Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) (20 page)

We trudged for hours under the unrelenting rain and through the unforgiving forest. Wet and miserable as it was—as we were—there could be no stopping, not until we put as many kilometers as possible between us and the faceless, armbanded them.

“Look out!”

Mark hauled me back hard from the downed tree trunk I was halfway scrambled over. My first instinct was to go low and freeze in his arms, my eyes wide for signs of danger.

“What is it?” My voice was frantic—the animals weren’t alerting to anything wrong, but if they were in danger—

The hands on my shoulders relaxed their grip. Mark’s sharp laugh echoed with the strain we were all feeling. “Nothing. A vine. I swore it was a snake.”

“Snakes aren’t going to be out in the open hunting in this rain. They don’t have the metabolism for it.”

“You could tell me that all day and my brain would agree with you. Heartily. But then I’d see another vine snaking around a tree trunk like that and I’d still react as if it were a live snake. I’m human. We’re hard-wired to panic first, think later.”

“I’d be thanking you hard right now if it had been a mamba or a bush viper. So”—I kissed him, full hard on the lips—“that’s for not thinking first.”

“Mmm. I think I’m going to panic more often.”

Always wanting to be in on the action when Mark and I touched, Jengo hugged our legs. Wet fur and soulful eyes told me he’d rather be in his dry bedroom at Zahur. Failing that, being wherever we were was the next best thing. “Me too,
mtoto
,” I whispered his way.

As I stepped away from Mark, I was once more hauled abruptly back. It took a moment to sort that our rifle slings had tangled.

“See, you just can’t get away from me,” Mark quipped.

I snickered, as much from frayed nerves as from the situation.

The distant drone of a helicopter reminded us why we were out here in the first place. My cheeks fell flat as my nervous laugh died. With a sigh, I clambered over the fallen tree trunk, Mark right behind me, and we marched another hour due east according to the tiny compass built into the hilt of my hunting knife.

As the gray day turned grayer, we began searching for a campsite, settling on piling some branches around a towering kapok tree with one of the more impressive wrinkled and fluted trunks in the neighborhood. Several saplings and shrubs within a few meters of the camp meant Tamu and Nyota would have good browse nearby. The rain ensured plenty of small flooded streams with fast-moving water, much of it runoff from the rains. Not the most ideal for drinking, but part of the emergency kit Mark carried in his backpack included chlorine dioxide drops to chemically sterilize the water for sensitive human systems. How the animals all managed to not get sick from any of the water they drank was beyond me. With all the perils in the wild, it was also beyond me how our ancestors managed to out-survive the competition, which seemed better suited for survival all the way around.

Emergency packs of sandwich crackers filled with stale peanut-butter ensured we wouldn’t starve the night. Which was fortuitous since we weren’t going to find any fuel dry enough to light a fire.

Ten packets each of powdered formula meant the babies would be held to one bottle a day, and that would be mixed with water not cow’s milk. The okapi was near weaning age anyway, so with enough browse she would be the easiest to care for on the trail. The rhino really still needed double feedings—forced sustained browsing would be hard on her stomach and hindgut, but she was carrying enough baby fat to help get her through the next week or so without overmuch stress so long as we allowed her and Nyota time enough to browse and graze.

The bit of fruit we carried for Jengo would have to be eaten soon or it would spoil. That meant we needed to collect whatever edible roots and nuts we could find going forward.

Gus was both the most problematic and the least. I had his usual assortment of dog treats in my pack, but beyond that half kilo of biscuits, he would have to hunt his dinner down. And since his prey would mainly be the same as any snake’s—mice, rats and lizards—he wouldn’t have any more luck finding them out and about in the rain than a snake would. Stumbling on a badger den or ground nest along the way would be his best hope for as long as this rain kept up. Still, of us all, I fully expected Gus to be the most capable of surviving.

As for Mark and I, we nibbled on our crackers after bottle-feeding the
watoto
and huddled in our shelter together for warmth. Things might have gotten cozier between us if not for 50 kilos of dog and a small gorilla snuggling in beside us, wet fur reeking, effectively killing any thought of even a romantic kiss.

“Next time,” Mark said over the ruff of fur that had somehow managed to crawl between us, “we hire a babysitter for date night.”

“Next time,” I agreed.

And despite the sadness and horrors of the day, it was the promise of
next time
that I fell asleep to, a balm to my pain.

A gift to my heart.

I woke the next morning surprised to discover I’d slept at all. After the abuse of college and residency, I was pretty sure my body was trained to catch sleep anywhere it could safely and without risk. There was little safe, however, about the constant rain, the night or the wild. That I could sleep at all was a testament to how much trust I put in the Rottweiler to warn us of any danger. Keeping that natural alarm in top working order would be my first priority out here. Or, first after making sure Kayla was safe and well.

She stirred when I did.

How could anyone possibly look that good after the day and night we’d been through? I ran a self-conscious hand through my hair before leaning over to kiss her cheek.

She rewarded me with a smile and a
“Habari ya asubuhi.”

“Habari ya asubuhi,”
I repeated back to her, fairly confident I’d just wished her a good morning.

Small hands gripped my head while a pair of thick lips stretched an incredible distance from their anchoring face to reach my cheek. Laughing, I returned the kiss on the top of the little gorilla’s damp head, miming it mostly—because let’s face it, damp gorilla fur wasn’t terribly inviting either in feel or smell—but smacking loudly to compensate for lack of actual physical touch.

With a delighted gorilla laugh, Jengo scampered out of the shelter to tend to whatever gorilla business needed attending.

“Your turn,” I murmured, and the Rottweiler looked at me with skeptical eyes. Deserved, because it wasn’t a kiss I had for him. I slipped my hand around his neck as gently as I could, feeling the heat gathered under the bruised and swollen skin.

“Those hyena bites are wanting to abscess,” I told Kayla.

She frowned. “The penicillin and Percocet are in my pack.”

“Perfect. We’ll get the wounds cleaned up by the stream while there’s a bit of lull in the rain. No infections or fever allowed on my watch.”

Gus gave my nose a solemn, dignified lick before crawling out of the shelter to join the others in the misty dawn, leaving Kayla and me alone together.

“How’s yours?” Kayla nodded toward my ribs.

I lifted my shirt and, heads close together, we inspected my bullet wound front and back. It was looking remarkably clean from the outside. “Just some pulling and twinging still on the inside,” I said. “Likely from scar tissue that’s forming.”

“Meaning it’s healing.”

I nodded. “All because I have a very excellent doctor.”

“Maybe, but you haven’t seen my bill yet.”

I patted my pockets, then spread my hands. “I seem to be all out of francs. Can I take it out in trade later?”

“And what would a handsome American doctor possibly have that I might want?”

“I’m betting we can find something of mine that’ll satisfy…the bill.”

That something twitched in agreement. All the more reason to get the coming trek behind us—I had a mighty hefty debt to pay.

“I’m looking forward to…bartering…with you.”

If we weren’t surrounded by rain and mud and hungry kids, I thought, I’d be bartering hard with her right now. A sharp memory of her on me, in me and around me focused my senses. I groaned with the sudden ache and need for her.

She covered my lips with her long, skillful fingers. “Later.” It was both an order and a promise.

“Depending on how soon later is, I’m thinking about adding in a tip.”

“I can assure you,” she breathed into my ear, “it isn’t just the tip I’ll be expecting.”

With a parting blow of breath that made my whole body shiver, she retreated the three feet into the corner of the shelter, picked up her backpack and unloaded baby bottles and formula. She tossed the bottles of penicillin and Percocet my way, and it was time to take care of responsibilities.

No, not responsibilities. They weren’t that any longer. Not when I slept with them, woke up with them and worried about them.

They were family.

Aside from the occasional helicopter fly-by as one militia or the other patrolled the area, the day’s trek was uneventful. We found handfuls of wild nuts and pulpy stalks to take the edge off our hunger in a landscape that was becoming even more amazing the higher we climbed. Giant heather, red-tipped flame trees and thickets of bamboo both startled us with their beauty and impeded our way. Oversized leaves and brilliant, shade-loving flowers danced around us in a gardener’s wet dream. The rain, finally, came to an end in the late afternoon, although lingering clouds promised the storm system was far from gone.

“If it’s going to rain again anyway, it needs to be soon,” I told Kayla as we labored over our shelter for the evening, stacking freshly hacked branches again the vine-lashed A-frame core and thatching it over with tropical fronds, adding several layers in preparation for another round of storms and chilly night. It took an hour to build, but we had to give Tamu and Nyota time to browse and rest anyway.

“You’re
hoping
for more rain?”

“Crazy, isn’t it?” I laid the final fronds over the roof and we wove the long leaves in with the others already in place, hoping the finished shelter would survive any wind and water thrown at it overnight.

“It’s the old ‘blessing and a curse’ situation. Mosquitoes don’t swarm in the rain, so we’ve got that going for us. But they’ll be laying millions of eggs in rain puddles once the rain does stop. I really would hate to still be in this forest when all those mosquito larvae turn into adults.”

“You’re looking at it way too narrowly,” Kayla assured me. “Mosquitoes are just our most deadly insects right now. The
Subs
virus is new and so it’s getting all the attention. But don’t forget malaria and yellow fever. Plus we have plenty more bugs here that can either kill you slow or make your life miserable while they’re around. Like sand flies and tsetse flies. Plus, just wait till the rain stops and the heat turns all that ground moisture to steam and humidity and everything’s still too wet to burn so you can’t even chase those pests away with smoke.”

“How does anything thrive out here? Well, other than the rhinos and elephants with their thick skins.”

“And even they’ll cover themselves in mud to avoid insect bites and keep the larvae from burrowing in.”

“Even knowing what I do about how the human body works, I’m amazed how much we’ve endured over how many thousands of years to get where we are today. How did any of our ancestors survive?”

The question, rhetorical though it was, hung in the air as Kayla and I sipped water from the small pools of it collected in the curve of clean leaves around our camp, rationing our chemdrops where we could. When we sat on mats of frond leaves to keep as much out of the mud and wet forest mulch as possible, Tamu and Nyota trooped over, fully expecting their regular evening feeding.

“One bottle a day only, sweetlings,” Kayla told them. They answered her with pathetic bleats.  “Poor
watoto
. Weaning is hard in the best of times.” Those sad, soulful eyes, though, were beyond even Kayla’s resolve to ignore.

We filled their bottles with plain water from a nearby rain puddle to settle them down. After a first glare at not finding either mild or sweetened formula in their bottles, they sucked peacefully away at the water, tails flicking contentedly. It was the ritual that mattered, and the way we came together as a herd and family. It wasn’t milk they craved, but the feelings of safety and knowing, for those few moments, they were the center of Kayla’s universe and mine. There was stress enough, marching them through the jungle, upsetting the only routine they’d ever known. It didn’t so much matter whether their bodies were ready for weaning, their hearts surely weren’t. Emotionally, they were babies yet. And so we indulged them, not only because they needed that tangible show of our love and concern, but because we needed to provide it to them.

I had a long evening to think about that need, to examine it and to dissect it, even after the two orphans finished their bottles and went back to browsing. Even after gray twilight turned into clouded night and Kayla and I curled around each other in the tight shelter with the gorilla and Rottweiler wedged firmly in between us. Filling that emotional need once the physical one had been met—that was what bedside manners were all about, that was parenting, that was partnering and marriage. That was the value-add of being human, although Kayla’s four strays also demonstrated it wasn’t the privilege of men and women alone.

It was this need, this act, genuine and authentic, that my mentors had encouraged in me and that most had decided I didn’t possess.

No, that wasn’t right. I knew it was a vital part of me, but I’d convinced myself it was a weakness not a strength, that it was enough to satisfy the physical needs of those around me. That anything more would erode my own emotional state and make me less than the man I wanted to be, less than the man I needed to be.

Could I have been so wrong?

I was drowsily contemplating the ramifications of that as night deepened and the jungle, for the moment rain-free, awakened around us.

First it was the frogs, full-throated with voices that ran the gamut from typical croaking to gurgled wails that, had I not known better, I would have sworn were a human baby’s cries. In the distance, hyenas yipped and katydids and other insects filled the night with their irritating chirps. Gus growled low, his ears pitched toward the shelter’s opening. Whatever it was must have moved on without threat as the big dog settled back down. Once again, I was grateful for his nose and ears protecting us.

With my head buried in the crook of my arm, I was almost asleep when Gus barked, sharp and insistent. An alarm.

My first reflex was to reach for his collar. I found Kayla’s hand there already.

“What—?”

“Don’t know.” I could feel Kayla’s head shaking in the night.

Then we both heard Nyota bleat.

Gus’s barks escalated as he scrabbled for leverage beneath my weight and Kayla’s, determined to tear after whatever was threatening his pack.

I heard the clang of Kayla’s rifle hitting the cookpot as she fumbled for the weapon in the dark. My hand was already closing over the sling of my own rifle.

“Stay here,” I ordered them both, thankful the gorilla seemed content to cower in the corner and chatter nonsense.

“No! I’m—” The protest in her voice came strong, Mama Bear roaring to the front, but I was already halfway out of the shelter. “Right. Go!” she relented, but only because Mama Bear still had her den to protect.

I raced toward the now-terrified bleating, pulling a palm-sized halogen flashlight from my pocket. Heart hammering, I swung the light around. The okapi’s striped rump flashed bright as her strong legs propelled her into a run. Had the sudden light scared her? Or had I?

The bright stab of light didn’t follow her fast enough. In the trail of darkness behind her it picked out movement, a faint impression of spots and a tawny eye. No hyena this, the creature was too long and lithe.

Jerking the rifle butt to my shoulder, I aimed, using the halogen beam as my nightscope. The creature was fast, faster than the okapi, and it had almost closed the distance to her when I fired.

The first bullet went intentionally high, giving the predator a chance to turn. Startled, it stumbled, losing a moment of precious ground as the beam from the flashlight better caught its shape—a big cat, dark, lank and lean, and lunging again for its okapi prey.

I had only two choices—shoot to kill, for a wounded animal in the wild was most often a dead animal, or fire another warning shot, knowing I’d have to reload before I could fire again, and that if the cat didn’t stop, Nyota would be dead.

I had only a split second to decide.

Then the okapi skidded into a hard turn to her left, a daring move that lost the cat another moment in the sloppy mud. Nyota bore hard left again, and now she was racing straight for me, for my rifle, for my protection.

With no other hope, she turned to me.

If the cat turned with her, I’d have little chance at a target with the okapi’s body directly between. But the split second Nyota had bought opened up one more choice for me. I ran past Nyota and toward the cat, yelling at the top of my lungs, rifle brandished high in case the cat took my charge as a challenge instead of a threat.