Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,21

Adrenaline mushroomed through Dalilah.

She ran up to the vehicle, removed a second, smaller shovel from the tool compartment. Using one hand she began digging awkwardly next to him.

“What are you doing?” he yelled, water sheening over his face.

“Helping—what do you think I’m doing?”

“I said move, dammit! You want to be a sitting duck in a flood, or what! Get the hell out of this riverbed.”

“No!” she yelled, rain plastering hair to her face, her dress to her body. She could hear the crackle of the fire now. She dug faster.

“Dalilah, you agreed to do as I say. I came here to keep you alive.” His voice vibrated with fierce energy.

“No, Brandt, ultimately I am responsible for myself. My decision. My life. We work as a team or we don’t work at all.”

He cursed. “Just because you’ve ordered people around your whole life—”

She raised her good hand, pointed her finger at his face, blinking into the glare of the lamp on his forehead. “You know nothing about me. If you want to get us out of here, quit picking on my title, stop being such a prejudiced ass and dig before the river comes down or the damn fire swallows us.” Her voice was pitched high with fear, and she was using words she never ordinarily used, but she didn’t care. She was afraid. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to stand on that riverbank while Brandt was swept away without her. She was sticking right at his side come hell or high water. Or fire and crocodiles and leopards. Or Amal.

“Dalilah—”

“Shut up and dig! I’d rather face a flash flood than be raped by Amal’s men and have my head cut off!”

Brandt spun away from her and angrily jabbed his spade into the sand. “You’re something else, you know that?”

“Yeah, I am. And so are you!”

Brandt stilled, and glared at her for a moment, then a wry smile curved his lips. He gave a quick nod, then resumed digging. He had to hand it to her—Princess had won his admiration.

Chapter 5

Jacob gently fingered the swelling on Jock’s muzzle, looking for the cut where he’d been kicked in the face. Jock whimpered as Jacob found the wound. It wasn’t too bad, and the bones didn’t appear broken.

“It’s all right, boy,” he whispered in his local Shona dialect, the love in the touch of his gnarled hand conveying all to the animal—he was not alone, even though his owners had been murdered. Jacob was also certain the attackers had slain his wife. He and the dog were in this together now. Both afraid. But not broken.

“Soek,” he whispered softly, holding his palm down to the soft red earth that was still dry under the fat branches and old canopy of the nyala tree—it was his indication for Jock to start a search.

Amal shot Mbogo a quick glance and raised an eyebrow.

“Lodge owners were Afrikaners,” Mbogo said quietly. “Guess they spoke to the dog in Afrikaans.”

In his peripheral vision Jacob was keeping an eye on the one-armed Arab and his big bull of a comrade, Mbogo. Jacob was a skilled hunter, trained to observe, to listen, without appearing to do so.

Mbogo cradled an AK-47 in his meaty hands. Bandoliers filled with ammunition crisscrossed his broad chest and a giant panga was sheathed down the side of his tree-trunk-size thigh. In contrast, the Arabic man at his side was slender with a narrow face and wild eyes. Even so, Jacob felt the Arab was the more dangerous one. He spoke English with an American accent and he also carried a panga, the blood of the delegates and lodge employees still black on his blade. A smaller curved and bejewelled dagger was hooked into his belt.

At Jacob’s boots, Jock sniffed the soft indentations in the earth where the man who took the princess had crouched. The dog was circulating air through his nasal passages with soft snorts, cataloguing the scent. Behind where Amal and Mbogo stood on the raised wall of the lapa, bodies lay among overturned chairs, broken glass. The fire in the circular pit had died, food in the pots burned, the scent of it all pungent. Ants had already found the slain. There would be flies later, and when the sun rose, the cadavers would begin to rot fast. Vultures would circle up high and silent on thermals above the camp as the heat of a new day pressed down.

Jacob was going to kill that one-armed bastard and his big bull.