Page 38 of Never Leave Me
“This is different. They had no reason to keep you. In fact, they needed you alive in order to gain more information.”
“Right.”
“But now that you’re healed, you’re a valuable commodity, just like her. They’ll test you both until they discover what they want, and they won’t let either of you live to tell about it.”
The words spread over the room like a mantle of doom. “I’ll make sure that she’s safely returned before I hand myself over.” Panic was slowly clawing at his insides. He couldn’t allow her to become Lionel’s lab rat.
“Look, Harrison. Even if you happen to broker an exchange successfully—which is doubtful—they’ll just go after her again at some point.”
Was Sybil right? Was an exchange futile? He fought against the desperation, trying to stay calm and rational. “How much time do you think you’ll need to locate her?”
“One week.”
“That’s too long.”
“We have some time. She’s too valuable for them to dispose of right away.”
“How about three days?”
“Five.”
“Fine, five days. After that I’ll arrange a deal. My life for hers. And I’ll add in an enormous sum of money if I need to.”
Even five was too long to expose Ellen to whatever Lionel had planned for her. But he prayed they wouldn’t harm her, not as long as they needed her alive.
Ellen fought the grogginess. Her mind was filled with images of Harrison and the hurt in his eyes after that early morning kiss in Saint Lucia.
I’m sorry, Harrison. I should have been more sensitive to you. She wanted to speak the words, but they were trapped in her throat. In their last hours before leaving Saint Lucia, she hadn’t handled the situation well. Instead, she’d withdrawn, something she’d gotten pretty good at doing over the years whenever relationships become too serious.
Her fingers brushed against the cold metal of an examination table beneath her. The movement awoke her to the pinch of the PICC line in her arm along with the restraints at her wrists and ankles tying her down. The steady pulse of a nearby monitor greeted her.
Where was she? Was she at the hospital again, having more tests?
She tried to tune in to the talking across the room.
“So far the lab work doesn’t reveal a trace of anything in her system.” The voice belonged to Jasper Boyle.
“None of the tests revealed anything in Arthur’s or Marian’s systems either.” At the foreign accent in the second voice, Ellen tried to decipher who was speaking.
“This is different.” Jasper again.
Ellen opened her eyes to fluorescent lights, and the memory of the kidnapping came rushing back. She wasn’t at the hospital. She was in a secret laboratory beneath a castle somewhere in the countryside.
“We knew this would likely be the case,” came the accented voice again. Dr. Lionel?
She shifted her head enough to see the older man seated in front of a nearby computer screen, studying the data there. Jasper stood near him, wearing a white lab coat and holding a steaming coffee cup.
The windowless room made gauging the time of day difficult. How many hours had elapsed while she’d been drugged?
“In comparing her old labs to those we drew,” Jasper continued,“we should be able to break down how the holy water interacted and bonded with the tissue receptors in cell membranes and intracellular fluid. At the very least, we should see the extent of the receptor activation.”
“Yes, but that is not the case.”
“If we can’t find evidence of absorption or distribution in the plasma, then we should find something in the renal excretion.”
Jasper, like Marian and her dad, was a pharmacokinetics specialist. His lifework revolved around testing and studying the effects of drugs in the body. But he hadn’t been able to find the holy water in her system. Would they release her now that the initial testing had failed to produce results?
“We have absolutely nothing. Nothing.” Dr. Lionel’s tone contained an inevitability that sent a chill up Ellen’s spine.
