Page 44 of Duty Preserved

The rangers were already talking among themselves. Zayn and Otieno and two others, heads together, voices low, working through it in their own language, on their own terms. The Citadel guys had given them the framework for reading the site, and the rangers had used it to find a truth we never would have found on our own.

The walk back was long and quiet and hot, and what I thought about had nothing to do with snares or villages or the recalibration that was still working through me.

I thought about Sarah’s mouth and the way she’d pulled so passionately on me. I thought about what I would have had to do to make her stay.

And then the child’s bare footprint would surface again. The two things sat side by side in my head, unresolved, the whole walk home. The woman I wanted to reach and the people I didn’t know how to help, and every weapon I owned useless against both.

Chapter 12

Sarah

The supply room had its own kind of logic. Boxes stacked by category, not alphabetically. Alyson had organized it enthusiastically eight months ago. Antibiotics on the left wall. Anti-inflammatories on the right. Sedation drugs locked in the metal cabinet with a latch that had rusted halfway shut.

I sat cross-legged on the concrete floor with the master inventory sheet on a clipboard, marking numbers as Alyson called them out. She worked the shelves, pulling boxes and checking labels, her phone balanced in her back pocket where it buzzed every thirty seconds.

Daniel sat on a crate near the door, slowly wiping down a set of hemostats that were already clean.

“How many meloxicam?” I asked.

“Fourteen. No, wait.” Alyson held a vial up to the light. “Thirteen. One’s expired.”

“Pull it.”

She set it aside. I scratched the number on the sheet and moved to the next row. Daniel kept working the same spot on the hemostats and didn’t offer to help.

“Daniel,” Alyson said without looking up, “the topical kits need counting too.”

“I was already going to do those next.”

“You’ve been wiping those hemostats for twenty minutes. They were clean when you started.”

He set them down and wandered toward the shelf with the topical kits, picking one up and turning it over in his hands like he’d never seen one before. Alyson caught my eye, and I looked back at my clipboard. We’d been doing this dance for months. Alyson asking, Daniel stalling.

We worked through the shelves in sections. Alyson was fast and accurate when she wasn’t checking her phone, which was about half the time. Daniel counted the topical kits at a pace that suggested he was also reading each label for personal enrichment.

“Did you hear back from KWS?” Alyson asked me. “About the snare.”

“Yesterday.” I checked a box of syringes and marked the count. “The liaison went out to the village and talked to the family. Given everything that happened—the fire, the men in the hospital—they’re not pressing charges.”

Alyson stopped counting. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it. It was illegal. All hunting here is illegal. But there are special circumstances to consider.” I capped the pen and set it on the floor beside me. “The family lost their breadwinners to the fire. The men are still in the hospital in Nanyuki. Nobody was bringing in food. The liaison talked to them, made it clear the conservancy is aware, and left it as a first and hopefully last warning.”

“Good.” Alyson turned back to the shelf. “I mean, it’s awful. All of it. But at least it’s resolved.”

I moved on to the next shelf. The snare had sat over the whole camp for days. I felt some slight relief at knowing no further harm would be caused, either by the family or to the family by the courts.

Alyson reached the back of the parasiticide shelf and pulled out a box I hadn’t seen her touch before. She opened it, looked inside, and frowned.

“Sarah. We’re almost out of the xylazine.”

I looked up. “How low?”

“Two vials.”

There should have been at least eight. We used it for large-animal sedation. Rhinos, buffalo, lions, anything big enough that putting it down safely required precision chemistry. Without it, the next emergency darting would be a real problem.

“That has to come from Nanyuki,” I said. “The regular suppliers don’t carry it. It’s a specialty order through the veterinary pharmacy there.”