Adrift on St. John (7 page)

Clutching the guinea’s limp neck, the Princess skipped off down the path to her tribe’s circle of huts, sniffing the air for a smoky hint of the day’s first fire. The cooking servants should have gathered the kindling by now. A savory gruel would be bubbling in the camp’s large iron pots.

But as she neared the edge of the encampment, her forehead creased with concern. The plume of smoke rising from the trees up ahead had a dark ominous color, its billowing char indicative of a far greater volume of combustion than that produced by a single fire pit.

Her anxiety heightened as she reached the edge of the village. There was no sign of the typical morning bustle, no evidence of the regular foot traffic between the huts—and everywhere a dense choking smoke.

She had only been gone a short while. What had happened during her brief absence?

Tentatively, the Princess rounded the corner to her father’s hut. A fog of smoke and red dust hung over the entrance. The air was thick with the scent of a recent struggle, stinging her eyes, blurring her vision. The morning’s busy chatter had been replaced by an eerie silence and the rancid smell of death—one far more potent than that of the guinea.

The bird fell from the Princess’s grasp as she leaned into the hut’s dark hazy entrance. Her stunned gaze sank to the stiff body sprawled across the scuffed-up ground and the ragged, blood-soaked heap of her father’s clothing—piled up next to his severed head.

The Princess’s oldest brother knelt on the floor next to the corpse, his face blanched with shock as he examined the cut below their father’s once proud chin. Her mouth opened to set loose the horrified scream coursing through her body, but a hand quickly reached out to muffle it. A second brother wrapped his arm around the Princess’s trembling shoulders while together they stared in disbelief at the gruesome display on the floor.

The pounding
thud
of human feet sounded in the distance, cutting through the awed hush of the hut. The older brother snapped his head up from his father’s mangled figure. Lurching forward, he shoved the Princess out of the tent.

“Run!” he yelled hoarsely.

She stumbled, her feet tripping clumsily on the red dirt. She shook her head, numb with confusion as her brother grabbed her shoulders and spun her body toward the savannah.

“Go!” he ordered firmly. “Don’t let them take you alive!”

The Princess panted heavily as she reached the end of the goat trail on the far end of the open plain. Her body was drenched with sweat, and her throat rasped for liquid, but she immediately began the rugged hike up into the mountains. Picking her way through the thickening forest, she slowly gained altitude. She had to put as much distance as possible between herself and the sabotaged encampment.

All the while, her head pounded with questions. How could this have happened? What had become of the rest of her family? Who had attacked her tribe? Which of her father’s allies had turned against them?

She reached a stand of trees overlooking a steep cliff and slipped into the shadows beneath their canopy, melding her body into a nest of branches. It was a hiding place she had used many times before—usually after playing a joke on one of her brothers for which she feared retribution. Never before had she stood in this spot with such urgency, desperately willing the smooth contours of her skin to harden into the shape of the surrounding wooden limbs.

Trying to steady her frightened nerves, the Princess reached a hand up to her collarbone and cupped it around an amulet that hung from her neck on a thin leather strap. Her fingers, still sticky with the blood of the guinea fowl, ran along the raised ridges of the iron-forged medallion.

The circular piece of metal had been crafted into the
shape of the sun. It was the symbol of her tribe—her father’s emblem, known throughout the region.

Her ragged breathing began to slow as she took a calming strength from the amulet. Her thoughts focused on her immediate needs, how she would survive alone in the bush for the next twenty-four hours.

But as the Princess began to sift mechanically through her available resources, she felt the presence of another being lurking in the woods behind her. The hopeful breath within her chest instantly evaporated.

In that long elastic moment, she stood, paralyzed, fervently praying one of her family members had escaped to meet her—all the while knowing, like the guinea, that it was not a friendly companion who had tracked her to this spot.

Her eyes drifted to the edge of the cliff as she heard her brother’s voice, calling out his last cautionary warning.

“Don’t let them take you alive.”

The ledge was just a few footsteps away. A short sprint would take her to it—and the endless drop into the abyss. The Princess swallowed hard, trying to summon the will to throw herself forward.

Her feet dug defiantly into the rocky soil; the muscles of her legs ached with stubborn resistance.

At long last, she overcame her body’s instinctive objection and lunged from her hiding place, committed to the fateful jump…but it was too late.

A swift blow to the back of her head knocked her unconscious, and her body crumpled to the ground.

Conrad slammed the book shut and pushed back from the table. He wiped the sleeve of his shirt across his face; then he reached his hands up to massage a stiffness that had crept into his shoulders. As he popped a loud crick in his neck, he noticed his cigarette had burnt all the way down to its end.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…what happened here?” he muttered as he twisted the stub in his fingers.

He’d been so engrossed in the story, he had missed out
on the most pungent puffs. He puckered his lips and sucked in a last stale puff from the charred paper. Lifting his head, he tried to inhale a large volume of the air above the table, a futile attempt to recapture the lost smoke. Still snorting loudly, he climbed onto the seat of his chair and tilted his head toward the basement’s low ceiling.

He suddenly stopped, midsniff—someone had entered the room. A shadowed figure lurked among the stacks, just out of view.

“Hello?” Conrad called out warily, hopping off the chair as the remains of the cigarette dropped from his fingers to the floor.

Crushing the stub beneath the toe of his boot, he brushed the bag of cigarettes off the side of the table and kicked it into the bottom shelf of the nearest bookcase.

“Who goes there?” he asked suspiciously.

The shadow issued no response.

“District Attorney Man,” Conrad grumbled under his breath, “you’ve got yourself one heck of a persistent streak…”

A slender, barefoot woman stepped into the half-lit corridor on the far side of the basement. She wore a close-fitting beaded vest on her torso and a knee-length sarong around her waist. A dizzy mop of dark curly hair bounced youthfully around her shoulders. Despite the frosty New York winter outside the library, her cocoa-colored skin glowed with an equatorial warmth. Her neck was encircled by a narrow strip of leather; it had been threaded through an amulet whose shiny metal glinted in the dim glow of the nearest lightbulb.

“Wha—well, hello there.” Conrad quickly smoothed over his surprise. He ran his hand over the balding crown of his head as the Amina Princess peered bashfully around the corner of a shelving unit.

He cleared his throat. “I…I was just reading about you.”

Cautiously, the Princess approached the table. She gave Conrad a timid smile; then she wrapped her fingers around the edge of the book and slowly reopened it.

“You want me to…?”

Nodding silently, she pointed to the text.

“Yes, of course,” Conrad said, shrugging his shoulders as he returned to his seat.

Pushing the reading glasses farther up the bridge of his nose, he resumed the story.

6

I stood on the small balcony outside my office, hidden from passersby on the brick path below by a dense bank of trees that had grown up against the railing. Through the mass of limbs and leaves, I watched as Hannah accompanied Vivian up the hill toward the resort’s main reception area.

Even from a distance, the young woman exuded an inquisitive vigor. Her curly hair bounced in time with her energetic step as she carried on a lively one-sided conversation with Vivian, who sulked silently beside her.

My eyes followed the mismatched pair until they disappeared from view; then I returned inside my office, my earlier headache now amplified by a raging apprehension.

Scooping up the “Penelope Hoffstra” nameplate from the surface of the desk, I began to pace back and forth across the room, smacking the flat side of the triangular-shaped wedge against the palm of my hand.

“Hannah Sheridan,” I muttered grumpily as I tried to make sense of the morning’s events. “Not very likely.”

It had been four years since I’d last heard anyone utter that name—four years since I’d left behind my life in the
States—four years since a mysterious airport encounter had changed everything.

An eternity had passed since that fateful scene.

When I looked back, I hardly recognized the harried woman in the tired business suit, nylon stockings, and high-heel shoes, wearily rolling her suitcase through the Miami airport. It was as if I were seeing someone else.

I was on the return leg of an unsuccessful business trip, the latest in a never-ending series of increasingly fruitless endeavors.

The airport was midway through a lengthy renovation project, and the wing where I was stranded had yet to receive the benefit of the coming improvements. After a long walk through a construction detour, I’d finally reached a crowded row of uncomfortable plastic bucket seats next to my gate.

I picked an open chair and slumped into its hard curvature, awaiting news on my indefinitely delayed flight home to LAX. A thin volume of air circulated through the failing ventilation system, overlaying a stale, moldy scent to the departure area’s overall sense of disarray and disruption.

Groaning, I kicked off my left pump, cracked the stiff bones in my big toe, and sized up the blister I’d worked up during the hike. Accepting the inevitable fate of a long sit, I unbuttoned my suit jacket and loosened the top buttons of my blouse.

The outfit had begun to show wear after one too many circuits through the dry cleaner’s, but there wasn’t any room in my diminishing budget for a replacement. I would have to make do until I figured out a way to reverse the current downward trend in income.

I’d spent the day with an elderly client in Boca, a cranky septuagenarian who was trying to determine which of her heirs would inherit her estate. She was still mulling over her options, but after numerous rants about her unworthy offspring, I was willing to bet her favorite tabby would end
up with her most valuable asset, a nicely appointed oceanfront beach house.

The old lady looked to have a good year or so left in her, giving me, I hoped, time to solidify my relationship with the soon-to-be affluent feline.

I glanced around the dingy waiting area and thought gloomily of my pending coach seat to Los Angeles—six hours trapped in the confines of a middle seat with nothing but a can of soda to look forward to. Kneading my forehead, I propped my feet up on my suitcase, took a long sip from the now cold cup of coffee I’d purchased halfway through my marathon trek through the terminal, and opened my laptop computer.

After nearly a decade of struggling to build my solo legal practice, I was finally coming to the conclusion that the lawyer life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

As I began tapping away at the keyboard, searching for alternative flights, a heavyset man waddled down the narrow aisle in front of my row of seats. Glancing up from the computer, I pulled my knees to one side to allow him space to pass through. He turned, pivoted like a stuffed penguin, and squeezed himself into the seat beside me.

I swiveled further sideways, trying to avoid the extra folds of padded skin that spilled out over the armrest as he settled into his chair. My eyes scanned the waiting area, searching for another empty seat, but, predictably, they were all now taken.

The swollen fingers of the man’s right hand tugged against the collar of his golf shirt. A thin layer of sweat dotted his brow, and a light fog clouded the round lenses of his wire-rim glasses.