The Promise of Rain (6 page)

“Take five steps to your right.” Anna’s voice had him turning like a schoolboy caught putting a frog in the teacher’s desk. She had Pippa by the hand and Niara followed with Haki.

“Five steps?”

“To your left, now that you’re facing me. You’ll get better reception. Trust me,” she said, continuing on her way. Niara looked from Anna to Jack, then smiled. A tiny one, but he caught it. Halfway around the world and he couldn’t escape female gossip. Despite himself, he wondered what Anna had told Niara about him. About
them.

Trust her?
Jack grunted, but then took the recommended five steps. Bingo. He dialed again.

“Dr. Alwanga. Hey. You know the samples I said I’d bring right back?” Jack turned slightly to his right to clear the reception. “No, no. Collecting them isn’t the problem. I won’t be coming back yet, so I’ll need to have someone fly them over. But I have a favor to ask. A couple, actually.”

* * *

A
NNA
WASHED
HER
HANDS
after finishing her rounds with the orphans. All things considered, it was a great morning. She’d noticed light coming through the guys’ tent on her way out to her acacia tree right before dawn. She figured it was Jack, and took extra care not to let him hear her walk by. The last thing she needed was Jack following her and invading her private time. More than any other morning, she needed it.

Time alone. To think.

None of this was supposed to have happened this way. She’d pictured it every dawn for five years now. He would contact her and declare his love without ever knowing about the pregnancy. Then she’d tell him about Pippa, but only after she knew his feelings were pure. Honest. And he’d be thrilled, not angry. They’d defy her parents’ pathetic example of a marriage—of love—and he’d love Pippa the way Anna had missed out on with her dad. With free will.

But it was too late for that. The last email he’d sent, a month after she’d first arrived in Kenya, was signed with plain old “Jack.” Not “Love, Jack.” Not even “Miss you, Jack.” At this point, she’d never, ever be able to trust that anything between them was real, that it wasn’t obligatory or misguided. All she needed to focus on now was Pippa, the only person she knew loved her unconditionally.

Anna left the clinic and headed for the Jeep. She needed to check the recording boxes. Hopefully, the herd would be within sight and she’d be able to take notes on how things were going with the big mamas and their children.

She was concerned about one “teen” male in particular. She hadn’t seen the bulls nearby in the past week or so, nor had she heard their calls. Teen male elephants were known to get unruly and rebellious without the guidance of older males. Much like human adolescents, they tested boundaries and needed role models, and like humans, they suffered from PTSD. All elephants who’d witnessed poachers in action suffered from post-traumatic stress. It had been documented in studies. The loss of loved ones was hard to recover from.

Anna rubbed her neck. Jack had never recovered, and for all their years of friendship, she wasn’t enough to change that. If he’d never been able to truly open his heart to her, how was he supposed to love Pippa beyond any superficial sense of duty?

Anna stepped on the gas and tried to focus on finding the bulls. If she didn’t pick up any distant rumbles on the recordings, she’d mention it to Kamau. The Kenyan government took poaching seriously, but despite heavy law enforcement by both Kenya Wildlife Services and the Masai community, it had yet to be eradicated. Far from it. For one thing, the fines weren’t high enough. And, unfortunately, southwest Kenya, where most of the elephant herds roamed, bordered on Tanzania, a corridor for poachers and their ivory. Anna bit down on her lower lip. Her bulls had to be okay.

A part of Anna was glad that she didn’t often go out in the field for indefinite hours—an arrangement adopted because of the children, especially during the first year, when Pippa was so young and Anna couldn’t bear even a few hours of separation. She was thankful to Kamau for acting in a mobile vet capacity, but regretted the gruesome scenes she knew he’d witnessed. She’d seen her fair share during her first summer in Kenya, before she’d discovered her pregnancy.

She pulled up near the first recording location and got out of the Jeep. Three more stops for the day, then she’d need to spend several hours cooped up listening, tracking and analyzing. She never slacked, but with Jack here and Miller breaking the trust she had in him, she couldn’t give anyone excuses.

How many times, when she’d encounter a teacher who didn’t seem to like her, had her mother told her that success was the best revenge? Anna had listened and studied harder. She’d finished high school at seventeen and her undergrad studies in three years. But being the youngest had had its downfalls.

Come to think of it, her age was probably why do-gooder Jack had taken it upon himself to befriend her and keep an eye on her. She thought of Haki. Were all guys like that? The bottom line was that no one could argue with an A+. Maybe her parents had been right about some things. Right now, success was her best revenge, and defense, against Jack.

* * *

J
ACK
HADN
’
T
SEEN
Anna at breakfast that morning. Although he got to spend time with Pippa and her friend, Haki, the little boy who kept an amusingly watchful eye on him, Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that Anna had skipped breakfast just to avoid him.

He coughed when the Jeep-on-steroids suddenly swerved westward, sending a spray of dust and sand around them. “Sorry about that,” Kamau called out over the sound of the engine.

Jack shook his head. “I’m fine.”

“The longer the drought, the worse it gets.” Kamau pointed toward what looked like a dried-up riverbed, where skeletal remains of some unlucky—and thirsty—animal lay along the bank. “That was a drinking spot just a month ago. We’re headed farther out to see if the watering hole is still viable. If so, there’ll be herds. All kinds. Watering holes are a source of life, but of danger and death, as well.”

Jack nodded, understanding Kamau’s point. They weren’t hoping for death, but if they did come across it, he could go ahead and get whatever tissue samples he needed. He could also try to get water samples for analysis of organisms, both harmless and pathogenic.

“How much farther?” Jack asked.

“About twenty minutes,” Kamau said, a few seconds before taking another sharp turn that had Jack grabbing for anything to keep from taking flight. Then they skidded to a stop. “Forget the twenty.”

Jack didn’t have to ask why. The stench of rotting flesh assaulted him seconds before flies, which had undoubtedly landed and sucked on things he didn’t want to think about, started pelting his arms and face. He swatted them away and pushed the sunglasses Kamau had loaned him higher up his nose to protect his eyes. Ignorance was bliss. Unfortunately, anyone who’d studied pathogenic bacteriology and virology knew flies were a vector for river blindness, among other things. He brought the crook of his elbow up to shield his nose from the putrid smell, and jumped down.

Kamau had gone with his men, rifles loaded, past a clump of dry brush into a small clearing. Jack followed, catching up just as all but one of them put their firearms down. It was important for someone to stand guard at all times. Jack had questioned the need for all the guns when they’d left camp, but they’d explained the necessary precaution. If not for human danger, then for a wild animal interaction gone bad. Several of the guns were loaded only with tranquilizers, he was told. He wished he knew which ones.

A weak squeal full of angst and pain came from one of the two forms that lay on the ground. The larger elephant, though it still looked relatively small, lay motionless and bloody, its body a deflated mass of wrinkled skin. Kamau and his men had gone to work on the second elephant. It didn’t look any older than the one he’d seen Anna cry over, but this one had two arrows jutting from its body, one piercing its trunk and the other its hind leg

Jack cursed, and on instinct, ran to help hold down the struggling infant as Kamau worked to stabilize him. Jack wrapped his arm around the leg, freeing the team to work on the wounds and secure the heavy calf for transport. Kamau had radioed in for help as soon as they arrived on-scene, but said they couldn’t wait. The calf had already lost a lot of blood and they had to do whatever was possible in the field.

“Will he make it?” Jack asked.

“Hard to say. We can only try.” The vet jerked his head toward the other victim. “No kill is worth the ivory, but that one was barely old enough to have tusks. All this for the slightest piece of ivory. This baby just got in the way. These two must have strayed, or were somehow lured from the herd on its way toward water.”

“Poachers?” Jack asked, adjusting his hold on the rough skin, gritty with dry dirt, at Kamau’s direction.

The vet shook his head. “No. Poachers these days are too high-tech. They wouldn’t have bothered with arrows. We have a rogue local on our hands. This is a farming region. The proximity to Mount Kilimanjaro has enriched the soil from past volcanic eruptions, and the ice melt usually ensures a good water supply, at least underground and along most riverbeds. But when we get a drought this bad, crops suffer. That means some farmers get desperate enough that they’ll deal with poachers. Ivory for money. Money to feed their families and keep their farm running. And so long as need shows its face, greed finds a place.”

Jack shook his head, carefully setting down the elephant’s limb. The calf had calmed considerably under the drugs Kamau had injected, and the help they’d called on, a large truck, arrived from camp. Jack stepped back to let the team strap the baby for lifting, and moved back in when it came time to shift him. Only when the calf was secured to the truck did Jack notice he was covered in blood.

Someone else took the Jeep’s wheel on the way back. Jack sat there in the passenger seat, the calf’s cry for help still sounding in his mind. The atrocity he’d witnessed... How could anyone cause suffering or turn their backs on it? The hot sun was nothing compared to the fury burning inside him. His shirt dried from the open-air ride and hot sun, causing it to stick against his chest. He would have ridden with Kamau and the calf, but he’d have been in the way, and there was room only for those who knew how to assist medically. That calf had to live. It had to.

* * *

A
NNA
WAS
PREPARED
for the arrival of the emergency team, but not for the sight of Jack covered in blood. For a split second, she feared that he’d been injured, but the logical side of her knew, from the focus of the team on the calf, that he hadn’t been. He didn’t need her—the baby elephant did.

She hesitated, closing her mouth only when he glanced up and caught her staring. Jack looked right at her, his eyes softening, then he mouthed,
“I’m sorry for this.”
Sorry for the poor baby elephant or for everything else? Did he now understand why she was so passionate about her work? Why she couldn’t leave? That this was one of the many reasons she and Pippa couldn’t be a part of his life? Anna cocked her head, let their connection linger for one more wishful and nostalgic moment before turning away to help. Her future with Jack was beyond saving, but she’d do her wholehearted best to save this baby.

Hours later, convinced the new elephant was stable and doing well in Ahron’s care, Anna went to change her shirt and check on the kids, who were hard at work coming up with a name. They were always in charge of naming the orphans. It made them feel they were contributing members of the camp, plus it preoccupied them when emergencies came in. Neither Niara nor Anna wanted them to see the gory condition the elephants were often in when they arrived. The children were still too young to witness so much blood.

She walked through camp and toward her acacia tree. She didn’t typically head out there in the afternoon, but today she needed to decompress. To gather herself. She hoisted herself onto the platform and spotted Ambosi scrambling above her. Anna smiled and had no sooner settled on the edge when Ambosi’s defiant chatter jerked her forward, almost off-balance. Something flew through the air and landed with a puff right in front of Jack.

She hadn’t heard him following her. That was scary, given how sharp her hearing was. If she continued to let herself be this distracted, she’d be risking something more dangerous creeping up on her.
More dangerous than Jack?

He’d shaved his face. She’d noticed, in spite of the mess he’d been earlier. He’d changed his clothes, too. Olive-green camper shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He looked so much like the Jack she remembered, only more filled in. His shoulders looked broader, straighter, but he still stood with his hands in his front pockets and his head cocked. Just like when he used to walk in on her trying to cram for anatomy in one of the classroom labs, and insist that she had to go get something to eat. As good as he looked, she doubted he had the same reasoning now. Whether she’d eaten or not wasn’t on his agenda.

“Is that the only one of those around here?” Jack asked, lowering his chin suspiciously toward the primate.

“You mean Ambosi? There are others, but he’s the one who sticks around the most. Sort of has to for survival,” Anna said. “Why?”

“No reason, other than I don’t think he likes me very much,” Jack said.

“He’s just overly protective of me. I’m the bearer of food,” Anna said, smiling up at her ally. Jack grinned and untucked his hands as he came closer.

“So, if you tell him I’m safe, he’ll stop throwing things at my head?”

Anna lifted a brow. “Who says you’re safe?” she asked.

“Come on, Anna Banana.” He took another step nearer. Ambosi screeched and climbed closer to her.

“He’ll attack like a Doberman on command,” she warned. Okay, an exaggeration, but Jack deserved it, walking up to her looking all charming and cocky like that. The nerve.