Page 54 of Hunted in Hope Town

“I just think, you’ll know more if I go in to see Dr. Leigh. In person.” Before he could argue with her, which he was obviously going to do, she continued on. “You’ll be with me. If we can work it out to see Colleen there…what might domino from that?”

His expression was fierce, but his voice was calm. She’d always been attracted to that dichotomy. That there was a temper underneath all that impressive calm, but he could use the calm whenever he needed to. So unlike any of the forces she’d grown up with.

“You’re talking about putting yourself smack-dab in the middle of danger,” he said, not outright saying something like I forbid it, but it had that effect all the same.

“I know that’s your MO. Why can’t it be mine?”

His scowl deepened. “Because you’re a civilian, Kirsten. One who’s already been harmed by something that shouldn’t have touched you.”

“But it did. We can’t go back and change that. You can’t even make it right. It will always be wrong, what they did to me. What they did to us. But don’t I have a right to fight back?”

“I am fighting back on your behalf,” he insisted. “And part of that means staying here. Staying safe. We’ve asked for help. We’ve got Zach and his crew and now Boyd helping. There is no point in us wading into danger we don’t know the extent of.”

She would have argued with him, had been prepared to, but something struck her in the way he phrased all that.

He wasn’t talking about handling everything himself. He wasn’t saying she needed to stay put while he ran into danger. He wasn’t running away. He’d said we. He’d said us.

So she sat next to him on the couch and didn’t point all the ways sitting here waiting went against everything he’d ever told her about what he did.

“You’re not going to argue with me?” he asked dubiously. She wouldn’t say he could read her mind, but he knew her well enough.

Still, she rested her head on his shoulder. “You said us. I’m not going to argue with that.”

Chapter Seventeen

The next few days reminded Ellis of his FBI days. The intense research and investigating prior to any undercover assignment. It wasn’t glamorous, certainly not what he’d pictured being an agent would look like when he’d started, but it was the reality of the job.

Information was the real currency in any investigation. And now he had plenty of it. On Colleen and her second identity. On Tom West and what he’d been doing since setting a fake Ellis up in Alaska.

Zach still hadn’t found anything to connect Dr. Leigh directly. Boyd hadn’t gotten back to him yet on the investigation into what had happened. He had more information, but everything remained nebulous.

It left an itch between his shoulder blades, and yet the situation he found himself in beyond all that was not terrible. Aside from all the research and danger, it was a bit like being on vacation with his wife.

She puttered around the kitchen a lot. She dusted the Christmas tree, fashioned little ornaments out of what she could find, and always had the little string of lights glowing. They ate meals together and talked. About their past, and about this case. They mostly avoided talk of the future—or he did.

They shared a bed.

So much of it was easy. Like everything had been frozen for two years. Now, melted, everything could just go back to normal. As if nothing had ever happened.

But so much had, and none of this was normal. Not just the fact that they were under some kind of threat he still hadn’t found the crux of, but being isolated up here on a mountain and in a tiny cabin. It wouldn’t be real life, no matter what happened next.

He found himself regretting that a little bit.

She was in the kitchen again, putting together a meal with canned and freezer items. She was humming Christmas carols.

In a few short weeks it would be Christmas. And for the first time in two years, Kirsten would remember. They might actually spend her favorite holiday together. They might be something again.

Did he really let himself think that was on the other side of this? A second chance? But what better end of this could he hope for?

It was the hope he’d learned to distrust.

Fear. He kept wanting to deny he’d been afraid, that he was afraid. Fear was for men with guns pointed at you. It wasn’t for feelings. It wasn’t for…good things.

But he had a harder time ignoring that fear had been driving him all along. Loving her had pushed him past a lot of fears he would have held on to otherwise, but there was one he hadn’t been able to get through, even if he hadn’t been able to admit it to himself.

Starting a family unlocked so many things he was afraid of—loss, namely.

And he’d lost her, more or less, for two years anyway. But she was here, and she still loved him, and it was a chance.