Hot Ice

gesture.
    The jeep had definitely seen better days. Though it shone from a fresh washing, the engine spit and missed as a Merina with a bright, rolled headband drove it up the rutted road.
    As a getaway car, he figured it came in a poor second to a blind mule. “It won’t go twenty miles.”
    “It’ll be twenty miles we don’t use our feet. Say thank you, Douglas, and stop being rude. Pierre’s going to drive us to the Tamatave province.”
    It only took one look at Pierre to see that he’d freely imbibed palm wine. They’d be lucky if they didn’t end up sunk in a rice paddy. “Terrific.” Pessimistic, and dealing with a headache from his own free use of wine, Doug said a formal good-bye to Louis.
    Whitney’s was much lengthier and more elaborate. Doug climbed into the back of the jeep and stretched out his legs. “Get your ass in gear, sweetheart. It’ll be dark in an hour.”
    Smiling at the Merina who crowded around the jeep, she stepped in. “Up yours, Lord.” Settling the pack on the floor at her feet, she leaned back and swung one arm jauntily over the back of the seat. “Avant, Pierre.”
    The jeep lurched forward, bucked, then rattled down the road. Doug felt his headache explode in tiny, unmerciful blasts. He closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep.
    Whitney took the teeth-rattling ride in stride. She’d been wined, dined, and entertained. The same could be said about dinner at the 21 Club and a Broadway show. And this had been unique. Perhaps this wasn’t a hansom-cab ride through the park, but anyone with twenty dollars could have one of those. She was bouncing along a road in Madagascar in a jeep driven by a Merina native with a thief snoring lightly in the back. It was entirely more interesting than a sedate ride through Central Park.
    For the most part, the scenery was monotonous. Red hills, almost treeless, wide valleys patched with fields. It had cooled now that the sun was hanging low, but the day’s baking left the road dusty. It plumed under the wheels and coated the just-washed jeep. There were mountains that rose up sharply, but again, pines were sparse. It was rock and earth. Though there was a sameness, it was the basic space that caught Whitney’s imagination.
    Miles of it, she mused. Miles and miles with nothing to block the sky, nothing to impede the vision. She felt it would be possible to find here a sense of self that a city dweller would never understand.
    From time to time in New York, she missed the sky. When the feeling came upon her, she would simply hop a plane and go wherever the spirit moved her, staying until her mood swung again. Her friends accepted it because they couldn’t do anything about it. Her family accepted it because they were still waiting for her to settle down.
    Perhaps it was the aloneness, perhaps it was a full stomach and a clear head, but she felt a strange contentment. It would pass. Whitney knew herself too well to think otherwise. She hadn’t been fashioned for long periods of contentment, but rather for darting around the next corner to see what was waiting.
    For now, though, she leaned back in the jeep and enjoyed the serenity. Shadows shifted, lengthened, thickened. Something small and fast dashed across the road just in front of the jeep. It was over the rocks and gone before Whitney could fully focus on it. The air began to take on that pearly hush that lasts only moments.
    The sun set, spectacularly. She had to turn and kneel on her seat to watch the western sky explode with color. Part of her profession dealt with incorporating tints and hues into fabrics and paints. As she watched, she thought about doing a room in the colors of sunset. Crimsons, golds, deep jewel blues, and softening mauves. An interesting and intense combination. Her gaze lowered and rested on Doug as he slept. It would suit him, she decided. The flash of brilliance, the spark of power, the underlying intensity.
    He wasn’t a man to take lightly, nor was he a man to trust. Still, she was beginning to think he was a man who could fascinate. Like a sunset, he could shift and change before your eyes, then vanish while you were still looking. The moment he’d taken that rifle in his hands, she’d seen he had a ruthlessness he could pull out and slip on at a moment’s notice. If and when he found it necessary, he’d be just as ruthless with her.
    She needed more leverage.
    Catching her tongue between her teeth, Whitney looked from him to the floor. The