11. Right of Way
Right of Way
JULIETTE
The river lay flat and dark beyond the reeds, its surface a sheet of dull, weathered metal. It refused to ripple, holding the sky in a stagnant reflection.
Nick let the engine idle low.
The quiet arrived in layers. Insects. Birds. Then nothing.
And this is the part where the swamp monster makes its scheduled appearance. I really should have checked the itinerary for local cryptids.
He didn't look at me. “Stay in the vehicle.”
“Wasn’t planning a swim, Mercer.”
A minute contraction of his mouth—not quite a smile, but a recognition of the friction.
He didn’t get out. That, more than anything, sharpened the air inside the jeep.
Nick Mercer was not a man who stayed seated because he lacked nerve.
If he kept the vehicle between us and the reeds, there was a reason.
He’d actually put the doors back on the vehicle this morning—a detail I hadn't questioned until now.
Apparently, the 'immersive' portion of the safari had been canceled due to a sudden surplus of reality.
He leaned forward slightly, gaze sweeping the waterline, the brush, the reeds, and the narrow strip of open ground between them. No wasted movement. No sudden adjustment. Just a slow, methodical assessment from behind the only barrier that mattered.
I leaned forward, attempting to reverse-engineer his line of sight.
The water was too still. It lacked the biological signature of a healthy ecosystem—no skating insects, no surface breaks. It looked less like a river and more like a trap waiting for a trigger.
His attention dropped to the bank, tracking the bent reeds, the flattened grass, the damp marks where something heavy had moved through.
He studied the ground with the kind of focused intensity I usually reserve for contract loopholes, quarterly projections, and figuring out whether a fictional dragon’s wingspan could realistically support its body weight.
The radio at his shoulder crackled—a burst of white noise that he ignored.
I pushed the door open, the hinge protesting with a dry, metallic creak.
Nick’s hand closed around the frame before my boot found the ground.
“Absolutely not.”
“I want to see.”
“Then use your eyes from inside the vehicle.”
The warning registered first. Then the angle of the jeep. The deliberate distance he’d kept from the water. I pulled my boot back inside, but left the door cracked, using the frame as a very inadequate compromise between curiosity and survival.
A compromise. One he acknowledged with a brief, sharp glance before returning his attention to the river.
The air pressure changed.
It wasn't wind. It was a subterranean vibration, a low-frequency thrum that bypassed the ears and settled directly into the marrow.
He went still, his focus locking onto the waterline.
“Juliette.”
My name. Quiet. An ultimatum.
“Yes.”
“Door closed.”
I moved. As a proponent of expertise, and currently the least informed person in the clearing, I pulled the door shut. My hand stayed on the handle, the latch clicked shut, a useless but instinctive tether to an exit strategy.
He didn't check to see if I’d complied. He already knew.
The water broke.
It wasn't a cinematic explosion. The surface simply lifted and split, displaced by a massive, slick gray arc. Nostrils first. Then eyes. Then the slow, terrifying reveal of a cranium far too large for the volume of water it had occupied.
Hippo.
Oh, fuck no.
That’s not the cute documentary.
That’s violence with legs.
It was closer than my previous estimation. Significantly closer.
Nick didn’t put himself between us and the animal. He put the vehicle there.
Which told me more than heroics would have.
“Stay inside,” he said.
The animal exhaled—a wet, forceful eruption of steam that shattered the river's reflection into a thousand jagged fragments. Its ears flicked. A secondary shadow moved beneath the surface.
Multiple units. A herd I hadn’t factored in.
Nick’s hand rose, palm down. Still. A non-verbal command for absolute stasis.
I stayed. Not because he told me to, but because my legs had apparently resigned from their positions and were no longer taking orders.
My breath became a liability—too loud, too fast for the pressurized silence of the cabin. I forced a slow exhalation, letting the count hold steady in my head until my pulse followed.
The jeep eased back another inch. Not enough to startle. Enough to matter. Nothing about the movement looked accidental. I cataloged the tension in his body. It was... impressive. Infuriatingly so.
The hippo’s head pivoted.
It ignored Nick. It locked onto the vehicle. It locked onto me.
Lovely. Africa was really committed to reducing my life expectancy one animal encounter at a time.
The distance stopped meaning anything—not in feet, but in the sudden, violent realization that I was the focus of its curiosity.
There is a specific kind of insult in being appraised as a slow-moving, poorly-armored protein bar. I’ve never been audited by something with tusks before. The experience was... sub-optimal.
Nick’s voice cut the tension like a blade. “Eyes on me.”
I looked at him.
Not at the gray mass. Not at the churning water. Just at the man who was currently the only structural support in my universe.
“Good,” he said, his voice a steady, low-frequency anchor. “When I move the vehicle, you stay still. If I stop, you stay still. If I tell you to get down, you get down.”
“Yes.”
The word was clean. No negotiation.
He held my gaze for a fractional second, confirming my compliance. Then he began the withdrawal. Not a reverse. Not yet. A fractional turn of the wheel. A slow release of the brake. The jeep rolled back by inches, every movement so controlled it barely qualified as movement at all.
The hippo shifted.
The water surged—a heavy, rolling displacement that broke against the reeds with a wet slap.
Nick stopped the jeep.
I stopped breathing.
The door handle was warm under my palm. I was acutely aware of the metal's thickness. It felt like paper.
The animal opened its mouth, and my brain filed an immediate objection to the dimensions. A pink, cavernous interior framed by blunt, tusk-like teeth that could likely snap the vehicle's frame in half.
My jaw tightened.
“Stay with me,” Nick said.
I did.
He eased the jeep to the right, creating a corridor between the river and the open ground. We were not being hunted. Worse, in some ways. We were parked in the middle of a high-traffic thoroughfare.
A second shadow surfaced. Smaller, but still substantial enough to represent a lethal force.
Nick’s head tilted a fraction. Whatever he was listening for, he found it.
The first hippo emerged.
It was a slow, purposeful transition from water to land. The ground seemed to groan under the sheer tonnage, a vibration I felt through the soles of my shoes. It was a contained, prehistoric force.
Jesus. Annie would fucking love this.
Nick’s foot settled on the brake.
Wait.
My rib cage forgot its one job.
The animal paused at the edge of the reeds, water darkening the silt in a widening pool. Its nostrils flared, cataloging the scent of river rot, hot engine oil, and two humans who were currently violating its perimeter.
Nick let the jeep roll back another foot.
Then stopped.
The gap between us and the reeds widened by inches, which suddenly felt like the most important measurement in the world. The hippo’s ears flicked, its focus shifting past us toward the open ground.
Nick didn’t move the jeep again. He held us there until the animal’s weight was fully committed to the path away from us. Only when the intersection of our trajectories was no longer a risk did he finish the retreat.
Only then did he shift again, easing the jeep back another several feet before stopping beneath the thorn scrub.
The engine stayed low beneath us. We simply sat in the charged quiet as the second animal followed the first, their massive shapes moving through the reeds like gray boulders coming to life.
The water settled.
Nick watched them until they drifted toward the tree line. Only then did he exhale—a single, controlled release of pressure that changed the entire atmosphere of the cabin.
I realized my fingers were white-knuckled against the seat. I loosened them, one by one. The return of blood flow was a stinging, slow-motion rush.
He gave the jeep a little more power. The vibration felt grounded now. Solid. We pulled away, the reeds closing behind us, erasing the evidence of the encounter.
“Too close,” I said. My voice was more stable than I expected.
“Yes.”
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“That there was a herd.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t get out.”
His eyes stayed on the mirrors. “No.”
“That bad?”
“Near reeds and water? You don’t improve the situation by becoming softer, slower, and easier to kill.”
“Useful safety philosophy.”
“Basic survival.”
I watched the set of his jaw. He was still scanning—the trees, the mirrors, the space behind us.
“You didn’t hesitate.”
He glanced at me, his eyes unreadable. “You don’t get that luxury out here.”
Something in my chest didn’t settle. It wasn't fear—it was a heightened state of awareness. A calibration to a new set of rules.
Nick drove with one hand, the other resting near the gear shift. He looked exactly as he had before the river. Same posture. Same focus. I simply hadn’t known how to read the intensity beneath it.
We slowed near the temporary field camp for the CEO offsite, a cluster of canvas tents set well beyond the main lodge. They were polished enough to be called an “immersive wilderness experience,” which meant there was probably linen, a lantern, and no one emotionally prepared for insects.
A man paced near the path, looking deeply offended by the lack of a concierge. Victor. Cufflink man. At dinner, he’d talked over everyone as if he owned the horizon. Now, standing in the red dirt with a dead smartphone, he looked like middle management facing a hostile takeover by the sun.
Tragic.
“Finally,” Cufflink snapped as we stopped. “I’ve been trying to get a signal for twenty minutes. There’s an issue with—”
“Stay inside your designated area,” Nick said.
No apology. No customer-service lilt. Just a boundary, drawn in the dirt.
The man blinked. “I’m just trying to—”
“Stay inside,” Nick repeated.
The man’s mouth shut. He stepped back, his posture folding under the weight of Nick's absolute lack of interest in his grievance.
Nick got out and walked around to my door. He opened it and waited.
I stepped down, the ground feeling uneven and strange after the stillness of the river.
“Lunch,” Nick said. “Then we’ll head out again.”
A directive.
“Fine.”
Cufflink cleared his throat, attempting to regain some semblance of leverage. “About the signal—”
Nick turned his head. Just a fraction. “Later.”
The word was a deadbolt sliding into place. The man retreated.
I watched the exchange. No raised voices. No confrontation. Just a line held with such absolute certainty that people adjusted their own reality to fit it.
I turned toward the rest of the group, pausing to look back at the dust settling behind the vehicle. I brushed two fingers against the inside of my wrist, checking the pulse still racing there.
But something had shifted.
I looked at Nick. At the line of his shoulders. At the way he occupied space without ever needing to claim it.
I should have kept the door closed. Instead, I’ve just discovered that my pulse is moving faster than my judgment, and I’m currently more interested in the ranger than the exit strategy. I’m clearly suffering from a temporary lapse in professional judgment.
Worth the risk.
He caught my eye—a silent, questioning look.
I didn't answer it. Not yet.
The next question wasn’t about the river. Or the rules.
It was about him.
And what happens when a man who holds lines for a living finally decides to cross one.