Page 45 of Love in the Wild

“Did someone say haircut?”

Thorne removed the gold leaves from his head and passed the circlet to Dembe. “Will you keep this safe for me?”

The child nodded and accepted the crown. “I will hide it in my memory box, under my bed.” She rushed away to her room.

Thorne then faced Afiya and the two small knives. “I am ready.”

* * *

Eden walkedout of her second interview with embassy officials and met Cara in the hall.

“Hey, how’d it go?” Cara asked.

“We all agree that my story sounds crazy, but I think they believe me. They’re sending people now to look for the bodies.” She had told the officials about how Thorne had killed the poachers, and how she’d discovered his true identity. One of the officials had immediately left the room to put in a call to the UK Embassy to see if they could contact the Haywoods in London.

“I’ve heard that a few of the older officials here remember when the Haywoods went missing. It was such a tragedy. Are you certain it’s their son?” Cara asked.

Eden nodded. “I have Jacob Haywood’s journal in my room, plus a family photo that I found on the wrecked plane.” She didn’t mention the signet ring or the necklace she wore. Those belonged to Thorne’s family by right, and she didn’t want them getting confiscated, not when she could deliver them to Cameron Haywood herself, assuming he believed her.

“Cara, can I get access to a computer for an hour?”

“Of course, we have a few laptops for guest use. I could sign one of those out for you. They’re fairly basic, though.”

“That’s fine.” All she needed was access to her email and a way to upload the photos from her camera to her Dropbox.

Cara left to get the laptop, and Eden settled in to wait. She hadn’t texted Bwanbale yet, so she grabbed her loaner phone and texted him an update. She’d decided to move into a hotel once everything was settled here. Kampala was a safe city, and her boss had already booked her a suite and covered her expenses, including a new laptop and smartphone to be delivered there.

Eden texted Bwanbale the address of the hotel where she’d be for the next few days. Paul had offered her a first-class flight to come straight home, but the thought of leaving, of never seeing Thorne again, felt wrong—worse than wrong. So for the time being, she would stay in Uganda until she could sort things out.

Besides, the more she thought about it, the more the story of the treasure thieves and the murder of the tourists could be a powerful call to action. She was not the sort of journalist to sensationalize stories like these for the sake of shock value or publicity. But she was the sort of person to use this tragedy as a way to get people to wake up to the problems the world was facing when it came to deforestation, the theft of a country’s natural resources, and the murder of innocent animals and humans. If she could write an article about that and expose whoever had hired those men in the jungle, maybe she could change the world too, as Bwanbale was doing.

Be the change in the world that you want to see.It was something her mother had always said to her, and now she truly felt she had a chance of doing that.

Cara knocked ten minutes later and handed Eden a laptop. She sat down on the bed and plugged in the camera memory card. She uploaded the pictures to her cloud storage while she checked her emails, and she soon found the one she was looking for. Her boss had called in every favor he had, but he had done it. He’d gotten Cameron Haywood’s private cell phone number.

She dialed the international number and waited. Her body vibrated with nerves and excitement as he she counted the rings.

After five rings she feared he wouldn’t answer, but suddenly he picked up, and she heard a cultured British baritone.

“Hello?”

“Lord Somerset?”

“Yes, who is this? The caller ID says the number is from Uganda.” Cameron sounded irritated.

“Yes, it is. Lord Somerset, my name is Eden Matthews. I have to speak with you about something very important.”

“Ms. Matthews, I do not know how you came by my number, but—”

“I found the plane,” she cut in quickly. “Your brother’s plane.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then he replied coldly, “Is this about the reward? That ended a long time ago.”

“Reward? What? No, I didn’t know about that. I don’t want money. You must listen to me, Lord Somerset.”

“Ms. Matthews, I have faced almost a decade of charlatans and con artists who’ve tried to convince me they found the plane and the bodies. None of it was true.”

Eden’s heart was racing as she struggled for the right words to make this man believe her.

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