Page 19 of Duty Preserved

She fell into step beside me. The compound had gone quiet in the way it did every evening after the meal, the camp drawing down to the hum of the generator and the distant sound of the kitchen staff talking softly as they finished. I could see the lights on in the operations building and, beyond the cabin cluster, the broad, empty dark where the conservancy stretched out toward the horizon.

My cabin door stuck the way it always did when humidity was high. I shouldered it open, and Alyson followed me inside and sat on the edge of my bed before I’d turned on the light.

“Talk.”

“Give me a second.” I pulled off my stew-stained shirt and dropped it on the floor, grabbing a clean tank top from the hook on the back of the door and pulling it on. My cabin was small and familiar. A single bed, the overflowing stack of veterinary journals, photos of my family, and the plant on the windowsill that had survived a year of inconsistent watering through sheer stubbornness. My boots were by the door where I always left them. The space was mine, and right now, I needed it.

Alyson waited exactly four seconds.

“Sarah, that man out there. That is the man from Paris.”

“Yes.”

“The man from the nightclub.”

“Yes, Aly.”

“The man you walked up to and tried to talk to and who basically blew you off.”

“He didn’t blow me off. He was meeting someone.”

“That’s blowing you off.”

“It’s not. It turned out he was actually meeting someone.”

Alyson frowned. “What does that mean?”

I sat down on the desk chair, after moving the stack of veterinary journals to the desk, and pulled my knees up. I’d told Alyson the short version after Paris. The cover story. Talked to a guy, it didn’t go anywhere, end of story. I hadn’t told her the rest because the rest was mortifying, and because some part of me had wanted to keep everything that wasn’t the vomiting for myself. Those were the parts I replayed when I couldn’t sleep.

“When we left the club that night,” I said, “after you and Daniel went ahead… A man grabbed me.”

Alyson’s entire body went still.

“He said he’d walk me to the hotel. But he took hold of my arm and started pulling me the wrong direction.”

“Sarah.” Her voice was low now, all the performance gone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because Donovan stopped him.” I could still see it. The fist closing around the man’s wrist. The punch. How fast and contained the violence was, something held in reserve and released in exactly the right amount. “He came out of nowhere. Hit the guy. And then Andrew, the redhead, he was there too. They had the guy in handcuffs and in a van in just a few seconds.”

Alyson stared at me.

“Then Donovan walked me back to the hotel. Through the lobby, up the elevator, and to my floor.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Once we got to my floor, we were in the hallway. And I⁠—”

“You what?”

“I threw up on him.”

Silence.

“You… On him?” Alyson repeated.

“On his shirt.”

“Sarah, why did you do that?”