The Taste of Fear (12 page)

“He’s had some disturbing news these past few days,” she said by way of explanation for Sal’s aloof demeanor. “He hasn’t been himself.”

“I gathered that much from his phone conversation in the balloon.”

“Yes, well, that was part of it.”

“How long have you been married, if I may be so bold to ask?”

“About four years.”

“He’s much older.”

“Thirteen years. How about you, Cooper, are you married?”

He grinned. “Would you marry this ugly mug?”

“I, too, am not married,” Kit said. “So if any of your movie star friends are looking for a strong husband and the son of a chieftain, please tell them about me.”

Their laughter was broken by a cry.

It was Sal.

Everybody shot to their feet. Scarlett was the first out of the tent. She looked wildly around but couldn’t see anything beyond the firelight of the camp.

“Sal!” she shouted.

He didn’t answer.

“Sal!”

Kit and Cooper exchanged a quick look. Kit dashed back inside the tent and returned carrying two rifles and a heavy-duty Eveready flashlight.

Cooper snatched one of the rifles. “Stay here,” he told Scarlett. “We’ll check it out.”

“No!” she protested. “I’m coming.”

“You’ll be in the way.”

“He’s my husband.”

Cooper started away, Kit beside him.

Scarlett ran to catch up.

“Lord, woman!” Cooper grabbed her wrist and pulled her between himself and Kit. “If you must come, stay in the middle and do exactly as I say.”

They moved at a brisk pace in the direction they’d heard Sal cry out. Kit took the lead, playing the beam of the flashlight over the ghostly trees as they moved deeper into the forest that surrounded the camp. Scarlett stuck right behind him, a hand on his shoulder. The ground beneath her feet was spongy and invisible. She stumbled twice. Cooper, taking up the rear, yanked her upright both times.

“Sal?” she shouted again, her thoughts racing. Lions? Hyenas? Assassins?

“Mr. Brazza?” Cooper called urgently.

“Here.” The reply was a harsh whisper, surprisingly close.

Kit swung the flashlight around. Sal was less than ten feet away, his back pinned to the trunk of a tree, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Sal!” Scarlett ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.

“There,” he said, pointing.

She turned. Kit redirected the light.

Numerous pairs of yellow eyes reflected back at them.

“My God,” Scarlett said, her breath hitching in her throat. Her legs felt suddenly weak. “What are they?”

“Lions,” Sal stated.

“They’re just cubs,” Cooper said.

“No,” Sal told him. “I saw a fully grown one, a lioness.”

“Their mum.” Cooper nodded. “She wouldn’t have left the cubs alone. We better get out of here, slowly. If you see the mum, whatever you do, don’t run. She’ll be on you in seconds.”

They set out in a tight line, Kit in vanguard again. Scarlett and Sal bunched in the middle, Cooper, the rear. Kit forced a much slower path out than the reckless charge in.

“There she is,” Kit whispered suddenly, aiming the flashlight to the right.

Two devilish eyes shone back, twenty meters away.

Good lord, it’s following us,
Scarlett thought. No—it’s
stalking
us.

Her breathing sounded absurdly loud in her ears. She wondered if the cat could smell her fear, the way dogs supposedly could. She hoped not. Her heart was an iron spike in her chest.

Several paces later Kit stopped. She peered anxiously over his shoulder.

The lioness was directly ahead of them now, much closer than before. Powerful and sinewy muscles bunched and knotted beneath the silky flank as it slinked between the trees, silent, like a ghost. The thin tail, the tip marked by a black tassel, snaked back and forth in rhythm to its imperial stride. Faint rosettes spotted the hind legs, tapering down to the paws. Then abruptly, dramatically, the beast swung its head to look directly at them. It snarled in a rictus of menace, baring its yellow fangs and a flash of pink tongue, before turning away again, apparently bothered by the glare of the light in its face. It growled, a low and rumbling sound that came from deep within its throat. Scarlett didn’t know whether that was a warning sound or a hungry sound, only that it was blood chilling either way. A second growl answered the first, from somewhere to the left of them.

There were two lionesses.

Cooper understood the danger. “Cover your ears!” he ordered, then fired a round from the bolt-action rifle into the sky. The muzzle flash was as bright as daylight. The sound was deafening. The acrid stench of cordite filled the air.

Scarlett searched the trees for either lioness. They appeared to be gone. “Monsters be gone,” she breathed.

It was a line from a fairy tale she’d read as a child, and she repeated it over and over in her head now, a kind of mantra that would keep the creatures from returning.

Kit pressed forward, moving at the same dreadfully slow pace. Scarlett wanted to run, but she remembered what Cooper had told them.
She’ll be on you in seconds.
Another tense minute passed with still no glow from the tiki torches. It seemed to be taking them a hell of a lot longer leaving the forest than coming in, and Scarlett began to question whether they were going the wrong way. God, if that was the case, and they got lost—

There was a commotion to the left of them.

Kit swung the light. Scarlett’s jaw dropped. A lioness came barreling toward them through the trees, huge and pale as bone, grunting and snorting.

It seemed to be coming straight for Scarlett.

Because she was the smallest?

The weakest?

“Don’t run!” Cooper ordered.

“Shoot it!” Sal bellowed.

“Don’t move!” Cooper repeated.

Shoot it! Scarlett screamed. But the words never escaped her locked throat. Nothing did except a harsh whistle.

The lioness didn’t slow.

It
was
coming straight for her.

Why wasn’t anybody shooting it?

At the last possible moment, the lioness skidded to a halt on muscular front legs. It glowered at them, still snorting. It was so close that Scarlett could see the stiff white whiskers, the wet black nose in the shape of an upside-down triangle, the tuft of beard. Its eyes shone like gold-flecked quartz, the pupils rounded to perfect black dots. A killer’s eyes, emotionless and without mercy. The power the cat exuded was tangible. Scarlett waited in horror for it to lung forward and claw off her face with one bat of its oversized paw. But it only snarled, flicked its head, then trotted back into the forest.

The world seemed to tilt crazily before righting itself. Scarlett had to grab ahold of Cooper’s shoulder to keep from falling over. Still, she felt oddly okay. Terrified, yes, woozy even, but the fear was tempered by an unrealistic calm, and she knew she must be out of her mind on adrenaline.

“Why—?” she began.

“Later,” Cooper said.

The group continued in strict formation through the picket of trees. Sounds Scarlett hadn’t realized she’d tuned out returned in a wall of noise: cicadas, toads, the crunch of their footsteps on the leaf litter, the faint melody of classical music.

The camp.

Scarlett glimpsed the soft yellow light in the distance. The elusive music—Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
—became louder. Given the danger that had just passed the delicate staccato notes of the violin concerto sounded absurd, like a wedding march at a funeral. Then again, she thought, they also sounded very civilized. Wherever you had Vivaldi playing, you had hors d’oeuvres and wine and doctors and philanthropists. You certainly didn’t have a crazy lioness charging you down.

They reached the relative safety of the mess tent without further incident. Stepping into the light was a feeling like no other. The light represented safety and order and control—control over nature and all the deadly things that hid within her nighttime embrace.

Scarlett’s adrenaline ebbed, her nerves kicked in, and she began to shake uncontrollably.

“Would you like some tea?” Cooper asked her.

“Why didn’t you shoot it?” she demanded.

“She was only protecting her cubs.”

“Protecting, my ass,” Sal said. “The bitch bloody well charged us.”

“If you noticed,” Cooper said, “she was flicking her tail back and forth during the charge. That means she’s only testing you out. If you hold your ground, she’ll usually back down.”

“Hell of a risk. It was our lives at stake,” Sal interjected.

“If I had shot that lioness, the game department could have had my license.”

“And had you read it wrong, one or more of us might be dead.”

“We wouldn’t have been in that predicament, Mr. Brazza,” Cooper said, getting riled himself, “had you not been out there on your own. What in the Sam hill were you doing?”

Sal didn’t reply.

Suddenly Scarlett knew. “You were on your phone.”

He shrugged. “I needed to touch base with Danny.”

“Why’d you need to go off into the forest?” she said, feeling herself sliding back into the black world of lies and conspiracy. “What’s the big secret? What are you not telling me, Sal?”

“I was simply walking as I talked. I had no idea how far I’d gone.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Watch it,
cara mia.
”

“You know,” she plowed on, “I was ready to put everything in the past and move on, ready to start over, fresh. How can I do that when you won’t be honest with me?”

“I told you, I was walking—”

“I don’t care about that! I don’t care about that. I don’t care about anything anymore. Christ! This is unbelievable.”

Sal stared at her, his eyes dark and defiant.

Scarlett turned on her heels and stormed off.

After a few minutes of silently venting her anger, Scarlett got herself under control. Cooper, who had followed her into the mess tent and made her tea, was now sitting on the other sofa.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she told him. “It’s not your job to babysit dysfunctional couples.”

“Listen, love. I don’t know what the two of you are chomping at each other’s throats over. Not exactly, anyway. And I don’t care to know. It’s none of my business. But if you don’t want to go to the airstrip tomorrow together, I’ll have Kit make two trips.”

“Thank you, Cooper, but that’s all right. Besides, I’ll be sitting next to him on the plane.”

“Would you like to sleep in here tonight then?”

“Would you mind?”

Cooper retrieved a set of folded sheets and a wool blanket from a chest and gave them to her. “Good night, Miss Cox.”

He fastened the three zippers of the door flaps behind him, grabbed a tiki torch that was planted into the ground outside, gave her a final salute, then wandered away into the night.

Sitting there on Christmas day, staring into her cup of tea, Scarlett thought about everything that had happened recently.

Slowly, inevitably, she began thinking about a future without Sal.

“If you’re looking for me,” he said, “I’m right here.”

She left without saying a word. Back at the mess tent, Cooper pulled her aside to give her a three-inch curved claw that was fitted with a bronze cap and black string to form a necklace. “It’s from a lion I came across a few months back,” he told her. “He died of old age. The hyenas got to him long before I did. Anyway, it’s not much. But after the excitement in the bush last night—” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought it would make a good trophy of sorts. Merry Christmas, love.”

“Thank you, Cooper,” she said, touched. “But I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you.”

“I have my looks. What more do I need?” He winked at her. “It seems like you’re holding up the caravan. Better get a move on.”

Scarlett looped the necklace around her neck, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then went to the Hilux where Kit and Sal were now waiting inside. She climbed in the backseat, next to Sal. Kit hit the gas and they lurched forward. She waved goodbye to Cooper, finding she already missed him.

The off-roading through the forest of strangler figs was just as rough going out as it had been coming in, forcing Scarlett and Sal to once more brace themselves inside the cab. At the east-west dirt trail they turned east. Forty minutes later they arrived at the airport—though it would be a stretch to call it such. Even
airstrip
seemed inappropriate, considering it was nothing more than a belt of dirt lined with white rocks. Ten people stood off to the side of the runway, next to a stack of luggage. Scarlett and Sal waited with them. At a few minutes before ten o’clock, a boy pointed to a silver glimmer in the gunmetal gray sky, which eventually resolved into a plane. The pilot did a low fly-by, likely checking for animals on the runway, then swooped back and taxied to a stop.