Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,18

the border or they’d be trapped on this side and facing Amal by morning.

“We’ll get you into some dry clothes as soon as we get over the river, okay?”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Then I’ll splint your arm, get some food into you.” He placed a water bottle beside her. “Stay hydrated, okay? There’s probably aspirin in that kit there at your feet. Take what you need.”

But she just sat, staring wide-eyed into space, jaw tight.

Brandt ran back to the leopard sprawled in the mud. She was right, it was a female. She’d shot it in the throat. Then he saw the enlarged teats on the animal’s belly. Glancing up into the tree, he panned through the branches with his flashlight. And his heart just about cracked—a cub, mewling, the sound drowned out by the storm.

That must have been what truly shattered Dalilah.

He crouched and shunted the dead leopard onto his shoulders. It was heavy and blood washed with rain down his arm as he made his way back to the jeep.

Horror widened Dalilah’s eyes as she saw Brandt approaching in the headlights with the animal draped over his shoulders.

“No! Oh, God, no, what are you doing?” She spun round as he heaved the dead animal into the far backseat.

“Can’t leave it lying out there,” he said brusquely, coming round to the driver’s-side door. “This storm will cover a good deal of our trace. But leaving that leopard with a bullet hole lying under the tree like that—might as well leave a flag with a note telling Amal’s men we came this way.”

He climbed, secured his rifle into a bracket on the dash beside a hunting spotlight.

“Brandt—”

He shot her a glance as he put the vehicle in gear.

“There was a baby, a cub.”

“I know.” He pressed down on the gas, tires whining in mud as the vehicle kicked forward.

“We can’t leave the cub.”

“We have to. I’m not killing it.”

“Something else will.” Her voice was filled with desperation.

“Dalilah,” he said softly, jaw clenched, eyes focused on the terrain illuminated by the twin yellow beams of his headlights. “We can’t take it. We have to let nature take its course here.”

She pushed herself back into the seat, fighting something inside. Then a flash of anger burst through. “I didn’t sign up for this!”

You and me both.

But he said nothing, concentrating instead on negotiating a rocky escarpment as he worked the jeep toward the banks of the Tsholo. With the dash-mounted GPS came increased confidence. He told himself they’d be over the river, hopefully, within an hour or two. Once across the border he’d treat her injury, get some food into her, then they could start the trip across Botswana veldt. They’d travel along a giant rift valley until they could find a route up to the plateau, after which they’d head for a paved road that bisected the eastern region of Botswana. They’d drive south for several more kilometers, the paved road hopefully hiding their vehicle tracks, then the plan was to veer offroad again into a controlled game area from which there’d be another day or two of driving across Botswana bush to his farm where he’d get on the phone to Omair. And then the princess would be history.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said. “I don’t kill things.”

He continued to drive in silence. The ground was dangerously rutted, flowing with water. The storm crashed around them, and branches were going down. Water was building into small rivers. Brandt needed full attention on his four-wheeling skills, and she needed space to lash these things out in her head herself, so he let her at it.

But his silence just seemed to egg her on.

“On principle,” she reiterated a few minutes later, as if he hadn’t heard. “I don’t kill animals!”

“You’re looking to get a rise out of me,” he said.

“You brought me here!”

“Look, Dalilah, I get that you don’t kill animals. Me, I don’t kill humans. On principle—I made that vow years ago. And now look at me—”

She shot him a hard look.

“I was forced to kill a man back at the lodge to honor a promise I made to your brother, a promise to get you out of here alive. Because of you I was forced to break that goddamn vow never to kill another man—” his voice came out more strident than he’d intended, and he gripped the wheel harder than he meant it to “—or woman.”

This time she stared at him in silence. Good. He’d hooked her out of her thought