Wild Encounter (12 page)

If anything, she looked worse.

He yanked off his wrecked jacket and examined the multiple slashes. Clare’s skin had to be worse off.

“So that’s her, eh?” McKenzie tried again. “She doesn’t look so tough.”

He tossed the jacket into the back of their Nissan. “Looks can be deceiving.” Clare had courage and resilience by the bucketful.

“Can’t take a surprise, that’s for damn sure.”

Simon rounded angrily on his partner of eight years. “When you’ve been in the same situation, McKenzie, let me know how you handled it. Until then…” He trailed off, meaningfully.

“Okay, okay. Holster your hormones, deVries.” She straightened against the hood of the SUV. “I trust you weren’t expecting her to run into your arms,” she added, but carefully.

“No.” But he would have settled for a cordial hello.

“And you
have
remembered she’s still off limits?”

He gifted his partner with his foulest glare.

“I really don’t understand why you’ve been single for so long.” McKenzie rolled her eyes and leaned harder than ever on her Texan accent. “You’re such a charmer.”

He ignored her crack and assessed the two men following Clare from the bush. One was of average height and steady with a shotgun, the other—the sponsor—was enormous, but his money was on him not having seen the outside of a boardroom in years—even if he had stepped in to protect Clare against danger.

Without a glance in his direction, she headed toward the mesh holding pens at the edge of camp.

“We’re on,” Mac said, straightening as the shorter of the two men turned and started walking toward them, leaning his shotgun against a canvas tent along the way.

Simon tugged off his tie and threw it into the back of the Nissan with his jacket, then popped the top two buttons on his expensive shirt. Instantly, the sheen of sweat under the light cotton cooled. What he wouldn’t give to trade travel uniform for field khakis right now.

The man approached and thrust his hand forward to shake both theirs in turn, all business.

“Mitchell Weiss, second in command of this project. We have two accommodation tents, men on the right, and women on the left. Everyone bunks together.”

Mac looked less than delighted to share a tent with a bunch of strangers. Although she was a pro at disguising her emotions when she wanted to, she didn’t bother now. Simon figured contempt rated higher in her mind than courtesy at the moment.

Weiss didn’t miss it. “We have a multi-millionaire on this trip. If anyone gets a private tent, it’s going to be him.”

Simon let his eyes skim the giant standing a short distance away. One of the three men who’d moved so subtly between Clare and a hail of potential bullets back in the clearing.

Wealthy. And interested in Clare.

Bastard.

“The accommodations will be fine,” Simon cut in briskly, not looking forward to bunking down with a handful of hostile men, himself. Still, he’d managed worse, and not too long ago. At least no one here was trying to kill him.

That he knew of.

“My partner will need to get some details about the translocation, your route, schedule, etc. Can she speak to you about that?”

“She can.”

Mac wasn’t happy to be tasked like that, either. It was in the merest flick of her lip, but he’d worked with the woman long enough to recognize her tells. He’d have to make it up to her later.

“I’m going to need to speak with Ms. Delaney,” Simon stated.

Weiss grunted. “Not going to happen. At least, not right now.”

Simon figured he was almost certainly giving off his own irritated tell right now. “Why not?”

“She’s busy. Getting ready to head out and locate the pack.”

Weiss was lying. And not very well. “We’ll need to come with you.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because we’ve been assigned to protect you.”

Weiss stood firm. “You’ve been assigned to protect the dogs.”

His respect for Clare’s second in command went up a notch. But he still wasn’t about to fold. “Which means we need to get a good and early look at them.”

Weiss wasn’t happy, but finally gave in. “Fine. We head out in twenty.”

Simon snatched up his kit and turned to his partner. “McKenzie, full background. I’ll get the Nissan ready.”

Without another word, he strode away and tossed his kit into the men’s tent. The quiet eyes of the small African followed him openly while the curious stares of the others burned into his passing back. He figured they’d get used to him soon enough, and if they didn’t…

Not his problem.

He was here to do a job, not win a popularity contest.

Chapter Nine

“Clare?”

Any voice that wasn’t British was very welcome at that moment.

Clare poked her head out from behind the igloo-shaped blind she was weaving more branches into. A human would have no trouble spotting the man-made structure, but to a wild dog it would just look like a mutated version of the bushes all around them. The perfect disguise for observation.

“We should head out to locate the pack before it gets dark,” Mitch said. “The dogs will be settling for the night.”

Ordinarily her heart would have leapt at this moment. The one she’d been waiting for since having been so violently separated from her dogs last year. But it felt leaden in light of the day’s events.

She mustered what enthusiasm she could. “There’s still time? Great. One more night to lure them in.”

They walked together back to camp.

“DeVries is insisting on accompanying us,” Mitch said gently.

She almost stumbled, and then took a deep breath. “They have a job to do, I suppose.”

She couldn’t think of him in singular terms yet. ‘They’ was somehow safely nebulous.

As sensitively tuned to human movements as he was to the wildlife around them, Musai had already gathered up the equipment he’d need to track the pack, and spread the pieces on the bonnet of the jeep to assemble.

“That’s what thirty thousand buys you?” Tim chided, joining them. “Gates you yank shut and old school TV antennae?”

Clare tried to see the location tracker through his eyes. It might look more at home mounted on the roof of a derelict house.

And, just like that, she was thinking about the farmhouse again.

She shook free of the irritating image. “It looks archaic, but it is as effective as any method we’ve found. If we went with vehicle-mounted equipment we couldn’t go half the places this little baby has led us.”

The awkward prongs on the tracker were fiddly to negotiate and exhausting on the arms, but the tireless Musai didn’t seem to have that problem. In the years she’d known him, he’d never once complained of muscle aches, even on the longest tracking sessions.

Especially not hers.

Her eyes found Musai’s. He’d been central to the search for her six months earlier, she’d been told. He’d tracked for nearly eleven hours straight at one point, hoping it would lead to the dogs’ signal and to her. His arms must have been in agony. But he’d also been the one to surrender the transporter—and Clare—to the poachers, and she hoped that didn’t still eat at him.

He gazed steadily back, his eyes filling her with strength. Letting her know he understood her wordless gratitude. She smiled softly then turned away. “Grab some binoculars from the green box over there, Tim, and hop in.”

“I’ll be on your tail.” Simon announced from behind them, pulling his keys from his pocket.

Her body locked up and thrilled in the same split second, and the confusing mess of emotion only made her angrier. She turned. “This is critically sensitive primary observation,” she gritted out.

“That was a statement, not a request,” he said simply.

“It requires stealth.” She took in Simon’s ridiculously large vehicle.

He locked his sunglasses on her. “You seriously think I lack the ability to move quietly in the bush?”

Instantly she was back in the tall grass in the Kafue Flats.

Instantly she was back under his weight.

Both of them breathing heavily.

Her mouth dried up. Wordlessly, she whirled and climbed into their jeep. Musai leapt deftly onto the hood of the aging vehicle, tugged a doubled-up piece of cardboard under him and hooked his feet into two battered tethers, stirrup fashion, so his hands were free to use the tracker. He slid a set of headphones up over his ears and was good to go.

They set off, rounding the edge of camp and bumping along a rarely used track that led deeper into the park. Or something that once was a track, now thickly grown over with clumps of wild grasses. Occasionally they broke out into a long clear stretch of grassland, but invariably it was carved in jigsaw pieces by the deep, dried up feeder tributaries that would swell to overflowing in the wet season. Some they picked their way carefully down, others they had to drive around. Mitch sped up when they hit the clearings then slowed to negotiate the thicker, clumped Nyala trees laden with fruit-gorging baboons. The last thing they wanted to do was hit an animal just going about its business.

She glanced in the rear view mirror and got a glimpse of the big Nissan pitching back and forth over the same rough terrain. It was infuriatingly quiet compared to their bush jeep.

“What’s he hearing inside those earphones?” Tim asked loudly, nodding at Musai.

“The signal from Jambi’s tracking collar. The sound fluctuates with distance and direction,” she explained, leaning in close to his ear to be heard over the noise of the engine. “Volume for distance and pitch for direction. So as the signal gets louder, Musai knows we’re drawing closer and as the pitch varies he can tell whether we’re going toward them or away.”

“What if you’re nowhere near the signal?”

“This is why it takes such patience and skill.” And why Musai had gone eleven hours without a single detection last year. “You could go days without a peep, but if you take your ears off the tracker for just a second you could miss the first whisper of signal and drive right past.”

Musai sat still for the most part, listening intently. Every now and then he signaled with two fingers and Mitch altered course accordingly, keeping their pace through the low rushes of the dambo wetland. Clare flicked her eyes to the mirror to see Simon turn his vehicle, too. Gazelle darted out of their way, and a tawny head rose up from the distant grass to stare at them. A wildebeest went by, and a pair of zebra and, startlingly, a hippo munching on sweet grasses watched them bump past its watering hole, its glistening skin drying out in patches. She touched Tim’s leg and nodded in the hippo’s direction.

“The most dangerous animal in Africa,” she said.

“Aren’t they vegetarians?” Tim asked, practically in her ear.

“I didn’t say they’d
eat
you,” Clare said with a laugh. “Just kill you.”

About five kilometers from camp, the terrain changed slightly into the sort of open woodland wild dogs preferred. Clare’s excitement grew.

They must be close now.

Musai had one hand on his earphone and his head tilted in concentration, reading the subtle detail in the signal. Finally, his weathered hand rose. Mitch slowed to a stop and killed the engine. The throaty purr of Simon’s SUV ceased, too. After the noise of the wind rushing past them, the rattle of the engine, and the crack of branches under their tires, the comparative silence was eerie.

No one spoke for a moment, tuning in to sounds of the bush. Mitch pulled the shotgun out from under the passenger seat. Simon stepped up to the side of the jeep, a much more modern and lethal weapon in a casual hold. The pump action shotgun looked totally out of place paired with his Saville Row suit, no matter how torn. But the man looked unnervingly competent. And sexy as hell.

Damn. She tore her gaze away and concentrated on the task at hand.

Musai lead the way with the tracker held high over his head. He swiveled it until the signal was strongest, then set off at a confident pace toward a dense copse of leafy, heavy-topped Nyala trees.

Simon moved around to her other side. She worked hard not to stiffen her spine. And even harder not to look at him again.

They approached the trees and stopped, adjusting to the light and temperature difference beneath the leafy canopy. Rich, damp earth wafted up from the decomposing leaf-litter and welcomed them deeper into the shadowy privacy of the shade. Suddenly, Clare’s heartbeat kicked up as she made out the distinctive yips and twitters of a group of wild dogs.

Her dogs!

“
Mhumbi
.” Musai flipped the earphones off his head and lowered the tracker, satisfied its job was done. The five of them entered the grove, crouching, barely breathing, wincing at every snapped twig and crunched leaf until they reached the far side. Clare lay down flat in the fringe of ferny bracken and raised her binoculars to her eyes, studiously ignoring Simon as he sank onto his haunches next to her.

She scanned the pack, quickly doing a head count.
Twelve
. She wondered with a pang which two hadn’t made it. The dogs were at rest, playing and sleeping near a waterhole that glittered and blinked as sunlight filtered down through the canopy. Wherever they’d been dumped off by the poachers, they had managed to find this little piece of heaven all by themselves and make it home.

Her eyes were drawn up to Simon of their own accord. As though by instinct, his flicked down and their gazes met. And held for a long moment.

Her pulse spiked.

She swallowed, and once again forced her gaze away from him.

Mitch pulled out a flip-pad and started to sketch the pack’s distinctive features. Each dog was identified by the unique patterns on its coat. Some were easier to recognize than others. Evolution had provided their natural camouflage, a random pattern of black, rust, and white patches, which allowed the animals to blend into the dappled light of the African bush. Clare focused her binoculars closer in on the pack in an effort to distinguish dog from dog in the mêlée.

On one big male a collar was clearly visible, as red as the stain around his muzzle.

Her breath caught with recognition, and a piece of her heart healed over.
Jambi
. The alpha.

“Hello, old friend,” she breathed with a smile.

Musai gasped softly and sat bolt upright. Simon’s fingers slipped automatically to a more lethal position on his shotgun, but Clare followed Musai’s keen gaze. Two tiny, dark-furred bundles emerged from the main group and tumbled around play-fighting for a few seconds before darting back under cover.

“My God,” she whispered joyfully. The pack had bred! That’s how much this territory suited them.

“That explains why the pack hasn’t moved in weeks,” Mitch whispered back.

Clare eased out a breath and rose up to sit more comfortably in the ferns. To her right, Simon let his finger fall from the trigger and lowered the barrel with a half grin, watching the pups.

“They’re pretty cute when they’re young,” he murmured softly. “Shame they grow up to be savage mongrels that stink worse than a barrel of week-old road kill.”

Four outraged faces swiveled to scowl at him.

“Kidding,” he whispered on a wink.

Clare jabbed her elbow into his arm. “Shut up, Simon.” She hadn’t yet decided if she would ever forgive him. She really didn’t want to start liking him before she made up her mind.

It took about twenty minutes to identify all twelve of the adults and figure out who hadn’t made it—two females, Petanke and Katala. Musai tapped his watch meaningfully, and so they packed up to go then retreated carefully on their bellies or all fours. Clare’s eyes never left the pack.
Rule number one
. Unlikely the dogs would defend in this situation, but better safe than sorry. Her backward crawl was awkward compared to Simon’s mean reverse-commando out of the undergrowth even with his weapon in hand. He straightened up off to one side, still on high alert.

Total super-spy.

“How about that?” she said excitedly to the others when they were well clear. “Pups! Can you believe it?”

“Fourteen,” Musai said in particularly pleased-with-himself Shona.

With good reason. They would be moving fourteen dogs to new habitat, after all.

She turned happily to Tim. “You’ll name the pups? I’d love you to have the privilege, as project sponsor.”

He nodded, but he looked uncomfortable for the first time since she’d met him. She slid her hand over his and curled her fingers around it. She remembered how moving she’d found her first pack sighting.

In her periphery, Simon’s focus shifted slightly in their direction, and she knew he was watching her with Tim. What was his problem? With one frown he could make her feel embarrassed, defensive—utterly high—or ashamed of doing nothing more than expressing her gratitude to a new partner.

She dropped her hand.

Unless he was just jealous…?

She snorted under her breath.
Right.
He’d had six months to contact her and start something more personal. Or give her an explanation. Or, God forbid, an apology. She wasn’t that hard to find. Especially not with the resources of British Intelligence behind him.

But had he? No.

She shook loose of his stormy surveillance by helping Musai pack up the tracking gear, chatting amiably with him about the dogs and the pups. Mitch jogged on ahead and returned lugging one of three dik-dik carcasses they’d brought along. He dumped it where Jambi would find it later when entering the area to investigate the scents left by the humans. These were the first of several food lures which would hopefully draw the pack the three miles to the campsite and into the waiting pens.

Simon cleared his throat. She started. He was standing right next to her.