Page 31 of Ambush

Levi came back into the kitchen. “Blake, it’s dark. Can we look at the moon tonight? Mommy said it was okay,” he said.

Blake ruffled his hair. “I think that can be arranged.”

He never seemed impatient with his brothers. Paradise had forgotten how even-tempered he always was, and she liked that quality just as much now as she did back then.

***

Paradise waved away flying insects as she surveyed the hippo submerged in the pond. Her wild mane of curls blew in the light breeze, and the heat brought pink to her cheeks. Blake forced his attention to Bertha. Only her eyes and nostrils showed above the murky water.

Paradise put her hands on her hips. “How are we going to get her out?”

The hippo was Blake’s favorite animal in the preserve. He’d spent many happy hours fishing beside her. Hez had joined him on occasion as well. “Bertha, I brought something for you.” He got out of the Gator and went around to the back. He held up the out-of-season watermelon he’d paid a ridiculous price for, and he could have sworn he saw the hippo’s eyes light up.

“Look at her,” Paradise marveled. “She’s leaving the water for the melon.”

“And watch how she limps. I noticed it yesterday.”

Bertha lumbered toward them, and he backed away with the melon. She followed the lure of her favorite food, and the limp started almost at once. “See?” He let her walk a few more steps before approaching her with the melon. No need to cause her more misery. As he approached she opened her huge mouth, and he deposited the melon inside.

Paradise approached with a thermal tool. “Most hippos are aggressive, but she seems pretty mellow.”

“Bertha came to us as a calf, and I’ve never known her to charge.”

Paradise knelt by the affected right back leg and checked the temperature on the thermal-imaging camera. “The heat in the joint above her foot is elevated by two degrees. She might have a stress fracture in a toe or in the joint. I’ll give her an anti-inflammatory, and we should make sure she doesn’t use it much until the temperature reading goes down.”

“So more food and less foraging.” He patted the hippo’s head. “You’ll like that, you lazy girl.”

Paradise started to stand, then stopped. “Wait a second, what’s this?” She peered closer at Bertha’s foot. “There’s something wrapped around her toes here. I’ll have to sedate her to removeit. I doubt she would be accommodating enough to lift her hoof off the ground for me.”

“Probably not.” And he wouldn’t want to run the risk of the hippo injuring Paradise.

She injected Bertha with the sedative. It took several minutes for the medicine to take effect. The hippo staggered toward the water, then crumpled to the mud before she reached it.

He joined Paradise beside the animal, and when she struggled to lift the heavy hoof, he reached in. “Let me get that. You see if you can figure out what’s wrong.”

It took all his effort to hold Bertha’s leg up while Paradise fiddled with whatever was causing the hippo’s lameness. “It’s some kind of wire,” she muttered. “There, I think I’ve got it. You can put her leg down.”

“Gladly.” He lowered the hippo’s leg and straightened. “Maybe it’s not a fracture at all that was causing the pain.”

“Probably not. The wire could have cut off blood flow, which affected her mobility.” She rose from beside the sleeping hippo and held up the wire.

His stomach bottomed out, and he took the wire from her fingers. This type of thing was a common sight when he was in war zones. “Blasting cap wire.”

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “Let’s do a sweep of the area around her enclosure. Someone could have planted an explosive device.”

Paradise put her bag of medical supplies away, and he grabbed boots for both of them from the back. “Here, put these on. Most of the area around here is marshy, and you’re liable to sink in mud to your ankles.”

She paused and slid her feet into them. “Let’s split up. What am I looking for?”

“Maybe more wire attached to a long metal insert. Maybe blasting material. Call me, and don’t touch anything dangerous.”

“Got it.”

He walked toward the north side of the pond while she went the other way through a straggly stand of trees and marsh grass. Mud tried to suck a boot off, and he paused to yank it back on. Bent over, he saw the ground from a different angle and spotted a flash of something red sticking up out of the mud. He pulled at it and discovered another length of blasting wire about three feet long.

This wasn’t good. Who had been out here with this kind of material? He wiped the mud from his hands onto his jeans and grabbed his phone to call the sheriff’s department. When he explained what he’d found, he was passed to Greene, the last person he wanted to talk to.

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