—sunlight refracting off the surface. Cool, welcoming.
And she’d never seen anything more beautiful.
“You should do it more often,” she said.
“Climb cliffs with you?”
She laughed as she pushed past him and dropped to her knees, dipping her hand in the clear, coppery-colored water.
“No, silly. Smile. I like your smile.”
His smile faded, his gaze darkening, becoming unreadable.
She cupped water in her hands—it was the color of clear Ceylon tea. “It’s cool, Brandt!” Dalilah took off her hat and bent forward, splashing it over her face, feeling like a child. Laughing.
“God, this is heaven.” She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Is it okay to drink, do you think?”
He was staring at her, and she felt suddenly aware, self-conscious, then that gorgeous broad grin crept over his face again, splitting it into facets and crinkles, making his blue-sky eyes dance again like a summer pool in sunlight. Then he braced his hands on his hips and laughed. “And what’s so funny?”
“You! You look like a female warrior with war paint out to do battle—and you’re still all trussed up in the harness and trailing rope.”
She peered into the surface of the water. In the rippling reflection she could see her face was now streaked with dark mud. She grinned. “I really must look a prize.”
“A hell of a lot cuter than you did in that cocktail outfit when—” He caught himself.
“When what?”
“It’s nothing.” Brandt came forward, untied the rope around her and swung off his pack. He dropped it to the slab with a thud, kettle clunking against rock. Crouching, he moved the rifle strapped across his torso to one side, then cupped his hands, tasted the water. “No cleaner in the world—just colored by minerals.”
“Still could have parasites, bacteria—”
“I’ll take that chance. This rock pool has been baked dry and clean by the sun all winter—it’s only flowing again now since the fresh rains.”
“Animal feces could be upstream.”
“Spoken like someone who understands water risks in Africa,” he said, pooling more water in his hands and drinking deeply, regardless. It was the first time Dalilah had seen him drink anything since the whiskey this morning. He’d saved their supply for her, and now he was slaking what was clearly a deep and desperate thirst.
He filled the water canteen, capped it, then stuck his whole head into the cool pool, rinsing his face. He got up, flicked his head back and raked his hands through his short hair, biceps flexing, and Dalilah was struck by a thought—she could love this man.
It turned her mood suddenly dark and heavy.
“Drink, Dalilah. And w
ash off—we’ll rest here a bit. We have enough light to get to the top before sunset. He dropped to his haunches again and opened his pack, removing two small airplane-size bottles. “Shampoo and lotion,” he said with a flourish of his hand. “You could take a full shower under this waterfall. Nature’s spa.”
Dalilah stared at the bottles. Her eyes flashed to his. “You brought those?”
A wicked tilt lifted one side of his mouth. “Traveling with royalty, aren’t I? Gotta keep a princess in the style to which she’s accustomed.”
“And there I was thinking you were going out of your way to make me feel uncomfortable.”
“Well, just enough to keep you focused.”
“See, I was right.”
“The princess is intuitive.”
She touched his hand. “Brandt.”
His body went stone-still.
“Call me Princess one more time,” she whispered, close to his mouth, “and I swear I will use that panga of yours to kill you.”
Energy shimmered between them for a beat, then abruptly Brandt averted his eyes and unsmilingly yanked the sarong out of the pack.
“Get undressed, take a full bath. I’ll go over there, behind that jutting-out rock. Out of sight, but within earshot. You’ll be safe. Use this to dry off.” He thrust the sarong at her. “If you want to wash any clothes, lay them out on those hot rocks once you’re done. Stuff will dry in minutes. You can get that splint wet—I have more bandages and another splint if we need one.”
He hooked up his backpack, made for the jut of rock, went round it and disappeared from sight.
Dalilah stood there, sarong in hand, staring after him.
A few yards away, screened by the rock, Brandt settled back onto the hot ledge.
From his backpack he dug out the high-tech digital camera with zoom lens. One thing he hadn’t found in the jeep, or in the pack, was a pair of binoculars, so the camera zoom lens would have to suffice.
Using the powerful lens, he scanned the landscape below, but he was unable to cut thoughts of Dalilah from his mind. Somehow—he wasn’t exactly sure how or when—she’d gone from being a principal to someone he actually cared about, so help him God. Yeah, it was shades of Carla all over again, but Brandt couldn’t undo what had changed within him, so he was just going to have to soldier through this now.
He panned over to an area of thorny trees. A small herd of zebra rested in shade. Not far from them buffalo moved slowly in a group. He swept the camera slowly to the east, saw dust rising. His heart kicked. Zooming in closer, he realized the dust was being raised by elephants, not Amal’s jeeps.
In the sky, above the bushy area near the elephants, five vultures wheeled. One dropped suddenly, like a bomb into the long grass, then another. Probably after the remains of the dog kill, he thought. If it was a fresh lion kill the birds would drop only as far as the trees, fearing retaliation from the lions.
There was nothing else that caught his eye. No glint of metal or flash of glass, no other telltale line of dust rising into the air. Most of the animals were resting in the heat, waiting for the cool of night, when the real cycle of violence and activity would begin.
Brandt leaned back, rifle on his knee, camera in his hand, and rested his head against the rock, listening to sounds of the place—the clicking of insects, birdcall, rustling feathers as smaller raptors rode the cliff thermals above him in search of mice and other small prey, water splashing into the pool.
The sound of the waterfall changed as Dalilah presumably moved under it. Brandt’s pulse worked a little faster, his chest tightening as he thought of her buck naked in the pool. He heard another splash, and before he could stop himself, Brandt eased forward, copped a peek.
Everything in his body stilled.
Apart from her blue SAM splint, the princess was naked, standing under the waterfall, head back as she rinsed shampoo out of her hair, her eyes closed in pure, unaffected pleasure at the sensation of the cool water drumming over her body.
Her skin was dusky, nipples dark rose-brown, pointing straight out from the coldness of the water.
She turned, and Brandt caught sight of the dark delta of hair between her thighs, the glint of a green jewel in her belly button. She was exotic even unclothed—the princess of an oil-rich Saharan kingdom, as far removed from his lifestyle as a woman could get. And she was set to marry an Arabian prince who might well be one of the wealthiest men in the world when he became king.
Unattainable. Wrong side of the tracks.
Brandt told himself to look away, but he couldn’t. He was utterly mesmerized—she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen out in this dry, scrubby, hard country. Like a bird of paradise that didn’t belong. That he couldn’t have.
Yet…somehow, naked, stripped, out of her element, she did fit, at least for this moment standing under that water. Just him and her, the water, rocks, sky, bushveldt stretching out for miles below—it seemed the most natural and beautiful thing on this earth. And in this moment, Brandt wanted to possess her with every molecule in his body, with a deep, raw hunger that went beyond the physical. It was a longing, a craving that made him feel suddenly lonely in his life. And he realized Dalilah was awakening in him powerful things he’d long buried.
A desperation swelled fierce and hot in his chest, and almost involuntarily, Brandt slowly put the camera to his eye, adjusted the lens, focusing on how the sleek curves of her body echoed the smooth contours in the red rock. He clicked almost before he registered the action, capturing wet hair slicked over her shoulders, the aristocratic slant of her nose. The pleasure in her features as she closed her eyes.
On one level he knew he was stealing these images, that he shouldn’t be doing this. But Brandt also knew Dalilah’s presence in his life was rare and fleeting, that he could never have her in the way he suddenly wanted her, and he was desperate to hold on to a part of her, a memory he could return to once she was gone from his life. A touchstone.
Photography had saved Brandt before. Capturing images of things that moved him deeply in war zones had become an outlet for his conscience. Returning to those images taken over the years had kept him grounded, reminded him why he’d made the choices he had. Photography had become, in part, the reason he could no longer fight, or kill.
Right now, though, he wanted to capture this moment in its purity and beauty—to remember this bittersweet, poignant, painful sensation Dalilah was reawakening in him—for reasons he couldn’t begin to articulate to himself yet.
He zoomed in closer, focusing on the winking of the emerald jewel at her navel, the hollow at her throat, the valley between her rounded breasts as he clicked.
She flicked her wet hair back suddenly and droplets of water sparkled in a graceful arc like diamonds in the sunlight—natural jewels, flickering to life one second, then falling and melting into the pool the next. Yet he’d caught them. That was rarity, pure wealth. Not an ostentatious Argyle pink stone bought by dirty oil money.
Brandt lowered the camera, blood racing.
Dalilah reached for her bra and G-string on the rocks, and began washing her underwear in the pool using the shampoo, affording him a vision of her rounded buttocks.
Heat sliced through his brain, blinding him a moment, throbbing low in his belly. She came to the edge of the pool and bent over, breasts swinging forward as she laid out her clean underwear on the hot rock, steam rising instantly. Through the valley of her breasts, a gap of sunlight was visible between her thighs to the apex where her hair was wet and dark. Something dark and carnal overtook his thoughts and his mouth turned dry. He raised the camera again, but this time he couldn’t click the shutter. As desperate as he was to feed the hunger within him, to make love to her with his lens, something had shifted, and it suddenly felt wrong. His breathing grew lighter, faster, tension, conflict whipping through him.
She reached for the sarong, started wrapping it around her torso.
Brandt leaned back, barely able to breathe, heart t
hudding in his chest, his groin hot, hard, his brain thick as molasses. He willed himself to calm, willed the desire pulsing between his thighs to abate.
But she edged around the outcropping of rock, wrapped in the sarong, damp spots on her breasts, and his pulse spiked back into overdrive. Brandt quickly scrubbed his hands over his face, avoiding meeting her eyes. “Done?”
“Just waiting for my things to dry so I can change.” She hesitated. “You okay?
No.
“Yeah,” he said, voice clipped. He stood, his erection making him feel like that frustrated bull elephant—this was insane, the level of lust coursing like molten lead through his system. This woman was like a drug he’d tasted and couldn’t get enough of, messing with his body and mind.
“You going to have a go? It’s like heaven.”
Hell, yeah.
He grunted and stuffed the camera back into his pack. He needed more than a shower—he needed a bucket of bloody ice. Brandt handed her the gun, still not meeting her eyes. “Wait here. Keep an eye on the plain.”
Brandt edged past her, trying his damnedest not to make contact.
*
Dalilah fingered the weapon in her lap, her hair drying quickly into a mass of thick curls around her shoulders. She jumped as something touched her bare foot. Looking down, she was startled to see an oddly shaped mouse with a long nose like a trunk. She smiled—elephant mouse. More of the strange little creatures peeped out, scurrying suddenly over the ledge on which she sat. One started to drink from a tiny puddle of water that had dripped from her hair.
As she watched the mice, she noticed red ants attacking a writhing insect struggling to escape, while along a deep crevice in the rock more ants bustled back and forth in a straight line ferrying gelatinous white eggs.
It struck Dalilah that the bushveldt on the micro level was as violent and intense as on the macro level. Life. Sex. Birth. Death. A constant fight for survival.
Looking up, she saw vultures dropping from the sky in the distance, and she thought of the wild dogs ripping apart the impala, the baby elephant being dragged to muddy depths by the crocodile. The crazy bull elephant. The dead leopard and motherless cub. She was a part of it all, living in the moment.
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