As lies went, it wasn’t bad.Vanika’s gaze never wavered.Adam might’ve even have bought the bluff himself—if he hadn’t caught the subtle hint of gloating behind her expression.
“What do you think, Mr.Bates?”Borthwick asked without looking away from the kid.“Will the girl’s directions take us where we need to go?”
Singh Rao studied the map.The subedar’s expression was unreadable, sheathed in the unimpeachable professionalism the man wore like another part of his uniform.
The ground seemed to shift under Adam’s boots, turning treacherous.“I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
“Join the Lord of the Dance on the ridge that points to the dawn of the longest day,” Borthwick recited.
“Uh-huh.”Adam kept his tone neutral.
“You won’t find it marked on the map,” Borthwick continued, “but I would still be interested in your general impressions.”
Vanika didn’t so much as glance at Adam.She didn’t need to.She was perfectly confident that Adam would confirm her route.
Why wouldn’t he?She had led him out from Nandapur expressly to help stop Borthwick.
She had no reason to suspect that Adam would do anything else.
Singh Rao stepped back from the map, making more room for Adam at the desk.
Adam’s guts twisted.Hell.
Without wanting to, his brain instinctively mapped Vanika’s directions against the contours of the landscape.They led to a real place… but not one that matched anything in the clue from Tulsidas’s manuscript.
The kid was deliberately guiding the colonel and his soldiers astray.
Borthwick and Singh Rao might not have put it together.If Adam confirmed Vanika’s route, they could follow it, putting them miles out of the way—and clearing a path for Subhas and his team to get to the Brahmastra first.
But there was also a damned good possibility that Singh Rao had seen the same thing Adam had in the map—and that all of this was just another test.
Adam had gambled for some high stakes before.Hell, he’d even sought them out—but not like this.
His heart clenched as he made the call.
“She’s taking you the wrong way.”
He could see the moment Vanika’s confidence shattered, along with her trust.Stark betrayal twisted across her face, followed by a wrench of fear.She might’ve been punching above her weight, but she was still achild—a twelve-year-old kid who stood in a room full of people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.
And her bluff had just been called by the one person she’d thought was on her side.
I’m going to get you out of here.Adam willed the thought at her, but how could she possibly understand it?He couldn’t let any of it show on his face.
As far as Vanika was concerned, Adam was no better than the man he was pretending to be.The line between that awful fiction and reality grayed inside of him, and Adam felt sick.
“He’s lying!”Vanika protested.
“Why don’t we see who’s lying?”Borthwick casually replied.
With a flick of his thumb, he loosened the whip at his belt.
Adam’s throat closed.
He knew what a stock whip could do.When he was seventeen, he had spent some time at a ranch in Marin—one of his father’s many investments.He had never been happier in his life than when he was riding with the herders across the hills.The men had all carried whips in case of a stampede because the crack of the poppers could help direct fear-mad cattle away from danger.
Adam had once seen an overzealous rider use his whip to strike an angry bull.The flail had ripped open the beast’s hide like a surgeon’s blade.
The man had been let go, but Adam had never forgotten what that injury had looked like.
