Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,79

not asking for your thanks, you...brute.”

He huffed, walked around the jeep, evaluating her purchase. Afternoon shadows were already lengthening. Doves sounded in the trees.

On the rear of the jeep someone had scratched the word Skorokoro.

“You see that?” He jerked his chin to the scrawled inscription. “It means too old to work. You paid two-point-five million for a lemon that might not even get us to the road.”

“If you have issues, I’ll drive. It’s my jeep now.”

He grunted.

“You just don’t like a woman taking over, do you, Brandt? Or is it the fact I have money?”

He stopped dead, turned to face her square. “No, Dalilah, it’s Haroun. I don’t like that family, and you’ve just given away his ring—I don’t know what constitutes a violation in his goddamn tradition.”

Her face sobered. “You’re afraid for me.”

“Hell, yeah. Nothing about this is right.” He waved his hand at the jeep, the village. “We’ve probably brought harm right to their door. And now—” He stopped speaking as he saw Teep approaching with two women dragging a cart of boxes loaded with supplies.

Teep handed him the jeep key as the women began to load the supplies into the back.

“Food, water, spare petrol, camping stove, pot, kerosene lamp, spare tin of kerosene and a blanket.” Teep hesitated, then said, “And two tins of motor oil.”

“Thank you,” Brandt said, irritably taking the keys. “Does it leak oil, then?”

“A bit.”

He grunted irritably. “You have any spare ammunition lying around?”

Teep’s eyes shot to his.

“For my rifle. Might need to hunt.”

Wariness crossed the man’s features, but he called out over his shoulder for someone to bring rifle bullets.

A man came running with two boxes of shells.

“Get in, Princess,” Brandt said as he took the boxes. “Your chariot awaits.”

She muttered something in Arabic and climbed into the passenger seat.

Brandt got in, turned the ignition.

The engine coughed, then sputtered to life with an unearthly growl.

“Skorokoro, you better have some juice in you,” he said as he pressed down on the accelerator.

He gave a wave of thanks and they trundled toward the gate, someone running ahead to open it. The children ran behind in their dust, squealing and waving. One of the women began to sing, and others joined in, waving them goodbye.

But as they reached the gate, Brandt stopped the vehicle just before the cattle grid and disinfectant trough.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, throwing open the door.

Dalilah shot him a look—he was edgy, she thought, like bottled fuel ready to blow. “Where are you going?”

But he was gone already, engine still running, door open. Dalilah spun around in the passenger seat. He’d taken the chief aside, his head bent down, urgency in the set of his body as he discussed something. A whisper of trepidation ran through Dalilah. The shadows were growing longer, the colors of the bush turning gold.

Brandt got back into the driver’s seat and shifted gears. They bumped over the cattle bars, and he laid on the gas. Dust boiled out behind them, catching the sun’s yellow rays. The jeep had some power in it, even if it sounded cranky. Dalilah took off her hat before the wind could snatch it from her head, holding her hair in her fist to keep it from whipping her face.

She glanced at his profile. His hands were tight on the wheel, his features pulled into a frown.

“What did you say to the chief when we left?”

“Told him if men come to his village asking about us, to say that we stole the jeep—then to show Amal our tracks to the road.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want Amal to think they helped us or that they’re hiding anything. I don’t want to give him any reason to hurt them.”

She swallowed, thinking of the villagers’ faces, the children, the bright, white smiles, the happy school. The babies.

They came to the road. It was narrow and the paving was pocked with potholes and being eaten away by thick grass along the edges. A rickety wooden arrow declared the Limpopo River border with South Africa was to the left, and another arrow pointed right to Bulawayo.

Brandt wheeled onto the rugged road and headed south toward the Limpopo.

“We’ll travel about twenty klicks down this paved section, then cut off into a tract of controlled conservation area. We’ll do some countertracking at the junction, and hopefully Amal will lose our vehicle tracks for good along here.”

“Countertracking?”

“Hide our tracks so it’s not obvious that someone recently veered off this road into sand.”

In the opposite lane, a vehicle came toward them, shimmering