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    ‘Jed, it can’t be true.’ She leaned back and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
    ‘I know, Patti. I can’t believe it myself.’
    ‘She’s all right, Jed, I know it. She might be hurt, but she’s not dead.’
    Jed wanted so much to believe Patti was right.
    ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down. Are you alone?’
    ‘Rob’s outside. It’ll take an age for him to park the car. How long have you got?’
    ‘Less than an hour, and I’ve got to check in for my connection to Johannesburg. Let’s get a coffee.’
    He ushered her across to a café, his hand on her elbow. He sat her at a table and she blew her nose on a tissue.
    ‘OK, tell me about this email you got,’ Jed said when he returned from the counter with two black coffees.
    She sniffed again, then rummaged in her big leather handbag. ‘It’s from a professor. Wallis is her name, Christine.’ Patti pulled a crumpled print-out from the bag and smoothed it out on the laminated tabletop. ‘Miranda met her during her final year at college – said the professor ran a postgraduate program for zoology majors in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Professor Wallis was the one who put Miranda onto this research project in Zimbabwe.’
    Jed nodded. He remembered Miranda’s description of the program, if not the names of the people involved. Zimbabwe had been short of foreign aid for years, because of its political and security situation, and it seemed the few foreign wildlife researchers left in the troubled nation were welcoming with open arms any contributions or volunteers. Miranda had mentioned that she was being funded by a US-based wildlife conservation group, as an offshoot of the program being run by Christine Wallis in South Africa. He couldn’t remember the name of the organisation. ‘So what did the professor have to say?’
    ‘Well, the media were reporting Miranda’s …’ Patti’s lip began to tremble again.
    ‘It’s OK, Sugar,’ he said, a little surprised at how easily the old nickname came back. ‘I saw the reports.’ He had printed them off at Bagram. ‘They said it appeared she had been sleeping with her tent flap open and that a lion had entered.’
    Patti nodded, took a deep breath and held up the paper. ‘Professor Wallis says, “ These reports surprised me greatly as Miranda is always so sensible when she spends time in the field. She always made a point of making sure her tent was completely secure, and was well aware of a recent case in which a young man was taken by a lion because he slept with his tent open on a particularly hot evening.”’
    Jed nodded. He wondered why anyone would sleep in a tent when there were lions around. ‘I don’t know, Patti. People get lazy when they get out into the field.’ That was true. He’d had a buddy who had been bitten by a snake at ranger school because he had left his sleeping bag unrolled during the day, allowing the reptile to slither inside.
    ‘This goddamned professor sent her there, Jed, and now she feels guilty. That’s what I know. But she does say that the press reports don’t tally with what she knew of Miranda.’
    Jed took the offered print-out and scanned it. ‘Says she’s going to go to Zimbabwe to talk to the authorities herself.’
    ‘Find her, Jed. Talk to her. Find out if Miranda could still be alive. I know she’s not dead, and the police and park rangers say they haven’t found her body.’
    Jed nodded. There were explanations for that, but he didn’t want to voice them in front of Patti.
    She was conveniently ignoring the media reports that human remains had been found at the scene of the attack. Now wasn’t the time to remind her. ‘I’ll do what I can, Patti. There will be arrangements to make with the embassy in any case.’
    ‘Thank you, Jed.’ Patti looked as though she would cry again.
    ‘You look great,’ Jed said, trying to get her to relax.
    She looked down at the table and felt her cheeks start to colour. She