Adam tossed aside the machete to grab her.He hauled her onto the platform, quickly checking for damage.
“I’m all right,” she assured him with a breathless wince.
Adam had already shoved up the torn leg of her trousers.Sharp little wounds circled her calf, streaming blood mingling with a wash of muddy water.The sight sparked both fury and relief—because it could have been much worse.
Ellie’s hand tapped his shoulder, the gesture off-target as she stared at something behind him.
“Er, Adam…?”
He turned to find himself facing a line of extremely surprised Indian Army sepoys.
Because he had landed on their bridge.
Hell,Adam thought as he slowly raised his hands.
Borthwick’s men had moved the last platform into place.The bridge now stretched across the river, expertly anchored to the banks.The detachment had been in the process of bringing over their supplies when Adam had landed in front of them.
The monstrous catfish floated limply alongside the logs, gore and blood streaming from the machete wounds in its head and side.
The cluster of astonished soldiers parted for someone coming up from behind them.
Jacobs stepped to the front of the line.His eyes moved from Adam, kneeling on the platform and splattered with fish blood, to Ellie, sprawled beside him in trousers with blood streaming down her calf.
He stopped at the corpse of the thirteen-foot catfish softly bumping against the bridge.
Jacobs began to laugh.
The sound was helplessly involuntary—an irresistible hysteria at finding himself facing his two least favorite people and a dead monster in the middle of the wilderness.
A trim, silver-haired figure with sun-weathered skin joined him at the front of the soldiers.Adam recognized the man’s wiry build, neatly trimmed mustache, and cold gray eyes from the crowd at the Jagannath festival.
He was looking at Colonel Charles Borthwick.
“Well,” Borthwick commented mildly.“This is unexpected.”
?
Twenty-One
Six rifles leveledat Adam’s head with a series of rapid clicks.Adam froze on his knees, hands still raised, his heart thudding as the moment balanced on a wire.
Borthwick’s expression read of mild surprise and curiosity.Ellie and Adam hadn’t been the ones who invaded his suite back in Puri, nor had he seen them during the festival.Everything in his reaction now depended on the other man who stood before the line of soldiers.
Jacobs.
Borthwick opened his mouth to speak—and a muddy missile launched itself onto the bridge.Kalb skidded across the logs with an uncharacteristic grace, panting happily as he dripped muck and river water onto the logs.
“Aw hell,” Adam blurted out, knowing exactly what was coming next.
The dog went into an exceptionally vigorous shake, spraying everyone within a twelve-foot radius.
Standing at the front of the line of soldiers, Borthwick took the worst of it.Muddy water splashed across the front of his uniform.
The colonel flinched back, his eyes flashing with quick fury.He wiped a hand over his khaki jacket—just above the stock whip coiled at his belt.
None of this was good.
“Do you know these people?”Borthwick demanded.
