Page 11 of Sheltering Instinct

Who knew? If not Mojo, maybe Enrico had a line on a dog that would be a good fit for Levi.

Chapter Three

Tess

Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia

Cocooned in the puffy warmth of her sleeping bag, face fresh in the cold desert night air, Tess had been blissfully in the void of sleep when a phone ping blinked her awake.

Rubbing the heels of her palms against her lids, she turned toward the rustling of her friend, pulling herself up to sit. “Gwen,” Tess whispered, “what time is it?” The night had been too short, and the green walls of the tent hadn’t brightened with the rising sun.

“Three fifteen. It’s not time to get up yet. Our team channel … hang on, I can’t find my glasses.”

Whatever thoughts one of their fellow tourists had in the middle of the night could, honestly, have been a “note to self” and posted in the morning when people rose to the new day. As Tess squirmed deeper into her bag, hoping to plunge back into the wonderful nothingness of perfect sleep, Gwen reached out and patted Tess’s thigh. “Got your GPS handy?”

“Why?” Her hand stretched into the cold air, feeling for her grab-and-go bag with the ten survival essentials she kept within arm’s reach when in the field—be it for work or, like right now, for play. Pulling her headlamp into place, clicking it on, and adjusting the light to green so she could see red map lines and not affect her night vision, Tess dug her backup, handheld GPS unit from the bottom of the pack. Wi-Fi was non-existent out here in the desert. Even basic phone connectivity had wide swaths of dead zones, and this was one of them. Where Tess didn’t get the ping, her friend and colleague Gwen did. It was allcarrier-dependent, and, luckily, Gwen had her Namibian phone with her.

“Mandy went to the bathroom and got lost on the way back,” Gwen spoke in an undertone that would keep their conversation in their tent, letting the other happy tourists sleep on.

“Lost?” The communal bathhouse was only about fifty yards away.

“Lights are out. She was using her phone flashlight.” Gwen tugged on a pair of fleece-lined tactical pants. The days out here were uncomfortably hot, and the desert nights were bitterly cold.

After searching the GPS for “gas” and finding the station, Tess pulled warm clothes over her pajamas.

The mating calls of jackals rode the breeze. Their howls were reminiscent of a wolf, only high-pitched and short-lived. “Eerie as hell. I bet Mandy was scared to death alone in the dark with a cellphone light and the jackals,” Tess murmured. “I would be.”

The sweater Gwen pulled over her head muffled her voice. “I texted Mandy to sit tight. We’re coming for her. I bet she’ll feel better now that she knows the cavalry is coming.”

Tess scooted on her butt down the bag to grab her boots,

“Check them for scorpions.” Gwen tugged on a wool sock.

“Yup.” Tess unzipped the door and held her boot upside down for a good shake and tap before putting them on and lacing up. If a scorpion had found its way to the toe of her boot, she didn’t want to release it in the tent. She still had hopes of getting a few more hours of shut-eye after this impromptu adventure.

“I bet you Mandy isn’t wearing boots. She was walking around camp last night in flip-flops.”

“Okay, what’s the danger?” Tess asked.

“Never walk barefoot or without a flashlight at night in Namibia as a rule. Some snakes are active after sunset, and slow-moving snakes are easy to step on. The puff adder, for instance. Highly venomous.”

“And the closest hospital is five hours away. That seems like a dangerous distance.” Tess scanned her light over the area immediately in front of her. “Are there puff adders here in the desert?”

“Usually not. I was just using that as an example.”

“Wonderful. Well, just so you know, I downloaded the Namibian snake app before I came.”

“Of course you did,” Gwen said, grabbing her bag.

Once Tess had cleared the door, she waited for Gwen to follow.

Aiming her light toward the ground, Tess pointed out the jackal tracks that had circled their tent at some point that night. But they must have scampered out of their campsite because Tess didn’t catch glowing eyes in her green light. She scanned along the group’s designated area, ringed with a wall of stones. That wall might have provided some buffer from the blowing desert sand, but it did nothing to separate the campers from the wild.

Seven of their group’s ten tourists slept in tents; three had decided—at their guide’s suggestion—to sleep under the stars as he did. Of course, the tourists with no wilding experience were on the ground with the desert animals, and the guide slept high and protected on the flat roof of their off-roading vehicle.

Tess stopped at Mandy’s tent and unzipped the door. She reached in and grabbed up Mandy’s boots. Pulling out socks that Mandy had shoved in the tops, she held them at arm's length and gave them a vigorous shake. Sticking the socks under her arm, Tess turned the boots over to do the scorpion tap, put the socksback in, tied the laces together, and draped them over her neck before zipping the tent shut.

No one needed a surprise jackal curled on their sleeping bag.

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