and wear her clothes and swear she hadn’t. The dolls connected Wynne to home, to her sister, to a life that was no longer her own. Wynne cherished the six dolls. She couldn’t bear to see him abusing Bart’s head and said, “Please, they’re fragile.”
“Sorry.” He drew back his long arm and let it rest on his thigh. “You miss your family?”
His insightful question surprised Wynne and she said, “Very much.”
“What about your folks? They alive?”
“Yeah, but divorced.” Wynne thought of her father and smiled. “My father is a veterinarian for the National Zoo in Washington, and my mother…” Her smile melted. What was her mother? A bulldozer in stockings, heels and a Chanel suit. “She’s in corporate law,” Wynne finally said, realizing she’d said too much. “What about your parents?”
“My parents?” He gave a little taut laugh. “They consisted of the nuns at St.Anthony’s Orphanage, and Clarence, the grounds man.” A wistful tone entered his voice.
“Clarence?”
“Yep, old Clarence kinda took me under his wing, taught me how to box, work on cars and how to hunt—the sisters didn’t like that though. He took all us boys hunting on weekends, told the sisters it was a camping trip to commune with God. Ha! I think they were wise to him, but they didn’t say a word. Beside the priest, he was the only male influence in our lives—not knocking Father Reilly, he could go a round in the ring with the best of them, but he liked gardening. We boys just weren’t into perennials….” His words trailed off, and he seemed lost in memories.
The kind of silence that accompanies too much personal disclosure dragged between them. She wished she hadn’t asked about his parents. Was he lying to gain her sympathy? No, there had been an unmistakable honesty in his voice. All she really wanted to know about him was if he was involved in the poaching.
“This is a mighty fine ride you got,” MacKay said, glancing around the interior of her truck. “It’s not standard issue.”
“It’s mine.”
“How does a warden in Zambia afford something like this? Isn’t the government strapped? Your salary couldn’t be but so much. You probably can’t afford to put gas in it.”
“I didn’t exactly take this job for the Wall Street salary.” He didn’t need to know she lived off a trust fund her grandmother had left her. Any momentary sympathy she might have felt for him flew out the window. He was becoming annoying again.
He lifted his beefy hand and began methodically cracking each knuckle. “So are you one of those bleeding-heart, bunny-hugging activists? That it?”
Make that extremely annoying. She jabbed back, “Are you one of those guys who prays to Charlton Heston every time you pay your NRA dues?”
“Touché.” He wrote an imaginary one in the air, then went back to work on his knuckles. “Score one for the liberal. But don’t you use a gun in your job?”
“Hardly ever.” The popping sound of his joints grated on her eardrums like sandpaper.
“Now that is different.” He spoke as if he didn’t believe her. He stopped torturing his knuckles, then said with a smirk, “But you gotta admit being a warden is not a fit job for a woman, even if she were packing.”
She fought the urge to stop the truck and leave him for roadkill, but she wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of letting him know he was getting to her. She smiled at him as if she’d just been impaled by a rhino. “And what kind of jobs are fit for a woman in your opinion?”
“I don’t know….” He shrugged and rubbed his chin. “Air traffic controller, astronaut, lobbyist, lawyer, veterinarian, detective. See, I’m not as chauvinistic as you thought, darlin’.”
“It’s a good thing you can’t read my mind.”
“Maybe I can.”
“You don’t seem psychic to me.”
“No, but I know you’re probably the only female warden in all of Africa. Hell, there’s probably not that many in the States.”
“I don’t defend how I live my life to anyone.”
She’d had to do enough of that with her mother, who would never understand why Wynne stayed in such a dangerous job. It wasn’t just about preserving the last great wilderness on earth, but also about the challenge. She thrived on overcoming the danger and the obstacles, and experiencing the amazing rewards which kept her here, like watching a lioness teaching her cubs to hunt, or the beauty of a herd of impala or zebra grazing. Africa had a wild but beautiful rhythm to it, and that rhythm was in her heart. It was well worth the fight to save it. Something this arrogant Texan would never understand. Or her mother.
“Are you a thrill-seeker, or you just got a death wish?” he asked.
“Do you?” Wynne added enough bite to the words that they came out as a threat.
It actually worked and for once he was speechless. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her in a probing, contemplative way.
She didn’t realize she’d driven past Hellstrom’s compound and she skidded to a stop. The Simpsons dolls whip-lashed on the dash and MacKay braced himself, uttering something about female drivers. She shifted into reverse and pulled into the drive then slammed on the brakes.
A man stood in the headlights, a rifle pointed at her.
Chapter 3
Wynne stared into the face of the guard. The headlights glowed along his dark skin and sunken cheeks and eyes. He wore a tan uniform with Hellstrom’s Tours embroidered on the shirt pocket. One hand held the rifle, while he grabbed a walkie-talkie on his belt with the other. He looked at her license plate, then spoke into the radio.
“Hellstrom’s got good security here.” MacKay grinned over at her.
Maybe too good. It hadn’t seemed extreme to her before now because all wildlife ranches and safari owners had secure compounds. But as she gazed at the ten-foot-high barbed wire fence that encompassed the compound and the guard’s AK-47, a rifle more suited to stopping armies than people, she had to wonder what he was hiding. “I guess he has his reasons for it.”
“You ever been here before?” MacKay asked while he rolled down his window, his attention on the guard.
“I ride by on my rounds sometimes.” Hellstrom’s compound was about twenty-five miles south of base camp, in a valley surrounded on one side by rolling hills, a prime area for grazing wildlife. When elephant herds went in search of fresh pasture, she sometimes drove past his compound to monitor them. She remembered the area before Hellstrom built the compound, when nothing was here but open spaces and herds of buffalo, eland, zebras, wildebeest and giraffe. She felt a tinge of loss.
“Can’t blame a man for putting up a fence.” MacKay didn’t wait for her comeback and stuck his head out the window. “It’s okay, Cephu. She’s giving me a ride.”
Cephu dropped the gun, smiled and said in English, “Oh, Mr. MacKay, it’s you.” The guard’s joy at seeing the Texan beamed in his face and a broad smile showed his white teeth. He dropped the walkie-talkie and stepped aside, waving Wynne through. “Have a nice night, Bwana MacKay.”
Bwana was a Bemba term for “Mr.” or “Master.” Wynne didn’t know if MacKay deserved such deference.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you know all the staff?”
“What can I say? I kinda grow on people.” He shrugged, then gave her a sympathetic glance, as if the only way she could grow on someone was if she were toenail fungus.
“I can grow on people, too.” The moment the words were out, she regretted them.
“I bet you do darlin’, I just bet you