Page 60 of Hunted in Hope Town

Boyd would take the room Ellis had originally slept in, and Ellis would come in here and sleep with her eventually, just like he’d been doing the past two nights. Just like had begun to feel normal and like old times.

Now there was this discordant note in all that remembering. What was still lost?

The door creaked open and Ellis stepped inside. She stopped her pacing.

“I thought you were going to sleep,” he said, with only a hint of censure in his tone.

“How can I sleep, Ellis?”

“You were the one who wanted to bring Boyd into this.”

She scowled at him and saw through him. He wasn’t saying that to be rude, he was saying that to try to rile her up and take her mind off the topic at hand.

But nothing could.

“What if he’s right? What if there’s something up here I can’t unlock.” She tapped her temple. “What if it’s the answer to everything?”

Ellis took her by the shoulders. His expression was one of sympathy and care. He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “It’s not the answer to everything, baby. It’s too complicated to be the answer to everything. No matter what you remember or don’t, it’s…at most a very small piece of a much bigger and more complicated puzzle.”

“What if it’s a really important small piece?”

Ellis sighed heavily, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. Which eased some of the tension pounding there.

“Boyd and I are going to handle it. Between the two of us, something will shake out. We were a damn fine FBI pair once upon a time. Not too much has changed.”

“But you’re not a pair, Ellis. We’re a trio. I like…making meals for us, even for Boyd. I like bustling around doing things for you guys while you come up with plans or I wouldn’t do it. But if I am even a tiny piece of this, I have to be a part of it. And I don’t want to.”

He chuckled, smoothing a hand over her hair. “It is some comfort to me that you can be a little petulant about that, because I don’t want you to be involved either.”

“But you agree I have to be?”

He sighed, all signs of humor gone. “I don’t know that I agree just yet. I don’t know that I agree with anything just yet, but I think we have to…follow Boyd’s theory for a while. It doesn’t mean I think he’s right, but maybe following it leads us to the right theory. Because we haven’t gotten close yet.”

“You know who’s after you.” Wasn’t that close enough?

“I’m reasonably sure, which isn’t knowing. And we can stop them temporarily because we know who they are, or might be, but we can’t eradicate a threat until we know why. This has to be over, Kirsten. Not just delayed another two years.”

She swallowed at the lump in her throat. Because he was right. Because she knew what she had to do, and he wouldn’t want to do it.

But he knew too.

“You have to lay a trap, Ellis.”

Chapter Nineteen

Ellis didn’t immediately respond because he didn’t want to yell at her, and if he opened his mouth, he thought he might just do that.

Out of fear. Out of terror.

Yeah, he could admit that now. He was terrified, and it pissed him off, because there was nothing to do with that feeling but feel it. Deal with it. Fear couldn’t dictate his choices like they once had, even the fear for her well-being.

So he took his time. To settle, to breathe, to remember that…at the end of this was a brand-new lease on life. He wanted that. Needed it.

“It’s very possible there is no one out there to trap,” Ellis finally said, like that really mattered to what she was saying.

“That would be the ideal scenario, right?” Kirsten replied. “But it’s also possible someone is lying in wait. Boyd could have led someone here, through no real fault of his own. Someone could know where we are, and the more time we give them, the more time they have to hurt us.”

“And you want to put yourself out there as bait?”