Every Serengeti Sunrise

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_c883f5aa-55eb-58f6-9613-ee2159f25b0a)

HAKI ODABA’S FUTURE was written in the stones: a few goats, plenty of elephants and a wife who would light up his days like the Serengeti’s blinding sun. He grumbled, slid farther behind the brush that camouflaged his jeep and peered through his binoculars. There she was. Tracked and spotted. A beautiful sight for the worried and weary. He lowered his binoculars and rubbed the heel of his palm against his throbbing temple. God help him. According to locals, the stones never lied—at least not when thrown by the tribal elder. The local Masai’s Laibon had certainly earned his role as healer and wise man over the years, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist or a tribal oracle to know who was destined to be Haki’s “blinding sun.”

The sunrise backlit Pippa Harper’s unruly, corkscrew curls like a fiery beacon glistening against an emerald backdrop of tree canopies in the distance. Her focus on Malik, a beloved, old male African rhino deep in a courtship ritual with several females, didn’t waver.

Not good.

How many times had Haki warned her about being aware of all her surroundings at all times? The heart of Kenya’s savannah beat with the rhythm of life and death...predator and prey. She hadn’t even noticed his presence, and he wasn’t being particularly stealthy. What if Haki was a stalking cheetah or lion?

He pinched the bridge of his nose. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, predators around here didn’t only come on four legs. What was she thinking? She might as well have radioed her coordinates to the poachers that the Kenyan Wildlife Service were tracking in the area. The KWS had informed Haki and his colleagues at the Busara Elephant Research and Rescue Camp of their presence early that morning, and everyone knew to be on the lookout. Given that her parents, along with Haki’s, ran Busara, one of Kenya’s most reputable elephant rescue camps, Pippa would make quite the prize if she got cornered by ruthless poachers.

Forget being destined to marry. At this rate, Haki would die from exasperation first.

The male rhino’s grunt rippled through the air. Pippa pushed her auburn hair out of her face, peered through her camera lens and began taking shots like her life depended on it.

Raised here or not, she either didn’t fully comprehend the danger she was putting herself in...or she didn’t care. Heaven help him. Haki had faced death before. The scar on his left thigh proved it. Working with wildlife, which included treating five-thousand-pound pachyderms in the field with fanged predators around, was risky business, but there was only one thing Haki truly feared, and that was Pippa’s fearlessness.

Haki put away his binoculars, grabbed his rifle out of the jeep and slung the strap over his shoulder as he made his way toward Pippa. He needed to get her back to Busara and convince her to stay put until they had confirmation that the poachers had been caught or were at least out of the immediate area. He seriously hoped that crash of rhinos Pippa was observing wasn’t what those poachers were after. They’d make a killing off rhino horn. Medicinal powder. Murder for money. It was all too sick and infuriating.

Fifteen meters and closing in, and Pippa hadn’t even turned around. The breeze whispered a soft, luring melody as it caressed the dry savannah grasses and urged each slender blade to stretch and claw at his hands like seductive sirens. Mesmerizing...and full of hidden dangers.

Pippa shifted her knees against the crusty soil and leaned her shoulder against the outcropping of boulders to her left, edging into its shade as the sun crested over it. She readjusted her camera angle and took another shot.

“Come on, girl. Show him your big, beautiful behind already. You’re such a tease,” she muttered as the female rhino stepped away from the restless bull. Two more females in heat joined the group.

“Crashing the party, are we?” Pippa chuckled.

Haki shook his head. That isn’t remotely funny, Pip. She’d been out here way too long and she was lucky her voice hadn’t carried toward the animals. He resisted calling out to her. A few more steps and he’d be able to keep his voice low enough not to startle the rhinos.

Malik, intent on his first choice, didn’t seem to notice the onlookers—two-footed or four. Much like Pippa hadn’t noticed Haki, now five meters away.

A young clump of elephant grass to her right swayed as a traitorous breeze lifted her curls away from her forehead.

The wind shifted.

She seemed to tense, then lowered her camera just as Haki stopped in his tracks.

Rhinos had terrible eyesight, but a keen sense of smell. They both knew it, too.

Malik grunted.

“Pip. Time to go.”

Pippa jerked around at the deep timbre of Haki’s voice and bumped her head against the rocky outcropping.

“Ouch! Get down before you get us both impaled.” She pressed her hand against the back of her head.

“We’re leaving right now. Get up and hope that he’s too distracted by his girl to charge.”

“Don’t give me orders like that. I have everything under control and my jeep’s not far,” she said. She rose to her feet and gave the dust on her khakis a brisk swat.

Haki glanced toward the battered jeep she’d driven from Busara. It was parked in the shade of an acacia tree less than twenty-five meters east of the rhinos. Not a safe spot at the moment. He looked at her pointedly.

“They weren’t there when I parked it,” she said.

“Of course not. Now back away slowly.” The bull raised his head and snorted, as if irritated by the putrid scent of man in the air.

Pippa steadied her camera with one hand as it hung from her neck strap and backed away from the rock. Knowing Pippa, she’d take a bruise to the head any day if it meant protecting that camera from damage. It was the same camera her father, geneticist Dr. Jack Harper, had been given by his adoptive parents during his troubled teen years. It was also the same one he’d brought with him on his first trip to Kenya. Pippa had been four, and prior to that trip, Jack had been unaware that he had a daughter, let alone one being raised in the wilds of Africa.

Haki waited until Pippa was at his side, then nudged her safely behind him as they retreated toward his jeep.

“I appreciate the lift, but I would have been fine,” Pippa said, climbing onto the front passenger seat.

“Fine? You didn’t even hear me walking up. What if it hadn’t been me?” Haki secured his rifle in the back, then got behind the wheel. They’d have to return for her jeep when the situation was safer. He churned the ignition and it choked several times before the engine roared to life. Malik raised his horn in their direction, but Haki left a screen of dust in their wake.

“I knew it was you all along. I saw your reflection in my camera lens when I held it away from my face,” Pippa called out over the engine noise.

Haki’s glower was met with a cheeky grin.

“You were ignoring me.”

“You were stalking me,” Pippa countered.

“Sta— I wasn’t stalking. There were poachers in the vicinity and your mother asked me to track you down when you didn’t answer her radio call. Ignoring is not okay.”

“I wasn’t ignoring her. I was going to radio in as soon as I got the shots I needed for the Busara website. I didn’t want to miss the moment.”

The Busara Elephant Research and Rescue Camp had come a long way over the past fifteen years. Its website was run and edited by one of the Harpers’ closest family friends, Tessa Walker. Everyone in the family contributed posts and updates, and Pippa was responsible for most of the photographs.

After marrying their “uncle” Mac, Tessa had begun building the site, which was dedicated to educating the public on just how precious and fragile their wildlife and the ecosystem were. It highlighted both Camp Jamba Walker and the work done to rescue elephants at Camp Busara. Mac Walker wasn’t blood-related to anyone at Busara, but he was everyone’s uncle Mac nonetheless. He was a bush pilot who’d spent years helping KWS and wildlife research groups in tracking both animals and poachers. He’d become friends with Pippa’s mother back when she first established Busara. So Uncle Mac had known both Pippa and Haki since they were babies and, as far as anyone was concerned, was their honorary uncle. Just as Tessa was an auntie to them all and the nephew she and Mac had raised together after his parents’ death, Nick Walker, was like a cousin.

“You know our safety rules.”

Pippa squeezed fistfuls of her hair before letting the wind have its way.

“How many times do I have to tell you all that I don’t need protecting? I’m twenty-two and you only have a year on me and we both grew up here. I know how to survive here as well as you do. Being a woman doesn’t make me stupid or less prepared.”

Her cactus-colored shirt and sun-kissed hair upped the intensity of her green eyes. Pippa was anything but stupid. Sometimes a bit reckless and sensitive. Always fearless, stubborn and headstrong, but not stupid. She’d even graduated with top grades from her geology program, back when the two of them attended university together in Nairobi. He’d learned about living things and earned his veterinary degree; she’d studied the nonliving. She knew all there was to know about the earth beneath their feet. If only she’d learned how to ground all that energy of hers enough to do something with that education. He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.

“Of course it doesn’t, but it can make you more of a target or tasty morsel. I may have only a year on you, but I’m also bigger. Not to mention the intense, military-style training I endured alongside KWS. Do I need to remind you who my supervisor was?”

Pippa closed her eyes and slumped back against the seat. She tilted her chin up and let the sun warm her face. Haki put his hand back on the wheel and scanned their surroundings as he made his way toward Busara. She knew full well that, training aside, physical strength and fitness were crucial in his line of work. Even at his peak, his strength didn’t come close to the brute force some of the larger animals he treated or rescued were capable of. Plus, he’d trained under her uncle Ben.

“Fine. You win,” she said.