Page 26 of Hunted in Hope Town

She was pacing. Coming up with a plan. Bouncing back quickly from the emotional turmoil of not trusting her therapist anymore.

And the word us pierced through him like any bullet.

“You’d be part of it,” she continued. “You could observe her and ask her questions that way. You could be looking for whatever it is you FBI agents look for.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. If she was anyone else, he would have jumped on the idea right away, but…

“I’m worried pretending like you remember might be difficult for you.”

“Stop worrying about my psychological well-being. I won’t have a psyche to worry about if this is actually a threat and I wind up dead.”

Dark, but true.

“I can’t do this,” she said, sounding agitated but in control. “Just exist in this place where maybe she’s bad, maybe she isn’t. Maybe we’re under a threat, maybe we’re not. Maybe what I dream or feel is a memory, maybe it’s not. I can’t… I need to act. I need to.”

He understood that need better than anyone, and still he hesitated, because acting put her in turmoil.

But she was already there, wasn’t she, whether he did anything or not?

“I’ll need to run it by Zach. We’d need his help and cooperation.” And approval, though he didn’t say that out loud. He couldn’t trust his own judgment on this. He needed an outside party to tell him if he was insane for even considering this. “I’ll need to make a plan. For what we’re trying to get to the bottom of.”

“Good. Good.” She nodded, stopped her pacing. She let out a slow breath like she could relax because he was going along with it. She even tried to smile. “I don’t want to sit around and wait, twiddle my thumbs, be a…a victim. Maybe that’s who I used to be, but—”

“It wasn’t. Never. You’ve always been a…a…champion. Of anyone. Your students. Me.”

She stared at him then, those dark eyes serious. “What about myself?”

He could only stare back at her, that moment he’d left to go on the undercover mission fresh in his mind. She hadn’t come right out and said she wanted a divorce. She hadn’t come right out and said he wouldn’t be welcome back, and because of that he’d been able to convince himself when it was over, he’d fix everything.

But he’d come to accept in the past two years that what he’d chosen would have been the end—with or without the way things went down.

“You were used to putting everyone else first, but I think you were learning how to consider yourself too. Maybe not a champion yet, but you were getting there.”

She nodded, as if she agreed. As if that made sense to her. She turned to look at the wall of people, dates, and everything that had led them here.

“Then I want to get there, whether I remember or not. Talk to Zach. Talk to whoever, but if Dr. Leigh somehow did this to us, I want to be part of getting to the bottom of it.”

Chapter Ten

She made dinner for them that night. Even though it was just putting together some nonperishable items to create a meal, the motions steadied her. And there was something about having someone to cook for that made it even more enjoyable. She wasn’t just keeping herself alive, she was extending that courtesy to someone else.

Ellis had taken the phone call with Zach outside. Spoken in low tones for a long time, then come back in with a red nose and watery eyes from the frigid cold. He stopped short, without fully closing the door behind him, presumably at the sight of her putting food on the table.

“I made dinner,” she explained.

“You didn’t have to go through that trouble,” he said a little gruffly.

“Heating up some canned soup and green beans is hardly trouble.”

“Zach is going to do some poking around. He wants to make sure if we set any bait for Dr. Leigh we’re ready to handle it. If we have some kind of therapy session with her, he wants to find a way to record it without her knowing, and he wants backup ready to come up here in case somehow Dr. Leigh has more eyes on us than we realize. He’ll get back to me tomorrow, and we’ll go from there.”

Eyes. She couldn’t help but look around, suddenly feeling like a million eyes were on her. But that was silly. She forced herself to take a seat at the little table in the kitchen and pointed to the one across from her. “Sit. Eat.”

He hesitated. She understood why when he sat down at the table. Across from her. With the little fake Christmas tree in the corner twinkling its colorful lights.

She was getting damn tired of the way things felt familiar, and yet she didn’t know why. She didn’t like causing him pain, and her questions about their old life seemed to, but…

She had to know things. She just had to ask about the things that popped into her mind. “How did we celebrate Christmas?”