Free The Crocodile's Last Embrace by Suzanne Arruda

the target. They hit the dummy in the rump, the nose, and the leg, but none pierced the heart. As far as Jade could see, the parents couldn’t have been prouder anyway, and each girl received her share of applause and accolades.
    “That will teach old simba to attack our girls, won’t it?” said Mr. Gault after his daughter, Lily, landed an arrow on the target’s nose.
    Helen, who shot last and hit the straw cat in the hindquarters, walked up to Jade holding the large bow. “If you would please demonstrate for us again, Lieutenant Jade,” she said with a salute.
    Jade took the bow with a smile while Beverly shooed everyone farther back, explaining that Jade would shoot from where she stood at nearly one hundred feet. Mary handed Jade an arrow and stepped aside, joining Helen. Jade thought she detected a knowing look pass between the girls and dismissed it as troop pride in their instructor.
    Better make this one count then.
    Jade turned sideways to the target and drew back her bow, her fingertips barely grazing her cheek. She took one deep breath, held it, and released the arrow. It flew true and struck the paper heart dead center.
    Polite applause followed, but Jade paid it no mind. All her attention was focused on the paper heart. It pulsed softly, as though the arrow had brought it to life. She could almost hear it, beating in time with her own. The red shifted in a creeping mass until it coalesced into thick blood and dripped onto the ground just as Jade dropped her bow.

CHAPTER 5
    But with the fish also come the crocodiles.
    —The Traveler

    “JADE, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? Jade!” Beverly’s voice came from a distance like a memory, one of an abandoned basement, a bloodstained scarf, and David’s cryptic ring—the ring that held the clue to his father’s murder. Jade looked at her hands, expecting to see that ring there. It took Finch’s hand gripping her elbow to snap her back to the present.
    “It’s just paint,” he whispered. “Nothing to be alarmed at. Only the girls having a lark, it seems.”
    Dozens of voices chattered around her. No one else seemed to notice her reaction. A few mothers with hands over their open mouths expressed shock over such a horrid stunt. Others tittered and most of the men laughed outright. The girls, watchful of their parents’ reactions, suppressed giggles or openly expressed their delight in the joke.
    It’s a good one at that. And now that she’d picked up her bow and walked over to the target, Jade saw that the spreading red puddle was nothing more than paint.
    “Mary! Helen! Was this your idea?” she asked.
    They nodded. “Yes, but Uncle Steven helped,” admitted Mary. “We couldn’t think what to use to hold the paint until I remembered those bags made from a goat’s stomach that the natives use for carrying milk. Uncle Steven bought one for me.”
    “Were you surprised, Miss Jade?” asked Helen.
    “Very.”
    “You’re not angry, are you?” asked Helen. “You looked . . . well, rather queer just then.”
    “I’m not angry and I’m fine. But I don’t believe that Lady Northey appreciated the joke.”
    The girls looked past Jade to the governor’s wife and paled. “Oh, dear,” said Mary.
    “I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Jade said as Beverly approached Lady Northey. “I’m sure your leader will smooth things over, but in the future, you might think twice before doing anything like that again.” She saw how downcast each of them looked and smiled at them. “If it’s any consolation to you, it’s a trick much like I used to pull when I was a girl.”
    “Really?” asked Mary. “And did you ever get in trouble?”
    Jade recalled the paddling she’d gotten on her backside when she’d put a dead snake under a parlor chair just before her mother’s library committee meeting. She grinned. “Yes, I did. But it was worth it.”
    Jade called to Biscuit and went off to wait for Beverly away from the crowds. Even though the girls had