Guarding the Princess (15 page)

Dalilah’s heart twisted.

It felt so strange to hear children laughing, see them playing, to think of a weekday and school hours while they’d been on the run, hunted by violent killers still on their tracks. And now she was lying here with this man she was beginning to love, and couldn’t have—it made it all seem so surreal.

There was a small fenced-off vegetable garden beside the school building and a tower with a water tank nearby. A windmill creaked in the hot breeze. No phone lines. No electricity. A little oasis of life separate from the rest of the world. Dalilah watched as two women with yellow plastic containers in a cart bent over a tap with a hose attached, filling the vessels. A toddler played in the sand at their feet.

It drove home suddenly the reason she was here in southern Africa. The deal in Harare.

The dead delegates. Her brother sending Brandt.

She looked at him.

Because I care. Because I’ve fallen for you, Princess. And because I can’t have you, and Sheik Hassan can...

Did her brothers care? She’d never spoken to them about her marriage doubts. Apart from that one instance of hesitation right before her parents were killed, Dalilah hadn’t even articulated her fears to herself. Until now—until the Zimbabwe trip, until she’d met Brandt, and kissed him. Until he’d abducted her—physically ripping her out from the very fabric of her life, affording her a reprieve.

How
could
she expect her brothers to understand or care if she hadn’t spoken to them? Dalilah wondered what her father might say if he were alive today, and she told him she wanted to marry a man for love.

Brandt felt her watching him and turned to look at her.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“About their water. About my volunteer work and what it means to me.”

Brandt held her gaze, something softening in his eyes, then he turned back to the village. “One jeep,” he said. “Over there, parked behind what looks like some kind of communal building.”

“Can we bargain with them for the jeep, do you think?”

“I don’t want them to see us. If Amal gets wind these villagers have any information on us, he’ll slaughter them all—like he did everyone at the lodge.”

“You want to steal it?”

“Liberate it, temporarily.”

She smiled. “I’ll pay them back for it once we’re safe.”

“Your brother will.”

“No. He won’t.”

He shot her a fast glance, brow raised.

“This is not his mission. Not anymore.”

Brandt opened his mouth, but she spoke first.

“I don’t care what you say about paying him back, or owing him. That’s between you and him. This is about
me.
My life. My mission. I’m taking it back, taking control. My brothers don’t run my life.” Then she muttered, “As much as they might try.”

He laughed, softly, darkly. “They do control it if you marry for them and not for yourself,” he said.

She held his gaze. “If I marry, it’ll be my choice.”

His features tightened, eyes narrowing.

“If?”

Dalilah’s heart beat faster. She hadn’t intended phrasing it that way. She averted her eyes.

A woman came out of the school building and rang a handbell. The noise of the children rose as they pushed and jostled and raced to line up in front of her. The woman waited until the line fell silent, then she led the kids single file into the building. In the shade of a tree two men were talking.

“How can we get that jeep with all these people about?”

Brandt took the camera from his pack and panned the village using the telephoto lens. “We could wait until dark,” he said. “But that could cost us valuable time. The foot-and-mouth fencing makes it more difficult,” he said, adjusting the lens and focusing on the jeep. “There’s only one way in and out and that’s through the cattle gate and disinfectant troughs over there.”

“Is that fencing and trough to control the spread of hoof and mouth, then?” she asked.

He nodded. “The disease devastated Botswana some years back,” he said. “See, next to the cattle gate is a smaller trough for people to walk through so they don’t carry the disease on their shoes.”

They lay a while longer in the sun, watching for opportunity.

Brandt cursed softly. “I hate the very idea of bringing Amal close to this place. This village,” he said, “is what Botswana is about for me. This peace. This lack of outside distraction, just people living in the present with what they’ve got.”

“Is that why you came to Botswana, Brandt?”

He grunted, moved the camera, focusing in on the jeep again. “The longer we wait, the closer Amal gets. It’s becoming a toss-up between keeping this village safe, and you alive.” He swore again, set the camera down, fingered his gun, watching, thinking. She could see he was conflicted.

He turned and looked toward the western horizon. She could see him calculating alternatives.

“That road you mentioned—how far is it from here?”

He rubbed the back of his neck—it was being burned by the sun. She could feel her own skin burning and was grateful for the hat. He had none.

“It’s not just the distance to the road. Once we hit that road we need to go south, then veer off into bush again. It would take us days on foot.”

“Maybe we could flag down a vehicle on the road.”

“The traffic is sporadic at best. We could be sitting ducks waiting out there.” Tension was tightening his voice. He was being eaten up with this immobility, the waiting. She swatted a fly. Another hour ticked by, but life continued to move in the village.

“I made your brother a promise,” he said quietly, as if thinking out loud. “No matter what you say about this mission being yours or his, I’m going to get you home alive. And I need that jeep to do it.”

The sun hit its zenith, small and white-hot in the hazy sky. Dalilah took off her hat and smoothed back her hair, wiped her brow. Brandt handed her a stick of biltong. They chewed in silence.

“So, what did happen ten years ago, Brandt, that has you paying Omair back like this now?”

His mood darkened. Then after a few beats he said, “I think you already have it figured out, Dalilah.”

She hooked her brow up. “How so?”

“You’ve been digging information out of me in bits, storing them like puzzle pieces in that pretty head of yours—I figure you’ve put most of the puzzle together.”

A dung beetle tried to roll a ball of dung up the sandbank. It got almost to the lip, then the dung rolled back down. Like a small black crepuscular tank the beetle scurried after it, started again. Almost at the lip, the ball escaped the beetle’s grasp, rolled back down, and the beetle once again began the upward push—a Sisyphean task. Beetle needed a damn break. She picked up a stalk of dry grass and pushed the dung ball over the lip for the beetle, then dusted her hand off on her pants.

“You want me to tell you what I’ve got, then?” she said finally.

“Not really.”

She poked holes in the dirt with her stick, thinking. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”

A wry smile twisted his mouth. “Why does this not surprise me?”

“I got that ten years ago something happened while you were with the FDS. Maybe on a job. It involved a woman, and it involved betrayal. And you blame yourself for her death—it cracked something inside you.” She glanced at him. “It made you bitter, leery of any level of commitment, afraid to fall in love again.”

His eyes bored into her, intense. A muscle began to tick at his jaw.

“Omair intervened and saved your life somehow.” She paused, thinking. “It had to be something big, or you wouldn’t be here with me now, paying him back like this.”

She doodled her stick, then slid her gaze back to meet his. He wasn’t smiling. He looked dangerous—a look she’d glimpsed in him before. She swallowed, throat dry, feeling nervous suddenly. “But the part I haven’t figured out,” she said, “is that you mentioned you were betrayed twice. Promises broken twice.”

He remained silent, regarding her intently.

“So—what happened? Does it have something to do with marriage?” she said after a while.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because you said you were not the one to talk about marriage, that you’d failed at that.”

“Dalilah.” His voice was low, cool. “Why are you pressing me like this—what difference does it make to you?”

Her face heated. She glanced away, watched a row of little red ants trying to attack a dragonfly—iridescent green and turquoise. She thought of her jewels, her wealth. Her ring.

Slowly she glanced up and met his eyes again. “Because you’re not the only one who cares, Brandt.”

“And that’s where it ends.”

“Does it?”

His eyes narrowed sharply. “What are you saying, Dalilah?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying.” But she did know—she was thinking beyond caring for him. She was thinking about the possibilities of acting on her affection. Of being with him beyond this mission.

He moistened his lips, a pain gleaming in his eyes, brief, then gone. He wiped his brow, fingered his gun.

“When I was twenty-one,” he said slowly, “just after I got out of the army—they had conscription back then in South Africa—I married the woman I loved. We had a son.”

Shock whispered through Dalilah—this she had
not
expected.

“What’s his name, Brandt? How old is he?”

“He’s dead.”

Double shock. Dalilah’s brain raced, a reticence to push further fighting with her now-intense curiosity.

“What happened?”

He checked his watch as if the time would miraculously give him a way out. He shifted his body on the sand, features tight. He was like a caged lion who couldn’t handle immobility, trapped with her questions in this cauldron of dust and heat.

She touched his hand. “It’s okay, I don’t need to know.”

He inhaled deeply. “His name was Stefaan, Stefaan after my father. A beautiful blond little boy, hair like white fluff—blue eyes.” His voice thickened, catching. His eyes were raw.

Emotion gripped Dalilah’s throat.

“He was two years old when he was mauled and killed by our dog.” Brandt looked away, getting a grip on himself. “It was my fault. I left the two of them alone in the garden for one second—went in the house to get lemonade for Stefaan.” His voice was flat now, empty. “Yolanda, my wife, blamed me for it. We ended up in different rooms, different beds. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—look me in the eyes. Sometimes I’d feel her watching me, though, and I’d turn, and recognize pure hatred on her face.” He inhaled, blew out a long, slow breath, wiping sweat from his brow again.

“She was in pain. We both were. Yolanda looked to my older brother for comfort. Pieter.” His jaw tightened around the name. “Pieter had always had a thing for Yolanda, and he stepped in and took on the role of comforting her. And sleeping with her.” He paused, a long while. “He shot the dog.”

Words defied Dalilah. But she suddenly understood Brandt wholly, the bitterness. The issues with promise and commitment.

“It was my damn dog,” he said very quietly. “A Staffie cross, russet coat. I found him living wild in the bush when I was stationed up at Caprivi. I sneaked him home, named him Jock.” He made a wry smile. “Like the old story we all read as kids,
Jock of the Bushveld
. Do you know it?”

She shook her head.

“Written by Sir James Percy Fitzpatrick in the 1800s, a true story about his travels across the veldt with his dog. Jock’s become part of South African culture. My Jock was a good dog—I thought he was fine with kids. Until that day. I still don’t know what set him off. Maybe Stefaan just got in his space.”

She touched his arm, gently. His skin was hot. He stared at her hand.

“Brandt, I’m so sorry. You should have been able to grieve together—”

“Damn right.” He ground out the words. “I figure she’d have eventually cuckolded me with that brother of mine. Losing our son was a catalyst—gave him opportunity.”

The wind rose, dust picking up in small dervishes.

“Is that when you joined the FDS, after your marriage fell apart?”

“Yeah. Buried my boy. Buried the dog. Sold the farm. Got as far away as possible. I worked with men who understood loyalty. And I earned good money, played too hard, didn’t think too much.”

“Except for the photos.”

His eyes shot to hers. But he said nothing.

“And then you met someone else?”

He snorted softly. “Carla. Daughter of a Nicaraguan police chief. He had a big drug crackdown looming, a battle with a cartel leader whose son his daughter had started seeing. He wanted me to get her away and keep her away—he expected bloodshed and retaliation, and he figured the cartel would use his daughter to get to him. My job was to abduct her and hide her, protect her. It was a mission that took months. She was beautiful—dark hair, smoky eyes, dusky skin, body to die for. She pushed all my buttons.” He glanced her way. “You remind me of her.”

Dalilah swallowed, another puzzle piece clicking into place—his conflict over her, his brusqueness when they’d first met.

“You fell for her.”

Brandt was silent a long while. “I crossed a line, Dalilah. A line I had no bloody right to cross. She came on to me. And I fell for it.”

“What do you mean, fell for it?”

“She was using me, and I didn’t see it coming. We were in a remote mountain area. Just our camp, me and her. We started sleeping together. I lost focus enough to think I didn’t have to watch her every second. I began to trust her, and one night she used my communications equipment to tell Alejandro—the drug lord’s son—where she was. His father sent Alejandro and some men. They attacked two nights later. He killed her.”

“Alejandro
killed
her?”

Brandt closed his eyes and his voice went strange. “He was never into Carla. They were using her all along—her father was right. They surprised me, beat me, tied me up where I was forced to watch and hear them rape her. Then Alejandro slit her throat.” He swallowed. “They let me live—to deliver the message to her father.”

Horror washed up her throat. “Oh, God, Brandt.”

How did someone come back from that?