Page 52 of Sheltering Instinct

“Behind our vehicle, Otto pulled a trailer with camping gear and our personal items.”

Gwen made a “can you believe?” face. “But no freaking water.”

Tess stopped and smiled.

“Sorry, more coffee, less cranky.” Gwen reached for the carafe. “Keep going.”

Tess turned to the head of the table. “As you were saying, Craig, Namibia is a land of storytelling. Unfortunately, some of those stories are tall tales. For hours on end, our guide, Otto, waxed poetic about his months-long forays into the jungles in Botswana, Angola, and South Africa. He had tales of his mighty feats as he overcame situations that required cunning and might. Unfortunately, the times when we depended on him, he proved to be,” Tess sighed, “perhaps telling someone else’s stories of expedition glory.”

“Fertile imagination,” Gwen said as she lifted her coffee mug to her lips.

“A bloated ego is hazardous anywhere, but especially in places like Namibia where so much can go so wrong so quickly without access to resources,” Enrico said.

“Exactly.” Tess nodded. “And when you couple an ego with a four-wheel drive vehicle that somehow functioned as only a two-wheeled rear-drive vehicle, you run into trouble in certain terrains.”

“We got sand-bogged at Big Daddy.” Gwen set her mug down.

“That’s dangerous,” Iris said with a scowl. “He took you out into the dunes in a two-wheeled heavy vehicle? Mercy.”

Tess reached for her own mug of coffee. “To be fair, he seemed pretty surprised to discover the situation. Just like we were pretty surprised that he forgot to bring water.”

“What?” Iris scowled.

“Not just forgot but made the decision to unload the drinking water at our campsite. Luckily—” Gwen leaned to the side to give the server space to set her plate down. “Thank you.” She straightened herself and lifted her fork. “Luckily, we came out of the Big Daddy debacle no worse for wear.”

“Not entirely true,” Tess said. “We began the trek with four spare tires, and Otto went through all of them. As each tire punctured along the way, we’d keep stopping and changing them over.”

“That’s part of driving in Namibia.” Enrico accepted his breakfast plate from the server. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“I understood the problem with the tires. That’s not the outfit’s fault,” Gwen said. “Where they were at fault was that there was something seriously wrong with the vehicle.”

“Two-wheel drive with a trailer is difficult,” Enrico told the Iniquus men sitting across from him. “The roads are sometimes flat, but there are a lot of elevation changes.”

“Yes, that too, but there was a bigger issue,” Gwen said, cutting into her sausage, “On the way to Big Daddy, the car suddenly stopped. Just completely stopped. There was nothing. No click, no turnover, it absolutely flatlined.”

Tess said, “Otto looked at things, trying to figure it out. And finally, he announced it had something to do with the fuel.”

“He had an extra fuel tank in the trailer?” Enrico asked.

“Exactly,” Tess said. “He started the pump to move the gas from one tank to the other. It took a while, but at this point, we were all in good spirits, on our way to desert camping and dune climbing. The vehicle started after he did that.”

“Was the fuel the thing that made it start again?” Levi asked. “Or did resting for a few minutes do the trick?”

“That's astute.” Gwen sent Levi a warm smile. Her gaze held his just a second too long.

Tess whipped her head around to see how Levi responded.

He was reaching for the salt and pepper.

Averting her eyes, Tess looked down at her plate of eggs, toast, salad, and slices of meat.

Craig followed her gaze. “It’s wild meats from our range lands. We culled the ones causing issues. So if the meats a bit tough, well, so were their personalities.”

“Dad!” Gwen wrinkled her nose. “That’s so not funny.”

“We’re having zebra and wildebeest,” Iris said with her knife in her hand. “The one on the right is wildebeest. Try that one first.”

Gwen laughed at how long Tess was chewing that bite. “What do you think, Tess?”

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