A small knock sounded on the door of the tower room.
Lora hurried to it, opened the door quickly, and let Ian in.
Ian stared, his fists clenched at his side. “Are you sure you’re okay, lass?”
Helen nodded, not quite used to the fact that Lora and Ian could talk to each other without voicing the words aloud. Lora had obviously called him to the room with their special bond. “Bruised, but not broken.”
“Who did this to you?”
“I should have listened to Simon. He was right.” After a deep breath, Helen detailed Philip’s abduction, his crazed behavior.
Ian listened from a distance. Lora held her hand and Tara stroked her shoulders.
“All of this in only a few hours?” Ian asked.
“What do you mean? We’ve been in my time for four days.”
“You’ve only been gone half a day for us.”
Helen shook her head. “We wanted to arrive back in my time close to when I left. That didn’t happen. I thought the stones moved you at your will.”
“The Ancients have the ultimate power over the stones. There must be a reason for the delay on your end and the quick return on ours,” Lora said.
“Has the fighting started here?”
“No,” Tara told her.
“A few of our enemy’s men were captured, but nothing else has happened.”
Helen shivered. “With Philip acting like his homicidal brother Malcolm, and all the crap going down here, I don’t know where to go.”
Tara squeezed her shoulder.
Ian snapped his head up. “What name did you say?”
“Philip, my boss.”
“Not that one.”
“Ah, Malcolm? That’s Philip’s brother. The one in jail for murder.”
Helen could see the wheels of thought twisting in Ian’s head. “Malcolm?”
“Right. Why? Does it mean something to you?”
“Mayhap. Tell me again, from the beginning, everything this Philip said to you.”
This time when Helen relayed the traumatic event, Ian sat on the edge of a table and appeared to hold his breath with the anticipation of her words.
“Philip knew about the necklace, but not its true power.”
“That’s what I got out of it. He kept talking about himself in the plural sense. We need this and us that. He’s crazy.”
“Mayhap. Or, he’s Druid as is his brother.”
“You think? I never noticed anything special about him. He’s charismatic, seems to get what he wants in life, but other than that…nothing.” Outside of the past few hours, Helen would bet money Philip wasn’t capable of hurting anyone.
She’d have been wrong.
“I didn’t know I had a gift until I came here,” Tara offered. “This guy could be just as clueless.”
“He didn’t act clueless.”
“And he was after the necklace.”
“No, see, I didn’t feel that. He didn’t try and get it off my neck. He had plenty of opportunity when I was out to hack it off had he wanted to.”
Lora lifted her gaze to her husband. “He might have gotten a hold of one of the other stones in the future.”
Every nerve ending in Helen’s body sparked. The hair stood on her arms. “Yes. Of course, that has to be it. His brother is in jail and not going anywhere according to Jake. Malcolm could use the stone and escape.”
Ian rubbed his jaw. “The man leading the warriors against us…his name is Malcolm.”
“Oh, God. I led him right to you.”
Ian waved her concerns away. “He was here long before you, lass. Even if it is the same man, his actions are not your fault.”
Helen stood on unsteady feet. “I’ve got to go back, stop Philip from telling his brother anything.”
Lora grasped her hand. “You need to rest. You appear about to fall over.”
“Lora’s right, Helen. Besides, there’s no way to undo what’s happened. The Ancients warned us about traveling in time to change the past,” said Tara.
“But Simon and the others. They don’t know what happened to me. They’ll be—”
“Worried sick, I know. Relax. They can always return here using Cian’s knife.”
With a frantic shake of her head, Helen debunked that plan. “No, they can’t. Cian’s knife wasn’t in his pocket when we landed.”
“What about Amber’s stone?”
“It’s still there.”
“Then they have a way.”
Tara draped a blanket over Helen’s shoulders. The weight of the fabric felt safe and her body started to melt into the thought of sleep. Damn she was tired. More than she’d ever been in her life.
“One night. We’ll have a clearer vision of what to do in daylight.”
“My wife is right, lass. Besides, if Simon were to see you now, he might find himself in the jail you speak of.”
“I look that bad?”
Tara offered a bleak expression. “You don’t look good.”
Helen let out a small chuckle, which quickly moved to tears.
Tara wrapped her arms around her. “It’s okay. We’re here.”
“I thought he was going to kill me.” Rape me.
“He didn’t.”
Helen grabbed hold of the other woman and let the emotion of the day roll over her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The first time his cell phone rang, Philip ignored it. In the pre-dawn hours, he removed his car off the highway and onto a desert gravel road. The location looked as if it was used by weekend dirt bike riding families who camped unplugged from the rest of the world. Suited him. He didn’t want to see anyone, didn’t want to talk to a soul. He stepped outside his car long enough to piss before crawling into the passenger seat. He glanced at the blinking green light on his phone and gave in.
The message was from the night guard at the prison.
Malcolm was missing and they knew Philip had spoken to him earlier that night.
“Come in on your own, or we’ll come in search of you. Your choice.”
It was a threat.
Philip buried his face in his hands. “Better f**king come back for me, Mal. You better f**king come back.”
In the last hour, a bone-deep peace he’d lived with all his life had vanished. Maybe it was the connection with his brother, maybe it was reality being a bitch and taking a massive sized chunk of his ass in a bite. Whatever it was, Philip knew his life wouldn’t be the same. “Should have known that when I yanked Helen from her car.” Yeah, he’d known then his life would alter forever.