The Crocodile's Last Embrace (30 page)

“Ouch!”

Pellyn’s death hadn’t fully sunk in yet and a part of her hadn’t let go of her suspicions regarding Finch. When the arm around her waist loosened by a fraction, she stomped her right foot down hard, hoping to connect with her attacker’s.

She hit wood.

The sensation was unexpected, and for a moment, Jade couldn’t reconcile the pain in her own heel. Her assailant released her.

“Dammit, Jade! Cut it out. It’s me.”

Her mind was not prepared for that voice. She spun around in the darkened alley, one hand gripping her knife, her eyes straining to see. In front of her stood a tall, slender form, but the beard enlarging the lower jaw was all wrong.

“It’s me!” the form repeated.

“Sam!”

Jade launched herself at him, wrapping both arms around his neck and flinging her legs around his thighs. She felt him stagger momentarily under the impact, but he quickly grabbed hold of her, one arm tightly around her back, the other supporting her rear.

Her lips found his and pressed against them, forcing their way past the bristling beard and mustache. She let go of every thought save one, and relished the moment. His surprised
ooh
quickly turned into a husky groan of increasing need. Jade’s senses were alive with the feel of his warm muscles against her, his musky scent filling her nostrils and his taste in her mouth. She was Persephone rising up from nearly half a year in hell, a starving person awakening to a feast, and she couldn’t get her fill. She wrapped her legs tighter around him, pressing closer.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” Sam said when Jade finally took a breath. “But your knife keeps hitting me in the back of the head. Do you mind putting it away?”

With those practical and unromantic words, all at once the despair and loneliness of those past months filled her mind. Every second of her time in hell, every endless day without him, and each nightmarish night burst out from her soul: a dam releasing a flood of pain. Jade pulled back and dropped her feet to the ground. She sheathed her knife, letting her anger purge away the passion and fill the void left behind.

“Sorry to have startled you the way I—” Sam began, reaching for her.

“You sorry son of a . . .” she growled. Her hands clenched into fists as she threw a one-two punch at his stomach. The first hit hard muscle; the second was caught and held in an iron grip. “Let go of me, you low-down coyote,” she snapped. “Is this your new trademark? Rush in at the eleventh hour like you did in Morocco? How dare you leave me for five months without any word and then have the nerve to—”

Sam pulled her in and stifled her outburst with another kiss. She fought against him at first, assaulting him physically and verbally for every nightmare she’d had, every moment when she thought she’d never see him again. He met each jab, every kick with an unrelenting gentleness emanating from his voice and his embrace. Then the solid warmth of his body took over and she fell against him with a sob.

“Sam,” she whispered into his chest. “Are you really back? Or am I having another hallucination?” After having seen Boguli and David, she wasn’t ready to trust her eyes. Something hard pressed against her temple and her fingers groped for it.

The Berber talisman.
That was something tangible.
He is real!

“I’m here,” he whispered into her ear, kissing her hair. “But no one else can know it. Your life depends on it.” He pulled her deeper into the alley with a “Shush,” as the constable locked up the medical office and walked, whistling, to the police car. They listened to him drive away.

Everything was happening too fast for Jade: Dymant’s death, Dymant as Pellyn, Sam’s unexpected return. Even his whispered warning seemed unreal. The talisman did not. She felt the silver box, cool against her fingertips.

“You’re still wearing the charm I gave you,” she said.

“Yes, and I swear the blasted thing really is haunted. I haven’t had a moment’s peace since I put it on. All I could think of was you. I’m sure I heard you one night, but all around you was the sound of wind and the moaning of the dead.”

“I went to France to see the battlefields. I remember hearing those sounds. I even saw . . .” Jade wanted to tell him more, but just then something scuttled along the alleyway.
Rat
. Thoughts of plague popped into her mind. “We can’t stay here; it’s not healthy or safe. Where are you staying?”

“Nowhere at present. I thought about getting a room at the YMCA when I saw you. I hid and eavesdropped, then followed you as best I could.”

Jade took his arm and pulled him out of the alley onto the dusty walkway. With no lights it was still dark, but the distant glow from Government Road’s street lamp let Jade see Sam and convince herself it really was him beside her. “You’re on foot?” she asked.

Sam nodded.

“Get a rickshaw and meet me at the Dunburys’. You can stay there or at Maddy and Neville’s.”

“No,” Sam said. “I was not exaggerating when I said no one can know I’m here. I definitely can’t stay at the Thompsons’. The Kikuyu talk. I don’t want word to go around that Bwana Tree Leg is back. When I’m seen, I have to be a different person.”

“How will you disguise your voice? Or your leg? Another wounded American is going to get noticed!”

“I’ll be an Australian.” Sam pronounced it with the broad “ale” in the middle and followed it all with a reasonably convincing, “G-day, mate.” When Jade’s brows rose up in wonder, he added, “I met one on the boat back here. Interesting man. Saw a lot of action in Turkey. He was hoping to start fresh here in Africa, so I bought his old uniform from him to help. I’ll just become him. Easy enough accent to mimic. And he’s already gone north to Lake Victoria.”

“As long as you don’t talk to too many people asking too many questions.”

“That’s the beauty of this disguise. When you smell like the back end of a barn for a while, no one wants to get too close.” He shushed her with a finger to her lips. “Listen. I know about our friend’s escape. When I left, I sent word to Avery’s contact and told him to also keep me informed of any change. Call it a hunch or a premonition, but I couldn’t imagine that witch submitting to prison for long. I told him to send any word care of my family in Indiana. I knew within a week of her escape and took the first ship to Africa after I . . .” He bit off his words as though he’d nearly revealed a deep secret. “Never mind that. I’m here now.” He stroked her hair and let his fingertips sweep around to caress her cheek. “I got your telegram, too.”

Jade studied his face and shook her head. “I don’t think anyone would recognize you straight off, especially in the dark. And you sure can’t sleep in the streets. You’ll be thrown in jail and then your secret’s out. I know I can sneak you into the Dunburys’ tonight and . . . Oh, damn, Biscuit will know you.”

Sam rubbed his neck and winced. “Fine job I’m doing, riding to your rescue. I
am
a horse’s patoot. My plan depends on secrecy and your cheetah might wreck it immediately.”

“You let me worry about Biscuit. Just get to the Dunburys’ tonight. Avery can hire you as a down-on-his-luck man to muck out stalls and sleep in the loft. That should help out the aromatic part of your disguise. One horse’s patoot with the others.” She grinned.

He pulled Jade in tighter and looked around at the silent neighborhood, all the shops long closed and everyone inside. From a few blocks over, the nightlife of European Nairobi echoed in honking horns, puttering motors, and snatches of indistinguishable conversation. Sam took Jade’s hands in his.

“You still have the ring,” he said. “On your right hand.”

“Is there a reason I should move it?” she asked. Jade wondered if he’d have come back to her otherwise. Did she have Lilith to thank for this? She waited expectantly, straining to read his features in the dim alley light.

He kissed her fingertips and the lion’s-tooth tattoo on her left wrist. Jade shivered as his whiskers brushed her skin. “We’ll talk about that when this is over. For now, you need to go before someone sees us. Since I’m a drifter, I’ll start walking to Parklands, but I won’t show up until late.”

“Then shall I tell Avery and Beverly to expect you?”

Sam hesitated a moment. “Yes, but only when you know that no one is going to overhear. Beverly especially. She’s likely to exclaim something.”

“Her sister is staying with them,” Jade said, suddenly remembering Emily. “She’s looking for a husband, too.”

“Damn,” muttered Sam. “I hate to be rude but—”

“If she sees you, you’ll have to be a bit brusque and maybe a bit stinkier than you’d planned,” finished Jade. “But not for long. She’s going down to Mombassa for a day or two.” Jade reached up and kissed him on the lips. “And don’t think that smelly horse manure or this horrible beard will deter me either.”

Sam’s dark eyes bore deeply into hers and she felt a warm flush rush down her arms, and her stomach did a curious flip-flop. “You will have to deter yourself. We’re going to have to be aloof with each other anyway so as to avoid speculation. Remember, I’m your ace in the hole. Lilith can’t know I’m here.”

“I’m ashamed that I didn’t ask this earlier, but did you sell your movie about the coffee farmers?”

Sam brushed back the curls from her forehead, exposing her tiny indigo lion’s-paw tattoo given to her by the Berbers. He touched it gently and smiled. “I did, but I think the studio bought it mainly to cut and use as background footage for their own adventure movies. But this is no place to talk.” He smacked her on the rump. “Now skedaddle like a good little varmint.”

She hadn’t taken but one step to her motorcycle when Sam grabbed her wrist. “I forgot to ask. How’s my plane?”

Jade smiled. “Jenny’s fine. Avery flew her this morning.” Jade left ruefully before he could cause her to lose the last of her self-control. But as she motored off to Parklands, she couldn’t help but feel wryly grateful that Sam had asked after her first, then his plane.

 

AVERY, BEV, AND EMILY were all waiting on the veranda for Jade’s return, after which they immediately sat down to dinner. As gently as she could, Jade divulged first Dr. Dymant’s death and then his true identity. All in all, she thought it went very well. Beverly choked on her food only twice and Avery muttered, “Damn,” only once. Emily, who was not familiar with the tales of Lilith Worthy and Mathers Pellyn, concentrated more on the fact that an eligible bachelor was not only a criminal but also dead.

Jade noticed that Beverly kept watching her expectantly, as though she could tell there was something else that Jade hadn’t revealed. For the first time in her life, Jade found herself hard-pressed to maintain a solid poker face. She made one sidewise nod to Emily, who was involved in receiving a fruit compote for dessert. Avery caught his wife’s look and provided Jade with an opportunity.

“Jade, your motorcycle sounded rough when you drove it in this evening. If you like, we can take it to the barn and have a quick look at it.”

“Thank you, Avery. That would be good.”

Jade spilled the news of Sam’s return to Avery in the privacy of the barn. He reacted by biting the stem of his unlit pipe in two. Soon after, Avery called Beverly to walk with him, and if her reaction to the news was more exuberant, the household simply put it down to the master and mistress being in a frisky mood. Jade kept Biscuit shut in her bungalow and watched out of the Dunburys’ drawing room window.

Sam appeared walking down their drive by eleven o’clock, and even Jade didn’t recognize him at first except for the familiar slight limp. He’d managed to turn himself into such a down-and-out reprobate that the limp was one of the last traits anyone noticed. His brown hair was longer than last September, hanging down to his eyebrows in front. His beard was a full-blown bush that obscured his lower face and distorted the jawline. As he came closer, Jade noticed that his hair was darker, too. In the shadows of the alley, she hadn’t noticed. But then, she’d been too preoccupied for details.

He stained it with walnut or tea
.

Most compelling for his new persona was his attire. Jade got a good look at it for the first time. He wore the ragged brown trousers and threadbare tunic of a former Australian Light Horse regiment man. One ragged duffel and a squared-off canvas pack across his back and a beat-up slouch hat atop his head completed his disguise. If ever a man painted a picture of hard luck and a veneer of disrepute, Sam had mastered it. His eyes shifted constantly under his thick brows like those of a man always on the watch for trouble.

Emily immediately declared that she never wanted to see that “creature” in the house with the baby.

“I’m sure he’s harmless,” said Avery. “Just another chap struggling since the war.”

“The war ended over two years ago,” said Emily, “and I’m through trusting men.”

“The war hasn’t ended for everyone, my dear,” said Beverly softly. “Some will never be free of it unless we assist them. But let both of us go inside and allow Avery to deal with him. Have you finished packing for Mombassa? You’ll enjoy yourself so much. You should stay for a week. Perhaps take a steamer to Zanzibar.”

Jade didn’t trust herself and walked away. A half an hour later, Avery told them all that he had hired a Mr. Oliver Fairley, formerly of the 2nd Light Horse Regiment, to do the stable work, and that he’d be sleeping in the loft and taking his meals in the barn.

—The Traveler