White Bone Read Online Free Page A

of thousands—of years. We have learned from our forefathers. We can survive for weeks, months.”
    “Teach me.”
    “Excuse me, Miss Grace?”
    “Olé, we see a rhino and he runs away. Giraffe, busy with eating. We spend forty minutes driving dusty trails searching for a lion that I honestly, sincerely, do not want to disturb. I feel in the way here. I’m intruding. Please, tell me about your life, the lives of your tribesmen. Help me understand the humans in this place.”
    He’d started with the obvious: what to eat—roots, mostly. But not all! Particular berries for particular purposes; how to find water; methods to prevent bug bites and to treat those that bite anyway. Set snares. Take shelter. Avoid being stalked and hunted by jackals and cats. Some of the information was new; some similar to lessons given by her grandmother while tending their family farm in central China.
    Safari guests were constantly cautioned to never leave the vehicle without instruction to do so. When allowed, Grace had always been accompanied by a guide. Cape buffalo were the animals most feared. Not rhino or jackal or hyena. Not elephant. Cape buffalo were known to charge without provocation. The safari vehicles were reinforced and fitted with roll bars and all manner of defense, but out of the vehicle? That was another story. She was one woman, one small woman, alone in the bush and with no form of self-defense.
    Grace’s thoughts circled back, unable to let go of the need to understand what had gotten her here. It had been nearly four weeks since she’d arrived to investigate Winston’s bad vaccine. During that time she’d felt little if any personal threat. Her most recent visit had been to an NGO called Larger Than Life, not the type of people to dump you in the bush.
    Her only reasonable concern had been the discovery, days earlier, of someone attempting to breach her computer. Though a virtually impossible task, it had been enough to scare her, to put her on the move.
    She reviewed the past few weeks, looking for a misstep. She’d begun with interviews of the activist, the old reporter. She’d moved on to some early success behind her computer—she’d breached a shipping company’s servers. Various pieces of the investigation had begun to fit together. She’d covered her digital tracks well, had taken extra precautions—but had sent John a red flag when someone tried to hack her. She thought if there was to be trouble, it would be in Nairobi, not a tiny village on the Tanzanian border.
    An animal cried in the distance, mournful and discomforting. It sounded both lonely and hungry. Grace worked to calm herself. Listening to Olé’s lessons in survival was one thing; living them quite another. Surely the staff at the Ol Donyo Lodge would come looking for her when she failed to make dinner. The couple who managed the place would be worried by now. Help was on its way.
    Unless . . .
    Someone had obviously planned this for her. She flushed with heat. She did remember now—leaving the clinic with a new driver, one not from the lodge!
    So, had they crashed? Broken down? Or had she been left here to wait for her driver’s return, or dumped, left to die of exposure? Why couldn’t she remember? Had her abductor intentionally left a broken-down vehicle out there somewhere to complete the fiction of her getting lost and isolated? She glanced at her phone; no service.
    Grace squatted and pulled herself into a ball, arms clasped around her shins, shivering despite the heat. Her breathing was shallow, her limbs shaking, ears ringing. She pushed to calm herself. She’d gone into shock. She needed water; there was none. She closed her eyes, steadied her breathing. She reminded herself she’d been raised in the rice fields of central China. She’d faced her share of exposure to the elements. Snakes. Wild dogs. Equally wild neighbors. She’d been through boot camp with the People’s Liberation Army; hadeaten grubs and worms.