She covered Thorne’s head with one hand as they backed up. The male gorilla advanced a few more paces. Jacob’s breath came fast as he tried to think and remain calm. The gorilla was pushing them back toward the plane—back toward the gold thieves. He reached a hand behind him, and Amelia laced her fingers in his in silent support.
Suddenly the gorilla’s attention lifted above them to something behind them. His lips curled back in a fresh snarl, and he started to charge at whatever he’d seen behind them.
A volley of bullets struck the animal’s chest. Blood misted in the air, and the beast collapsed dead at Jacob’s feet.
“No!” Despite their current peril, his heart ached for the gorilla’s life. With horrifying dread, he and Amelia turned around to face the true danger of the jungle.
“Jacob,” Amelia whispered, her hand still in his and her other arm holding their child to her chest.
They faced the group of armed men. A white man, young, possibly twenty or so, seemed to be the one in charge. His pale-blue eyes were so cold that they made Jacob shiver. Jacob knew that he and his family were not going to survive. There was no mercy in those eyes, only cold calculation.
“Please,” Jacob said. “Please leave us alone. We won’t tell anyone anything.” He moved protectively in front of Amelia and his child. He would, without hesitation or thought, give his last breath to protect them.
“How did you get this deep into the forest?” the young man asked. “The tours don’t come this far east.”
“Our plane crashed. We were headed for the airfield near the forest guide station.” Jacob nodded toward the direction they’d come from.
The man jerked his gun at them. “Show me.”
Jacob took Thorne into his arms, and Amelia stuck close to him as they walked back to the crash site. He and his family stood with the Cessna at their backs as the armed men conversed in hushed tones.
“Amelia, we aren’t getting out of this alive.” He shot her a quick glance before facing the men again.
“Why can’t they just let us go?” she asked.
“Because I saw the gold and diamonds they were looting from a cave.” He caught her gaze and put a hand lightly, almost casually on the slight bulge of his pocket where he had the diamond.
“Gold?” she echoed. “All of this is for gold and diamonds?”
The greed of men ran deep, like the fissures of rocks that exposed the veins of the gold they coveted so badly. And with every ounce of greed, twice the blood would be spilled. Jacob knew better than to bargain with men like these.
The thieves faced them again. The youngest one, the one with the cold eyes, raised his gun at Jacob.
“We’ve had a little vote. You aren’t worth leaving alive.” That was Jacob’s only warning before the gun fired.
“Jacob!” Amelia cried out.
The bullet tore through his chest. He reached up slowly and touched the wound as his blood bubbled over his hand. Amelia’s voice was distant to his ears now as he fell back against the side of the plane and sank to his knees.
Above him, the exotic birds shrieked a warning that came too late. He choked. The sense of drowning was so frightening, yet he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. His vision paled at the edges rather than darkened, as though he was slowly being surrounded by a light, soothing mist. Dimly, he wondered if that was why a person’s eyes clouded. It was like death stole over them like an inescapable fog.
It was so hard to think now. He clutched at the last few seconds of his life, and his mind drifted to thoughts of autumn leaves caught upon the wind, carried to places far and away.
Amelia shoved Thorne behind her. The child was stiff and silent with fear. Jacob lay motionless a few feet away. The light in his eyes guttered like a candle in a mighty wind and finally went out. She had no time to grieve—her maternal instincts overrode all else.
“Please, we won’t tell anyone. My son’s only three. I need to take care of him.” Thorne curled one arm around her leg, holding on for his tiny life.
“It’s nothing personal. No loose ends.”
“Please don’t. Not my baby!”
The man almost smiled. “Don’t worry, love. I don’t kill children.”
The man with blue eyes raised his gun again, and Amelia stared him down, defiant to the last as he fired. She collapsed to the ground, Thorne hugging her arm, sniffling as he tried to stay quiet.
“Please don’t. Not my baby . . .” She tried with her dying breath to shelter Thorne at her side. It was so hard to breathe. So very hard . . .
“A mother’s love—how touching,” the man mused thoughtfully as he gazed down at the child. He met Thorne’s gaze, and then looked toward Jacob’s body. “Search his pockets. I don’t want to leave anything someone could use to identify him.”
One man searched Jacob’s pockets and held up the fat uncut diamond. The man with blue eyes holstered his gun and took the diamond, holding it up with a possessive gleam darkening his eyes.
“Put their bodies inside the plane. I don’t want anyone to think they survived the crash, assuming anyone even finds the wreck.” He walked away, and the remaining men came toward Jacob.
“What about him?” one of his men asked and nodded at the toddler.
The man with the blue eyes turned back. “He is not to be harmed. Put him in the plane with his parents. I don’t kill children, but he’ll die out here soon enough. Let nature run its course.” Amelia was breathing shallowly now, her limbs cold and numb.
“Don’t touch . . . him!” she gasped, choking on her own blood as the men lifted up her beloved husband. “Don’t . . .”
Then they came for her. She was already slipping away. Such a funny thing, dying. Once the pain faded, all that was left was quiet silence, like falling asleep on a sunny Saturday afternoon. But it wasn’t easy, letting go—not when she left her child behind.
Adroa Okello held his rifle loosely, a canvas bag of gold slung over one shoulder as he stood inside the crashed plane. Others had carried the bodies in and set them in the chairs. But the boy, the helpless child, wouldn’t be parted from his mother. He sat curled on her lap, one hand resting on her lifeless arm, his body trembling as he murmured, asking her to wake up over and over.
Adroa wanted to help the boy. He was no killer, but he’d been paid good money by his boss, the Englishman called Archibald Holt, but who he called Death Eyes in Swahili when he was out of hearing. Adroa had a wife and his own children to feed and he couldn’t risk crossing Holt.
The child sniffled, his vivid dark-blue eyes so wide and full of tears that Adroa could not bear it. He was the last of Holt’s men inside the plane now. No one would see what he was about to do. He swung the canvas bag off his shoulder and removed one of the gold trinkets they’d stolen from the cave—a gold circlet of leaves like a crown. He held it out to the child. Holt would never know a piece like this had gone missing. And perhaps the gold would distract the child for a little while.
“Be good now,” he told the little boy in English and patted the child’s silky dark hair. “Stay inside, you hear? Someone will come for you.” He didn’t want to lie, but what else could he do? Save the boy, and Death Eyes would kill him. Kill the boy, and Death Eyes would kill him.