Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,43

to walk directly west to the rift wall, and climb up. On one hand it’ll be slow. But it will also save us having to drive a full day north in order to access the plateau via jeep. You up to a hike?”

“Do I have an option?”

“Nope.” He hooked the GPS onto his belt. “Amal will have found my plane by now and be looking for a way over the Tsholo. Like I said, they’ll come fast—our tracks will have baked like clay into the mud. If we climb up the cliff, they won’t be able to follow us up the face with horses or jeeps. They’ll still have to drive the full day north to get up onto the plateau and then they’ll have to cut back again for our tracks. It’ll buy us a small advantage.”

Fear coiled cold and tight in Dalilah’s gut as she thought of Da’ud, his throat slit in his bed, of her dead parents. Of all the terrible things the Ghaffar clan had done to her family and country. Amal would spare her no mercy—she knew that. Her death would be violent. He’d make her suffer, and he’d make her brothers suffer, too.

Shading her eyes, Dalilah squinted into the distant glare. Heat shimmered off the veldt in waves. It would be just her and Brandt out there, crossing these Botswana plains. She wasn’t sure that they’d make it, but it was better than waiting for Amal.

“Can we take the two-way radio from the jeep dashboard?” she asked quietly.

“No one to communicate with.” He went around to the back of the jeep and opened the rear compartment. Dalilah watched as he took out a blackened kettle and a small camp stove, which he balanced on a flat rock. Filling the kettle from the water container on the backseat, he lit the stove and set water to boil.

“Keep an eye on the kettle,” Brandt said as he began emptying the backpack he’d stolen, laying the contents out on the backseat, deciding what to take, what to leave. Out of the pack came a small cosmetics bag, a wallet and a camera with zoom lens.

“Arm all right?” he said, opening the first-aid kit, selecting supplies.

“Fine.”

He shot her a quick glance. “It doesn’t hurt?”

“Not much.”

“Good.”

She felt like a spare part waiting for water to boil as he busied himself selecting items and stuffing them into the pack.

“Here.” He tossed her a khaki hat. It came spinning through the air and dropped into the dirt just short of her reach. She picked it up, dusted it off and was about to put it on her head of thick, dust-caked tangle of hair when she stopped.

“Do you have a spare piece of string, or a shoelace, or something?”

He glanced up, crooked a brow.

“To tie up my hair.”

For an instant he looked dumfounded. “I...uh, ya.” Using his pocketknife, Brandt severed a strip off a finely woven triangle bandage from the first-aid kit. He held the strip out to her.

“Could you help me? I can’t do it with one hand.”

A flicker chased through his cool eyes. He didn’t want to touch her again.

“Sure,” he said, coming over.

Dalilah lifted her hair off the nape of her neck. It was hot and thick, and she was relieved to have it off her skin.

“I’d love to braid it, but that’s probably beyond your expertise, so could you just tie a ponytail?”

She felt him hesitate, then grasp her hair. His fingers brushed against the sensitive skin on the back of her neck and goose bumps chased down her spine. Dalilah swallowed. It was like this man was permanently charged with electricity and each time he connected with her body, she grounded the charge.

He pulled and yanked at her dust-caked curls and she realized he was actually trying to braid it. Emotion, sharp and sudden, pricked her eyes, even as a wry smile crossed her lips.

“There,” he said, stepping back, examining his handiwork.

Dalilah reached behind her head and fingered the braid. “Not bad,” she said, turning around. “You surprise me.”

They were close again, face-to-face. His gaze held hers for several beats, then flickered to her mouth, and heat pooled low in her belly.

He grunted, quickly averting his face as he bent down to take the kettle off the gas as it came to a rolling boil. “If a man can tie flies, I don’t see why he can’t braid hair.” He turned off the gas and poured water into a pale yellow enamel mug containing a tea