Guarding the Princess - By Loreth Anne White Page 0,86

a terrible sound, followed by sick wet tearing, growling as he struggled with one hand to fight off the dog.

Jacob put his hand to his waist. Blood was soaking through his shirt, through his fingers. He pressed his hand to the wound, tried to crawl away.

Then his world went black.

* * *

Brandt stilled. Beneath the roar of flames he detected human screams that chilled him to the bone. He listened carefully, trying to separate the sounds. He thought he could hear animal snarls, like a wild dog attack. Nausea washed over him as an image of his son’s body slammed through his mind.

Then suddenly there was silence. Deadly silence, apart from the crackle of fire. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but someone down there had killed five men of his own party in a hail of bullets, then shot another who had been climbing up toward Dalilah, just as Brandt had been about to fire on the man himself.

He put his fingers into his mouth, issued three shrill whistles. In the moonlight on the other side he saw Dalilah wave her arm up.

Relief bottomed out of his stomach. Her orders were to stay hidden until he’d scoped out the place properly—there could still be someone down there alive.

Brandt waited another few beats. Still no sound. Heart thudding, he made his way carefully down between the rocks, gun in hand.

Five bodies lay in a twisted mess at the bottom of the cliff.

Amal, however, was not among these five dead. Brandt crept along the gorge bottom, staying in shadows. Smoke was thick and acrid down here, the smell of fuel strong. Then out of the blackness between rocks, something came at him.

He spun around, gun leading, and then his heart stalled. An animal—a dog. Advancing toward him, blood on his mouth—like a ghost. A ghost from his past.

Jock.

For a nanosecond Brandt couldn’t think as past looped into present. Then he snapped back, curling his finger around the trigger as he aimed at the animal.

But the dog lowered his head suddenly as he neared, its tail tucking in as it edged toward him sideways, wiggling, whining. That’s when Brandt saw Amal’s body behind the rock—throat ripped out. Arm mauled. Dead. This dog had killed the one-armed bandit? Another body lay in the sand a few metres away from Amal.

They were all dead, every single one of the men who had entered the ambush.

Confusion raced through Brandt’s mind as he crouched down and took hold of the animal’s collar. He reached for his flashlight, shone it on the tag.

Jock.

His heart began to hammer overtime, his life flashing before his eyes—images of Stefaan, mauled. His own dog, blood on its mouth. Yolanda. His brother. He was beyond exhausted—he hadn’t slept for days, he told himself. He was hallucinating, here in the Valley of Ghosts—seeing a dog from his past.

Fatigue was catching up with him, that’s all this was. Brandt tried to shake the ghostly sensation as he whistled for Dalilah.

While he waited for her to come down, he read the name on the dog’s tag again, just to be certain he’d seen it right the first time. “Hey, buddy,” Brandt said, crouching. “What happened here? Where are you from?”

The dog whimpered then slithered off to a body lying not far from Amal. He licked the man’s face, then lay down beside him with another whimper.

Frowning, Brandt went over to the body.

Dalilah came scrambling down the rocks behind him.

She froze.

“That’s Jock!” she whispered.

“I know,” he said, crouching beside the dog. Just like the animal he’d rescued from the wilds in Caprivi, the one his brother shot. It looked exactly the same—a russet Staffordshire cross, stocky and strong.

“Jock from the safari lodge,” she said, still trying to wrap her own head around the animal’s appearance in the Valley of Ghosts. “The lodge owner told us he was using him to track... Oh, my God.” She dropped to her haunches beside Brandt. “This is Jacob. He’s the lodge tracker—Amal must have forced them to trail us, Brandt.”

An AK-47 lay in the sand next to him.

“It must have been Jacob,” he said, looking at the gun, “who turned on them all. He killed Amal’s men, and Amal must have attacked him—Jock tried to protect him.”

Dalilah reached to feel for a pulse at the old man’s neck.

“He’s alive, Brandt! He’s got a pulse!”

Quickly they rolled him over. There was blood across his abdomen, and more blood pooled dark in the sand under him. Yanking up the old man’s shirt,