Page 68 of Never Leave Me
As much as he wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her, he knew that wouldn’t keep them together. They would be ripped away from each other without any notice.
“Promise to get holy water, Ellen.”
“Promise you’ll warn all the families to be careful. Get them someplace safe. And then alert the police.”
He didn’t know what she was talking about and would sort it out later. For now, he had to make her understand the urgency of providing the holy water. “My investigator has located you in Lionel’s underground lab. And now you have to get the doses of holy water into the vault as soon as possible.”
She stilled, as though finally hearing him. “Will and Marian only have one bottle left. And they don’t have control of the wellspring anymore. But Will’s agreed to try to regain possession.” Her fingers skimmed his ribs.
Another heated current sizzled through him—just as it always did when they connected.
“Be extra careful, Harrison. Dr. Lionel’s threatened to come after you...” Her voice grew faint. An instant later, she was gone. And he found himself lying on his bed alone, the lamp casting a glow over the empty space beside him. The modern temperature control of his room and scent of his masculine soap replaced the mustiness.
Gentle fingers on his shoulder shook him. “My lord?”
He glanced up to find Drake at his bedside.
Though fatigue settled into every bone, Harrison pushed up to his feet. Something was wrong. “What is it, Drake?”
“Ms. Huxham is here, my lord.”
He glanced at the clock: 11:35. His whole interaction in the past had lasted only minutes. If only he could have stayed with Ellen longer. If not for Drake’s waking him, would he have had more time?
“Ms. Huxham would like to speak with you.”
The gravity of Drake’s expression told Harrison the matter was serious. He nodded his thanks and stumbled out of his room, fighting the exhaustion that came after the time overlaps and trying to make sense of Ellen’s warning through the haze in his mind.
What had she said? That Dr. Lionel had been the one to hurt Josie and had threatened to harm the others?
Had Ellen gone into the past to try to find holy water to save the girl? Or had Dr. Lionel forced her to cross time by threatening to harm the Serenity House children?
She was obviously worried for them. And for him. He wasn’t surprised to learn Lionel was threatening to come after him.
As he made his way into the entryway, Sybil stood just inside the front door. She was attired in her usual black leather jacket and jeans, and her brown hair hung in a long straight curtain. But her shoulders were uncharacteristically slumped, and she pressed her fingertips into her temples as if warding off a headache.
At his approach, she dropped her hands, straightened her shoulders, and faced him square. “Harrison. The mission was a failure.”
The words fired into his chest like a bullet, stealing the air from his lungs.
“I’m sorry.”
He hadn’t expected them to attempt the rescue until earlier in the morning. “What happened?”
“We planned for oh three hundred as a disguise and executed the real attack at twenty-two hundred.”
His muscles tensed. “And Ellen?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“They’d already moved her?”
“No. She’d never been there.”
His legs wobbled. He groped for the edge of the nearest settee and lowered himself. He could barely hear Sybil as she explained they’d found evidence that the warehouse had once been a primary lab—likely the place they’d taken Harrison. But Lionel had moved locations since then, leaving only a small lab behind as a decoy.
All he could focus on was that Ellen hadn’t been there. Now they were no closer to finding her than they were at the beginning.
He groaned and buried his face in his hands. “She didn’t deny being held in a lab. But I should have pressed her for more information. Even if she didn’t know exactly where, she could’ve given me more details.”
