Chapter 25
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Twenty-Five
Rain washed against Ellie’s tent in a rasping patter. The downpour had started an hour before, but inside the canvas shelter, she remained dry—drowning only in her own worry.
A single paraffin lantern illuminated the two bedrolls. Kalb lay on the ground beside the blankets, his eyes mournfully fixed on the entrance as though he could will Adam to appear there. Every now and then, the dog let out an eloquent huff of longing.
Ellie thought of Adam’s casual theory that Kalb was his new lucky rock. He would have to revisit that hypothesis, as nothing had gone right for them since they had left the palace.
She was exhausted. Her leg hurt. She itched with the need to know how Adam was doing, but going out to look for him would only raise Borthwick’s suspicions higher than they were already—if she even made it that far.
Regular patrols circled past her tent, the men set to guard the camp through the night.
Jacobs would also be attuned to anything she or Adam might do that could cause him trouble.
As much as she hated it, for the moment all she could do was wait.
Ellie pulled a cigar tube from the pocket of her trousers. Unscrewing the lid, she slid a slender carved bone into her palm and traced her thumb over the rough texture of the Glagolitic characters carved into its smooth surface. They spelled out the word sv?t?… for light.
Instinct tickled. Ellie looked up to see a figure lingering in the rain-soaked gloom beyond the open flap of the tent.
A woman stared solemnly at Ellie through the downpour, wrapped in the pale folds of a drenched sari.
Black hair streamed over her shoulders. Her eyes glinted through the darkness like flecks of obsidian.
A whisper hissed through the monsoon that battered the tent.
Listen.
Kalb jumped to his feet, barking wildly at the entrance. Ellie jerked, startled by the sound.
The woman was gone. It was Adam who stood in the rain.
The water slicked his shirt to his skin. His gaze was hollow. For a moment, Ellie wondered if he was just another product of her tired, wandering mind, but then Kalb wagged his tail in frantic greeting, dancing at the threshold.
Ellie pocketed the firebird bone as she stood, joining the dog just shy of where the rain crashed down. Adam met her there, lingering in the downpour.
“Adam?” Ellie prompted, instinct softening the word.
“I’ll get everything wet.”
Adam spoke as though answering a question Ellie hadn’t asked. The helpless despair in his voice cut her like a blade.
She reached out through the rain to take his hand and draw him into the tent.
In the dim light of the lamp, his golden hair was darkened to bronze, plastered to his head with the damp. Water streaked down his jaw.
Kalb jumped at him, whining.
“Down, buddy.” Adam’s gentle rebuke was duller than usual, but he gave the dog a token rub between the ears.
He pulled his soaked shirt over his head and stuck it outside, wringing it out with an angry, powerful twist of his arms—and then lingered there, stalled on the threshold as though lost.
Kalb sat down at Adam’s feet and huffed up at him worriedly.
Ellie took the shirt from his hands, hanging it from one of the poles to dry. She drew him from the flap, pulling it closed, and then turned to face him, worry quickening her pulse. “What happened?”
“Vanika’s under guard,” Adam reported in a clipped, flat voice.
“Why?”
Adam closed his eyes as though her question was a blow. “Because I told Borthwick she was lying.”
Shock jolted through her. “Why would you do that?”
“She was trying to lead him off track. Borthwick asked me to validate her route. I told him it was wrong.”
He threw the words down like stones, sharp and harsh.
“He was testing you,” Ellie deduced.
“Of course, he was testing me. But she doesn’t know that. She’s twelve years old. She thinks I betrayed her. I did betray her.”
Worry rose at the acid in his words. “Adam—“ Ellie began to protest.
Adam cut her off, his voice raw with guilt. “He was going to hit her with that goddamned whip, and I said nothing. I stood there and watched while he threatened that kid with something that could rip the skin off her back.”
Ellie’s heart skipped uneasily. “You wouldn’t have let him do it.”
“There were four armed men in the room.”
“You wouldn’t have let him do it,” she cut back with fierce certainty.
Adam was bleak with despair. “Vanika doesn’t know that. Not anymore.”
Ellie gripped his bare shoulders and spoke with all the conviction that she could muster. “She will. When we get her out of here.”
Self-loathing snapped through his tone. “That’s going to be a lot harder for us to do now because of me.”
“You didn’t have any choice.”
“You sure about that?” Adam pushed back bitterly.
Ellie felt the coiled strength in his arms as she forced him to face her. “Yes.”
Adam’s cold expression crumbled, exhaustion and fear showing through. “I gave him the damned directions, Ellie. I told him right where he needs to go. It was the only way I could think of to stop him from hurting her.”
Ellie pressed her palm to the stubble on his jaw. “I understand.”
Adam pulled away from her. His hands clenched as his body went rigid with the force of his emotions.
“And then I spent the rest of the night pretending I was fine with that. That I could have a friendly dinner with a man who’d flay a child because she’s poor and Indian and that means she doesn’t count. ”
“It was just an act, Adam.”
He looked haunted. “It’s not an act. It’s who I’m supposed to be.”
The words chilled her. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“That’s the man I was supposed to be,” Adam repeated in a snarl. “That’s the son George Bates would’ve been proud of.”
His strange protest from earlier that day rang through Ellie’s mind.
My father never wanted me.
A low hum of shock numbed her thoughts. “That’s what you were trying to tell me after we crossed the river.”
Anger mingled with a terrible shame in Adam’s eyes.
“I have to go along with all of it. The bile Borthwick spits about this place. The way he talks down to everyone around him as if they’re worthless.
I have to pretend that all of it is fine, because that’s what my father would have expected.
That’s the man he wouldn’t have cut off.
” His voice caught, the words becoming uneven. “Ellie, the look on that kid’s face…”
Ellie gripped his arm. “That isn’t you.”
“It has to be until we get Vanika out of here—however long that takes. I just…” Misery tightened his features.
“I could never be what my dad expected, even when I wanted to. And Christ, Ellie—there was a time when I wanted it more than anything in the world. It’s taken me my whole life to get away from that.
I lost my home over it. My little brother. ”
His voice broke on the word.
Brother.
“Putting it all back on again now, like this, it’s…” He trailed off bleakly.
Ellie’s mind spun. She had known Adam’s relationship with his father had a dark history ever since that night on the Sibun River when he had casually told her how he’d been disowned after quitting college.
She had glimpsed more of it in the way he’d tormented himself about the nature of their relationship back in Egypt, where George Bates had echoed through the words that fell from Adam’s lips.
That he was irresponsible. Careless. Impulsive.
This felt deeper, and Ellie began to wonder whether she really knew just what sort of monster Adam’s father had been.
What sort of monster he was.
She took Adam’s hands. “No matter what this requires of you, there will always be one person in this camp who knows the real Adam Bates.”
Relief softened the taut lines of his face. He had needed to hear that, Ellie realized—even as an odd thought tumbled into place behind it.
“Well… I suppose there are two of us, really,” she allowed.
“Two?” Adam echoed.
“Myself… and Jacobs.”
Adam’s brow quirked with a flicker of his usual insouciance. “I’m not sure I find that comforting.”
“Neither am I,” Ellie admitted.
A little spark of humor crept back into Adam’s eyes. “What about Dawson?”
“I don’t think Dawson pays enough attention to anyone outside himself to know another person. He’s probably barely noticed that you’re American.”
“Oh, I think he’s got that part figured out well enough,” Adam drawled back.
Ellie frowned thoughtfully. “I’ve been wondering about him.”
“Dawson?” Adam filled in skeptically.
“No,” Ellie returned dryly, and then sobered. “Jacobs.”
Adam waited with wary curiosity as she elaborated.
“In my experience, most people who hurt others do it because it makes them feel powerful—in control. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?”
“Yeah. I’d say that’s right.”
Adam’s flat reply made Ellie think—uncomfortably—of someone who spoke from experience.
Ellie mentally filed through every threat she had experienced from the man they spoke of—every leveled gun or brandished blade. “But that’s not why Jacobs does it. Hurting us doesn’t make him feel bigger. He does it because it’s his job, and his job gets him closer to what he wants.”
“There are a whole lot of people out there with jobs who still draw the line at torture and murder,” Adam pointed out coldly.
“They do,” Ellie agreed. “But that just leaves me wondering why Jacobs is different. I’ve read of men who were incapable of remembering faces the way the rest of us can. There are people who lack the ability to see certain colors. What if Jacobs was born without… I don’t know. A moral code?”
“He has a code. It’s just not one that makes a hell of a lot of sense to the rest of us.”
“Maybe… empathy, then,” Ellie filled in. “The ability to care about how his actions impact other people. But if that’s true, would it make him more evil? Or less?”
“Why’s it matter?”