The Lioness(68)

A moment later, a fellow who seemed to be in charge sat on the ground beside her, stretched his legs before him, and tried to hand her a canteen. In the light from the fire, she saw his fingers were gnarled. Not arthritis, she surmised, but likely broken in the past. Easily two of them and maybe three. She stared at the canteen for a moment but didn’t touch it. She wondered if it had been poisoned and this was how they were going to kill her. Would they then add more wood to the blaze and toss her body onto the pyre?

As if he could read her mind, he winked at her, his eyes a piercing blue, and took a long swallow, and once more offered her the water. His face was lightly freckled. This time she accepted the canteen and drank some. The water was warm, but she chugged great mouthfuls. When she was done, he handed her a paper bag of mixed nuts, and she put a few in her mouth.

“Are the others still tied up?” she asked him after she had swallowed the nuts.

“They’re in their huts,” he said, not precisely answering her question. He had a trace of a Russian accent.

“Why have you brought me out here?”

“Because you sounded hysterical.”

“Where is Margie?”

“She’s in her hut.”

She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t. “She’s pregnant, you know,” she said. “And she had that cut.”

“She had a few cuts. But we took care of them.”

“I thought I heard her crying.”

“You did, but not because of any cuts. She was, like you a few minutes ago, panicking. But she’s fine now. She calmed down.”

“May I see her?”

“No.”

She started to ask why not, but stopped herself. She wasn’t sure how far she could push this man. “I heard gunshots,” she said instead. “Can you tell me—”

“We scared away a couple of hyenas,” he explained, cutting her off.

Now she was sure he was lying. She was confident she would have heard hyenas. Moreover, it had still been light out when there had been those shots. Would hyenas try and infiltrate a boma during daylight? She doubted it. Right now, there were neither goats nor cattle herded inside it. There only were humans.

“About the others—” she began, but he cut her off.

“I told you, they’re fine.” She could hear in his tone that she risked trying his patience.

“I’m sorry. I meant my other friends—the ones who were in the other Land Rover. There were three of them.”

“I see. They’re safe.”

“And Charlie Patton and his team? Where are they? The ones who are still…” She let the sentence stagger and then sink like a stone underwater.

“Still alive?” he said after a moment, finishing it for her. “Is that what you’re asking? The ones who are still alive?”

She sighed. The image of Juma’s death and the murder of the rangers came back to her, causing her stomach to lurch. The man beside her was a beast. He was handsome—God, those eyes—and undeniably charismatic. But he was still a monster. (Perhaps that was the worst kind of monster: the kind who had blue eyes and small constellations of freckles, and yet was humanized by fingers made knobby by injury or illness. The fact was, Hollywood was awash with exactly that sort of predator.) “Yes,” she said.

“They’re safe. I suppose they’re still in transit.”

She decided not to ask where. She decided she didn’t dare.

“Now,” he began, clearing his throat, “I want you to do something. Or I will tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“The negotiations have grown more complicated than I would like. So, tomorrow, I’m going to take a Polaroid picture of you. You’re going to brush your hair and smile. And you’re going to write a note, though you will be writing what I tell you to say. More or less. I’ll want you to make it your own.”

“Something has gone wrong with the…the kidnapping?”

“Negotiations are never easy. That’s all.”

That’s all. Were people balking at the ransom? And who would that be?

“Of course,” she said. “Whatever you need.”

“Thank you. We’ll deliver the note as soon as you write it.”

“My brother, Billy,” she said. “He’s hurt, too. Worse than Margie, I think. One of your men hurt him.”

“I regret that. You never want to bruise the fruit.”

By now, Billy’s face was likely fuchsia. “You hurt him badly. It was more than an apple with a ding.”

“He’ll recover. He’ll get better.”

“And no one else has been beaten?”

He said nothing, and his silence unnerved her. She had expected reassurance, even if she suspected whatever he said would be a lie. He threw a stick end over end into the fire. “Terrance Dutton. He tried to escape. We stopped him.”

“How bad?”

“It looks worse than it is.” A bird called out, and it sounded to Katie like an owl. “That’s a hoopoe,” he murmured, and he mimicked its high-pitched cry: “Hoopoo. Hoopoo.”

“And the rest of tonight?” She wasn’t precisely sure what she was asking. “You’ll tie me up again. You’ll tie us all up again. Is that the plan?”