Page 3 of Hunted in Hope Town

She looked up at him in surprise, though he hadn’t exactly been stealthy in his approach. But she was staring at him like she wasn’t sure if she should let him in.

“Faith said you had some Christmas decor ideas that might need my help,” he offered. “I thought I’d see what you had in mind. See if I need to buy any supplies.”

She inhaled, and he supposed anyone else might not notice the slight shake in that sound. But he noticed everything about her.

“Oh. Well. Right.”

She got nervous around him more often than not, but this was different. He cataloged every different. Always looking for some hint that the past might come back to her.

He was never sure if he wished it would or wouldn’t.

But today she didn’t just look nervous or unnerved in any of her normal ways, she actually looked a little…afraid.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concerned. She hadn’t seemed afraid of him in well over a year.

She nodded. Then she waved it away. “Sorry. I had this horrible dream last night that I didn’t remember until I saw you. It’s just left me feeling a little…off-kilter. Can’t seem to shake it.” She stepped into the warmth of the store, so he followed.

“Horrible dream about me?”

She grimaced, her cheeks going a little pink. “Well, you weren’t being horrible. You’d been shot. It was…awful and bloody.” She lifted her shoulders in a kind of shrug, then shuddered.

Everything inside him froze for a moment. He almost lifted his hand to the spot on his shoulder where he still had a scar from the gunshot wound that had caused him considerable muscle and bone damage.

That had stopped him from saving her from the fall from the second-story balcony, after she’d been thrown off of it.

At the last second, he stopped himself from touching the spot, but he was struggling to find words. To breathe.

He was too busy reliving that night, and the terror and pain and, yes, blood.

Jessica was…dreaming about that? Did that mean she might remember?

He shook that thought—that hope, that dread—away.

“Hey, guys,” Faith greeted them, appearing from the back room. She was carrying a big box, so Ellis took that as an excuse to look away from Jessica and move over to help Faith shoulder the burden.

There were three people in this town who knew he and Jessica had a past. Zach Simmons, also a former FBI agent who’d built Hope Town and was the reason Ellis and Jessica were here. Lane Webb, the original member of Hope Town’s privatized witness protection program who ran the antique store and acted as mayor and a kind of liaison to all the women under protection. And Faith Anderson, the bookstore manager who employed Jessica.

Ellis had needed to fight for that one with Zach. The whole point of any witness protection program was keeping people’s pasts on the down-low, but Ellis knew that Faith would need to understand that if Ellis was lurking around, it was only for Kirst—for Jessica’s safety.

“Thanks,” Faith said. “We need to get as much stock as possible out today. Hoping this stupid snow doesn’t screw up Small Business Saturday for us.”

Ellis tried to make his mouth curve. He wasn’t sure he succeeded, but he managed a few reassuring words about the weather.

And spent the rest of his day trying not to wonder if Jessica’s dream hadn’t been a dream at all.

But an actual memory.

Chapter Two

Jessica loved her little apartment above the empty storefront across from the bookstore. It was like her sanctuary. When everything outside these walls got to be too much, here she was safe.

From what?

The little snippet of a thought stopped her in her tracks this morning. What…was she afraid of?

Her doctor said that she shouldn’t worry about before. That she should focus on her present. After two years of having this big blank for a past, she thought she’d become quite the expert at that.

But the past few days, ever since she’d had that dream with a bloody Ellis, she felt…anxious. She should probably call to set up an appointment with Dr. Leigh. She marched over to her refrigerator, where she kept a magnetic pad of paper and a neatly printed to-do list, and added make an appointment to the list next to all her Christmas preparations.