Chapter 29
Sarah
The gunfire was constant, and I couldn’t see any of it.
I was on the floor between the bed and the wall, as low as I could get, my palms flat against the concrete. Away from the windows and the door. Doing exactly what Donovan had told me to do before he kissed me and went into the dark.
Stay in the cabin. Stay down. I’ll come back for you.
The shots came in waves. Several bursts from what sounded like the north side of camp. Most of it was muffled pops and bangs in the distance, but some rounds pinged off metal somewhere close. The cabin walls were concrete block. They would stop a bullet.
They should stop a bullet.
I pressed myself harder against the floor, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it hurt.
I didn’t know who was shooting. I didn’t know who was winning.
The cabin had no line of sight to the north perimeter, and lifting my head above the windowsill was out of the question.
All I had was sound, and sound told me the fight was real and close enough that danger could be on my doorstep at any moment.
I pressed my forehead against my arm and tried to slow my breathing.
Then the door opened.
Donovan?
The handle turned, and not one but two men came through it. For a half second, I thought Donovan had sent rangers to move me somewhere safer. The camp was under attack and this cabin was too exposed, and someone had come to get me out.
Right?
But they wore dark clothing, not ranger khaki. No radio on a chest strap. No one calling my name.
The lead one had a bandanna pulled across the lower half of his face.
These men were not rangers.
Everything inside me went cold. I opened my mouth to scream, but all I could manage was a startled gasp.
The first one grabbed my arm and hauled me off the floor.
His hand was enormous, fingers wrapping my bicep completely.
I kicked. Connected with his shin hard enough that he grunted.
It didn’t matter. He wrenched me around and pinned my back against his chest, one arm across my stomach and the other locked around my shoulders.
The second one clamped his hand over my mouth. Wide palm, crushing force across my jaw. I bit down hard. He flinched but held.
A third stood at the door. Watching the camp. The gunfire was still rolling from the north.
Where is everyone? Where is Donovan?
I drove my elbow backward into the ribs behind me.
I clawed at the hand on my face. I twisted and bucked and used every ounce of strength I had.
A hundred pounds against men who had a hundred-plus each on me, and it didn’t change anything.
I had to fight. I had to fight because I did not want to just accept the alternative with these men.
The cloth came from behind. It was pressed hard against my nose and mouth, soaked in something chemical.
I tried to hold my breath, but my exertion already had my body craving air.
My lungs burned. My diaphragm spasmed, and my body tried to inhale against my will.
My vision grayed at the edges. I felt my legs go heavy beneath me, and the fight drained out of my arms.
They were carrying me. Hands under my shoulders and knees, my body lifted and moving. The last thing I heard was the gunfire. Distant. And the only thought I had left before the dark took me was that the shooting might mean everyone was already dead.
I breathed in.
Everything went dark.
I came to slowly.
My head was thick, and the light hurt. A thin bar of it came through a gap in the curtains to my left. Enough to make my eyes water. Enough to show me I was somewhere I’d never been.
I tried to move my hands and couldn’t. My wrists were locked behind me, plastic biting into my skin.
I pulled harder, and pain shot up both forearms. Zip ties.
My mouth was covered—a strip of cloth tied across it, knotted at the back of my head.
I tried to breathe and the cloth sucked against my lips, and for a moment, I couldn’t get air and I panicked.
My chest seized, and I jerked against my restraints.
Stop. Breathe. Through your nose. Breathe.
I forced air in through my nostrils. Held it. Let it out. The panic didn’t leave, but it loosened enough that I could think past it.
I was in a chair. My boots were still on my feet. I was alive.
It came back in pieces. The door opening. The men. The bandanna. Fighting. The cloth over my face and the chemical on it and the dark rushing in. Before that, the gunfire. Donovan going out the door.
Donovan.
I didn’t know if he was alive. I didn’t know if any of them were alive.
The room assembled itself in pieces as my vision cleared.
Unpainted walls with moisture staining along the bases.
A corrugated metal roof, rust spotting the seams of the sheeting overhead.
It appeared to be an agricultural building of some sort, the kind of structure used by livestock operations all over the Laikipia corridor. A farmstead somewhere off the reserve.
Read the room.
I did what I did with any unfamiliar case. An animal comes in without a chart, I start with observation. What’s in front of me?
A table against the far wall held papers and a two-way radio with a coiled antenna. Plastic crates stacked three high against the adjacent wall, their labels printed in a language that wasn’t Swahili or English. Drag marks scored the floor where the crates had been repositioned recently.
I thought I could hear voices through the walls. Men talking. It was hard to be sure because whatever they’d drugged me with hadn’t fully worn off, and my own heartbeat was so loud in my ears it crowded out everything else. I tried to take long and deep breaths through my nose to calm myself.
I had to calm myself.
I listened harder. The voices sharpened, but I still couldn’t make out words. Men speaking casually outside the door. An engine ran somewhere nearby, a steady mechanical rumble that could have been a vehicle or a generator.
The light from the curtain gap fell across the floor in a narrow stripe. Late morning, maybe. The angle was high enough that the sun had been up for hours. I’d lost time. A lot of it. Whatever they’d used on that cloth had put me down hard.
My face ached. The left side, above my jaw. Something pulled beneath the skin when I clenched my teeth against the cloth. I didn’t remember being hit, but during the taking, while I was fighting or after I went under, someone must have struck me.
My wrists burned where the plastic cut in. The bindings weren’t coming off without a blade. I flexed my hands behind my back. My fingers were going numb, but they still moved.
I was terrified. But I was thinking. And as long as I could still think, I was still in this.
The door opened.
A white man walked in. Mid-forties. Solidly built but not large.
He wore khaki pants and a long-sleeved bush shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. His boots were scuffed and mud-caked.
His hair was cropped short, going gray at the temples.
He didn’t scan the room or check the corners.
He walked straight to the chair behind the table, picked it up, carried it across the floor, and set it down facing mine.
Two meters between us. He sat down, crossed one ankle over the opposite knee, and rested his hands on his thigh.
He studied me for a moment. Brown eyes that didn’t move from mine. Then he leaned forward and untied the cloth across my mouth. He pulled it free and dropped it on the floor beside his chair. He sat back.
“My name is Willem Nasser.” South African accent, thick enough to place immediately. “And you’re Dr. Calloway.”
He already knew my name?
“I want you to understand what this is,” he said. “And what it isn’t. Nobody is going to call your family and ask for money. That’s not the business I’m in.”
“What business are you in?”
“Horn. Ivory. Whatever the market wants.” His tone didn’t change between the commodity list and the sentence that followed it. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Dr. Calloway. Fifteen years across four countries. I don’t dress it up, and I won’t apologize for it. It’s just how I make my living.”
His expression didn’t shift. He wasn’t justifying himself and he wasn’t performing. The casualness in his posture was real.
“You kill animals for money.”
“I do.” His eyes held mine. “I made peace with that a long time ago. I expect you find that difficult to hear, given your profession.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I would disagree.” He rubbed his thumb along the side of his index finger. “The market doesn’t care about your feelings, Dr. Calloway. Or mine. A kilo of rhino horn is worth more than gold in the right hands. I didn’t create that demand. I supply it.”
He let a beat pass. Watching me absorb it.
“So why am I here?”
He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. Elbows on his knees.
“Because you matter to the man who’s been making my work very difficult.”
My chest tightened.
“After your people interrupted my crew, I did some homework.” He folded his hands together.
“I know your boyfriend’s name. Hughes. I know his partner.
Volante. I know what Citadel Solutions is, and I know what they sent their people here to do.
Private military contractors embedded in a conservation program. Clever arrangement.”
His chin dipped a fraction. His eyes narrowed, but not with hostility. He wasn’t angry about what Citadel had done. He was impressed, and somehow, that was worse.
“I respect what your people have done with those rangers,” he continued.
“I’m not dealing with a few village boys carrying rifles they don’t know how to use.
I understand that now. You’ve got trained men on that reserve.
Military backgrounds. Professional operators who’ve built something functional out of raw material.
I saw it at the interdiction. Disciplined chaps.
” He tilted his head. “That’s a real problem for me. ”
“So you kidnap someone?”