Guarding the Princess(18)

That must have been what truly shattered Dalilah.

He crouched and shunted the dead leopard onto his shoulders. It was heavy and blood washed with rain down his arm as he made his way back to the jeep.

Horror widened Dalilah’s eyes as she saw Brandt approaching in the headlights with the animal draped over his shoulders.

“No! Oh, God, no, what are you doing?” She spun round as he heaved the dead animal into the far backseat.

“Can’t leave it lying out there,” he said brusquely, coming round to the driver’s-side door. “This storm will cover a good deal of our trace. But leaving that leopard with a bullet hole lying under the tree like that—might as well leave a flag with a note telling Amal’s men we came this way.”

He climbed, secured his rifle into a bracket on the dash beside a hunting spotlight.

“Brandt—”

He shot her a glance as he put the vehicle in gear.

“There was a baby, a cub.”

“I know.” He pressed down on the gas, tires whining in mud as the vehicle kicked forward.

“We can’t leave the cub.”

“We have to. I’m not killing it.”

“Something else will.” Her voice was filled with desperation.

“Dalilah,” he said softly, jaw clenched, eyes focused on the terrain illuminated by the twin yellow beams of his headlights. “We can’t take it. We have to let nature take its course here.”

She pushed herself back into the seat, fighting something inside. Then a flash of anger burst through. “I didn’t sign up for this!”

You and me both.

But he said nothing, concentrating instead on negotiating a rocky escarpment as he worked the jeep toward the banks of the Tsholo. With the dash-mounted GPS came increased confidence. He told himself they’d be over the river, hopefully, within an hour or two. Once across the border he’d treat her injury, get some food into her, then they could start the trip across Botswana veldt. They’d travel along a giant rift valley until they could find a route up to the plateau, after which they’d head for a paved road that bisected the eastern region of Botswana. They’d drive south for several more kilometers, the paved road hopefully hiding their vehicle tracks, then the plan was to veer offroad again into a controlled game area from which there’d be another day or two of driving across Botswana bush to his farm where he’d get on the phone to Omair. And then the princess would be history.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she said. “I don’t kill things.”

He continued to drive in silence. The ground was dangerously rutted, flowing with water. The storm crashed around them, and branches were going down. Water was building into small rivers. Brandt needed full attention on his four-wheeling skills, and she needed space to lash these things out in her head herself, so he let her at it.

But his silence just seemed to egg her on.

“On principle,” she reiterated a few minutes later, as if he hadn’t heard. “I don’t kill animals!”

“You’re looking to get a rise out of me,” he said.

“You brought me here!”

“Look, Dalilah, I get that you don’t kill animals. Me, I don’t kill humans. On principle—I made that vow years ago. And now look at me—”

She shot him a hard look.

“I was forced to kill a man back at the lodge to honor a promise I made to your brother, a promise to get you out of here alive. Because of you I was forced to break that goddamn vow never to kill another man—” his voice came out more strident than he’d intended, and he gripped the wheel harder than he meant it to “—or woman.”

This time she stared at him in silence. Good. He’d hooked her out of her thought loop.

“So we’re square, okay? I didn’t want this any more than you did. That leopard was a case of kill or be killed. Survival.”

She continued to stare at him, and he knew what she had to be thinking—what woman had died at his hand? Brandt gritted his teeth, swinging the wheel too hard to the right to avoid a boulder that appeared abruptly in his lights. The vehicle slid sideways in mud, tilting almost onto its side as they traversed the escarpment.

Dalilah gasped, clutching on to the roll bar.

Brandt cursed and stopped the jeep. Focus, dammit. But this woman was messing with his head and his memories. And his anger had pushed him to take chances with the terrain. He wiped sweat off his brow, then slammed the vehicle back into gear.

Slowly he coaxed the wheels forward, crawling out of the tight spot. He sped up when they hit flat ground. There was little scrub now, mostly grassland. Rain was whipping sideways under the canopy, and the wet grass made a clacking noise under the carriage as he gunned forward.