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Ellie could seehimperfectly well. He looked entirely at ease in his chair. He was stripped to his shirt, of course, with his white sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned forearms. The suspenders for his trousers hung at his sides. Bates had obviously shrugged out of them as soon as he had escaped the jacket he had condescended to don for dinner. At least he had shaved since Ellie had seen him that afternoon, but she could already discern the shadow of his beard reemerging along the sharp line of his jaw.

She didn’t know him. As far as she knew, he didn’t even like her very much.

Ellie held her breath as the gag pulled against the corners of her mouth.

“Only the mosquitoes,” Bates replied. “And some woman who dropped out of the sky.”

She froze. The surveyor didn’t so much as glance at her. His eyes were on the man in the doorway.

The bastard. The rotten, irredeemable bastard…

With a liquid grace, Bates rose from the chair. He stalked over to the doorway. The move put him close enough that Ellie could’ve reached out and touched him if she’d chosen.

He still held the drink. His voice, when he spoke, sounded richly, terribly dangerous.

“Looked to me like somebody put a gag in her mouth,” he said. “Tied up her hands.”

“Did it,” Jacobs countered flatly.

“A man has to wonder,” Bates went on with apparent calm as the spirits in his glass twisted into a little tornado. “What sort of fellow would be out looking for a woman trussed up like a goose?”

“Perhaps one concerned for her welfare,” Jacobs replied coolly.

“And why would a lady be running from a guy like that?” Bates returned.

A notion burst into Ellie’s head—one that was quite frankly bizarre. She willed it toward Bates regardless as though mere urgency could dart it into his brain.

Don’t lie, she thought furiously.Whatever you do, don’t lie to him.

Silence stretched, rich and thick as the night air. Tension swirled around her like the electric potential of the moment before a lightning strike.

“Seems to me,” Bates continued softly. “If I had seen a woman like that, you might be the last goddamned person I would tell where she’d run off to.” He carefully set his glass down on the nearby table, then raised his gaze to the unseen man across the threshold. “And now I might suggest that you get yourself the hell off my doorstep before I take it in mind to make a more direct intervention in this situation.”

There was a pause the length of a breath as Jacobs considered his options.

“Sorry to disturb you,” he said at last—and a moment later, his footsteps moved away.

?

Eleven

Ellie barely daredto breathe as she listened to Jacobs depart. Finally, Bates stepped back into the room and closed the French doors behind him.

She exhaled in relief—a feeling that rapidly dispersed as she took in the expression on the face of the man who had just saved her.

It looked terribly like fury.

“Now, I’m going to take off this gag,” Bates said evenly. “And then you’re going to tell me exactly what sort of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into. Clear enough, Princess?”

Before she answered, Ellie tore her eyes from his face and took a moment to actually look at the place where she’d inadvertently landed.

The room was a disaster. A single glance revealed that it hadn’t been cleaned in months. Every available surface was covered in debris—empty glasses, stacks of papers, teetering piles of books, the cold tail-end of a cigar. The walls were barely visible, buried under pinned-up maps, sketches, and scribbled notes between hooks holding picks, shovels, coils of rope, and wooden tripods. A rifle leaned against the wall in the corner next to a piece of driftwood that looked oddly like a flamingo.

A pair of theodolites, used for accurately measuring distance, sat on a shelf between the skull of an iguana and a jar holding the biggest spider Ellie had ever seen. She was reasonably confident it was dead.

She could feel the crisp pressure of the map in her skirt pocket beside the cold weight of the medallion. An idea began to take shape in her mind.

It was a decidedly terrible idea.