Page 184

It seeks the answer in your heart—in your desire.

What desire did someone likeJacobshide in his heart?

Then another implication of Adam’s revelation snapped into place.

“Hold on!” Ellie exclaimed, forgetting to keep her voice down. “Are you telling me that your deepest and most fervent desire was to get your blasted knife back?”

“I wanted a way to beat Jacobs!” Adam protested. “It’s not my fault if the best way to do that just happened to involve me getting hold of my machete.”

Ellie gazed at the familiar lines of his bruised, stubble-shadowed face. Warmth fluttered to life inside her chest. “You are…”

She wasn’t quite sure what she meant to say next. Incorrigible? Magnificent?

Before she could find out, Jacobs was there.

He loomed over them, the glare of the paraffin lamps scattered about the hollow throwing his shadow across the place where Ellie and Adam sat.

Jacobs cast a look back over his shoulder. All the rest of the men who had been blatantly gaping at him, from guards to crew, quickly went back to doing whatever it was they were supposed to be doing.

Ellie was painfully conscious of her bound hands. She was utterly powerless sitting on the ground at Jacobs’ feet.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Zeinab’s gaze flash once more to the crown of the ridge. Her mouth firmed into a fierce, determined line.

Ellie couldn’t know what she saw up there—but she hoped it was worth the terrible risk she and Adam had just taken.

Jacobs looked down at the two of them thoughtfully before his eyes shifted to Adam. “By all rights, the pair of you ought to have been dead three times over.”

A hint of frustration seethed through his words. A twist of fear wrenched in Ellie’s gut.

Adam leaned back against the rocks. “I’d say more like four or five, but who’s counting?”

Ellie forced herself to wade in, even though the thought of deliberately provoking Jacobs’ ire made her feel ill.

“So what is your innermost desire, Mr. Jacobs?” she asked, forcing a light tone. “Being set loose to murder anyone who irritates you?”

His expression was as calm and implacable as always—but Ellie thought she saw something else flash through his black gaze. Something…complicated.

“And why do you want to know, Miss Mallory?” Jacobs demanded.

Ellie’s pulse thudded with a rising sense of danger. She forced herself not to look away, even as she could feel the other prisoners watching her worriedly.

She had to keep him talking for a while longer—no matter how she managed it. In that moment, she could think of only one thing to say that would be sure to hold his attention.

She swallowed thickly against a suddenly dry throat.

“I supposed I had better think on how I answer that,” she replied carefully. “Given that you will know if I am lying.”

Jacobs’ habitual stillness deepened, turning into something darker. His focus on her intensified until she could feel the weight of it like a stone against her chest.

“Will I, then?” he asked in a voice like black silk.

Ellie fought against the urge to sink into the wall and disappear. “I therefore propose a deal,” she went on carefully. “I will answer your question, Mr. Jacobs, if you answer mine.”

Jacobs’ black gaze was as cold as the end of the earth. “You are awfully sure of yourself for a woman tied up on the floor,” he noted in a dry, flat drawl.

Adam stiffened beside her at Jacobs’ words. She deduced that he was fighting the urge to do something extraordinarily stupid. She hurried on before his anger won out over his good sense, agonizingly conscious of his bound hands and missing knife.

“You can’t kill us,” Ellie retorted quickly. “Mr. Forster-Mowbray won’t let you.”