You are wounded, my dear Tanya. Thinking like that—using those words, dear Tanya—released a flood of emotion in his chest. A stake was driven into your heart when you were a tender woman. And now I have pushed it deeper. I just wanted to show you, Tanya. Can you understand that? Killing is all I have. It is what Sula gave me. I meant to show you that. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

Shannon leaned against the tall Yevaro tree beside him and let the pain roll through him. The jungle sounds fell away and he allowed himself to wallow in the strange sentiments. The field before him lay in surreal stillness, peaceful with Tanya resting on the grass. He stood at the perimeter, wreaking of blood. Like a foul monster peering from the shadows at a sleeping innocent beauty.

He clung to the bark and felt his torso buck with a dry sob.

It was the first time he’d ever felt such ravaging sorrow. She lay out there so innocent, breathing like a child, and he . . . he had nearly killed her.

Kill her, Shannon.

He blinked. The fog was washing through his mind and for a moment he thought he might be dying. Kill her? How could he even think of killing her?

Sula . . .

Shannon closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He stepped out into the clearing and then saw the dark stain in her hair when he was halfway across the clearing.

His instincts took over midstride, before he formed the clear thought that this was blood on her head. He dove and had the knife from his belt before he hit the grass.

“Stand up, you fool!” a voice sneered across the clearing.

That voice. A chill flashed down Shannon’s spine.

Tanya was still breathing—the wound hadn’t been fatal. A blow to the head had left her unconscious. And now Abdullah was screaming at him.

“Stand up or I will shoot your woman!”

Abdullah had found his way here! In a thousand square miles of jungle he had stumbled upon Tanya. It was the river, of course. He had taken the river as most would. The crocodiles hadn’t gotten to her, but Abdullah had.

Shannon’s mind had already climbed back into its killing skin. Now he would kill Abdullah. And he would do it in front of Tanya.

He stood slowly and saw Abdullah step from the trees, dragging a man by the collar. The priest! He had Father Petrus.

Shannon cursed his own carelessness. He had given Abdullah the upper hand. It was the insanity plaguing him, the voices screaming in his skull, the foolish sentiments—they had made him weak. Now he faced a man bearing a gun at a distance of twenty meters without the least element of stealth in his favor.