Page 16 of If She Sensed

She had been at it for nearly two hours and had not found a single point where the two women's lives visibly intersected.They’d lived in different neighborhoods, had worked for different employers, had orbited different social circles as far as she could tell.There had been no mutual connections on social media, and their divorces had been handled by different law firms on opposite sides of the city.Their children had not attended the same schools.Their grocery loyalty cards placed them in different parts of town.As far as Kate could map it, the paths of Carol Paige and Donna Holt had simply never crossed.

She refilled her coffee, stood for a moment to stretch her back, and sat back down.

She went back to Donna's financial records and started working through a different layer, looking not at what Donna had done publicly but at what she had signed up for, registered for, and paid for out of pocket.Credit card statements, direct debits, recurring charges, and things of that nature.She was nearly twenty minutes into this when she found it: a line item in Donna's bank statement from nine months ago.A single payment of two hundred and forty dollars to an entity listed as Fresh Horizons LLC.

She typed the name into her browser.

Fresh Horizons came up immediately.It was a locally-based life coaching service.It was described on its website as a program designed specifically for women navigating the transition out of long-term marriages.It offered group sessions and one-on-one coaching.The site was clean and professionally done, with a short paragraph about the founder, a man by the name of Richard Hale.Hale himself had gone through his own divorce fifteen years ago and built the program in response to what he described as a shortage of resources that actually helped.Fresh Horizons had been operating for six years.Sessions were held out of a suite on Caldwell Street.

Kate found it odd that a man would be running and operating such a service, but she noted that the vast majority of other employees, counselors, and managers were mostly female.It made her wonder if maybe Hale was more of a monetary source who’d happened to have the originating idea.

Kate went back to Carol Paige's financial records without pausing.

She found it in under five minutes.A payment of two hundred and forty dollars, eleven months ago, to Fresh Horizons LLC.

She sat still and looked at both entries side by side on her screen.Both payments made within a month of each other, roughly a year ago.She was looking at two women who shared no visible social connection, no overlapping geography, no common professional or personal circles… but yet they had each written a check to the same local program within weeks of one another.

It wasn’t proof of anything.Kate knew that simply enough.Fresh Horizons had been operating for six years and could easily have served several hundred women over that time, most of whom were presumably alive and going about their lives without incident.The overlap might be exactly what it appeared on the surface—just two women in similar circumstances who had each found their way to the same local resource.

But it was a connection.Tangible, specific, and documented.After two days of confirmed alibis and neighbors who had heard nothing, a real connection between the two victims was not something she could sit on and examine at her leisure.

She found the Caldwell Street address on the Fresh Horizons website and entered it into her phone.Then she opened her text thread with Sloane.

Might have a potential lead.Meet me at the car in 5.

She closed the laptop and gathered her things.Both of their victims had written a check to the same organization within a month of each other, and both were now dead.

She didn't know yet what that meant, but she was going to find out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Fresh Horizons was located in a cluster of companies that, when all boiled down to its core, was nothing more than a glitzy strip mall for lesser-known businesses.The Fresh Horizons suite was on the third floor of a building that housed a dental practice and a financial planning firm on the floors below it.When they stepped inside, Kate took in the smell of a thousand other small, industrial areas.It was all glass-cleaner and too-strong potpourri, barely winning the fight over something that smelled almost like plastic.

The elevator opened onto a small reception area decorated in warm neutrals, with two low sofas facing each other across a coffee table and a shelf of carefully arranged books along one wall.The lighting was soft and considered.A small white noise machine sat on the floor beside the reception desk, which struck Sloane as a detail that was highly purposeful.Whoever had put this space together had understood exactly the sort of people who would be entering the space and what they might need to feel as soon as they were inside.

A receptionist greeted them with a smile at the front desk.She was cute, and in her thirties with a pleasant, unhurried manner.She looked at their credentials with muted shock, made a brief call, and told them Mr.Hale would be right out.He appeared less than two minutes later.

Richard Hale was in his early fifties, trim and well-dressed, with a full head of silver-threaded hair.He extended his hand to each of them in turn and held eye contact when he introduced himself, and had what Kate thought to be an open and inquisitive expression.

"Agents, thank you for coming in.Please."He gestured toward the corridor behind him."My office is just back here."

He led them down a short hallway lined with framed prints, abstract shapes in muted colors that managed to feel calming without feeling clinical.They passed a room with its door open, set up for group sessions.Eight chairs were arranged in a loose circle, and a whiteboard with something written on it in careful lettering that Kate couldn't fully read as they passed.A second room had its door closed.

Hale's office was at the end of the hall.It was larger than the rest of the suite, with a desk set to one side and a seating area with two chairs and a small couch arranged near the window.He directed them toward the seating area rather than the desk, which Kate took note of.It was a deliberate choice, the kind that communicatedthis is a conversation, not an interrogation.Kate suspected he made it with everyone.

"Can I get either of you anything?Coffee, water?"

They both declined.He sat across from them, relaxed but attentive, hands rested loosely on his knees.Kate got the idea that meeting with authority figures wasn’t exactly new to him.

"So," he said."How can I help?"

Kate leaned forward slightly."We're here about two former clients of Fresh Horizons.Carol Paige and Donna Holt."

Something moved across Hale's face, a shift in attention, maybe.He had the look of a man reaching back through a mental file."Yes, I remember both of them.They completed our program last year."He looked between them, almost as if trying to telepathically get them to share more."Has something happened?"

"Both of them have been killed in the past two days," Sloane said.

In the silence that followed, Hale looked at Kate, then at Sloane, as the composure he'd carried into the room took a visible hit.He sat back slowly, his face cycling through multiple emotions."Both of them…?"