“Really?” he teased as he started walking, bracing his midsection. “I was pretty sure the bull was telling me to kiss you.”
Leighton laughed, but it was a nervous, shy one that had her ducking her head.
It was dark, so he couldn’t tell, but Owen thought there was some new color in her cheeks. He let it carry him back up to the road.
She glanced at him. “You’re okay to walk…?”
“I’m good.” Even as he said that, he heard the steady thump behind them. A check over his shoulder confirmed his suspicions—the herd was following. “Chaperones?”
“Protectors,” Leighton corrected as she hooked an arm under his and wrapped it around his waist for support. “Like you.”
Surprised at her words, the conviction in them, her sudden belief in him, Owen looked at her, really wanting that kiss now. “I’m pretty sure all these cuts earned me a kiss.”
Just then, baby elephant shuffled up between them, making Leighton laugh even more, especially when the calf stayed there the entire twenty-minute grueling hike. Owen’s chest bled and ached, sucking away his strength.
Relief was thick and heavy when he heard the laughter and firelight of the camp.
Leighton slowed. “Look at them,” she whispered with tight words.
On one edge of camp, a large bonfire lit the night with the royals gathered around it.
“Just sitting there, laughing, not caring that we were missing and in danger!”
Indeed, that laughter lent credence to his earlier suspicion that being abandoned was intentional. That someone wanted them gone. “Hey, Leighton. Listen?—”
The first shouts came from the guards, who rushed forward with their rifles ready to challenge the elephants, who trumpeted against their rude welcome, then swung away to head back out to the valley.
“No, don’t shoot!” Leighton hollered, holding a hand out to stop the guards. “They protected us.”
Owen’s legs tangled, weakness sapping him from the blood loss.
“Help us,” Leighton shouted, her voice trilling. “He’s bleeding—badly!”
An older man rushed to Owen, calling to another, who joined them.
Dizziness made Owen’s head swim as he stumbled and dropped to his knees. Felt himself fall out of Leighton’s grip. He reached for her but was intercepted by the men. Vision blurring, Owen noticed the blur of shapes coming from the campfire. Worry choked him—if he died, she’d be alone. “Leigh?—”
“Here. Lift him.” Mugo, the safari manager, swam into view and nodded to the side. “Come, come. He needs a doctor.”
The world upended, Owen grappling for a grip on reality as the stars swung into view. But that blanket of black morphed into a suffocating void that pulled him into its dark embrace.
13
Outside Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
He looks dead.
Leighton hugged herself as Mugo, his son, and the town doctor hurried an unconscious Owen into a small surgical room at the back of the small clinic. Shirt and chest shredded and bloody, he looked so pale. Angry red cuts and welts swelled along his upper neck and jaw.
She and Owen had walked all that way…with him in that shape, and she’d never given it a thought. He’d said he was okay…
The doctor immediately cut away the shirt, muttering to his nurse, whose spew of medical terminology might as well have been in Swahili for all Leighton could understand as she watched them thread an IV into his arm. The doc tsked as he assessed the lacerations. Shook his head. His grim expression was stressing her out.
A swirl of nausea threatened what little composure she had left. What if he didn’t make it? “Is he going to be okay?” she asked, unable to hold back her concerns.
The doctor scowled in her direction. “You go.” He shooed her away.
With a smile that was anything but genuine, the nurse guided Leighton out of the room and to a small foyer at the front of the building that served as a waiting area. The wood was well-worn and the seats rickety. It all made her wonder about the skill of this clinic and its doctor. “Sit. Wait. I will come back soon.”
