He was speaking to Jacobs, the question prompted by the pale man’s involuntary response to Ellie and Adam’s unorthodox entrance.
Not that Jacobs was laughing anymore.The shock of their bizarre appearance on the bridge had faded.In its place, a frustrated and angry calculation shifted across his angular features.
Time crawled as Adam waited for his answer.
“As it happens,” Jacobs evenly replied.
Adam scrambled furiously for an escape.He could grab Ellie and roll them off the bridge.Keep her under the river for as long as he could and hope the current carried them out of range.
Except that the rifles pointed at his head were Martini-Henry MK IVs.They had a firing range of four hundred yards.
He and Ellie weren’t going to make it four hundred yards—assuming they weren’t shot before they hit the water.
“This is Mr.Adam Bates,” Jacobs announced.“And his wife.”
Adam stilled at the unexpected word.Wife?Why the hell was Jacobs calling Ellie his wife?
Borthwick eyed Adam with closer interest.“Not one of the San Francisco Bateses?”
Adam’s chest tightened.
The San Francisco Bateses.
Was it possible that a high-ranking Indian colonial administrator had heard of his family?
A colonial administrator who was friendly with the likes of Lord Aldbury.
Yeah,Adam thought with a lurch of dismay.It was possible.After all, it wasn’t as though George Bates kept a low profile.
“He is indeed,” Jacobs replied—fixing Adam with a look that he could read as clearly as paint slapped onto a wall.
Play.Along.
Adam had never stopped to discuss his family history with Jacobs in between trying not to get killed by the man—but Jacobs wasn’t the kind of guy who left things to chance.Adam couldn’t really be surprised that his enemy might have taken the time to figure out exactly where he’d come from.
Not that any of that mattered right now.Jacobs was obviously setting him up, and Adam could think of only one reason for him to do that.
Because it would keep him and Ellie alive.
“Which of them do you belong to, then?”Borthwick pressed.
Knowing that it was probably the best way to keep himself free of bullet holes for the next ten minutes, Adam forced himself to answer—even though he hated every syllable.
“George Bates,” he ground out.“I’m George Bates’s son.”
Adam could feel Ellie’s astonished gaze on his back as Borthwick coldly assessed him.The colonel was weighing the plausibility of a son of George Bates turning up on a river in the backwoods of India, slaughtering oversized catfish with a machete.
To anyone who knew anything about Adam’s father, it would sound pretty damned far-fetched.
Borthwick’s gray study halted on Adam’s face.“You look like him,” he commented.
The words felt like a punch in Adam’s gut.
Borthwick hadn’t just heard of his family.HeknewGeorge Bates… because he was right.
Adam was taller than his father.His dad had a beard, his blond hair gone to silver.But they had the same sky-blue eyes… and more or less the same damned face.
Being reminded of the resemblance made Adam want to hit something.
