My mouth curved before I could stop it.
ME:I won’t.
The typing dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
JULIETTE:I know.
The room went too quiet around that.
I dressed, added the flight to my calendar, and blocked the travel days before I could downgrade them into a preference.
Then I opened a fresh note and typed the first line.
October coverage.
It was not today’s problem. The reserve did not need it solved before breakfast.
I made it real anyway.
I added Daniel as interim lead for field coverage, left Mbeki off anything involving a fence line until a medical professional with better judgment than him cleared it in writing, and saved the note without sending it.
One concrete promise at a time.
Then my radio cracked hard enough to cut through the cabin.
“Mercer,” Sarah said. “You need to come back to ops.”
I picked it up. “What happened?”
Silence held for half a second too long.
“The contractor login accessed the transfer manifest at 0418,” she said. “Not the general departure list. The assigned vehicles.”
My hand went still on the radio.
“Which assignment?”
Below the cabin, a horn sounded once from the courtyard.
Sarah’s voice came through low and stripped flat.
“Ms. Wilder’s vehicle.”
Chapter 31
Fixed Truths
Juliette
TheLandRovercarriedme away from Mara Khaya with excellent suspension and absolutely no regard for the fact that my carefully curated exit strategy had become administratively inconvenient.
Morning spread across the reserve in a thin gold wash, touching the thorn scrub, the dry grass, the pale ribbon of road ahead. The sky had the nerve to be blue. Somewhere beyond the rise, a bird called once, bright and ordinary, as if no one had bled, no one had lied, no one had stood half-dressed in a doorway before dawn and sent me away because staying had become the dangerous choice.
The leather seat still held the faint chill of early morning. The air-conditioning whispered over my bare wrists. Coffee satin a covered cup in the console beside me, bitter now, cooling untouched.
