Page 38 of Hunted in Hope Town

It wasn’t.

Chapter Thirteen

Kirsten sat at the dinner table frowning over the information Zach had sent them about the assistant. “I’ve never seen her in the office, but it’s been a few weeks since I was there.”

“What about phone calls? Emails?”

Kirsten shook her head. “I’ve always dealt directly with Dr. Leigh. She might have mentioned an assistant in passing, but it’s not someone I ever had any contact with. Not something I’ve ever really thought about.”

Ellis didn’t sit. She could feel him wanting to pace, but he remained standing in one place, leaning against the counter in the kitchen. A caged energy pumping off him.

“If this assistant is somehow part of this threat, I have to believe it’s without Dr. Leigh knowing. She…she would have had a lot more questions about me remembering, about where we are, about everything if she was connected to a threat.” She looked up at Ellis hoping for disagreement.

She got nothing but blankness. “Unless the assistant is doing her dirty work.”

Kirsten didn’t like it. It felt so cynical. So unnecessarily complicated, but she also understood that some of her feelings probably stemmed from the kind of naiveté that came from not remembering.

Ellis was an FBI agent or had been one. That meant he understood threats and the lengths people were willing to go to. He understood complicated scenarios. Far more than she did.

“Zach’s private investigator is currently following her,” Ellis continued. “We’ll wait to hear if there’s any kind of connection to the men we know would be a threat. It’s the first step, and then we decide what the second step is once those answers come in.”

She frowned at him. “I don’t like how you said that.”

He expressly did not meet her gaze. “Said what?”

“The men we know. Like there’s ones we might not? Other…possible threats besides these people you investigated that didn’t get put away.”

Ellis blew out a slow breath. He moved into a seat at the table and interlocked his fingers on the surface in front of him, before he met her gaze. It was what she might call a very law enforcement look. There was a detachment at its core, but also an attempt to be…not comforting, exactly. Just very clear.

“The most obvious source of this threat is someone from the Caruso family, but I worked a lot of cases. I’m sure I made a lot of enemies. It’s more of a long shot, but I don’t want to rule anything out. We can’t act on hope. We have to act on facts, and those are very hard to come by at the moment.”

She hated the idea of him having more enemies. Of this being more complicated. Of…feeling like this extraneous thing. Somehow involved, but not part of it.

Was that a real feeling, or an old one? She knew he used work to walk away from her in their marriage, or she wouldn’t have said and felt what she did earlier. So was this just an echo of that?

She studied him, tried to settle into the feelings—just like she had before. It seemed to work, to open up something inside of her. There wasn’t anxiety when she remembered—not when she was around him anyway. It was more a state of calm. Like she felt safe enough with him to remember.

Unless the remembering got too intense, then the anxiety seemed to take over and push the memories and feelings back.

So she tried not to resist the feelings that came, to not let fear of intensity block things. There was clearly a lot of turmoil when it came to Ellis and his job—and she didn’t think it was just because of what had happened. No, there’d been turmoil in him taking the undercover case that had led them here.

“Was it worth it?” she wondered aloud, not sure exactly what she was asking. Nothing so specific. Just…in general, maybe.

“Was what worth it?” he asked, studying her dubiously.

“Your job? The danger? Undercover work away from your wife and putting yourself at risk, when you could have…just had a more normal life?”

He inhaled deeply. And he definitely didn’t look at her, but she could tell he was taking the question in, considering it.

“I put a stop to some bad in the world. Maybe it’s a drop in the bucket. At the time… I did think it was worth it. Necessary. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t worth anything.”

She could feel his inner pain over that, and she knew… Even if she didn’t remember their whole life, or him totally, she knew, deep down. “Yes, it was worth it. Is. Doing good is worth it.”

He looked up at her, and she wondered if he knew she saw every question in his eyes. If he understood she felt an echo of the deep, overwhelming pain she saw reflected there.

Or did he think he was hiding it?

She got to her feet, went with instinct and crossed to him. She leaned down, pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek as she squeezed his shoulder. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.”