Wild Encounter (14 page)

He caught up in seconds, easily matching her angry strides with his long legs, and swung her around with an iron grip on her arm. His eyes blazed. “You know damned well—”

“Just get your evidence and go, Simon.”

His jaw flexed. “This is no fun for me either, Clare. But I have a mission to finish.”

“Right. Orders. I get it.” The tightness in her chest ached.

His intensity arced down on her. “I’m constrained by my oath, Clare. Something I hold very dear. What I want to say and what I’m authorized to say are not one and the same.”

“What
do
you want to say, Simon? Why all the effort to get me alone?”

He regarded her seriously. Stepped closer. “I wanted to clear the air between us.”

Pain and disappointment bit deep.

Closure.
Great
.

“And I needed to know that you are okay. That you stay okay.”

Thump, thump, thump.
If she spoke more than two words, her voice would betray the heart hammering in her throat. She lifted her chin, forced her heart back where it belonged. “I’m fine.”

Such meaningless lies.

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t argue. He nodded and glanced to where his Amazonian partner prowled the tent area. “A couple of days, Clare. That’s all we have to get through. We both have jobs to do and a lot riding on this project. A couple of days and you’ll be back on a plane to Boston. Let’s just try to keep things
professional
until then.”

There was that word again. She could grow to hate it.

But there was one other thing she hated already—that he was wishing her on a plane for home when they’d only just found each other again.

…

Simon spun on his heels and took himself back to camp the long way round. Back past the Nissan, down around the holding pens and back up the far side of camp. As many laps as it took to walk off his anger.

At himself.

What an ass. The tighter his chest had got the more words just tumbled from his lips and the less he’d been able to control it. Like the greenest of rookies. He’d interviewed—and bested—slick fraudsters by staying cool and focused and tripping them up in their own lies. Yet with Clare he just…babbled.

Mac caught his eye the moment he walked back into camp and flicked her eyebrow a quarter of an inch. That was code for
deVries-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you
? And his surly return glare was code for
nothing-to-see-move-along
.

It was the bracelets. He lost his cool the moment Clare jangled them in that nervous way she now had. Every time he heard the whisper jingle of metal on metal he remembered the scars she carried beneath the tangle of wire and who had given them to her.

As far as he was concerned, those scars had come to symbolize everything that stood between the two of them. And the jingling just amplified it.

“Weiss,” he barked and the South African carefully finished what he was doing then walked toward him, his own expression heavy with code Simon didn’t care to decipher.

“Something you need?” the blond man said amiably. Totally fake.

Yeah there was something he needed, a partial lobotomy of whatever part of his brain was locking up like an antique firearm every time Clare stared up at him with those deep brown eyes. Whatever it was that was robbing him of the decisiveness and certainty that he was known for. And of air.

“I’ll need to interview anyone who was part of the hijacked convoy last year, about ninety minutes each.”

Weiss stared at him. “Probably better tomorrow before we get hammered with dogs arriving.”

“And I may have follow-up questions the next day.” And if he didn’t, he’d think of some, because keeping his mind busy was a much better idea than stewing endlessly. Particularly given what Clare had said.

Not something I’d do under less than life-threatening circumstances.

In Simon’s world that was tantamount to an admission.

Clare had slept with him to escape. Hadn’t she warned him outright she’d be using her body to stay alive? She’d even said as much in her interview with the police.

He shoved down the ache low in his gut.

What more did he need, a confession signed in blood?

“I have to say I was wondering when someone would get around to interviewing us properly,” Weiss continued.

That drew Simon’s eyes up. “What do you mean?”

“We were interviewed but not very… None of us felt it was particularly thorough. Under the circumstances.”

“Careful what you wish for,” Simon murmured. “I have a reputation for thoroughness.”

Weiss considered him through narrowed eyes. “I guess there would have been no point wasting human resources on a bunch of people who had no idea what was going on, when your lot knew exactly where Clare was the whole time.” His calm tone was edged with anger. “Course we didn’t know that. All we wanted to do was help. That was a horrific few days for all of us. Though obviously Clare most of all.” He finished on a grimace.

Simon sucked in a measured breath. None of that fear and anxiety had come through in the brief field reports from their interviews in Zambia. The downside of his job and MI6 processes. They tended to homogenize. Dehumanize. His mind went straight to the police report Clare filed in Lusaka after escaping. How flat and beige that was.

Although what did he expect, that she’d gush about the man that did absolutely nothing to get her out of there? He barely cracked a mention in the entire report. And then only if you were looking for signs of him.

“Well, I can assure you of a thorough and full interview now,” he told Weiss.

That’s how he took ‘em and that’s how he gave ’em. Full disclosure was part of his job, and he’d lived up to his reputation as by-the-book deVries in the days after bringing down the hammer on the Zambian operation. Not that he’d gone into gory detail. But he’d left no doubt how close he had become to Clare during her ordeal.

And how many times.

His fellow ops officers might’ve been sympathetic, but his supervisors had torn him a new orifice, suspending him pending an investigation and stripping him of his privileges for weeks to hammer home what an appalling breach of trust and protocol he’d committed. Reminding him week after week after week how vulnerable a hostage was, and what a lowlife he’d been to have exploited that. He’d been forbidden to contact her in any way. That would only make things more difficult for her, they’d said.

There was no room for feelings in the SIS. So he didn’t share his.

He just took his hits as they came.

Better him than Clare.

At least his colleagues had remembered to acknowledge the hell he’d endured for three months undercover in the company of psychopaths, and that—against all odds—he’d not only pulled off the operation, he’d minimized collateral damage. A few had also voiced respect for the courage and ingenuity of his hostage, those who’d heard the full details of Clare’s escape and how it had allowed him to proceed with the mission.

He cringed inwardly every time they referred to her as ‘the hostage.’

Clare,
he’d wanted to shout at them.
Her name’s Clare!

“What exactly do you hope to learn six months after the fact?” Weiss asked, now. Simon forced himself to focus on what he was still talking about. Interviews.
Right.

What was he hoping to learn? Nothing he could share with anyone from WildLyfe. But there were a lot of gaps in the jigsaw and, in his experience, plugs tended to come from the strangest places. And so did insight.

“You’ll find out for yourself. Tomorrow.”

The South African nodded and left. Simon let his attention drift from him to Nadia, then Luka. Musai on the far side of camp. Weiss’s quiet words betrayed so much more than just a casual working relationship. These people were like family to Clare. And so those few days last year
must
have been hell for all of them.

He scanned the clearing again and took particular care to avoid Clare.

All but one, maybe. The one feeding inside information to the assholes he’d been working with.

His job was to find out who that one was.

Chapter Ten

“Need anything?”

Tim’s quiet question over the campfire that night brought Clare back from her thoughts. He looked genuinely concerned as he sank down next to her. She’d been so absorbed stewing over Simon’s presence she’d barely given him a thought.

She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that this has all upstaged what should have been an exciting first project for you.”

“Are you kidding? I sign papers all day. This is about the most excitement I’ve had in years. My first full day in Africa, my first watch…”

She glanced at his bandaged hand. “Your first baboon spider bite. What were you doing out that far from camp at dusk, anyway?”

His normally crystal clear gaze clouded just slightly. “Just exploring. That’ll teach me to put my hand somewhere I shouldn’t.”

Civilians wandering around alone in Africa was pretty much all one big
shouldn’t
. But it seemed like Tim got that now. She wasn’t going to badger the man who was presently her most legitimate distraction from thinking about Simon.

She glanced over to where he and his partner sat, talking with the others around the fire. He’d spent the better part of the evening chatting to all the other team members.

But not her. Not since earlier. Not even a glance.

Tim saw the direction of her gaze. “How do you feel about him being here?”

Jubilant. Ecstatic. Utterly heartbroken.
A little bit breathless even when he was nowhere nearby. Furious with herself for feeling that way.

She measured her tone. “He worked hard to keep me from coming to real harm during my captivity. I didn’t understand it at the time but I did recognize he was doing it. It makes perfect sense now.”

Not that she enjoyed realizing he’d only been working so hard to keep her safe because he was paid to.

Tim dropped his voice lower. “He may have kept you from harm but he didn’t help you escape.”

The urge to defend him rushed up fast and raw. Tim watched keenly.

“He gave me his gun at the end, when I escaped. I didn’t steal it, he
gave
it to me.” It sounded thin even to her ears. “And he had a mission to complete, priorities—”

Tim swirled his coffee. “Where I come from, your life would be the priority.”

She swung around to speak more privately, moving closer. “Tim, I’m the only person here who has a right to be angry with him or judge the decisions he made. To everyone else he’s a representative of the British government, here to keep the team safe. Can I rely on you to remain impartial?”

It felt very odd lecturing the head of a Fortune 500 company like this, but she hoped Tim was a big enough man to take some criticism on the chin.

He didn’t let her down, looking hard at her. “Yes. Out of respect for you I will endeavor to remain civil.” Then, turning back to his coffee he mumbled. “But if he puts you at risk again he’ll find out exactly how high up my reach goes.”

Clare laughed to keep the conversation light, but there was seriousness beneath the joke. A kind of edge she didn’t fully understand. “Thank you, Tim. Getting all of this back on a professional footing will make it easier on me.”

In another lifetime she might have been drawn to a man like Tim, someone open and gentle with business acumen and an interest in wildlife. Not to mention a private jet. But in
this
lifetime she apparently had eyes for only one man.

Her eyes went reluctantly back to Simon.

As foolish as that was.

…

“What do you mean, it moved?”

Beyond the crackling fire, Simon concentrated on not letting anything show on his face as Mac brought him up to speed on the afternoon’s events. Anyone watching would just assume they were enjoying a casual conversation while letting their full bellies digest. Around them, everyone washed down the last bites of roasted something-that-had-once-had-four-legs, starchy root vegetables, and tasty rice with local wine. Lots of wine. Enough that most of them had completely failed to notice that he and Mac weren’t joining them.

He shifted closer so they could talk without being overheard, busying himself letting a rhinoceros beetle waddle from hand to hand.

“I walked back to the highway setting up our perimeter GPS markers while you were out locating the dogs,” Mac murmured. “When I got back, I noticed someone had been in the women’s tent.”

“Because something was moved?” He didn’t doubt her—Mac was never wrong—but he wanted all the facts.

“Nothing was disturbed, but Nadia’s bag wasn’t where she’d left it. And everyone was either with you or busy putting up the holding pens.

He didn’t need to ask how Mac knew the position of someone else’s luggage. Eidetic memory. Insanely useful. The woman noticed everything.

A bad feeling started to build in his gut. He let the beetle walk off into the dirt. “So someone had a good, careful look around?” he muttered.

Mac stretched indifferently, as though they were talking about the weather. “You’d expect more disturbance from thieves.”

Yeah. People tended not to care about making a mess when they were planning on being miles away by the time it was discovered. But people who stuck around…

He glanced at each of the team members gathered around the fire. There was nothing amiss in the men’s tent. Just the women’s. Which meant whoever it was had to be after something belonging to Mac, Nadia or Clare.

Simon’s gaze went to where Clare sat across the campsite, drinking coffee with the giant Kiwi.

“You want a code two?” Mac asked.

He poked a stick at the fire, thinking. Code two meant asking someone to remain in camp at all times. Out of the whole group, he only trusted Mac and Clare. Mac needed the flexibility to do her job. She couldn’t be tied to camp as well. And Clare… Clare he wasn’t letting out of his sight.

“No. Let’s just remain vigilant. Maybe they’ll make another play for whatever they were looking for.”

…

Simon waited until everyone was in bed before releasing his beleaguered teeth from their death-clench.

He gazed out across the midnight-dark clearing from his perch on the Nissan’s hood then tipped back his head to stare at the stars blanketing the deep navy sky. He’d forgotten about the incredible spangle of glittering heavens above the African wilderness. How very glad he’d been six months ago to live long enough to see them again.

Once the sedatives had worn off enough for him to think, once he’d survived the angry recriminations of the men who’d tasked him with Clare’s death, he’d realized how early in the ordeal she must have hatched her plan.

That first escape was an elaborate ruse. He couldn’t imagine how much courage it must have taken to allow herself to be recaptured after getting what she needed for her real escape. Judging by the number of vials he and Sergeant had found stashed under the floor, she must have been planning on downing them one by one. Or been prepared to. It was beyond speculation that either of them had submitted to those drugs willingly. It had taken him a full twelve hours of vomiting to recover from the massive dose. He’d puked his guts right through the transfer. Not that anyone gave him the slightest quarter for it. And not that he asked for any. As soon as the transfer went down and his MI6 team shifted their surveillance to the two strangers who’d taken delivery, they all went underground to lay low while the dust cleared. The Republic Police found nothing to incriminate them in the stripped down farmhouse.

But there’d been a price to be paid for letting her escape once the business of the transfer was out of the way. Sergeant had paid, too.

By the time Simon recovered from the gang beating he’d received, Clare drugging him wasn’t even an issue. She did what she had to do.

He’d hoped she’d found her way to the authorities—for more than one reason. He’d pressed his pistol into her hands for protection. But he’d also given her his weapon so it would be red-flagged when the police conducted the inevitable license check on it. The flag had been intercepted by SIS, and one of their African operatives had been sent in to keep the Republic Police out of Crown business. The interpreter Clare had rightly pegged.

But now, it couldn’t be any clearer how she had targeted him from the very beginning. He was just a part of her plan. She’d merely been waiting for the best moment to spring her trap—after he’d broken down and let himself be seduced. He never would have fallen for it if she’d been better at seduction. But her innocence, her stumbling awkwardness and fake confidence, and just sheer…goodness…. It fed right into his belief system, his hunger for some kind of connection. He’d been suckered. Totally.

His superiors had wasted no time in hammering that particular point home.

A rustling in the bushes near the edge of camp froze him in place for a second and though his hand went to the pistol holster at his back of its own volition, he knew better than to think it was anything four-legged. Lions and elephants in the sanctuaries might wander into the food-rich tourist camps, but out here in the wild they tended to give humans the widest possible berth. Especially with the embers of the fire still glowing red and billowing wisps of smoke. That made it some kind of nocturnal tree rat, most likely.

A deep, accented voice came out of nowhere. “It seems odd the British government would send two of their top field operatives to shepherd a convoy of wildlife workers up the Trans-African Highway.”

A nocturnal tree rat…or the two-legged equivalent.

The big Kiwi materialized from the night shadows.

Simon straightened cautiously. What was the millionaire doing slinking around the edges of camp this late at night? When he’d already been read the riot act for heading off into the bush by himself. And how the hell did he know where he and Mac fell in MI6’s food chain?

Simon reigned in the twitch of his fingers toward his holstered gun. “Based on your extensive experience of SIS operations?”

Perhaps sarcasm wasn’t warranted, but it wasn’t a friendly expression on Tim Fergusson’s suspicious face, and Simon had more than the usual reasons not to feel friendly toward the guy.

“I know enough,” Tim said. “More specifically, I know who you are, and I know that you’re here under a cloud.”

“You don’t know jack.” An unexpected perk about working for the Service—you didn’t have to be polite to smug millionaires.

“What I can’t quite figure out is why you would specifically request
this
duty.” Tim crossed his arms and leaned a hip on the bull bar. The top of the front grill would hit a normal man around hip-high, but it barely reached the top of Tim’s thigh. “Given you’re at the pointy end of your investigation,” he mock-pondered, “shouldn’t you be at a desk somewhere pulling forensic reports together?”

Simon considered him silently. For a man ten thousand clicks from home, in the depths of Africa without a civilian mobile tower for a hundred miles, Tim Fergusson was remarkably well informed. Simon wondered which of the three thousand satellites orbiting Earth was pinging a signal to what must be one hell of a pricey private sat phone.

And who was on the other end.

“Are all your countrymen so bloody-minded? And so nosey?” Simon asked amiably.

“Pretty much.”

He switched tactics. “Listen. I’m an operations officer with the Secret Intelligence Service. I’m hardly in a position to have a casual chat about my objectives here. Even with someone who owns half of New Zealand.”

Fergusson’s teeth glinted in the moonlight. “Then let’s chat about Clare.”

Simon’s hackles rose. “Let’s not.”

Heated stares collided. “I don’t like how she is around you. Tense as a coiled spring,” Fergusson said.

“You’ve only known her a week. I hardly think you’re in a position to judge.”

“And how long have you known her?”

Christ, the man was cool under pressure. Precise as a sniper bullet. He must be deadly in negotiations.

“Her personality one-eightied the moment you and your partner drove into camp. I may not be a hotshot secret agent—” his smile belied his tone “—but I know enough about people to see there’s something going on between the two of you.”

“I kidnapped her and held her hostage. You don’t think that has any bearing on her demeanor?”

“And yet, she’s your biggest defender. It defies logic.”

Simon’s mind grabbed at that and held it close. “Maybe she feels guilty for drugging me, now that she knows I’m one of the good guys.”

“I don’t think the hijacking’s what’s bothering her.
You’re
bothering her.”

“And you’d like that to stop?”

“Yes.”

“And what gives you the right to make that kind of demand? Are you going to pull Clare’s funding if I don’t play nice?”

“Would that work?”

“No. And I don’t think you’d do that to her.” Nonetheless, driving off her sponsor would pretty much be the nail in the coffin in Simon’s relationship with her, so it was a pretty powerful card. Not that they actually had a relationship to protect.