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 ontome.
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.
