White Bone Read Online Free

that list. Hotels you may have recommended, restaurants. Bars. Coffee shops. I don’t care. Anything. Everything.”
    Now Knox spoke directly to Dulwich. “My flight shouldn’toriginate from here, just in case she’s already talked. Route me through Frankfurt. A puddle jumper to Berlin. Berlin to Nairobi. All separate tickets, no code sharing. Paid for on my company card. I go in on business. Same as always: I’m on a buying trip.”
    Dulwich nodded. He spoke to Winston. “As you know, John’s business is . . . world arts and crafts. Import/export. It gives him good cover in situations like this.”
    Sarge was coming around to Knox’s way of thinking. Knox kept the smile off his face.
    “If and when I track her down, I will stay away from her and whatever she’s chasing. I get a visual and I’m back on the plane. She’ll never know I was there. To everyone else, I’ll be my usual annoying self, a two-bit hack looking for some Maasai necklaces. If they run a background check, I’ll pass with flying colors.”
    Dulwich glanced at Winston, who nodded. “I’m counting on her making contact tonight, but I don’t disagree with you.”
    Another double negative,
Knox thought.
    “I’ll make every effort to enter from the west,” Dulwich said. “We’ll set up a web code.”
    “Every name you gave her, and in the same order,” Knox said, repeating himself. “All I’ve got is her footsteps.”

6

    T he smells hit her first. Dust. Sticks. Dry grass. A bitter taste, staining her mouth.
    It took her some time to come to grips with what had happened, to realize the taste was left over from whatever drug he’d stabbed into her. She was sore, but didn’t bother checking for a bruise. Instead, she focused on an undulating reddish brown line a foot in front of where her cheek lay on the powdery dirt.
    Safari ants. The column of workers was an inch wide, protected on the outside by an interwoven network of sentries a half-inch thick.
    Grace sat up slowly, overcome with aches and pains. She must have been thrown from the vehicle. She wiped mascara from under her eyes and searched for the Jeep. But she saw only endless savanna.
    Why was she waking up at all? If someone wanted to kill her, why not just do it? Why dump her instead?
    She took in the sameness of the savanna, which stretched beforeher, an endless plain of auburn grasses, stunted trees and coiling shrubs. In the distance, smooth gray hills rose slowly to join verdant mountains. The expanse left her feeling inconsequential and meaningless.
    Her few safari rides had instilled in her a respect for the scope of the African bush. Open, unfenced space to the horizon. Wild animals, elegant and bold. But that had been from the cushy backseat of a Land Cruiser, a thermos of tea within easy reach. She recognized immediately that there might not be any kind of structure for a hundred kilometers in any direction. Somewhere in the distant mountains stood Ol Donyo Lodge, where she was currently a registered guest. But where exactly? How many days on foot would it take to reach those hills?
    There had to be an explanation for her current situation. Was she a victim of an accident? Had the truck hit a ditch? An animal? Had she hit her head in the collision and wandered off into the bush? Her short-term memory was fleeting and confused.
    She would sort out the cause later. An aboriginal instinct was spreading from her belly through her chest and into her extremities.
    Two days earlier, while being guided in the Solio reserve in the north, she’d found herself uninterested in the big game, but fascinated by her guide and driver, a Maasai in full tribal costume. He’d been willing to indulge her.
    “On one’s own,” Olé, the guide, had told her, “a stranger to the bush won’t last a single night.”
    “But the Maasai,” she’d countered. “You have lasted thousands of years.”
    “It is true. We have lived here, hunted here, survived here, for thousands—tens