Love in the Wild

Chapter 1-2

“Darling?” Jacob retrieved his gun from the case inside the cockpit where he’d hidden it out of Thorne’s sight for safety.

Amelia was sitting in one of the seats with Thorne, reading the jungle alphabet book to him. “Yes?”

“I’m going to go hunting, and maybe I’ll fish in the river. Stay here with Thorne. I should be back in a few hours.”

She stood and lifted Thorne into her arms. “Jacob, I don’t know if that’s safe.”

He was almost too big to hold like that, but Jacob had the sudden urge to have his child in his arms. He held out his hands, and Amelia passed him the toddler. Thorne rested his cheek on Jacob’s shoulder as he cradled the boy, pressing his own cheek on the child’s head.

A realization dawned on him as he swayed the little boy in his arms. Someday he would be holding Thorne for the last time. At some point the boy would be too big, too old for this. Was this the last time? Would Jacob even be aware of it when that last time he held his son came and went? A chill crept along his arms and the back of his neck. It felt like someone had stepped over his grave.

He held Thorne a moment longer before he gave him back to his wife. Amelia offered him a wistful smile, but her eyes were heavy with concern.

“I’ll be back soon,” he promised and kissed her quick and hard.

“Be careful,” Amelia warned as he stepped into the jungle that awaited him outside the security of the downed Cessna.

The trek into the jungle took nearly an hour. He glimpsed a few simian-shaped shadows above him, swinging or jumping between the trees. But he didn’t aim his gun at them. He knew the dangers of ingesting monkey meat, so he would only kill them as a last resort. He climbed over the rocks, wound his way through tightly growing moss-covered trees, and chopped down thick vegetation with a machete they had brought along on the plane.

He was nearly at the river—it was only another quarter of a mile—when he heard something moving through the brush. There were some low-level foothills that had caves nearby. He had discovered a cave a week ago but hadn’t gone too far in. Ebola was often found in African caves. He didn’t want to risk contracting that virus.

Whatever was heading toward the cave was definitely big. It might be a kob. He abandoned his path toward the river and followed the sound at a safe distance.

When the sounds ahead of him stopped near the black cavernous entrance to the cave, he halted, holding his breath, but a second later, he exhaled in a rush as he heard human voices.

“This is the one, Holt,” a man said. “I saw the gold myself.”

Gold? Jacob wondered how they had found gold here.

“Bloody natives,” one man grumbled. “Burying gold in a bleedin’ cave. What’s the point of it? Well, get to work. I want to see it.”

Jacob peeled a branch out of the way of his face and saw a group of men entering the cave. They didn’t look friendly. The guns they were carrying and their general unkempt appearance, added to their talk of hidden gold, made them dangerous. They were not the sort of men Jacob could ask for help.

He slowly backed away, but not before he saw one man emerge from the cave carrying a crate. A dozen golden objects—from plates and cups to other unidentifiable items—were visible as they jutted out of the top of the wooden crate. The man set the crate down nearby, and when he left, Jacob crept closer and grasped the nearest object he could find and ducked back into the shelter of the bushes and examined it. It was an uncut diamond as big as his fist.

Good God.

Whoever these men were, they had stumbled upon an archaeological find of great importance, and they were looting it dry. The items they were stealing belonged with the descendants of the people who had put them there or, if such people no longer existed, in a museum.

I should leave now, Jacob’s inner voice warned him. But the thought of such injustice . . . no. He had to leave. He couldn’t put his wife and child at risk. Not for this. He was about to put the diamond back into the crate when he felt it go warm beneath his palm, and a strange humming filled his head. Flashes of light, whispering . . . voices he couldn’t quite understand, but he sensed what they wanted.

Keep the diamond. Run now!

He sank back into the foliage, tucked the diamond in a pocket of his cargo pants, and turned to run, only to barrel straight into a man. They both stumbled back. Jacob saw the man loosely clutching a rifle, and he acted fast. He threw a punch that would have made his boxing days at Cambridge look tame. The man hit the ground, out cold, and thankfully not having attracted any attention.

Jacob shook out his fist, stretching his fingers before he leapt over the fallen body and started to run. Once that man woke up, he would tell the others to come after him. Jacob had to get to Amelia and Thorne.

Jacob had gotten a quarter of a mile away when he heard faint shouts behind him. He picked up his pace. Above him, birds were chattering madly and monkeys screamed in warning. It was like the entire jungle was crying out that danger was coming.

He reached the plane and burst inside. “Amelia, grab Thorne! We have to get out of here!”

His wife grabbed their child. Jacob threw the remaining protein bars and water tablets in a bag and slung it over his shoulder. They had made it a hundred yards from the plane when they stumbled right into the path of a silverback gorilla. It thumped its chest with its fists, making a loud pok—pok—pok sound as it snarled and charged them.

Jacob shoved his wife behind him and bowed his head.

“Don’t look at it. Keep your gaze down,” he warned Amelia.

She covered Thorne’s head with one hand as they backed up. The male gorilla advanced a few more paces. Jacob’s breath came fast as he tried to think and remain calm. The gorilla was pushing them back toward the plane—back toward the gold thieves. He reached a hand behind him, and Amelia laced her fingers in his in silent support.

Suddenly the gorilla’s attention lifted above them to something behind them. His lips curled back in a fresh snarl, and he started to charge at whatever he’d seen behind them.

A volley of bullets struck the animal’s chest. Blood misted in the air, and the beast collapsed dead at Jacob’s feet.

“No!” Despite their current peril, his heart ached for the gorilla’s life. With horrifying dread, he and Amelia turned around to face the true danger of the jungle.

“Jacob,” Amelia whispered, her hand still in his and her other arm holding their child to her chest.

They faced the group of armed men. A white man, young, possibly twenty or so, seemed to be the one in charge. His pale-blue eyes were so cold that they made Jacob shiver. Jacob knew that he and his family were not going to survive. There was no mercy in those eyes, only cold calculation.

“Please,” Jacob said. “Please leave us alone. We won’t tell anyone anything.” He moved protectively in front of Amelia and his child. He would, without hesitation or thought, give his last breath to protect them.

“How did you get this deep into the forest?” the young man asked. “The tours don’t come this far east.”

“Our plane crashed. We were headed for the airfield near the forest guide station.” Jacob nodded toward the direction they’d come from.

The man jerked his gun at them. “Show me.”

Jacob took Thorne into his arms, and Amelia stuck close to him as they walked back to the crash site. He and his family stood with the Cessna at their backs as the armed men conversed in hushed tones.

“Amelia, we aren’t getting out of this alive.” He shot her a quick glance before facing the men again.

“Why can’t they just let us go?” she asked.

“Because I saw the gold and diamonds they were looting from a cave.” He caught her gaze and put a hand lightly, almost casually on the slight bulge of his pocket where he had the diamond.

“Gold?” she echoed. “All of this is for gold and diamonds?”

The greed of men ran deep, like the fissures of rocks that exposed the veins of the gold they coveted so badly. And with every ounce of greed, twice the blood would be spilled. Jacob knew better than to bargain with men like these.

The thieves faced them again. The youngest one, the one with the cold eyes, raised his gun at Jacob.

“We’ve had a little vote. You aren’t worth leaving alive.” That was Jacob’s only warning before the gun fired.

“Jacob!” Amelia cried out.

The bullet tore through his chest. He reached up slowly and touched the wound as his blood bubbled over his hand. Amelia’s voice was distant to his ears now as he fell back against the side of the plane and sank to his knees.

Above him, the exotic birds shrieked a warning that came too late. He choked. The sense of drowning was so frightening, yet he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. His vision paled at the edges rather than darkened, as though he was slowly being surrounded by a light, soothing mist. Dimly, he wondered if that was why a person’s eyes clouded. It was like death stole over them like an inescapable fog.

It was so hard to think now. He clutched at the last few seconds of his life, and his mind drifted to thoughts of autumn leaves caught upon the wind, carried to places far and away.

Amelia shoved Thorne behind her. The child was stiff and silent with fear. Jacob lay motionless a few feet away. The light in his eyes guttered like a candle in a mighty wind and finally went out. She had no time to grieve—her maternal instincts overrode all else.

“Please, we won’t tell anyone. My son’s only three. I need to take care of him.” Thorne curled one arm around her leg, holding on for his tiny life.

“It’s nothing personal. No loose ends.”

“Please don’t. Not my baby!”

The man almost smiled. “Don’t worry, love. I don’t kill children.”

The man with blue eyes raised his gun again, and Amelia stared him down, defiant to the last as he fired. She collapsed to the ground, Thorne hugging her arm, sniffling as he tried to stay quiet.

“Please don’t. Not my baby . . .” She tried with her dying breath to shelter Thorne at her side. It was so hard to breathe. So very hard . . .

“A mother’s love—how touching,” the man mused thoughtfully as he gazed down at the child. He met Thorne’s gaze, and then looked toward Jacob’s body. “Search his pockets. I don’t want to leave anything someone could use to identify him.”

One man searched Jacob’s pockets and held up the fat uncut diamond. The man with blue eyes holstered his gun and took the diamond, holding it up with a possessive gleam darkening his eyes.

“Put their bodies inside the plane. I don’t want anyone to think they survived the crash, assuming anyone even finds the wreck.” He walked away, and the remaining men came toward Jacob.

“What about him?” one of his men asked and nodded at the toddler.

The man with the blue eyes turned back. “He is not to be harmed. Put him in the plane with his parents. I don’t kill children, but he’ll die out here soon enough. Let nature run its course.” Amelia was breathing shallowly now, her limbs cold and numb.

“Don’t touch . . . him!” she gasped, choking on her own blood as the men lifted up her beloved husband. “Don’t . . .”

Then they came for her. She was already slipping away. Such a funny thing, dying. Once the pain faded, all that was left was quiet silence, like falling asleep on a sunny Saturday afternoon. But it wasn’t easy, letting go—not when she left her child behind.

Adroa Okello held his rifle loosely, a canvas bag of gold slung over one shoulder as he stood inside the crashed plane. Others had carried the bodies in and set them in the chairs. But the boy, the helpless child, wouldn’t be parted from his mother. He sat curled on her lap, one hand resting on her lifeless arm, his body trembling as he murmured, asking her to wake up over and over.

Adroa wanted to help the boy. He was no killer, but he’d been paid good money by his boss, the Englishman called Archibald Holt, but who he called Death Eyes in Swahili when he was out of hearing. Adroa had a wife and his own children to feed and he couldn’t risk crossing Holt.

The child sniffled, his vivid dark-blue eyes so wide and full of tears that Adroa could not bear it. He was the last of Holt’s men inside the plane now. No one would see what he was about to do. He swung the canvas bag off his shoulder and removed one of the gold trinkets they’d stolen from the cave—a gold circlet of leaves like a crown. He held it out to the child. Holt would never know a piece like this had gone missing. And perhaps the gold would distract the child for a little while.

“Be good now,” he told the little boy in English and patted the child’s silky dark hair. “Stay inside, you hear? Someone will come for you.” He didn’t want to lie, but what else could he do? Save the boy, and Death Eyes would kill him. Kill the boy, and Death Eyes would kill him.

The boy gazed up at Adroa mutely, his tiny fingers curling around the leafy golden crown. A sudden eerie feeling stole through Adroa. He felt the presence of his ancestors in the shafts of light penetrating the canopy above. Many thousands of years ago, his people had lived in this jungle. They’d built great cities among the trees, and the cave had held their sacred treasure. All of that had been a myth to Adroa until he’d set foot in the cave with Holt and the others a few weeks ago. The glint of gold beneath their pale flashlight beams had almost blinded him. And he’d sensed the anger of the ancient ones in the cave, felt their righteous fury deep within his blood and bones. But they were dead, dead and gone, and had no use for treasure now.

Perhaps it was his imagination, or perhaps it wasn’t, but he was sure that he heard a whispered warning among the trees as he left the crashed plane. The whispers murmured that a ghost would rise, crowned in gold, a lord of the jungle returning to avenge his family.

Adroa stumbled back and raced into the jungle to catch up with Holt and the others. He tried to banish the image of that child from his mind, but he knew it would haunt him for the rest of his life.