Chapter 5 #2
My fingers tightened around the mug.
She set the mug down. “You shouldn’t trust anyone who asks operational questions before lunch. It’s bad character.”
“That’s the first thing we’ve agreed on.”
Another flash of amusement. Short enough that if I’d blinked I’d have missed it.
I should have stood up then. Left her to the rest of the retreat. Gone back to the service yard and the boundary reports and the sort of work that behaved when you gave it enough attention.
Instead I found myself asking, “Why law?”
Juliette’s fingers paused on the notebook. “Because when I was twenty-two, I still believed facts won.”
“And now?”
“Now I know they need help.”
The deck fell quiet between us. Below, a hornbill clattered out of a tree with the grace of falling cutlery.
I took another sip of tea.
“Why did you stop?” I asked.
Her thumb traced once over the edge of the notebook. “Because eventually I got tired of spending my days in rooms where everyone lied professionally.” Her mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “Also because my father died.”
My fingers tightened once around the mug.
She looked at me. “You?”
I met her gaze for a second. “Military first.”
The corner of her mouth moved. “I suspected as much.”
I leaned back against the railing. “Then this.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re leaving out the middle.”
I studied the valley instead of her. “There’s a reason.”
“Is it classified?”
“No.”
“Less fun.”
I watched the valley instead of her. Heat shimmered above the thorn trees now, flattening the far ridge into a silver blur. A truck rattled somewhere near the service buildings.
“My wife got tired of being married to a man who was always somewhere else,” I said.
Juliette didn’t respond immediately. No sympathy face. No softening. Just a stillness that waited without pressing.
I set the mug down. “She wasn’t wrong,” I said.
Juliette’s fingers tightened once around the notebook, then eased. “No,” she said. “She probably wasn’t.”
The honesty in it should have irritated me.
It didn’t.
A generator coughed somewhere behind the kitchen, caught, then steadied.
Juliette’s eyes shifted toward the sound. “That would be your voltage issue.”
I stood. “That would be maintenance pretending it fixed itself.”
She rose too.
“You’re not invited,” I said.
“I’m aware.”
She fell into step beside me anyway. Gravel crunched under our boots as we crossed the service yard.
Mandla, our head mechanic, looked up from the side panel with a wrench in one hand and judgment in both eyes.
“You brought the lawyer,” he said.
“She followed me.”
“Worse.”
Juliette offered him a cool nod. “I prefer consultant.”
“That’s worse,” Mandla muttered, turning back to the open housing.
She almost smiled.
I stepped beside him and looked into the machine. Belts. Vibration. A regulator that had started making a dry metallic chatter it hadn’t earned.
“What’s it doing?”
“Cut under load,” he said. “Then it behaves again as soon as anyone respectable looks at it.”
“Loose connection?”
“Maybe. Maybe old age.”
Juliette moved to the doorway, staying clear of the work space without being told. Smart.
The generator thudded through the floor and into the walls, making the air vibrate. Sun hammered the tin roof overhead. Diesel and heat sat heavy at the back of the throat. The air was thick enough to chew, a cocktail of friction and failing mechanics.
“Why not replace it?” she asked.
Mandla snorted. “Because engines don’t care what a maintenance log suggests.”
I crouched and checked the lower bracket. Warm metal under my fingers. Grease at the edge of the housing. The regulator cable had a hairline split near the clamp.
“There,” I said.
Mandla bent beside me. “I saw that.”
“You were testing me.”
“I was waiting for you to stop showing off in front of the guest.”
Behind us, Juliette said, “Please continue. This is excellent local theater. I haven't seen this much tension since my last board-room coup.”
I straightened. Mandla cut the power. The machine shuddered down. Silence rushed in hard enough to ring in the ears.
A moment later, the lodge lost power.
From across the yard came a ripple of voices. Doors opening. Someone in the kitchen swore with admirable creativity.
Mandla went back to the panel. “Ten minutes.”
Juliette stepped away from the doorway and out into the shade cast by the wall. Without the generator running, the afternoon sounds sharpened: birds in the thorn trees, cutlery clinking from the kitchen, the wind skimming grit across the yard.
I joined her in the shade.
“You look pleased,” I said.
Juliette watched the machine like it was a case study. “I like seeing what keeps a place alive.”
“Most guests prefer the version where the lights simply work.”
“Most guests have never had to keep anything standing.”
That stopped me.
She looked across the yard toward the lodge, where staff had already shifted seamlessly to backup routine. Lanterns out. Coolers opened. Service rerouted. No fuss. No spectacle.
“Your team’s good,” she said.
“They are.”
“They move like they trust each other.”
“They have to.”
She kept her eyes on the staff yard. “So does mine.”
The answer came out quieter than the ones before it. Not soft. Just stripped of the edge.
Sweat had dampened the loose strand of hair at her temple. A pale line of clay grit crossed one forearm where she’d leaned against the jeep earlier. Her mouth had gone serious. The kind of serious that looked expensive in other people and earned in her.
Mandla called from inside, “Mercer.”
I went back in.
Juliette stayed.
She asked exactly two questions, both of them useful. When the system came back online and the lodge breathed to life again, Mandla looked at her with reluctant approval.
“See?” she said to me as we walked back toward the main buildings. “Progress.”
“You stood in a doorway.”
“I stood in a doorway supportively.”
“That’s not a recognized trade.”
“It should be. I’m excellent at it.”
By then, the afternoon had started to deepen. The heat had broken just enough for the wind to matter. Long shadows stretched off the service vehicles. Somewhere near the guest suites an ibis screeched like a murder confession.
We reached the terrace steps.
Juliette stopped with one hand on the rail. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not treating me like an idiot after the elephant.”
Her face showed no sign she was joking.
“You didn’t behave like one,” I said.
Her mouth parted slightly, then closed again.
The pause held.
Something shifted in the air between us. Not softer. Tighter.
Voices drifted from inside the dining room. Glassware. A burst of laughter from one of the other retreat guests.
Juliette’s hand remained on the rail. Mine was braced against the post beside it.
Too close now to ignore the heat coming off her skin.
Closer than I should have allowed. Close enough to see the faint gold flecks in her eyes, the ones the sun usually washed out.
The wind carried the scent of her—something crisp, like spice, that had no business being in a place this dusty.
Her gaze paused on my mouth.
Then came back up.
My hand closed hard on the railing.
I stepped back first. It was a tactical retreat—the kind you make when you realize you’ve been standing on a landmine for three minutes and the pressure plate just clicked.
Standing there another second would have been a mistake.
Juliette looked at my mouth again.
This time she knew I’d noticed.
She didn’t say a word, but the knowing curve of her mouth was a direct hit.
She turned and walked toward the terrace, leaving nothing behind but the scent of spice lingering in the dry, dead-still air.
I watched her go, gripping the railing until the wood bit into my palm.
I’d spent all morning warning her about the dangers of the bush, only to realize I was the one who'd been compromised.
She’d found the weak point in the perimeter after all.