Chapter 12
Sarah
The supply room had its own kind of logic. Boxes stacked by category, not alphabetically. Alyson had organized it enthusiastically eight months ago. Antibiotics on the left wall. Anti-inflammatories on the right. Sedation drugs locked in the metal cabinet with a latch that had rusted halfway shut.
I sat cross-legged on the concrete floor with the master inventory sheet on a clipboard, marking numbers as Alyson called them out. She worked the shelves, pulling boxes and checking labels, her phone balanced in her back pocket where it buzzed every thirty seconds.
Daniel sat on a crate near the door, slowly wiping down a set of hemostats that were already clean.
“How many meloxicam?” I asked.
“Fourteen. No, wait.” Alyson held a vial up to the light. “Thirteen. One’s expired.”
“Pull it.”
She set it aside. I scratched the number on the sheet and moved to the next row. Daniel kept working the same spot on the hemostats and didn’t offer to help.
“Daniel,” Alyson said without looking up, “the topical kits need counting too.”
“I was already going to do those next.”
“You’ve been wiping those hemostats for twenty minutes. They were clean when you started.”
He set them down and wandered toward the shelf with the topical kits, picking one up and turning it over in his hands like he’d never seen one before. Alyson caught my eye, and I looked back at my clipboard. We’d been doing this dance for months. Alyson asking, Daniel stalling.
We worked through the shelves in sections. Alyson was fast and accurate when she wasn’t checking her phone, which was about half the time. Daniel counted the topical kits at a pace that suggested he was also reading each label for personal enrichment.
“Did you hear back from KWS?” Alyson asked me. “About the snare.”
“Yesterday.” I checked a box of syringes and marked the count. “The liaison went out to the village and talked to the family. Given everything that happened—the fire, the men in the hospital—they’re not pressing charges.”
Alyson stopped counting. “So that’s it?”
“That’s it. It was illegal. All hunting here is illegal.
But there are special circumstances to consider.
” I capped the pen and set it on the floor beside me.
“The family lost their breadwinners to the fire. The men are still in the hospital in Nanyuki. Nobody was bringing in food. The liaison talked to them, made it clear the conservancy is aware, and left it as a first and hopefully last warning.”
“Good.” Alyson turned back to the shelf. “I mean, it’s awful. All of it. But at least it’s resolved.”
I moved on to the next shelf. The snare had sat over the whole camp for days. I felt some slight relief at knowing no further harm would be caused, either by the family or to the family by the courts.
Alyson reached the back of the parasiticide shelf and pulled out a box I hadn’t seen her touch before. She opened it, looked inside, and frowned.
“Sarah. We’re almost out of the xylazine.”
I looked up. “How low?”
“Two vials.”
There should have been at least eight. We used it for large-animal sedation. Rhinos, buffalo, lions, anything big enough that putting it down safely required precision chemistry. Without it, the next emergency darting would be a real problem.
“That has to come from Nanyuki,” I said. “The regular suppliers don’t carry it. It’s a specialty order through the veterinary pharmacy there.”
“I’ll add it to the next run,” Alyson said.
I filed it away and went back to counting.
We worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Daniel had given up on the topical kits entirely and was back on his crate near the door, scrolling through his phone. If he noticed the irony of criticizing Alyson for hers, he didn’t show it.
“Can I say something?” I said to Alyson, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry past the shelf between us and Daniel.
“Always.”
“The other day. At the snare site.” I lined up three vials of ketamine and marked the count.
“When Donovan realized Zayn and Jomo had gone off on their own to look at the evidence, he didn’t call them back.
Cole and Andrew were running a training exercise for the whole group, real skills from three experienced operators, and he didn’t tell the two of them off for wandering away from it.
He actually wanted to understand what they’d seen.
He left the whole demonstration and went over to listen. ”
Alyson looked at me over her shoulder. “And?”
“They were right. They’d caught something the rest of us missed.” I set the vial down. “And when it turned out to matter, Donovan brought them back to the group and had Zayn present it himself. Not as his own findings. He made sure the credit went to Zayn and Jomo.”
I’d been carrying that moment for two days without knowing what to do with it. Something about a man being so humble had lodged in me and refused to leave.
“The Citadel guys seem to genuinely care about what’s going on here,” Alyson said. “It was really nice of him to lift the rangers up like that.”
From his crate, Daniel made a sound in his throat. “Can we stop talking about this guy like he walked on water? He did his job. That’s what they’re here for.”
I looked at him. He was still on his phone, thumb moving, but his jaw had tightened.
“He did more than his job,” I said.
“He listened to the rangers. Great. Revolutionary.” Daniel pocketed his phone and stood up. “Maybe next time, he can also figure out why two of us are on the floor counting vials while the security guys get treated like they hung the moon. I’m going to check the recovery pens.”
He left. The crate sat empty by the door, and the afternoon light stretched across the floor where he’d been.
That was Daniel code for going to take a nap in his cabin.
Alyson watched the space where he’d been for a long moment.
“He’s becoming someone I don’t really want to be around,” she said quietly. She turned back to the shelf and pulled the next box toward her. “More and more, every week.”
I didn’t argue. I’d have liked to, for her sake, but I didn’t have the material.
We worked through the rest of the shelf in silence. When the last box was counted and the numbers matched, minus the expired meloxicam and the xylazine shortage, Alyson leaned back against the wall.
“So.”
“So, what?”
“So, you just spent four minutes describing in loving detail how Donovan Hughes handled a bunch of rangers at a poaching site, and your voice did a thing it doesn’t normally do. Are we just supposed to pretend you don’t have a thing for Mr. Hughes?”
“My voice didn’t do a thing.”
“Your voice absolutely did a thing. It went soft. Like you were describing a sunset and not a man standing in a field.”
“I was describing leadership.”
“You were describing a crush.”
A crush.
Such a small word suddenly had the ability to fill the entire room. I felt the heat climb my neck and settle across my cheeks.
“It’s not a crush.”
“Not a crush, or not just a crush?”
I opened my mouth to tell her she was wrong, and that was when it came back.
The kiss. His mouth, warm and slow, and the gentleness of it undoing me more than force ever could have.
His hand light and careful on my jaw. The few seconds when the entire reserve had disappeared, and nothing existed in the world except the heat of him and the quiet sound he made when I pressed closer.
“Sarah. We’ve known each other for years.”
Her voice pulled me back into the supply room. I made myself look at her.
“You don’t talk about people the way you just talked about him. You talk about animals like that. You talk about the Grévy’s zebra like that. The fact that a human man just got the same reverence as an endangered species is significant.”
I couldn’t tell her. Not because I didn’t trust Alyson, but because then I would have to verbally confess to having been the fool who ended the moment.
Alyson was watching me. Her head had tilted and her eyes had narrowed. She wasn’t going to let this go.
“Something happened,” she said.
“Nothing happened.”
“Something happened, and you’re not telling me.”
“Alyson, nothing happened. I admire how he handled the situation. That’s allowed.”
She held my gaze for three more seconds. Then she let it go, which wasn’t like her, and I knew with absolute certainty that she was coming back to this later.
“Okay,” she said. “But you like him. That much is obvious.”
“I—” I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. “It doesn’t matter if I like him.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because look at him. And look at me.”
“I am looking at you. You’re a knockout.”
“I’m a five-foot-two vet in dirty field clothes who hasn’t worn makeup in eleven months. He’s—” I stopped myself.
You know how this ends. You’ve already seen it. A man gets close, gets a good look, and the interest drains out of his face so slowly he thinks you can’t tell. But you can always tell. You could always tell.
The thought closed around my chest like a fist. It wasn’t new. It had stopped feeling like a wound that might heal and started feeling permanent.
I swallowed it down. Alyson didn’t hear it. Nobody ever heard it.
“How would it even work?” I said instead. “We live in a camp. Thirty-odd cabins, one dining tent, no privacy. Everyone in each other’s business all day long. You can’t date someone when the whole compound watches you eat breakfast together.”
“People date in camps all the time. Daniel and I—”
“Are a cautionary tale.”
She laughed, short and startled. “Okay, fair. But that’s Daniel, not—”
“The logistics are just too complicated, Aly. There’s no version of this that makes sense.”
She went still. Then something clicked into place behind her eyes, and she set down the box she was holding and sat next to me.
“Logistics. Of course.” She turned to face me fully. “You take the run into Nanyuki for supplies tomorrow. With Donovan. Daniel and I usually take it, but I could use a break from that drive anyway. Pick up the xylazine, and get some out-of-camp time to explore your not-crush.”
I stared at her. I could see exactly where she was headed.
“No.”
“Sarah—”
“No.”
“Just hear me out.” She leaned forward. “Someone has to make that run, and it should be the person who actually knows the medication. Someone who could use a few hours off-camp. Someone who could maybe, possibly, have a nice meal in a town where nobody from this camp is watching.”
“Alyson.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It is absolutely a big deal, and you know it.”
“It’s a supply run. I’m not saying make a move.
I’m not saying show up in a cocktail dress.
I’m saying drive to Nanyuki, pick up the xylazine, and eat a meal with someone whose company you enjoy.
If something comes of it, it comes of it.
If nothing does, you got the meds and you finally stop torturing yourself over whether to try. Where’s the downside?”
I wanted to find one. I wanted a clean, logical reason this was a terrible idea, something I could hold up and watch her concede.
I couldn’t find one.
“The run is tomorrow,” Alyson said again. “Which means if you wait, you’ll talk yourself out of it. I know you. You’ll find a reason and it’ll be a good reason, and it’ll also be complete garbage and you’ll stay in this supply room forever.”
She stood up, dusted off her knees, and held out her hand to pull me to my feet.
“Come on. They’ll be serving supper right about now.”
We crossed the compound toward the mess tent as the light went amber and long.
The camp was winding down the way it always did at this hour.
Weary bodies shambling toward food, the day’s heat dipping to a simmer.
Voices carried from inside the tent, threaded through the radio playing something low and rhythmic against the canvas walls.
Most everyone was already inside.
Donovan was not.
He was crossing toward the tent from the direction of the cabins, unhurried, a few steps behind the last of the crowd. Then he caught sight of us coming from the vet facility, and he slowed and stopped and let the others file in without him.
He’d seen us and he’d waited. He’d chosen to.
Alyson’s elbow connected with my ribs. Hard enough to make me gasp.
“There he is. Ask him now, before your brain gets fully involved.”
“My brain is already involved.”
“Then hurry, before it finishes.” She gave me a shove. “Go.”
“Aly—”
“Sarah has something she wants to ask you,” Alyson called out, her voice carrying the gap between us and Donovan with theatrical precision. She squeezed my arm once, hard enough to leave a mark. “I’m going to go find Daniel and get some food.”
She peeled off toward the tent entrance without looking back.
I crossed the last of the packed dirt to where he stood, the warm evening air pressing against my skin and the noise of the mess tent muffled behind the canvas.
Donovan looked at me with the patient, unhurried expression of a man who had nowhere else to be.
He’ll figure it out. They always figure it out.
I swallowed.
“The supply run. To Nanyuki. Tomorrow.” My hands found the hem of my shirt, and I made them stop. “We’re short on xylazine. It’s a sedation drug, for the large animals. The pharmacy in Nanyuki is the only place that carries it, and someone needs to go pick it up.”
He waited, his full attention on me, steady and quiet.
“Alyson and Daniel usually take the run, but they’re not. She doesn’t—” I was fumbling and I knew it, and knowing it made it worse. The noise was so loud in my head I could barely hear my own voice over it. “Would you want to come? With me. Tomorrow. For the meds.”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a full smile. The start of one, held in check.
“What time?”
“Midday. Noon, probably. I have a few things I need to do first thing before we head out. It’s a little over two hours each way.”
I understood, too late, exactly what I’d asked for. A truck and a road and a long drive with nothing between us but the thing neither of us had said.
He looked at me for a moment, and whatever he saw, he didn’t make me wait on it.
“I’ll be at the truck at noon.”