“Speak of the devil. Here she is!” Andrew spoke loudly, competing with the monsoon that had reappeared. It threatened to rip the overhang clear off the building. Natalie paused a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dim light. It amazed her sometimes how casually the people who lived in this region of the world accepted wild weather.
Five people sat around one of the picnic tables that had been pushed deep into the pocket of the platform underneath the overhang and against the only corner. It offered some protection from the rain, but not enough. The winds blew the rain sideways, soaking everyone at the table. Natalie peered more closely. A single fat candle flickered, casting shadows on their wet faces: Andrew, Mali, Karina, Hatcher, and a man she didn’t recognize.
She sat down and looked around the table. The new guy, the man Andrew had referred to earlier as “company,” flashed a smile at her so bright she would have been able to see it in the dark. He reached out a hand. “I gather you’re Dr. DeAngelo.” He, too, raised his voice but his was smooth rather than strained, as Andrew’s had been. “I’m Seth Vincennes.”
As she shook his hand, she realized she’d heard that name before, and he looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place him. He wore a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms the same rich walnut color as Mali’s skin. A bit taller than Natalie, he was slim but sturdy. His handshake was strong. Warm. And his accent was definitely not Thai. He had grown up speaking English. Indian, maybe. She’d figure it out later.
“Andrew forwarded your article, and I’m quite impressed,” Vincennes said. “You must be one of the first western women to become a mahout—and to rehabilitate a pachyderm others considered, well, violent. Wasn’t she?” He turned to Andrew for confirmation.
“Dr. Hatcher was ready to put her down,” Andrew said.
Hatcher adjusted his fogged-up glasses and kept silent.
“I’m not a mahout,” Natalie said.
Vincennes’s mouth opened a bit as if he was trying to figure out what to say.
A crack of lightning lit up the meadow and outlined the jagged mountain peaks in the distance. Natalie glanced toward the enclosures, straining to hear any trumpeting, but the rain and wind obliterated any other sounds.
“Is this Sophie now back with the herd?” Vincennes asked.
Does this guy not notice we are in the middle of a storm? Natalie wrapped her arms around herself, told herself to be patient.
Mali and Karina huddled together on the other side of the table, obviously miserable. They weren’t best friends, so to see them, shoulders touching, seemed odd. But what was even stranger was that neither Andrew nor Hatcher seemed to register the women’s discomfort. Instead, they continued to chat with Vincennes as if they’d finished nine holes and were enjoying a whiskey sour on the veranda of the Pinehurst Country Club where women wore big straw hats with their pink-and-green Lilly Pulitzer sundresses.
Vincennes had the steady gaze of a man who’d never doubted that he was anything less than pertinent to the conversation. He wore a slight smile and had straight shoulders he pulled back slightly. He appeared confident, sure of himself. She could see why Andrew wanted to prove something to this man even though she still couldn’t figure out who he was.
Thunder rolled again, then for a split second, silence prevailed. In the distance, she heard a series of trumpets. The herd.
She stood. “I’m sorry, but Sophie and some of the other elephants are having a hard time with this storm, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to beg your forgiveness and go calm them.”
Vincennes rose as if preparing to pull out her chair like he would if they were at a dinner party. The perfect gentleman. She wanted to laugh; instead, she simply moved aside. Who the hell is this guy anyway?
“Of course you need to tend to your animals,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to help?” His words and accent were distinctly British, yet some other accent flickered beneath the British.
This time she did laugh. Aloud. “No, no, but thanks. You’re in dry clothes. Maybe you can come meet them tomorrow.”
In a swift movement Natalie didn’t see coming, he stepped out past the overhang. “No need to worry about me.” He spread his arms wide as he stood in the pouring rain, and within a heartbeat, he was soaked. “Not like I’m going to melt.” He laughed as if getting wet was the highlight of his day. “Besides, I want to meet this Sophie.”
Natalie caught Andrew’s eye. “Don’t look at me, dearie,” he said, throwing both hands up as if in defeat. “The only place Mali and I are going tonight is the cabin. If you want to bring this crazy man to meet Sophie, it’s up to you. I’m sure Karina has had it for the night, too. Right, love?” He glanced at his sister.
Karina nodded and stood, shifting to the right and placing both hands on her lower back. “I’ve done my duty. A four-hour one-way ride down and back to the Bangkok airport is enough for me for one day. I thought we’d need a boat on the way back. Right now, a cup of sherry and dry clothes is all I want. Mr. Vincennes, why don’t you meet me here tomorrow morning, and if it’s cleared up, I’ll take you on a tour?” Her voice rose, becoming high-pitched and falsely cheerful.
“You can take me tomorrow,” Vincennes told Karina, “but tonight I’m going to meet Sophie.”
Without asking for permission, he grabbed Natalie’s hand and said, “Let’s make a mad dash for it! Lead on, Dr. DeAngelo!”
Two seconds later, they splashed through running water, heading for Sophie’s enclosure.
Neither spoke as they dashed down the muddy road, slipping and nearly falling several times. Still, Vincennes’s grip on her hand stayed strong, and when they reached the enclosure, Natalie felt almost reluctant to release it.
The enclosure reeked of elephant dung. “Looks like this storm has literally scared the shit out of someone,” Vincennes said, waving a hand in front of his nose. He laughed good-naturedly, and she shared in his laughter as if she’d known him since high school.
The elephants—Ali, Pahpao, Thaya, and Mai—that had decided to join Sophie outside her enclosure were female with the exception of Ali. The females would not have included him in their group if he’d been in mustph. Thankfully for him, he’d experienced his mustph last month. But because he wasn’t currently raging with testosterone, he acted like the biggest baby in the herd and needed company during thunderstorms. Even now, though he stood at least two feet taller than the other elephants, he frantically tried to squeeze into the middle of the group. Sophie reached for him with her trunk, but the rest of the females ignored him, bumping him with their butts as if he was one of the adolescents.
Vincennes stood a step or two behind Natalie under the overhang, yet not out of the rain. It didn’t seem to bother him. The wetter he became, the tighter his jet black hair curled. It created commas around his forehead and the tips of his ears, shining with the moisture.
“So who are these beauties?” he asked.
As Natalie introduced him to each of the elephants, she watched his face. His eyes, almost black and rimmed with long and feminine kohl eyelashes, squinted a bit as he studied each elephant, his gaze roaming over their faces as if appraising them. But she suspected it was more than that. It seemed he knew he must silently assure them that he was both confident and non-threatening. He aroused her curiosity.
He must be a philanthropist of some sort, one of Andrew’s friends, perhaps one of the people who funded the sanctuaries. Maybe that’s why his name appeared vaguely familiar. And maybe that’s where his self-confidence came from. The few people she knew who were immensely wealthy had an air about them that was difficult to describe as if every one of their physical needs had been met so now they recognized and enjoyed their passions. On some people, that air became an obnoxious and selfish black cloud, while others reflected their passion and embraced new experiences joyfully, like a child, making them appear the golden people. Andrew was like that and Seth Vincennes seemed to be as well. He also wasn’t afraid to get wet.
“And the bull over there who’s a scaredy cat is Ali,” she continued. “He’s Sophie’s best friend.” Natalie gestured toward Ali who had his head tucked against Thaya’s butt. “He’s not a big fan of storms. He’s also a strange male. Usually the boys don’t hang out with the girls in the elephant world.”
“Has he been trained using protected contact, too?”
“No, Sophie’s the only one. The other vet who’s here isn’t quite sold on the technique yet, so Sophie was an experiment. He still believes the mahouts need to use the ankus to direct the elephants. We don’t agree on that. Obviously.” She moved further under the enclosure and reached for Sophie, whose ears were at full attention, a sure sign of her heightened anxiety. Sophie didn’t know Seth Vincennes—and didn’t always trust men. Even though Natalie was sure the storm was the source of most of Sophie’s anxiety, she suspected Vincennes’s sudden appearance in the enclosure hadn’t helped.
“How long have you been working exclusively with Sophie?” he asked, leaning against the gate.
“Almost six months. Every day,” she answered. She stood in the middle of the circle of elephants now, touching each of them and talking to them quietly.
“What treatments is she still getting?”
“The leg wound has pretty much healed, so I work with a salve, for the most part.” Natalie angled herself back so she could see him and kept her voice even. This wasn’t exactly the right time for an interview, but it appeared she didn’t have a choice.
“What about Sophie’s history? Any chance of a relapse into her previously violent reactions?”
“I don’t think so,” Natalie said. She told him the little she knew and the ways she treated Sophie’s PTSD. As she spoke, Sophie watched her, as if she knew Natalie was talking about her. “I’m convinced 90% of Sophie’s reactions were due to the incredible pain she was in.”
Natalie stroked Sophie’s ear as she spoke, willing the elephant to calm. “She’d worn a hooked chain on two legs for most of her life. The infection in her front leg had started to eat the bone. We’re lucky we were able to aggressively treat it—and I really credit the protected contact technique with giving us the capability of moving her leg and administering medicines in a way that was safe for us and calming for her.” As if on cue, Sophie shifted and leaned on her good leg. “Man, once those medicines started working, she calmed down, and I was able to get her to follow the commands the mahouts taught me. It was like magic. Even now, she loves being in the enclosure. She feels safe, I think.”
The thunder abated a bit, though rain still pelted against the roof like machine gun bullets.
“Your article said something about her being insecure around men.” Vincennes took a few steps toward Sophie. The elephant turned her head a bit so she could watch him with her good eye.
“It amazes me that you actually read my whole paper,” Natalie laughed. “When I was regularly publishing, the only people who read my papers were my editors.”
“Of course I did. Why do you think I’m here? In fact, a lot of people are going to read it. Don’t you know you’ll be the talk of the veterinary world? All over the blogs. Your work with PTSD is going to help so many elephants. Hasn’t Andrew told you? I’m here to get the scoop. You’re going to make news in the animal world.” He stood now with his feet spread and his hands on his hips, a flirtatious smile pulling at his mouth.
“No, I didn’t know, to tell you the truth.”
“Then you don’t know who I am, do you?” He laughed as if totally delighted that she wasn’t impressed with him.
“No, I don’t. Should I?”
“Well, a lot of people do.”
She shook her head in apology.
“Do you watch Nat Geo?”
“I haven’t watched television in a long time. And I purposefully haven’t used my cell phone since arriving here. The only time I’ve used technology is for research.” She waved a hand to indicate the area around them. “We don’t get great reception. And to tell the truth, I haven’t missed it.”
He laughed, a deep, rolling laugh that indicated he had taken no offense.
In the light from the gas lanterns hanging from the enclosure’s poles, she studied Seth Vincennes once again. When he watched the elephants or glanced her way, it was with those black fringed eyes, made serious by a squint, as though he spent a lot of time in the sun. A ragged, short beard, kept close to his chin and a sketchy moustache served to punctuate full lips. It was an attractive face, a deceptively serious face, until he smiled, then everything changed, and she was disarmed. Unnerved. Uncomfortable. When he stood near her, she was aware of how tall he was. Six foot two or three, she would guess, and he carried that height comfortably. In another life, he’d be a basketball player or a cowboy. Here in Thailand, he was an anomaly.
Who the hell was he anyway?
He turned to her, only six inches or so away. So close, she could smell his minty breath.
“We’re on TV. My show . . . it’s . . . uh . . .” For a moment, he stammered, which wasn’t exactly what she expected. Could he be a bit embarrassed? She watched him duck his head and run his fingers through his thick wave of hair. “I have a show on Nat Geo. Exotic Beasts of the World. A combination travel documentary and animal reality series. I’m kind of . . . well, I’m the host. I think they chose me because of my vet experience, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.” He grinned modestly. “Each week we focus on a story about human interactions with animals. You know, who’s doing something great with an endangered species or breaking ground with new research.” He paused and flashed her one of his smiles and arched one eyebrow flirtatiously, “Or who’s raising the most adorable baby tiger kittens.”
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything though she had to clamp her mouth shut to do so.
“That was a joke. You can laugh,” he said, though he wasn’t laughing himself.
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was nervous.
“My road crew will be here tomorrow. I always get to the location first to scope out the place where we’re going to shoot, and once we’re pretty set, I bring my guys in. Always works out better that way.”
“A television crew,” Natalie repeated slowly. “Cameras and sets and crew members.” She ran her hand absent-mindedly along the edge of Sophie’s trunk. The elephant rumbled and drew her trunk up Natalie’s arm. She could sense Natalie was getting upset.
He nodded and cocked his head to the side. “Andrew didn’t tell you, did he?”
“Not really, but he doesn’t have to, does he? I understand.”
“Hope you do, because Andrew gave me his permission to be here for a month and the wherewithal to shoot what I wish.”
The back of her neck prickled. Had Andrew thought about what this might do to the elephants, particularly Sophie? Why hadn’t he spoken to her about this? Maybe she shouldn’t have written that paper, but how could she have known how much attention it would garner?
A month. The words reverberated as if a gong had been sounded next to her ear.
A television crew.