Wild Encounter (22 page)

It was one hundred percent pure adrenaline and terror spinning out of them, leaving them breathless and shaking.

He kissed her. So very gently, taking care with her cracked jaw and bruised face.

Slowly—agonizingly slowly—the events of earlier in the day came back to her. She pulled away out of his hold, rolled onto her back, and pressed one hand to her heaving chest while the fingers of the other found her lips. Simon fell onto his back next to her.

Tim spoke up. “You okay, Clare?” He looked and sounded different. The same but—

“Why do you have a gun?” she asked, bewildered.

He shrugged. “ASIO issue.”

Simon’s eyes fell shut. Then they opened again, much more resolute, and he pulled his torso up and stared at Zimbabwe’s dust plume disappearing back down the track. “He has a chip.”

Tim’s eyes narrowed. “Data?”

Simon shook his head. Managed a shadow of a grin. “Tracking.”

Tim ghosted back a smile, pulled out a satellite phone, and started dialing.

Simon rolled his head to look at her. “How bad are you hurt?”

Incredulity settled like acid in her aching belly. “That was one of WildLyfe’s chips?”

“Yeah. The data chip is still sealed in the collar. Your jaw looks bad.”

So did his face. Vaguely, an image of him screwing the cover back on the collar filtered through to her swollen brain. “So it was worthless? Why didn’t you give it to him sooner?”

Why let it get so far? Why had he let them hurt her? Let them cave in his face so badly?

Anguish filled his blackening, slitted eyes. “They knew me. If I’d given in too soon they’d have known. It had to look genuine. We needed to track him.”

So all this had been about SIS getting their man? All that torment and fury in Simon’s expression as he’d laid there in the dirt—that had all been for the sake of the ruse? Hurt washed through her until the pain inside matched the considerable pain outside as the numbness wore off.

She lowered her voice so only he could hear. “So the case doesn’t mean enough for me to die for, but you have no problem with me being beaten senseless or having a dead man’s fingers in my underwear?”

He groaned softly. “I…”

Honestly? It was not a question she wanted the answer to. She frowned up at Tim. “ASIO?”

“Australian Intelligence.”

Wait. “So you’re not a millionaire CEO?”

He shrugged, his call on hold. “Nope. No private jet.”

God, she was surrounded by spies! “You’re working undercover, too?”

“’Fraid so. Sorry about the deception. Had to be done.”

“You’re not even from New Zealand, are you?” she said resignedly, realizing what was different about him. His accent.

He shook his head. “I’m Australian.”

A weak laugh sifted through her body. Would Mitch turn out to be CIA? Maybe Nadia was a rep for some eastern bloc warlord.

“Is your sponsorship real, at least?” she risked asking.

Simon stared at her, like he couldn’t quite believe she was asking about money. But that money was her life. Her future.

“Actually, that is real,” Tim said. “Channeled through a real Kiwi company. Consider it a finder’s fee from the Australian Government for the retrieval of the documents.”

“Why does Australia want them?”

“Oh, lots of countries want them, love. For what’s on them. They might have been US-based but the mega-corps that got ripped off had tentacles across the globe.”

Simon gingerly pushed himself up from the ground, rose slowly to his feet, and retrieved both his weapons.

He checked Boots for signs of life, found none, and left him where he lay. “Are you in charge of retrieval, then?”

Tim nodded. Simon slumped against the sedan. “Does Vauxhall know you’re here?”

“Someone there knows. Took me a while to realize you didn’t.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed. “What about McKenzie?”

“She didn’t seem to, judging by the disdain she saved especially for me.”

Simon grinned but it was more of a pained grimace. “Trust me, that wasn’t special, mate.”

“Nice.” Tim snorted. “I think the word you’re looking for is ‘
thank you’
. I’m only here in case you lot weren’t able to bring this one in. I didn’t actually expect to be saving your pasty arse.”

Simon grunted but Claire lifted her eyes. “
I’ll
thank you.”

“For what?”

“For shooting him so I didn’t have to.” She would have done it to save Simon’s life, and despite her disgust for the filthy, degenerate excuse of a man, she would never have been able to get over killing another human being.

Tim’s face sobered. His call connected and he strode away and spoke urgently into his phone.

Clare managed to sit up and prop herself against the tire of the sedan that Boots had driven into their convoy like a missile. “What I want to know is how they knew we’d be driving past here today? Enough to plan this site. How did they find us in the first place?”

She had an idea but still couldn’t bring herself to admit Artie’s guilt. Or culpability. Because that meant he might be behind what just happened to her.

“Someone on the inside at WildLyfe. And they’ve been watching the camp. Since at least Monday,” Simon admitted.

She knew it. That dark, evil sensation… The feeling she was being watched.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.
Vindication tasted an awful lot like blood. She forced herself to spit it out.

She asked, “Because they wanted the last chip? I thought you said there were two copies of each?”

“The other one was…corrupt.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I corrupted it. Back in the farmhouse. With a magnet.”

She recalled the square, industrial-sized magnet she’d found under the farmhouse that had seemed so out of place. He must have tossed it down the ancient drain-hole in the bathroom to hide the evidence. “You sabotaged their operation?”

“My job was chip retrieval,” he said. “I only had a minute or two alone with them but I corrupted as many as I could get away with in the short time I had before they locked them away. I got four of them. This must have been the only chip they didn’t have a double for.”

Her chest filled with admiration and respect. Grudgingly—because he’d put his job ahead of her so many times. “But they had nearly all the chips. Wasn’t that enough for them?”

“These are top-end, encrypted financial records. They’re not stored individually as documents even at their source. You need all seven chips to reassemble the archive or else they’re useless. Just lucky they were one short thanks to Jambi.”

“They’ve probably been biding their time, waiting for WildLyfe to go after the dogs again,” he continued. “And do their job for them. Just like last time.”

The idea they’d been watching her project that closely made her skin crawl.

“What will you do when you catch him?” She meant Zimbabwe, but she was still thinking about Artie.

Simon’s bloodied nostrils flared. “He’s going to pay. Trust me on that. And he’s going to give us the location of everyone involved and the rest of the chips.”

Tim clicked off his sat phone. “Musai and your partner are tracking him already. Our team is en route now.”

Simon turned to him. “This is an SIS collar.”

He held up both hands. “You can have him. We just want the final chip out of circulation.”

Simon nodded. “As soon as it’s been processed at Vauxhall.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope no one will try and decrypt the content?”

Simon eyeballed him. “Way too much.”

Tim grunted. “You do realize I saved your girlfriend’s life, too.”

“I’ll get you a knighthood,” Simon drawled and Tim shrugged.

“I’ll let our Directors battle out the question of who gets the data.” He tossed his head toward Boots’ corpse. “You got someone to take care of that?”

Simon pressed a thumb to the bridge of his nose to stem the bleeding. “We’ll have the local cops here within the hour.”

“I think we should just leave him for the vultures,” Clare muttered, not able to look at the body.

Simon grunted. “That would have been so much more rewarding if he’d still been alive to feel it.” He smiled through the crusting blood and the purpling bruises. She had to look away. Didn’t want the warmth it made her feel.

Fergusson took some photos of the scene with his phone. “Are there keys in that thing?” He motioned to the sedan.

Simon peered through the windshield. “Hotwired.”

Tim sighed. “Why is it never easy? Clare, love—” he reached down and took her hands, pulling her carefully to her feet “—sorry I didn’t get here faster. You did bloody well defending yourself
and
this worthless bloke.” He hitched a thumb at Simon. “And for what it’s worth, Australia never thought you were involved.”

Off to the side, Simon hawked blood into the dirt.

Tim’s eyes softened. “Look me up if you’re ever in Oz.”

“Under T for Tim, or A for ASIO?”

“Actually it’s Jim,” he shook her hand. “James Fergusson. But don’t worry, I’ll put a flag on your passport. I’ll get notified the moment you hit Australian customs. I’ll find you. We can have lunch.”

Lunch.
Right.

He gently lifted her hand and kissed it. Then, tossing Simon a nod, he jogged back down the track, leaving her alone with him and a faceless corpse. Fine company.

She looked down at her pants. Boots had torn them in his haste to get them open. She attempted to tie the two shredded sides together but her unsteady fingers couldn’t keep a grip on the fabric.

“Here…” Simon stepped close and took over, his warm, gentle fingers brushing her hips.

“So, Australia doesn’t think I’m involved?” she said to cover her instant reaction to his touch.

That’s not what she really wanted to know. And he knew it.

“Nor did I, Clare.”

“You just followed me to Africa because you needed the frequent flier miles.”

His eyes darkened. “I was
sent
to bring you in. I
came
to keep you safe.”

Her chest tightened against the warmth those words birthed. “Why wouldn’t I be safe? Unless you knew they’d come after me?”

“They wanted that last collar. You were their link to it. You were also a victim who could send them all to prison, an eyewitness who could identify them. I thought it was pretty likely they’d come after you.”

Disbelief raged. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I was ordered not to contact you.”

“You could have had my passport renewal held up. Stopped me from even leaving America. Or delayed my African visa. Until they were caught.”

His lips thinned. “We’re glorified civil servants, Clare. We don’t have that kind of reach.”

Pretty trashed for a civil servant. He used his T-shirt to wipe some of the blood from his face. The hint of firm torso only made her already aching head worse.

“Still…” she mumbled.

“I couldn’t, Clare. Okay? We needed you, too. To retrieve that last collar.”

Her mind screamed. Any one of their team could have located the dogs and retrieved the evidence for SIS. But the chip wasn’t the only thing SIS wanted, was it? They wanted Boots and Zimbabwe behind bars, as well and information on who’d employed them and where to find them. They had to know the brutal thugs who’d be coming after the chip would also be determined to eliminate their earlier victim—an eyewitness who could put them there.

Her
.

Clare’s body went perfectly still. “Was I—?”

No
. They wouldn’t do that to her.
He
wouldn’t do that to her.

But she whispered it anyway. “Was I bait, Simon?”

His eyes held hers, though the conflict reflected in them intensified. “I specifically requested the mission. I knew I could keep you safe.”

She held her hands out to her sides, looked down at all her injuries. Hurt and anger mingled in a toxic brew. Her laugh was raw. “Safe like this, you mean?”

His eyes bled pain and regret. “I was doing my job.”

Her shaking intensified. “Why does doing your job always seem to be at my expense?”

“Clare—”

Her head pulsed with agony. “I trusted you, Simon. I believed in you. I defended you to everyone about your role in my captivity.” Her voice broke. “You knew they were coming for me but you didn’t warn me. You had me recover the dogs but didn’t tell the risk that was strapped to one of them. You tossed me like a carcass to those predators.” Her gaze went to Boots’ still form. She took a deep breath and brought it back to him. “You used me.”

Use me once, shame on you. Use me twice…

He seemed to struggle with something, started to speak, and then changed his mind. “I had no choice. I had to play both sides at the farmhouse. To keep you safe and still complete my assignment. Not getting those financial records back would have meant ruin for some really major players, and them going down would have taken millions of families with them. It would have made the Global Financial Crisis look like a dip in profits.