Maiden and the Lion by Lizzie Lynn Lee Page B

cafe. The four quickly became friends and planned a trip to the Kruger National Park. Since Judith and her brother were trust-fund kids, they’d been allergic to hardship and had wanted their travel arrangements to be as comfortable as possible. Judith had booked expensive accommodation in Kingston Camp, a colonial game lodge in Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. The camp had offered dangerous game hunting as one of its main attractions.
    On the fateful afternoon of October fifteenth, the four of them had coursed along with the park ranger, Nisi, on a dry creek in an open vehicle. They’d spotted a warthog. The party didn’t have a hunting licence, but Cameron had been hell-bent on killing something that day. He’d pulled out an antique Colt he’d purchased from a fellow lodger and shot the warthog. Instead of killing the overgrown male boar, though, Cameron had only pissed the warthog off. It had charged in their direction and managed to topple the vehicle. The five of them had scampered for cover and become separated.
    As the evening had approached, Judith had reunited with Oliver and Nisi, but they had lost contact with Gabriel and her brother. Oliver had broken his arm and wrist in the accident. Nisi had only scraped his knee. They’d spent the night in the wilderness before the other rangers had rescued them in the morning.
    Back in the camp, Judith had immediately faced bad news. Cameron had died from an accidental gunshot wound during the time they had been separated. Gabriel had been with him when it had happened. Judith had been devastated. Only when she’d come back to America with Cameron’s body had she realised that her brother’s death hadn’t been an accident. Cameron had been murdered.
    Joseph Hearne, a doctor who’d served as Rossi’s private physician at that time, had voiced his concern over Cameron’s gunshot wound before the wake. Cameron’s death couldn’t possibly have been caused in a self-inflicted accident. Judging from the entrance and exit wounds and the trajectory of the bullet, the deed must have been done by somebody shooting Cameron at close range.
    Armed with the new evidence, Judith had gone to the police to report the incident. Unfortunately, on the way there, Judith and Dr Hearne had been involved in a twenty-car pile-up, which had resulted in Dr Hearne’s instant death. Judith herself had become trapped in the burning car. She’d suffered extensive second- and third-degree burns that had landed her in a three-week coma. When she’d regained her consciousness, Cameron had already been cremated, Dr Hearne was dead, the evidence had been destroyed in the accident, and her family was stricken with grief.
    It had taken Judith five long years to pull herself together. Her family had been torn apart by the tragedy and deep in her heart she harboured suspicions that Gabriel was the one responsible for her brother’s death. The park ranger, Nisi, had been with her the night she and Cameron had been separated. Oliver had been injured—he couldn’t possibly have been the one who had committed the murder. Judith insisted that Gabriel must have been the cold-blooded killer.
    Cat took another long drag from her drink while she spied on her target. Gabe was in the middle of a serious discussion with Alex. A sliver of light from the low-hanging lamp above the pool table illuminated his youthful face. He didn’t look thirty-five at all. More like in his late twenties. Her heart gave a quick stir. Gabe was a really good-looking man. The photos she’d seen in the magazines and tabloids didn’t do him any justice.
    Could that soft-spoken, handsome man be the killer who’d murdered Cameron Rossi fourteen years ago?
    It was hard to believe Gabriel was capable of that heinous crime.
    He hadn’t had any motive to kill Cameron that Cat knew of.
    Jon had told Cat that people committed crimes for three main reasons—love, money or revenge. Gabriel hadn’t profited from Cameron’s death.