A Delicious Mistake (6 page)

Benjamin
shrugged. It was, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He had been surviving on
bread and water for the past two weeks, and even then he didn’t eat much of it.
His whole insides had been tied in knots. For the first two days following
Luke’s death, he had thrown up anything he had dared to put in his stomach.

“So…um…”
Thomas hesitated and wet his lips. “How are you?”

Benjamin
snorted. He looked Thomas straight in the eye and took some pleasure in
watching the kid practically squirm in his seat. “How do you think?”

Thomas
cringed. “Yeah. Sorry, stupid question.”

“Indeed.”

A
few moments of blissful silence went by before Thomas cleared his throat and
said, “It’s just…we’ve all been worried about you, especially with your taking
off on your own like you’ve been doing.” He waved a hand at the door as if
waving at the entire world. “You know, with what happened and all…some of the
guys were afraid you would get into trouble, too.”

Calling
what had happened to Luke “trouble” sounded so infinitely, mind-numbingly
reducing. Luke Hutton had not only been murdered he had been mauled. On the
same land he had sworn to protect until the day he died. He had kept his
promise in the most dire of ways.

Benjamin
wanted to scream all of that to the kid and to all those men throwing sneaky
and not-so-sneaky glances at him. He wanted to grab each one by the shoulders
and shake until their teeth chattered and jarred together. He wanted to yell in
each man’s face, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see what happened here? Why aren’t
you screaming in pain and panic and anger? Why aren’t we all doing that?”

But
he didn’t. Instead, he shrugged and stood. “I need to be alone.”

“Understandable.”
Thomas climbed to his feet as well. “But maybe you shouldn’t be. And I don’t
mean just in the sense of having someone to scout the land with you.”

Benjamin
frowned. “What
do
you mean then?”

“I
mean…” Thomas grimaced and glanced around but no one stood nearby. “You
shouldn’t be alone and you don’t have to be because—”

“Let
me stop you right there.” Benjamin stepped forward and punched a finer into
Thomas’ chest. He didn’t like where this was heading. The last thing he needed
right now was a shoulder to cry on. “I don’t need any therapy session. All I
need is to keep doing my job of patrolling. I could use someone with me, that
much I’ll give you.” He had to admit he had been stupid, roaming off on his own
like that. This was the closest he would ever get to saying that out loud.

“It
wouldn’t be therapy,” Thomas said, defensively. “Just a friend listening to
you.”

“I
don’t need a friend, Thomas.” Benjamin turned away. And he really didn’t. He
was too busy mourning the last friend he had. He threw his words over his
shoulder. “I need a partner. Understand?”

Thomas
exhaled slowly from his nose. Benjamin wasn’t sure whether the kid was
suppressing anger or if he was just uncomfortable. The kid’s hazel eyes widened
in surprise as Benjamin’s words fully registered. “Wait…are you asking
me
to be your partner?”

Benjamin
shrugged. He knew Luke had been grooming the boy, and he felt it was somewhat
his responsibility to continue with the task. “You did a good job last week,
when I took you with me.”

Thomas
stared at him. “I’d…I’d be honored!”

Benjamin
rolled his eyes, but he had to admit he could feel a small smile tugging at his
lips. He started for the door again. “Whatever. Just make sure you never keep
me waiting. I hate it when anyone’s late for patrols.”

Benjamin
headed out and he heard Thomas scrambling behind him to finish his breakfast.
He needed silence right now, and he hoped Thomas understood that and would
respect that need.

Ten
minutes later they were getting ready to leave for the first patrol of the day
when Isaac Alassane, the butler at the Hutton’s game farm, walked up to them
with the town’s police chief in tow.

Instantly,
Benjamin’s stomach clenched so viciously that he feared he would throw up
everything he had just eaten. He forced himself to remain calm and turned to
meet the officer who was heading straight to him.

“Mr.
Bankole.” Benjamin nodded at the well-known and well-respected officer. He
nodded to the catering tent. “Would you like some coffee?”

“I’m
afraid I’m here on business.”

In
his sixties, Tobias Bankole was one of the most honest men Benjamin had ever
known. It had been a blessing, Benjamin thought, that the man had ended up as
police chief. It made for one less thing to worry about, knowing that at the
very least you could trust the police, even if they couldn’t do much against
poaching, not without government aid.

Tobias
had been a good friend of Benjamin’s father. Benjamin had known Tobias ever
since the day he’d been born. As Benjamin grew up and became a ranger, the two
men had ended up collaborating on a number of occasions and had come to deeply
respect each other. Perhaps that explained the pain on his face as he spoke. “I
need you to come with me, back to the station.”

Benjamin
blinked. “Why? Have there been any developments?”

Tobias
Bankole hesitated. Isaac had stepped into the background and looked like he
would have loved nothing more than to disappear. Tobias met Benjamin’s stare.
“I’m afraid I will need to question you again.”

Benjamin
frowned, confusion and foreboding mixing together in his guts. “Why? You
already did.”

Tobias
sighed. He squared his shoulders and straightened up to his full height, which
was still considerable for a man of his age. “You have become the prime suspect
in the investigation of the murder of Luke Hutton.”

Benjamin
felt as if he had just turned to stone. It was one thing to be suspected, that
was almost a given, considering everything. But to be considered the
prime
suspect
was another matter entirely. How could they?

He
felt all eyes on him. He found the courage to look around. He realized that
what he had seen in his fellow rangers’ eyes before was not suspicion at all.
He saw the look again now and knew it to be sympathy for his loss and wariness
of his pain. As he watched, that look changed and what he saw now in their eyes
was suspicion. It burned his skin like hot coals.

“Are
you going to arrest me?” he asked through the haze of his shock.

Tobias
Bankole shook his head. “It’s just a questioning. I don’t have enough evidence
to arrest you…yet.”

Somehow,
that sounded like a promise. Tobias Bankole was letting him know that no amount
of respect, and no ties from their past, would let Benjamin get him off the hook
if he really had murdered Luke Hutton. He knew Tobias planned to charge him.

With the murder of his best friend.

With the murder of his brother.

He
wondered then if the Hutton family believed him guilty—was that why no one called
to talk to him? He wondered if Sarah, too, believed he had killed Luke.

Chapter Four: Ominous Times

               
What about that midnight phone call, the one that wakes you from your peace?

Wasn’t
that how the Carbon Leaf song went? Sarah thought about that long after the
call had come. When it had come, Sarah had been dreaming about gazelles. To be
more specific, she had been dreaming of being one. It was a game she and Luke
had played as kids in Africa, running free in the vast, endless expanse of the
Serengeti plains. Sometimes Benjamin would join them, but for the most part he
either looked on or left them to their odd game, seemingly unwilling to intrude
in that cherished brother-and-sister moment. Luke and Sarah would laugh and
run, pretending to be either gazelles or zebras or, on their wildest days, a
hybrid they had made up and dubbed
gazebra,
an animal with a gazelle’s
horns and graceful body, and a zebra’s muzzle and powerful legs. They ran until
their lungs burned and they collapsed onto the grass of the savannah.

She
had been dreaming of exactly that when the shrill ringing insinuated itself
into her dream and brought her back to the world of waking—which was boring and
dreary and filled with rain falling outside her flat’s window in the smoky English
night. Just the fact that she had heard the ringer was enough to make her heart
rate speed up in worry almost instantly. Normally she was an extremely sound
sleeper and nothing short of bombs being dropped overhead could wake her. But
this phone call had, and that was enough to knot her stomach.

The
next thing she heard when the still-lingering images from her dream cleared was
her father’s voice, muffled as it came from the living room of their large
London flat. His voice held a note that Sarah couldn’t recognize or quite put a
name to—but if she had to, she would have said it sounded like urgency and
heartbreak. She was already out of bed and halfway down the stairs when her
mother’s strangled, anguished cry came. Startled, Sarah flew the rest of the
way down the stairs, through the corridor, and finally,
finally
into the
living room. The flat had never seemed so awfully big.

 Nor
had it ever looked so ominous. She walked into the living room, heart
thundering in her chest. It seemed to Sarah like the dark hickory bookshelves
with all their thick, leather-bound volumes were actually looming over her like
gloomy sentinels who kept a dark secret. She didn’t want to find out what that
secret was, but she knew she was about to and there was no escaping it.

Her
mother, Lucy, sat on the leather couch, pale and shaking and looking suddenly
like a very frail thing. An hour ago she had seemed like an energetic
middle-aged woman. Her father, David, sat in his wheelchair, the phone receiver
to his ear. He was still talking, but the words didn’t register with Sarah. She
was too shocked by her mother’s evident despair.

“Mom?”
she called, her own voice shaking. “What’s happening?”

One
hand tightly pressed to her mouth, her mother shook her head. Tears streamed
down her cheeks and blurred her green eyes.

The
click of the phone as her father hung up brought Sarah back. She turned to her
father. To her horror, she saw tears glistening in his eyes, too. He didn’t let
them fall, but they were there—shiny and taunting her with a lurking terrible
truth. Sarah swallowed against the tightness in her throat and put out a hand
to the nearest bookcase to hold herself up. Something had happened. She could
only think about Luke. Then she wondered if that was wrong—had something happened
to Benjamin? No. Impossible. Both men were fine. Perfect. Wonderful. Having a
marvelous time together in Africa. Weren’t they? She stared at her parents.

David
pushed his wheelchair closer to the couch and reached out to take his wife’s
hand. She clutched at his fingers and held on tight, as if holding onto him was
the only thing keeping her world together.

“What’s
happening?” Sarah asked again, her voice going slightly shrill with mounting
hysteria as she looked from her father to her mother and back again.

Her
father took a shaky breath. “It’s your brother,” he began. His voice was rough
with barely contained grief. “He’s dead.”

Sarah’s
world collapsed. Her mind went blank. She just couldn’t process it. She found
herself rooted to the carpet, unable to take a step forward or back. It felt
like her life suddenly had no direction to go in, like the whole universe had
essentially frozen. She couldn’t find the tears just yet. She blinked and knew
with a distant part of her mind that she must be in too much of a shock.

She
had no idea how much time passed in that chilling paralysis where time and
space and heart and blood seemed to stop and freeze. When she finally found her
voice again, it sounded far away to her own ears. “How?”

Her
father looked at her with a blank stare like he could hardly believe this had
happened. “He was murdered.”

If
Sarah had thought she was in shock before, now she had been pushed somewhere
beyond that. A sizzle washed through her, followed by a hollow numbness. It was
as if her father had just spoken to her in a foreign language and not only she
did not understand him but she had never even heard such words before. It felt
too absurd, too cruelly grotesque to be even remotely real. How could this be?
Luke had been running in the grass with her only a few minutes ago.

Her
insides grew cold as she realized what the dream had been. Foreboding, an omen.
Possibly it had even been her brother saying goodbye to her in his own way.
Luke always did things in his very own way. Or he had done. Thinking about him
in the past tense sent a horrible shiver all down her spine.

“How?”
She got the word out with a stutter.

Her
father hesitated. He threw a look at his distraught wife and then he looked
back to Sarah. He shook his head. “It’s best if you don’t know.”