“My father never wantedme.”
Ellie’s face softened with sympathy.“Adam…”
“No,” he cut in sharply.“Listen to me.Things are going to be different.I have to be—”
Kalb jumped to his feet with a bark.
Borthwick walked up to them, his gray eyes placid in a face weathered by years in the sun.“Are you sure you wouldn’t like my medic to see to that?”
“I’ve got it,” Adam managed.
“Don’t let me interrupt.”Borthwick punctuated the remark with a permissive wave of his hand.
He wanted Adam to keep going… while he watched.
Ellie’s calf tensed at the colonel’s words.She didn’t like the idea either.
Adam was pretty sure their opinions didn’t matter.
“Try to relax your leg,” he pleaded.
Ellie drew in a breath, and the muscle under his hand softened.
Adam drove the needle through her skin, smooth and precise.He knew what he was doing.He’d set stitches before.
Mostly on himself.
Ellie pressed her face into her arms, muffling a curse.She should have been shouting them at Adam, but she wouldn’t want the enemy looming over them to see it as a weakness.
Nothing about Ellie was weak.Adam bit back the urge to say as much, sliding the catgut through her calf.
“I’m curious what George Bates’s son is doing in the wilds of Odisha,” Borthwick mused.
“Chhattisgarh,” Adam bit back automatically.
Borthwick’s silence had weight.Adam refused to cow to it, keeping his attention on Ellie’s leg.
“The river marks the border,” he elaborated shortly.“We’re in Chhattisgarh now.And I came to survey a mining operation my father is thinking of investing in.”
Adam had known Borthwick’s question must be coming.He had started working up an answer as soon as they’d crossed the bridge.
“Your father does engage in some…unusualinvestments.”
“My father,” Adam retorted tightly, “knows how to make his money work for him.”
Nothing about that was a lie.Adam just left out all the pain the man caused in the process.
Not that George Bates cared much about any of that.
He pulled the catgut taut.He had to keep going.It wasn’t fair to Ellie to leave her waiting for the rest of the pain while Borthwick talked… which was likely intentional, Adam realized with a burst of helpless fury.The colonel had chosen this moment, when Ellie was vulnerable and Adam clearly needed to focus, to strike with his interrogation.
Borthwick probably knew quite a lot about interrogations—including the value of pressing your subject while they were distracted.
He could feel the cold weight of the man’s attention and knew Borthwick was studying every nuance of Adam’s responses.
“How do you know him?”Adam asked.
The question had been burning through his mind ever since Borthwick had made his casual comment about Adam’s appearance.
