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“Lucky girl Have sex for me But be ready to be back to work next Friday The violence in Sierra Leone is escalating again The peace talks are going to fall apart I want you there before Christmas ”
“You know me,” Nina said “Ready to fly at a moment’s notice ”
“I won’t call unless a near breaks out I proet laid while I try to remember what it’s like ”
A few days later, Nina was in Namibia, in a rented Land Rover, with Danny at the wheel
It was only seven in the ht and warm By one o’clock, the terees, and it could well be hotter The road—if you could call it that—was really a river of thick reddish gray sand that sucked at the car’s tires and sent the one way and then the other Nina held on to the door handle and sat up straight, trying towith the motion
She used her other hand to steady the ca around her neck so that the strap didn’t bite into her flesh A T-shirt rapped around the camera and lens—not a very professional way to battle dust, but in all her years in Africa, it had proven to be the best compromise between protection and use Here, sorab your camera and take the shot No time to fumble with straps and cases
She stared out at the desolate, blistering landscape As the hours passed, taking them farther and farther from any semblance of civilization and deeper into one of the last true wildernesses of southern Africa, she noticedby dry riverbeds In this su where they stood as they waited for the rains to co bones lay everywhere
“You sure you want to find the Hirin as they slammed sideways and almost found themselves stuck in the sand The dirt on his face ht Dust powdered his collar-length black hair and shirt “We haven’t had a week to ourselves in months ”
The so-called road beca hi the shot just a little, she saw hier: a handsome thirty-nine-year-old Irishman with pronounced cheekbones and a nose that had been broken hts as a lad, he always said, and just nohen he was looking ahead, concentrating on the road, she could see the tiny frown lines around his mouth He orried that he’d followed bad advice on the wrong road, though he’d never say such a thing He was a war correspondent and used to being “in the shit,” as he liked to say, used to following a story to hell and back Even if it wasn’t his story
She took the shot
He flashed her a sraph woest waitresses at a poolside bar ”
She laughed and put the ca the lens with its cap “I owe you one ”
“Indeed you do, love, and I’ll be collecting, you c’n be sure ”
Nina leaned back into the torn, uncomfortable seat and tried not to close her eyes, but she was exhausted After teeks tracking poachers through the jungle and four weeks before that in Angola watching people kill each other, she was tired to the bone
And still, she loved it There was nowhere in the world she’d rather be and nothing she’d rather be doing Finding “the shot” was an adrenaline-fueled fun ride, and one she never tired of, nothe way She’d known that sixteen years ago, when at twenty-one, with a journalisree under her belt and a used caone in search of her destiny