Page 145 of Empire of Shadows

That Adamhadn’tmanaged to find any of his stuff made him wonder whether Jacobs had just tossed it all in the river… including his machete.

The thought made his gut lurch with a terrible sense of loss.Not my knife…

One of the men approached the place where Adam glowered out at the camp. Adam recognized him as Pacheco, one of the young guys from Caulker Caye.

“Mr. Bates? They want you to look at the maps again,” Pacheco announced a little nervously.

Adam couldn’t entirely blame him for being wary. After all, as far as Pacheco knew, Adam was a filthy, unshaven, grumpy-looking bakra getting marched around camp at the wrong end of a gun.

The kid obviously had no idea who the real bad guys were around here.

“Sure. Be right there,” Adam replied flatly.

He finished the last few bites of his stew. Nigel had worked a small miracle with dinner, given that all Velegas had managed to drag back to camp had been a pair of iguanas.

“No game,” the tracker had announced as he had tossed the dead lizards down by the fire.

Adam didn’t doubt it. He’d barely caught sight of anything larger than a lizard himself since they’d passed the stela.

He was probably looking even grumpier than usual as he followed Pacheco through the camp. Why wouldn’t he be? He was being summoned to put his skills to use for a couple of thugs who were threatening Ellie.

The notion made him want to hit something.

Adam was so focused on not hitting anything that he almost missed the subtle flash in the corner of his vision. It was just a quick reflection of the late afternoon light—but there was something achingly familiar about it.

Adam whirled toward the glare, and his eyes locked onto the place where Braxton Pickett, the fish-eyed Confederate son, sat on a fallen log.

A machete twisted in Pickett’s hand. The eighteen inch blade curved at the perfect angle and was sharp enough to split a blade of grass. The well-oiled handle had been custom carved by an old Mayan guy in town out of pest-resistant cocobolo wood before being wrapped in flexible, comfortable strips of leather.

The knife would fit Adam’s grip like it had been made for it—because it damned well had been.

Adam realized that he’d grabbed poor Pacheco by the front of his shirt.

“Is that my knife?” he seethed as Pacheco gaped up at him in terrified surprise.

Pickett slowly lifted the tip of the blade to his mouth—and inserted it between two of his teeth.

The bug-eyed Confederate pulled the knife out a moment later. He studied what he’d mined, and then wiped it on the leg of his trousers.

Adam choked back a strangled cry of outrage.

“Uh… Hey, bali? Maybe let go of the boy?” Staines offered carefully from behind him.

Adam looked down. He’d nearly lifted Pacheco’s feet off the ground.

He quickly released his hold on the kid’s shirt and forced himself to take a breath.

“Sorry,” Adam said as he squeezed Pacheco’s shoulder awkwardly. “It’s just… That’s my knife.”

Staines scratched the side of his nose awkwardly. He looked a little shamefaced. Pacheco patted Adam’s arm.

“You have my sympathies,” he said, and then dashed off across the camp.

“You, ah… ready?” Staines jerked his head in the direction of Dawson’s nearby campfire.

Adam didn’t answer. He just turned and stalked toward the professor, hating everything about his life.

Dawson’s tent was up again. Inside, Adam could see the carpet spread across the tarpaulin. He wondered how many more spiders would be living inside of it by the morning.

---