Sasha shook the bottle of concentrated bug spray and proceeded to squirt it on the exposed sections of her skin, then she put her research notebook to the side, and completely relaxed in the chair. The little voice in the back of her mind whispered that she should have been entering in more information, but instead she lay back.
With her eyes closed against the warmth of the afternoon sun, Sasha inhaled deeply and smiled at her colleague’s relaxed comment.
Their sole purpose was to study the very elusive and near-extinct Malayan tapirs. The nocturnal and reclusive donkey-size animal inhabited only select parts of the tropical forest. They’d been in the target habitat a week and had only seen footprints of the beast. If she hadn’t seen a black and white photo taken a few months before by another expedition, she would have given up and moved on to the next project. However seductive the lush tropical weather and abundant the wildlife population, the overabundance of insects still made her want to head to cooler climates. Overhead the trill sound of a bird echoed and a breeze carrying the scent of decaying vegetation made Sasha wrinkle her nose.
At thirty-one, most of her college classmates had settled into comfortable corporate or public careers, married and begun saving for a future child’s education. Sasha, on the other hand, wasn’t looking. An ironic smile appeared and quickly disappeared; she’d had marriage offers from men on three continents. The first time, she hadn’t even hit puberty. During an expedition in Kenya, her parents’ guide had offered her father over a hundred cows. She leaned back and again closed her eyes. Several minutes passed and she’d begun to drift into a light doze when Thorne called her name.
“Sasha.”
“What?” She opened her eyes slightly.
“Did you hear that?”
“Thorne, how many times do I have to tell you that the local snakes aren’t poisonous and they won’t come near you, much less bite?”
“Exactly twenty-three. But that’s not it.”
His powers of observation worked great when they were tracking a subject, but at times like this he made her want to scream. “Then what is it?”
“Listen.”
Sasha stood up and focused her attention outward. Straining her ears, she concentrated on putting aside the white noise of the forest. And the same moment, she picked up the whirring noise; every animal alongside the stream seemed to freeze. Sasha’s heart stuttered to a stop and then jerked into high speed.
“Damn,” she swore. “That sounds like…”
“A plane,” he stated simply.
“What would it be doing way out here?”
He shrugged and stood up. “Maybe poachers?”
“Not likely,” she growled. “They’d come over land. From the sound of it, I think the plane is headed toward us.”
Sasha’s gaze narrowed on the milling animals. This deep into the tropical forest, most of the animals had not been exposed to humans or machines. It suddenly occurred to her that the sound of the plane would inevitably trigger the “fight or flight” instinct inherent in most living things. “We need to gather everything we can and get behind the trees.”
“They may run the other way.” Thorne came to stand alongside her.
“Do you want to put your life and our equipment at risk?’
“So now you’re the rhinoceros expert, too?” Thorne said sarcastically. The twang of his cockney accent came out in full force. “You think they’re going to stampede.”
“I know they will.” Sasha drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
She moved quickly to pick up the equipment and dump it in the travel bags. The entire episode reminded her of why she preferred the company of animals to humans. She’d had her pick of group expeditions, but it hadn’t taken her long to realize she’d inherited her parents’ solitary nature.
Sasha didn’t look at Thorne. If she didn’t need his talent, she would have stopped using his services long ago. She’d learned from her parents how to take care of herself in any environment. But what she hadn’t learned, and it would irritate her for life, was how to deal with people. And that undeniable fact made it easy for her to work and live in undeveloped countries and remote locales around the world on a moment’s notice.
“Move it,” she ordered, stuffing the GPS system, radio, laptop and video set into another bag. “Or someone’s going to find your trampled corpse.”
She grabbed her backpack and pushed through the tent flap. Her eyes scanned the horizon even as her ears could more easily detect the whirring sound. Sasha took off in the direction of more heavily wooded area with Thorne right behind her. Only when they’d gotten deep enough into the overgrown thicket of trees and underbrush did she slow down. A few minutes later when she was sure that they would safe, she stopped and dropped her bags onto the floor.
“We’ll wait here for at least a half hour.”
Breathing heavily, Thorne just nodded his head and slowly collapsed under the weight of his equipment bags. Turning her face towards the sky, her eyes strained to catch a glimpse of the horizon through the thick foliage. Failing to see anything, she used her ears and hands instead. Sasha crouched and out her hand against the ground. Sure enough, she could feel the slight trembling that had nothing to do with earthquakes and more to do with large stampeding herds.
Not this way, she prayed silently. The Lord must have been listening as the plane approached along with the animals because, as she’d hoped, the thick brush and trees forced them to go around their location.
“Good thinking,” Thorne whispered.
Sasha noticed the beads of sweat rolling off his forehead, and didn’t say a word.
An hour later after having returned to their campsite and discovered it intact, Sasha leaned down next to the abandoned lagoon and lifted a black plastic cylinder from the rocky shore. She held the object far from her body and stared at it. Her name had been stenciled in bold white letters on the side. Whatever it contained was important enough to have someone hire a plane to deliver it. A shiver raced down her spine with a shadow of foreboding. Drawing in a calm breath, she unscrewed the top and pulled out three sheets of heavy paper.
Several heartbeats passed as she read through the missive, and uncaring of the muddy water seeping between her toes, she dropped the container. Clutching the papers to her chest, Sasha walked back toward the undisturbed campsite and stopped as her knees threatened to buckle. She caught sight of Thorne just as he finished taking a drink of water from one of the many canteens. “We need to pack up,” she said in a low voice.
“What?”
She avoided eye contact by looking over his shoulder. “We’re leaving,”
“What did you just say?” he questioned. “I swear you just said that we were leaving.”
“I did.”
“Just like that? A little stampede has scared the unflappable Sasha Clayton?”
“I have to go back
