Page 53 of Hunted in Hope Town

Which was the name of the man who’d facilitated his fake transfer to Alaska.

KIRSTEN WATCHED ELLIS carefully as he said his goodbyes to Boyd. She’d listened to Ellis’s side of the conversation but hadn’t quite been able to follow the full crux of the conversation.

Except Ellis had expected to be rebuffed and had been welcomed instead. She’d known he would be. Boyd had been a real friend.

But something had happened at the end of that conversation that made Ellis still, stiffen. He hit End on the phone. Set it down. And let out a slow breath.

“You found something.”

He didn’t look at her. He was still just standing there. “Maybe.”

“Well?” Since he wasn’t turning to face her she walked into the living room so she could see him, since he still wasn’t responding. “Ellis, tell me.”

“Boyd mentioned Colleen leaving not long after I did. I didn’t really have to lead him there. So, I think it was genuine.”

“Okay, confirming what you already thought. So why are you acting so…” She didn’t have the right words for it. It kind of reminded her of before she remembered. The careful way he held himself always. “Ellis.”

“There was a guy in support named Tom West. He handled travel and, in my case, the fake transfer to Alaska. Apparently, according to Boyd, he’d gotten kind of close to Colleen right before she left. It doesn’t mean anything, necessarily.”

“But it could. If he made the arrangements for Alaska, he knew more than other people. And he could have fed it to her. On purpose or not.”

“He works for the FBI, Kirsten. If he fed it to her, he meant to. And if this is all true…why would these people turn on me? Why would they still be after me through you all this time later? I didn’t do anything to them. I didn’t even succeed in that assignment. I failed.”

“Some people went to jail, you said.”

“Yeah, but not all. Believe me, they didn’t pay. Not really.”

“That’s how you see it. Big picture. Some not all, but I’m guessing the some were pretty pissed about it. I dealt with plenty of students who thought I was the bad guy for punishing them for things they chose to do wrong.”

Some of the tension in him released, a little. His mouth curved. “Students and mobsters.”

“Not so very different,” she finished. Because it was something they used to say to each other.

He lowered his mouth to hers. A brief, soft kiss, but it was the first time she hadn’t pushed him into it, and it made her want to cry. Because here they were, finding their way back to each other.

But there was a black cloud hanging over it. Still, she wrapped her arms around him. To hold on. To believe that this was the rock, the anchor, that would get them through to the other side where a future—a new future—lay.

“You get to be upset that someone might have betrayed you,” she told him when he stiffened against the hug. “You don’t have to lock it all away and focus on the job.”

She felt his chest rise and fall in another sigh. His hand smoothed down her back. “There’s a threat. That has to be the focus. To stop it.”

“But the threat is personal.” She looked up at him, arms still wrapped around his waist. “Or at least it feels that way, right?”

“It doesn’t mean it can be personal. Not when there’s still so much we don’t know, and as much as it feels personal to me, it doesn’t mean it was for them. The information leak could be a lot of things and for a lot of different reasons.” He gave her a little squeeze, then released her, putting space between them.

But it wasn’t running away. He was sitting down on the couch so he could open the laptop. “It feels like it was about me, but I have to remember, a good agent remembers, feelings aren’t facts. What we need are more facts.” He pointed to the computer as if he could find them all there.

Which was a perfect time to introduce what she’d been thinking about all day. Most especially when he’d been on the phone with Boyd. Research was great. Collecting data was obviously important.

But if she knew anything about being an FBI agent from being right by Ellis’s side all these years, it was that at a certain point you had to act. With all those tools, yes, but collecting a bunch of tools didn’t matter if you weren’t ever going to use them.

“I’ve been thinking about something.”

He didn’t look up at first. He was typing away. In investigator mode. She could leave him to it. He was the professional after all. But…

“I know you’re not going to like it.”

He stopped typing, eyed her. But he didn’t stop her or demand to know what she was talking about. He let her get it out in her own time.