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“You…! He…!” he stammered, pointing at Adam wildly until he noticed the ropes around his wrists.
Dawson visibly relaxed, though he still took a careful step back from where Adam knelt on the paving stones.
Jacobs turned away from Adam to focus his implacable attention on Ellie and Neil.
“Why don’t you show me what your little excavation turned up?” Jacobs prompted silkily, nodding to something Neil held in his hand. “And then we can all have a nice little chat with your employer.”
Neil clutched the object to his chest. It looked like a small slab of clay. He stared at Jacobs nervously.
At least he had the instinct to recognize the man was a threat.
“Don’t give it to him,” Ellie ordered, her eyes still locked on Jacobs. “And don’t go anywhere with him, either.”
Jacobs flashed her a thin smile. “Neither of you has anywhere else to go, Miss Mallory.”
Ellie’s fists clenched at her sides. “Then I’ll take my chances with a fight.”
Adam’s heart twisted with a burst of mingled fear and admiration.
That’s my girl, he thought warmly… and then hoped desperately she wasn’t about to get herself killed.
She wouldn’t, Adam determined grimly. Because he’d take out the whole Al-Saboor family and Jacobs with them if they touched so much as a hair on her head, rifles be damned.
No matter what it cost him.
He made a silent assessment of where things stood. Lefty and Hobbles had split off from them outside the chapel, clearly not much use after what Adam had done to them in the brawl. The two Al-Saboors with the rifles had become Ears and Ralph in Adam’s head—one because he looked like a horse-toothed guy Adam had known back in San Francisco, and the other because… well,ears. Beardy had his cudgel. Gaps had retrieved his sword. Scarface pulled a pair of daggers from his sleeves, and Muscles had… well, himself, which seemed like more than enough.
Sayyid and Constance hung back by the wall of the courtyard, half hidden from his view by Scarface and Beardy. Adam hadn’t pegged Sayyid as a fighting type. Constance had her knives, but the notion of her having to use them made Adam feel a little queasy.
And then there was Jacobs.
Adam didn’t love the way it all added up.
Jacobs was studying Ellie, his look coldly thoughtful. Quick as a snake, his hand flashed out—and set the blade of Adam’s machete against his neck.
Adam swallowed, and the steel rasped against the stubble of his throat. The knife was damned sharp. Adam always made sure of that.
Ellie’s gaze flashed with fear—and then she grabbed Neil’s wrist, forcing both it and the clay artifact up over their heads.
“Hurt him, and I’ll smash it,” she snarled. “And you know that’s not an idle threat.”
“Nobody needs to hurt anybody!” Neil protested, pulling against Ellie’s grip. “We don’t even know what it is yet!”
Ellie’s eyes met Adam’s from across the courtyard. She flinched with worry.
Adam looked back at her steadily, willing her not to break.
We’ll get through this, he thought at her. Trust me.
Not that he had any idea how just yet.
“Out of the way. Coming through.”
The supercilious tones of Julian Forster-Mowbray sounded from behind Adam as The Mustache pushed his way through the clustered Al-Saboors. He was dressed in a pristine suit of pale linen with a stylish flat-brimmed hat in a matching hue.
“Well! I see we’re all here,” he declared brightly—until his blue eyes fell to the knife Jacobs held at Adam’s throat.
Julian startled, then hedged his way around Adam’s bound figure as he made a nervous adjustment to the line of his blond mustache. “Fairfax, old bean. This is quite the merry chase you’ve led us on—though I did appreciate your note.”
