Page 51

“Oh…” I move to look around me. Ben said something about his estate in New York, but the beeping sounds like we’re in a hospital. A sharp pain in my shoulder prevents me from moving much.

“Easy there,” Ben cautions in a soothing voice. “The bullet missed anything important, but you’re going to be pretty sore, and I think your doctor might get testy if you rip your stitches.”

I nod, still confused about my surroundings. “Wait. Where are we?”

He chuckles. “I have a house outside of New York City. It’s been in my family for years,” he says with a pointed glance at the nurse still hovering in the doorway. I understand it to mean he’d bought it around the turn of the century.

He makes a waving motion at the door, and it clicks shut, announcing the nurse’s departure. “I brought you here and had a private doctor hired. When people show up in hospitals with gunshot wounds, a lot of questions get asked. Thought I’d save the task force some covering up by doing it this way.”

“I see.” I close my eyes again. The short conversation wears me out, even though I want to know so much more. “You said everyone was okay at William’s?” More images flash through my brain as I think of it. I want to hold on to them, especially those of Quint, but they move quickly, and I can’t quite grasp them. The pain clouds everything, getting worse with each passing second. My face against Quint’s chest. Blood staining his shirt when Ben pulled me away. I asked Quint not to go. The desperation in his expression matched his tone from before.

“William and Isabelle and … Quint?” I question. Would he ever forgive me for leaving?

Ben looks away at the hitch in my voice when I mention Quint. He knew of Quint’s flirting, likely suspected there was more given the state of our own … relationship? Is that even what he have? I hardly know anymore.

I doubt Ben realizes how deep my feelings for Quint are.

“They were all fine when we left.”

It doesn’t fit right in my brain. “Gibbons shot at someone else, after he hit me.”

“It missed Quint. Gibbons was in a hurry, Quint said, just trying to get through the mirror, and he thought Gibbons shot to keep him back. According to Quint, he got through quickly—surprising, considering what the task force said about his abilities.” Ben’s voice tightens on every word.

“I had opened the passage not long before, testing it. Perhaps there was some kind of latent energy,” I excuse.

Ben nods, then gives a short, dry laugh. “William and I walked all over the city, it seemed like, and he showed up at Gracewoods after the mirror. I should have seen that coming—we should have looked for a mirror to get him home—but I thought he was in the past to stay.”

I squeeze Ben’s hand, trying to push away the hurt and disappointment. I don’t like the tension in his face. He’s done so much for me. Saved my life in more ways than one. Saved my life so many times now. I owe him.

“Where is he now?” I ask.

Ben shrugs. “He came back to the present and went off the grid. Dr. Cooper and Burke are looking for him, but he’s trained to be untraceable.”

“What was he doing in 1928?”

“The task force is checking it out. The McCann mirror was still at the old Allen estate—there was something in Quint’s will about making sure it stayed in the house.”

“Oh?” Pain slices through my chest again, but not from my injury. “Gibbons—uh—didn’t hurt anyone when they came back?”

“No.” Ben moves away from the bed, standing to stare out the window. “No one was there.” He’s probably guessed about my relationship with Quint. It must have been plain in my and Quint’s faces, especially since it seems I was so out of it, I didn’t do anything to hide it.

“So we’re not in some altered future?” I force lightness into my voice.

Ben grants me a smile as he turns. “No. Nothing seems out of place, as far as I can tell.” He comes back and sits by the bed. “I found something out about your family.”

I press my lips together, knowing my emotions—all the things that have happened in such a short time—will spill out if I don’t. Finally, I say in a trembling voice, “Because bringing me here and hiring a doctor to save my life and tracking down a time-traveling bad guy wasn’t enough to keep you busy?”

He leans over the bed and gently wraps his arms around me. “It’s been a rough twenty hours since I brought you here, waiting for you to wake up. What else would I do but research the one thing that means everything to you?”

“Thank you.” My voice breaks over the words. Do our arguments in 1928 matter anymore? If Burke and Dr. Cooper want us to do more time-traveling, will Ben be able to trust that I am capable of helping? Selfish as it is, I don’t want to lose him. Part of me still cares for him, even after everything that happened with Quint. Maybe because of everything that happened. A life with Ben is a possibility.

A life with Quint is not.

Ben colors and sits back in his chair, clearing his throat. “This was helpful,” he says, holding up the picture Quint gave me from The Villa. It has a bloodstain on one corner. “They were definitely at The Villa while the Allens were there, and I could even trace them to the area around it before that—maybe even as long as four or five years.”

I furrow my eyebrows. “According to Quint, I was four at the time, so I could have been born in the past…” I chew on my lip. “Why would they time-travel while my mother was pregnant? That seems risky—or could they have traveled forward by accident? Were my parents born in the past and then stayed in the future?”

“I don’t think so. Unless you have a bigger inheritance than you let on. The kind of paper trail they would have to create—both of them have birth certificates, school transcripts, everything that points to them being born in the future, not the past. That would take a lot of money.”