"Stay in the bed," I said, my fingers finding the buttons by feel. I reached for my boots, the knots done before I looked down.
“What was the code on the radio?”
One hand paused on my holster. Most guests wouldn't have recognized the cadence of the radio chatter, let alone asked for the specific designation. Juliette wasn't most guests.
"Eastern fence. Sector four," I said, checking the chamber of the sidearm. "It’s not a stray leopard."
I turned to her then. She was sitting up, the sheet pulled to her waist, hair loose around her shoulders, eyes already clear.
"Latch the panels," I said. Her eyes moved over my face once, and whatever she saw there stopped the question. "Stay away from the openings. Do not step onto the deck until I am the one walking up those stairs. Understood?"
She didn't argue. She didn't ask if I'd be okay. She just nodded, her jaw setting in a mirror of my own. "Understood."
Before either of us could make it a goodbye, I was down the steps and behind the wheel. Night air hit my face. The jeep was moving before the dust settled around the tires, headlights cutting through the dark while my mind ran three kilometers ahead to the cut wire.
Sector four.
It was one of the problem points in the perimeter—a dry wash where the ground shifted after hard rain and the Acacia scrub played hell with the camera traps. If someone had watched the boundary long enough, they could have noticed the pattern.
The radio crackled again. "Elias here. We’ve got a clean break. Two sets of prints, heavy tread. Looks like they headed toward the upper road, not the lodge."
"Staged vehicle?" I asked, shifting into fourth.
"Spotted a white pickup on the service road outside the boundary ten minutes ago. It cleared out when Daniel moved in."
"They're inside, then," I said. "Lock it down. No guest movement. I want a full sweep of the rise before the sun hits the horizon."
A kilometer out, the headlights went dark. Moonlight and memory took me the rest of the way, the track unfolding paleand narrow beneath the tires. By the time the fence came into view, Elias’s flashlight was already moving over the damage.
Sand crunched under my boots when I stepped out. The wire had been cut cleanly enough to rule out accident. Not elegant. Not amateur either.
“They got lucky with the camera gap,” Elias said, pointing to the downed trap.
“Or they watched long enough to make luck useful,” I said.
I knelt, studying the tracks. Men. Two of them. Moving fast, moving light. They weren’t here for a rhino, not yet. This was scouting. A rough measure of how fast we moved and where the perimeter thinned.
Wrong fence. Wrong fucking night.
That was how it started. Not with chaos. With patience. A blind spot here. A delayed patrol there. By the time rifles came out, the men carrying them already knew which ranger would reach them first.
On my feet again, I scanned the wash, the high ground, the black seam of treeline. Above us, the ridge cut a dark spine against the stars. Somewhere along that spine, two men were moving through the reserve, and Juliette was sitting in a suite with nothing but canvas between her and the dark.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out, expecting a situational report from the gate. Instead, the screen bloomed with a text from Sofia.
SOFIA:did u book flights yet? mom says we need to decide
The message held me there until the screen dimmed.
Elias shifted beside the fence. “Nick?”
The phone clicked dark in my hand before I slid it back into my pocket.
“Show me the tracks.”
By dawn, the ridge had enough light to read tracks. The intruders had vanished back through the wash. The fence was still cut, the camera still down, and I still didn’t know why they’d picked tonight.
