Page 53 of Love in the Wild

Thorne spooled a lock of her hair around his finger. After a long moment, he nodded. His vivid blue eyes seemed to glow in the lamplight.

Eden hugged him tight and then reached for her new phone on the nightstand and sent Cameron a text that she had found Thorne and he’d agreed to a DNA test. She almost immediately received a response.

I will have a private flight to London arranged tomorrow. I want you to bring him to England. Bring him home.

Eden stared at the wordsBring him home.Then she turned to Thorne.

“Your uncle wants you to come to England to meet him. To see where you were born.” She licked her lips nervously. “Will you come with me?” Then she tried saying it another way. “Will you let me bring you home?”

She saw flashes of uncertainty shadowing his eyes, but he nodded again.

“If you are with me, I will go.”

Thorne rolled her beneath him on the bed, his mouth capturing hers, and all thoughts of London were forgotten.

* * *

Archibald satin his office in Fort Portal as night closed in. The French gemologist Jean Carillet was asleep in a hotel room across the street, paid well for his silence and for helping Archibald dispose of Cash’s body.

The flat-screen TV in his office was on, but muted. The BBC was covering the discovery of the murdered tourists in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. A reporter stood in front of the dark park entrance, speaking to the camera. On the screen below her were pictures of the deceased, presumably now that the families had been notified.

Archibald stared at the TV, his hands idly playing with a large golf-ball-size rock that looked more like a dusty piece of quartz than the near-priceless uncut diamond it was. He’d tried more than once to have the diamond cut down. He was, after all, not a sentimental man who would have kept such a valuable find as a keepsake. But the three different men he’d hired to cut it down had all been unsuccessful, their diamond cutting tools shattered the moment they came into contact with the stone. It was a mystery that Archibald could not solve, but he knew one thing—the stone held power, great power. The question that he struggled with was,What kind of power and how can I use it?

He had found this diamond in his first year in the jungle when he’d turned twenty-one. Even now, after all these years, he could remember the rush he’d felt at seeing the cave for the first time, stepping inside and flashing his torch over the rocky walls.

The artificial light had made the diamonds on the ground and in the walls glitter. And there had been more than diamonds in the dark, humid cave. There had beengold. Hundreds of pounds of gold fashioned into goblets, plates, and jewelry. Gold had streaked across the walls like shiny paint. It was clear that some ancient culture had left the items there, perhaps the distant ancestors of the now displaced Batwa tribes. The cave had felt more like a temple than a hiding spot, the way the items had been so carefully arranged.

Archibald had stood there for what felt like mere minutes, but later it had proven to be two hours as he’d stared at the treasure, and he could not tear his gaze away.

In that moment of discovery, Archibald had earned his reprieve from the wretched life he’d lived on the streets of Camden in London. He had been born into nothing, and had lived as nothing, yet he’d craved so much more. He had fought hard to leave that world behind, and finally he’d escaped.

At eighteen he’d found work on a cargo ship bound for Africa, and he had never regretted leaving. By the time he was twenty-five, he had amassed enough wealth to buy a townhouse in London and a manor house in the English countryside. The elite of London society now played tohistune and were at his beck and call.

But it wasn’t enough. He doubted if anything would ever be enough, not when gold and diamonds still whispered to him from a mist-shrouded mountain cave in the jungle. No matter how much money he earned, he could sense that others considered themselves his betters, that he’d never shake his Camden roots. To be foundwantingwas a fate no man wanted to endure.

Archibald set the diamond down and reached for the TV remote, turning the sound on.

“Emergency crews are working through the night to recover the bodies of the park guides and the tourists. There is still uncertainty as to who killed them and why. The bodies of four armed men, not part of the group, were also found, and they are believed to be responsible for killing the tourists. It is unclear at this time who killed the armed men. Theories are already being investigated regarding poachers and rebel activity. Uganda has long been a place of political unrest and has only in the last decade been considered politically stable. It is hoped that this is not a sign of political turbulence that may return.”

Archibald muted the TV and leaned back in his leather chair. Killing tourists had been a stupid mistake, one that could have been avoided. If Cash had still been alive, Archibald would have killed the man himself. If the investigation pointed toward Archibald, he would need to make sure there were no loose ends and that he had an escape route.

A picture filled the screen that made him turn the sound back on.

“This isn’t the first time the Ugandan national park has had its tragic mysteries. Twenty-two years ago, the Earl of Somerset, Jacob Haywood; his wife, Amelia; their son, Thorne Haywood; and their pilot went missing when their plane crashed. After months of searching for the wreck site, their bodies were never found. The Haywoods were passionate conservationists who used their wealth ...”

He tuned out the words and stared at the faces of the Haywoods, his anger only deepening. Twenty-two years ago, he’d killed that family, believing no one would care enough to look too hard for them. Yet their disappearance had upset his excavation work for more than a year. Archibald saw the close-up of the Haywoods’ young child and flinched.

Compassionwas a word that was alien to Archibald. He had none and gave none. However, he refused to accept the idea that he was no better than the hooligans he’d grown up with. Men of power and means, men of culture,bettermen lived by rules. Killing a child would have made him no better than the swill of his old neighborhood, yet on occasion he wondered if leaving the boy to the forest had been any better.

Upon reflection, he realized it didn’t matter. Only the rules mattered. That was how one judged one’s place in the world of men. Power and position meant nothing without it, and it was how he knew he was better than those who still looked down upon him.

Still, the thought left him unsettled. He had done his best to forget that day, to forget those bodies. The last thing he needed was the media stirring up old mysteries, in case it led to new leads.

His phone hummed, and he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

“This is Jim. You asked me to keep you informed about the Matthews girl.”

“Yes?” Archibald listened to his man on the inside of the US Embassy. Jim Bramble helped him from time to time when he needed information on people.

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