leaped high and over her, violently kicking backward with his rear legs.
Brandt ignored the impala, aiming his gun at the vacated grass.
Her gaze shot to him in fear.
“Wild dogs,” he whispered. “That rocking-horse jump makes it harder for the dogs to grab their stomachs and disembowel them.”
The dog pack was only seconds behind the impala—small mottled black-and-tan predators with huge ears, white tail tips, snarling teeth as they gave full chase.
Dalilah heard a terrible gurgling death rasp as somewhere in the long grass the pack sank their teeth into an unlucky antelope and began ripping it apart alive. She grabbed Brandt’s arm, blood draining from her head and bile rising in her throat as she listened to the wet tearing, ripping grunts and growls.
“Nasty way to go,” he whispered. “That sound will attract bigger predators. We need to move fast.” Taking her hand, Brandt led her at a fast trot to the steaming base of the cliff, not letting her go for a minute. Dalilah was grateful because she felt she’d just hit rock bottom in every way, and was crashing hard.
At the cliff base, she slumped onto a rock, put her face in her hand. She wanted to cry, just release everything inside, but she also wanted to hold it all in. She began to shake. Brandt placed his hand, large, firm, calming, on her shoulder.
The tears welled.
He looked up at the sky, and she knew he was at a loss to know how to handle her. And he had to be tired, too.
Then, as if making a decision, he lowered himself onto the hot rock next to her and tentatively put his arm around her. Then he committed, pulling her tightly against his body.
Dalilah leaned into him, drawing comfort from his solid strength, his confidence, the steady beat of his heart, and she let the tears come.
“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay—I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She sniffed, met his eyes. “No, she said, very quietly. “I’m sure you’ll do your best. Or Omair will probably kill you.”
He smiled, a soft light entering his pale eyes, and he took her hat off, moving hair away from her dust-streaked face.
“Yeah. And if Omair doesn’t kill me,” he said softly, “Haroun will.”
She held his gaze.
“Brandt, thank you. I know I’m just a job, a package—”
“No,” he said softly. “Not just a package, not anymore.” He smiled, sadly this time, a worry entering his eyes. “You’re too stubborn for that.”
Chapter 10
“It feels as if it has a presence,” Dalilah said, looking up at the wall. “Like it’s got eyes.”
“The Batswana call it Solomon’s Wall,” Brandt said. “Sangomas—the local witch doctors—claim it’s a place where old spirits live and watch over the plains to the Tsholo.”
“Must be about seventy yards high,” she whispered.
“Around sixty meters of columnar basalt straight up, higher in other places. The wall runs for maybe forty or fifty kilometers—a rift caused by volcanic upheaval thousands of years ago.”
She studied the big blocks of rock—cubes of various sizes stacked one atop the other almost as if by a giant human hand, an ancient ruined city wall now being pried and twisted apart by the gnarled roots of crooked trees and sparse shrubs that had found sustenance in crevices.
Again the hot breeze, an almost imperceptible sensation, rustled over her skin, as if the wall itself was softly exhaling. A prickle ran over her skin.
“It feels like it doesn’t want to let us through, or over.”
“This land has a way of doing that, like something primitive whispering just beneath the veil of the surface, reflecting back your own emotions.”
She looked at him oddly, something shifting in her. Brandt handed her water. She met his eyes as she drank. He still didn’t take any, but he felt thirsty now.
“You going to be okay?” he said.
She forced a wry smile and cast another glance up the cliff face. “I’m scared of heights.”
“Because you’re afraid of falling and dying?”
She bit the corner of her lip. “I suppose that’s what it boils down to.”
“You could look at this two ways—if we stay down here, you probably will die at Amal’s hands. Or you could let me help you climb, and only stand a faint chance of dying at your own hand.”
“Oh, great. You sure have a way of making someone feel like they have some nice options—stay down here and get my head cut off, or go up there and get smashed.”
He crouched in front of her and looked up