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 wasnot 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 bootback 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.
