to be some way out of here."
But nobody has any suggestions.
"Look on the bright side," Tom says to Jacob. "You're Canadian. They might let you go. Not us, not her, but maybe you."
"Derek was Canadian."
"Yes, but he… " Tom hesitates. "I thought he said he was set up."
Jacob nods slowly. "Yeah. He did."
Veronica blinks. A memory creeps through her despair and into her pounding head. Derek's last words, shouted to the others: This was never a random kidnapping, this is a fucking execution. Islamists and interahamwe, working together, that's exactly what I was here to investigate, someone set me up -
And before that, in the helicopter, even more mystifying: Was it you? Did your husband send you? Danton DeWitt. Did he send you? Did you know he was involved? Is that why you came to Africa?
"This isn't coincidence," Jacob says. "Derek gets kidnapped by the same people he was investigating? No way that happened at random. He was set up. We all were. Someone knew he was going to Bwindi and wanted to stop him before he found something."
"Investigating for who? Who did he work for?" Tom asks.
Jecob hesitates. "Private security consulting company called Azania. It was just him and his partner, guy called Prester. Doesn't really matter now. We're here. He's dead. The why stopped being relevant a while back."
Veronica opens and then closes her mouth. She wants to tell them he mentioned Danton's name, but Jacob is right, it doesn't matter any more. Still, the question nags at her. She never mentioned Danton to Derek at all. She certainly never mentioned her ex-husband's full ridiculous name. So how did Derek know it?
Could Danton have been involved with terrorists? No, the notion is ridiculous, laughable, obviously false. Danton is not a nice man, their divorce proceedings made that abundantly clear, but thre is no way he supports Islamic terrorists. It's true that he has African connections - it's even true, in a roundabout way, that Veronica is in Africa thanks to those connections - but Danton is a commodities trader, not some kind of international terrorist financier. She shared his life for seven years. She ought to know.
She can't come up with any answer that makes sense. Her head hurts too much to think clearly. Anyways it doesn't really matter. Derek is already dead. She will join him soon. Veronica almost wishes they would come right now and get it over with. She is so weak and miserable, her head hurts like her skull has been fractured, her ears are actually ringing with the pain, and her skin is riddled with innumerable other gashes and bruises and blisters, an inescapable, discordant symphony of pain. In many ways the end will be a mercy. Maybe she should try to find some way to finish it herself, suicide as a final act of defiance, a way to avoid whatever they will do to her before they kill her.
Veronica wonders who will really grieve when she is dead. Her parents, of course. They are old and frail, they married late and had her late in life, she is their only child, the shock of it might kill them. Nobody else. After marrying Danton she drifted slowly away from all of her friends.
The daylight begins to fade. They hear and briefly see the helicopter fly away. A boy with a gun brings them a bucket of rice. They eat in silence, except for Susan, who doesn't eat at all. The rice is dirty and undercooked, and Veronica doesn't feel the least bit hungry, but she forces herself to eat nonetheless. She wonders why their captors are bothering to feed them at all. Maybe so they won't be too weak to scream and plead when they are executed.
At least her sickness has abated. A small mercy, if a mercy at all. It was easier to deal when her mental acuity was sapped by sickness. This endless gruelling fear is crippling, both mentally and physically, her stomach muscles cramp violently every time the image that has conquered her mind recurs: herself forced to kneel on the red river mud, naked and bloody and violated, as a man in a dishdash stands above her, a machete in his hand. That is what will happen to her soon. Not a nightmare but a near-certainty.
Then Susan says, quietly, "It's not over."
Everyone turns to stare at the blonde British girl.
She says, "Derek gave me something."
* * *
"He gave it to me in the cave," Susan says, looking down at