Page 44 of Hunted in Hope Town

“I’ll just step outside.”

Kirsten shook her head. “We’ll do it in the living room and you’ll put it on speaker so we can both hear and contribute,” Kirsten said in that schoolteacher voice of hers. She walked out the door, just like she used to walk into a classroom. In charge and certain.

Except he knew her and knew that was a kind of armor. Especially when she felt neither in charge nor certain.

So he followed her out to the living room. She settled herself onto the couch and, even though he was still a little leery of being close, and what that did to his focus, sat down next to her.

He dialed Zach back, then put the phone on the table on speaker mode.

“I hope you’re calling with some information,” Ellis said when Zach answered.

“Some. We’ve got an ID on the assistant. She has no concrete connections to anything we’ve been looking into so far. I’m emailing all the info I have to you as we speak, along with some pictures the PI got. Everything seems pretty normal on the surface.”

“And under the surface?”

“I’m not convinced she’s who she’s claiming to be,” Zach replied. Ellis could hear the tap of Zach typing while he spoke. “There’s something a little too pat about the woman. It looks exactly like what I’d put together for an undercover plant.”

Ellis didn’t like the sound of that, but he got up to retrieve his laptop. He opened it, clicked the email client. He tried not to scowl when Kirsten reached over and tilted the laptop so she could see the screen too.

It shouldn’t bother him she wanted to help. That she remembered. It was all good.

But he didn’t know how to carry the weight of it all.

One step at a time.

An email from Zach popped up, so he skimmed the contents. The assistant’s name—or fake name—was Sarah Conway. Thirty-two. Education in psychology, but no actual licenses, just degrees. Born in Colorado, spent most of her life there. Moved to Fairmont, Wyoming, in May. Had been working for Dr. Leigh since then, remotely a few months prior, but definitely not the whole time Kirsten had been going to Dr. Leigh.

Was it all a coincidence?

Ellis listened to Zach explain his next steps—keep watch on this Sarah, keep mining information on the Carusos who weren’t in jail—while he opened the picture attachments to the email.

The pictures were fairly clear, but not particularly close-up. Ellis zoomed in on the face in profile walking into a store, then full on coming back out. She maybe looked…vaguely familiar, but nothing concrete. He was probably overthinking the vaguely familiar and—

“Oh my God,” Kirsten said, leaning toward the screen. “Don’t you know who that is?” Kirsten demanded. “The hair is different. The way she’s holding herself. But I’d recognize that mouth anywhere.”

He looked over at her. She was scowling at the screen, something angry in her expression. He looked back at the picture again. Focusing on the mouth of the woman in the picture. And muttered a curse under his breath as a familiar feeling worked its way through him—disappointment and the excitement of a lead twining together.

“Who is it?” Zach demanded.

“Her name is Colleen Fredericks. She worked at the FBI Office in Chicago in public affairs.”

She’d been a friend for a while, but then things had gotten…complicated. He glanced at Kirsten. Mostly because his wife—who liked just about everyone—hadn’t liked her. So Ellis had started to keep his distance.

“Are you sure?”

“I am,” Kirsten said darkly.

“So you’re…remembering?” Zach said, with a carefulness to his tone.

“Yes,” Kirsten said with no equivocations, when Ellis didn’t think they could be unequivocal about it until she talked to Dr. Leigh. Until they really went through everything, but they didn’t have time for that.

They didn’t have time for anything if Colleen Fredericks was somehow involved with Dr. Leigh.

Zach paused, and Ellis could only imagine what was going on in Zach’s head when it came to Kirsten remembering.

“I think we should steer clear of Dr. Leigh until we get to the bottom of this. I’ll look into Colleen—”

“Let me handle figuring out Colleen,” Ellis interrupted. “She was still at the office when this all went down two years ago. Let me track that. You focus on figuring out how she got connected to Dr. Leigh, and who she might be talking to outside that office.”