Jessica Delaney took a deep breath, and did her best not to lose her cool with the grinning, portly, older man in front of her dressed in safari khakis. He topped her by a full foot, and looked utterly unimpressed by her urgency, her World Health Organization credentials and authorizations, or anything else she brought to bear.
"Look, love," he said. "I can't help it, can I, that some earl or duke or something from bloody Hungary decided that he wanted to go big game hunting and offered me treble what you did?"
"We had an agreement," Jessica said heatedly. "Do you not understand that this is a matter of life and death? People are dying! An entire native tribe just wiped off the face of the earth. I cannot express the urgency with which I must get these supplies…"
"Into the hot zone, yes, yes, you've told me that a time or two, as I recall."
Jessica looked at him impatiently, her blue eyes blazing fire.
"Might I remind you that my organization chose you because you claimed to be a professional. Now, I need you to honor our signed agreement get me where I need to go!"
For a moment, it looked as though the pilot was going to give in, but then he just grinned a little wider, seemingly amused by Jessica’s tenacity.
"Your agency chose me because there are precious few pilots foolhardy enough to attempt to fly the route between Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria," he said. "Cool your heels. Head into Dar es Salaam. It'll take a little longer, and you'll pay a little more but it'll get you to whatever little backwater you've been babbling about."
She gritted her teeth, glaring at him.
"Too much time. Too much money," she said. "I have lives to save. The WHO needs this information. The Tanzanian government needs this information. You would be doing an enormous service..."
The pilot laughed outright at that.
"Love, when the WHO or the Tanzanian government does a damn thing for me, that’ll be the day when I bend over and take it up the arse for one of them. Until then, I suggest you and your little medical satchel high-tail it down to Dar es Salaam and..."
He trailed off, which was a good thing because Jessica was distressingly close to pummeling him with her little medical satchel. She followed his gaze off to the right.
The small, dusty, private airfield off the coast of Tanzania was desolate to say the least, but it was not deserted. There was another white man, tall and broad shouldered, standing in the cool shadows of the hanger. He was under the wings of a small plane that most certainly looked as though it had seen better days. As Jessica watched, she saw the tall man hand a wad of cash off to a black man, who walked away shaking his head.
What the hell am I seeing? she wondered, and then the pilot next to her grinned.
"All right, you want a ride, love? You for-sure want to get out to the middle of nowhere in Tanzania?"
Jessica scowled at him.
"Stop calling me love," she said automatically. "And, yes, that’s the gist of what I’ve been saying. So glad we’re finally on the same page." She had a bad habit of being completely unable to curb her sarcasm at times.
"All right, then. Let's see what I can scare up. Just remember, I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart, right?"
She sighed and nodded, watching with some apprehension as he sauntered over to talk to the man who had apparently just bought himself a plane.
There was something about the tall, broad shouldered man in the shadows that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. As he turned, she could almost see what appeared to be a strikingly handsome face, his tanned skin dark against the light tactical gear he was wearing. Jessica was reminded of her training. She’d been warned about the European soldiers of fortune that haunted eastern Africa looking for bodyguard work or less legal, more lucrative opportunities. These men were to be considered highly dangerous, especially to a short, slight woman wandering the earth doing good work for global health organizations, but there was something else about this man that made it impossible for her to tear her eyes away.
She saw her portly pilot pull the taller man into conversation, and at first, it didn’t seem as if the conversation was going in a favorable direction. The man was resistant to whatever her pilot was proposing, putting up his hands in an attempt to stop the man, but then something the older pilot said made the taller man look up at her.
Jessica shivered. Even from where she stood, she could see that the man's eyes were a bold pale green, glittering like glass. If she were back in New York, she would have guessed expensive tinted contact lenses, but who the hell would wear something like that out here?
She gripped her knapsack and medical bag tighter. So many things had gone wrong since she took off from New York. Please, please, couldn't something finally go right?
*
"Whatever you want, the answer is no, Bernie," Marcus said shortly. "I don't have time for your bullshit scams right now."
"Hey now, is that any way to speak to an old comrade in arms?" grinned Bennie. "Don't you forget, I was there when all that malarkey went down in Johannesburg..."
"You ran away from Johannesburg like someone set your ass on fire," Marcus retorted. "Don't make me laugh."
It was probably better that Bernie had been a coward, though, Marcus had to admit. There had been a few humans mixed up in that cluster fuck, and when the dust had settled and everything was sorted out, the Shifter Council had stepped in and dealt out a generous round of memory cleansing and recriminations for all. Bernie had never gotten close enough to the truth, and for that he was lucky.
"Yeah, well, have I got an offer for you today, mate..."
Marcus shook his head with a short laugh.
"Don't need you to sell me a girlfriend, either," he said, and Bernie made an offended sound.
"Hey, this one's all right. She's a doctor or something, a do-gooder, on her way to save lives out in the bush. You'd be getting yourself some good karma along with picking up a paycheck. Chance like that doesn’t come along every day."
Marcus started to turn the man down again, but then, almost as if his head was on a marionette’s string that had been pulled up, he glanced over at the girl that Bernie was referring to.
Marcus felt as if he’d taken a blow to the chest, knocking the breath right out of him. He had to consciously make his lungs force air into themselves. After he realized he was staring, he looked away.
Bernie was still going on and on about how she was going to save indigenous tribes from some strange affliction or deadly disease or something, but Marcus wasn't really listening.
Some of his kind did their best to hide their primitive instincts, to live amongst humans with their senses dulled down as much as they could be. Marcus, on the other hand, had sharply honed his instinctual senses, which were much needed in his profession. Right now, his instincts were firing off like mad.
The girl wasn't much to look at. She was short and slender, not the type to catch the attention of a man who liked his women tall and lush, but once he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes off her. Even as he tried to focus on what Bernie was saying, he found his glance drifting back to her.
She looked vulnerable but proud standing straight as an arrow in the middle of the field, her black hair cut short as if hacked with a machete. She was dressed for the country at least, wearing a long green linen skirt and a pale green shirt that covered her arms. She had the look of a lost traveler, but then he glimpsed her eyes. They were a blue so bright that for a moment Marcus wondered if he had run into a woman of his own kind somehow, all unawares. Then, reason and his senses reasserted themselves. This woman was human, but in those eyes, he had glimpsed something determined almost to the point of madness. She was going to get what she wanted, and damn whoever stood in her way.
"I wouldn't try it, mate," Bernie advised. "Someone invited her for a drink just a bit ago, and she nearly chewed his head off and spit it down his neck hole. Not really the huggy type, you know?"
"I think I do know." It was in that moment Marcus came to a decision. There were a few legitimate reasons that could back up his decision-making, but in the back of his mind, he knew that those reasons were just retroactive excuse-making. The truth was, something inside him wanted to be close to the small, dark-haired woman. Something that refused to be denied.
"All right, we'll see how this goes."