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 wantedme.
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 Iwantedto.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 hewas.
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.”
