Die Again (Rizzoli & Isles, #11)(32)

“No, Millie. I do not think he should be the only one in control of the gun.”

“What are you doing, Richard?” I whisper.

“I could ask the same of you.” The look he gives me is radioactive. Everyone around the campfire goes quiet, and in the silence we hear the distant whoops of hyenas, feasting on the gift of entrails we left behind.

Johnny says, calmly: “I’ve already asked Isao to take the second watch tonight.”

Richard looks in surprise at Mr. Matsunaga. “Why him?”

“He knows his way around a rifle. I checked him out earlier.”

“I am the number one marksman in the Tokyo shooting club,” says Mr. Matsunaga, smiling proudly. “What time do you wish me to stand watch?”

“I’ll wake you up at two, Isao,” says Johnny. “You’d best get to bed early.”

? ? ?

THE RAGE IN OUR tent is like a living thing, a monster with glowing eyes that waits to attack. I am the one in its sight, the victim in whom its claws will sink, and I keep my voice low and calm, hoping the claws will pass me by, that those eyes will burn themselves out. But Richard won’t let it die.

“What’s he been saying to you? What were you two talking about so lovingly?” he demands.

“What do you think we were talking about? How we can make it through this week alive.”

“So it was all about survival, was it?”

“Yes.”

“And Johnny’s so bloody good at it, we’re now stranded.”

“You blame him for this?”

“He’s proved to us he can’t be trusted. But of course you can’t see that.” He laughs. “There’s a term for it, you know. They call it khaki fever.”

“What?”

“It’s when women fall into lust for their bush guides. All it takes is the sight of a man wearing khaki, and they’ll spread their legs for him.”

It’s the crudest insult he could fling at me, yet I manage to remain calm because nothing he says can hurt me now. I simply don’t care. Instead I laugh. “You know, I’ve just realized something about you. You really are a bastard.”

“At least I’m not the one who wants to f*ck the bush guide.”

“How do you know I haven’t already?”

He flings himself onto his side, turning his back to me. I know he wants to storm out of this tent as much as I do, but it’s not safe to even step outside. Anyway, we have nowhere else to go. All I can do is move as far away from him as I can and stay silent. I no longer know who this man is. Something has changed inside him, some transformation that happened while I wasn’t watching. The bush has done this. Africa has done this. Richard is now a stranger, or perhaps he was always a stranger. Can you ever really know a person? I once read about a wife who was married for a decade before she discovered her husband was a serial killer. How could she not know it? I thought when I read that article.

But now I do understand how it can happen. I’m lying in a tent with a man I’ve known for four years, a man I thought I loved, and I feel like the serial killer’s wife, the truth about her husband finally laid bare.

Outside our tent, there’s a thump, a crackle, and the fire flares brighter. Johnny has just added wood to the flames to keep the animals at bay. Did he hear us talking? Does he know this argument is about him? Perhaps he’s seen this happen countless times before on other safaris. Couples dissolving, accusations flying. Khaki fever. A phenomenon so common it’s earned a name of its own.

I close my eyes and an image appears in my mind. Johnny standing in the tall grass at dawn, his shoulders silhouetted by sunrise. Am I infected, just a little, by the fever? He is the one who protects us, who keeps us alive. At the moment he sighted the impala, I was standing right beside him, so close that I saw the muscles snap taut on his arm as he raised the rifle. Once again I feel the thrill of the explosion, as if I myself had pulled the trigger, I had brought down the impala. A shared kill, binding us with blood.

Oh yes, Africa has changed me, too.

I hold my breath as Johnny’s silhouette pauses outside our tent. Then he moves past and his shadow glides away. When I fall asleep, it’s not Richard I dream about, but Johnny, standing tall and straight in the grass. Johnny, who makes me feel safe.

Until the next morning, when I wake up to the news that Isao Matsunaga has vanished.





KEIKO KNEELS IN THE GRASS, SOBBING SOFTLY AS SHE ROCKS BACK and forth like a metronome ticking off a rhythm of despair. We’ve found the rifle, lying just beyond the bell-strung perimeter, but we have not yet found her husband. She knows what that means. We all know.

I stand over Keiko, uselessly stroking her shoulder because I don’t know what else to do. I’ve never been good at comforting people. After my father died, and my mother sat weeping in his hospital room, all I could do was rub her arm, rub, rub, rub, until she finally cried out: “Stop it, Millie! That’s so annoying!” I think Keiko is too distraught to even notice that I’m touching her. Looking down at her bowed head, I see white roots peeking through her black hair. With her pale, smooth skin, she seemed so much younger than her husband, but now I realize she’s not young at all. That a few months out here will reveal her true age as her black hair turns to silver, as her skin darkens and wrinkles in the sun. Already she seems to be shriveling before my eyes.