CHAPTER NINETEEN
She placed the call via Bluetooth as she came to a red light, and he answered on the second ring. “Well, hello, Agent Wise.”
"Hey," she said. “Just checking in. I feel bad about being out so late, but this case is sort of going nowhere and right now…well, it’s getting bad.”
"No need to apologize,” Allen said. “Is it moving at all?"
"Slowly. We split up about an hour ago to follow two leads. I'm heading to an address right now."
"Is it safe? Where you’re going, I mean."
“I think so,” she said, touched by the fact that he still worried about her in such a way.
“But as far as the case goes, there are now three dead women and not a single reliable lead.
Nothing is clicking into place yet." The light changed and she turned right, scanning the numbers on the mailboxes.
"I'll be home when I can. Don't wait up. "
"I wasn't going to." She could hear the quiet amusement in his voice. "Be careful."
"I will. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
She ended the call and slowed the car, pulling up against the curb at 714 Aldermoor Drive.
The house sat back a little from the sidewalk on a wide, flat lot.
It was a brick ranch-style, single-story, with white shutters and a covered front porch.
A lamp was on inside, visible through a sheer curtain in the front window.
A string of small café lights hung from the porch roof but were not switched on.
Two terra cotta planters flanked the front steps, empty now for the season but positioned with a care that suggested warmer months had made something of them.
Kate got out of the car, walked up the path, and knocked.
She heard movement almost immediately. Footsteps, then a pause—probably someone checking the feed on the doorbell camera mounted to the left of the door—and then the door opened.
The woman who appeared was in her early fifties, with warm brown eyes behind reading glasses she had pushed up into her graying hair.
She was wearing a cardigan over a floral blouse and holding a half-folded dish towel in one hand,.
She looked at Kate with immediate, open attention.
"Bridget Hanover?" Kate asked.
"Yes?"
Kate held up her credentials, a gesture that apparently never stopped feeling natural even after taking so many steps away. "I'm Special Agent Kate Wise, with the FBI. I'm sorry to come by at this hour, but I was hoping to ask you a few questions."
The door opened wider before she had finished the sentence. "Of course. Please come in." She stepped back and pulled the door open, holding it for Kate with both hands as if she'd been expecting exactly this kind of visit and was relieved it had finally arrived.
The front room was warm and settled in a very cozy way that made Kate think of English cottages in the countryside.
A floral couch was pressed against the back wall, a crocheted throw across one arm.
Framed photos sat on the mantle, most of them showing Hanover at various ages, usually in groups, and always smiling.
A vision board leaned against the wall beside the television—half-finished, with printed phrases and cut-outs pinned at varying angles.
ABUNDANCE. INTENTION. FORWARD. Kate had to catch her mental commentary as she thought it was a bit cheesy.
On the bookshelf, a small Bluetooth speaker sat silent beside a library paperback with a bookmark two-thirds of the way through.
"Sit anywhere," Hanover said. "Can I get you anything? I was just tidying up."
"I'm fine, thank you." Kate took the armchair nearest the door and waited while Hanover settled onto the couch. She was still holding the dish towel, seemingly unable to set it down.
"I need to ask you about the Fresh Horizons forum," Kate said. "Specifically, your involvement there over the past several months. My current case happens to be wrapped up in it."
The word "involvement" seemed to land wrong. Hanover straightened slightly, her eyes locked on Kate. "Is something wrong? Did something happen?"
"I'm afraid so. Three women connected to the forum have been killed in the past week."
Hanover's expression shifted immediately and completely. The color left her face. She pressed her free hand flat against her knee and her head started to shake as if on a swivel. "Killed… killed?"
"Yes. I can share that much. Their names are Carol Paige, Donna Holt and Nancy Briggs. I'd like to know if you recognize any of those names."
"I know Carol," she said. "I mean, I knew her from the forum.
We weren't close, but she was always so good in the group.
Very direct and encouraging." She looked away from Kate toward the middle distance, as if she was trying to conjure up a memory.
"And Nancy—I just liked one of her posts tonight.
She posted about a date. She was so excited and…
God, no one deserves this sort of thing…
" She shook her head slowly, and Kate could see that she was genuinely working through it, not performing distress but actually absorbing it in real time. "God. What happened to them?"
"I’m sorry, but that's an ongoing investigation.
I can't go into details yet." Kate studied her face trying to determine if she was being sincere or sort of milking it.
From what she could tell, the woman was definitely in a state of disbelief.
"I wanted to speak with you because your name came up during our review of forum activity.
You've been an active and consistent member. "
Something shifted in Hanover's expression then—not guilt, but a pleased, slightly embarrassed recognition that she had been noticed.
"I try to be. That community gave me a lot.
After my divorce, I mean. I finished the program about a year and a half ago and I just—I stayed.
Because it helped me and I thought maybe I could help other people going through the same thing.
" She said it without any great performance.
It was simply true and she knew it. "I know it can seem a little much, all the exclamation points and the cheering each other on.
But that's what worked for me when I was in the thick of it.
Having someone say that your small victory was worth celebrating. It sounds silly, I know."
"It doesn't sound silly at all," Kate said.
"My daughter thinks it's silly." Hanover smiled briefly and rolled her eyes with affectionate self-awareness.
"She says ‘Mom, you don't have to comment on every single post.’ But I remember what it felt like to put something out there and have nobody respond.
" She smoothed the dish towel across her knee.
"I don't want to be that person who just reads and never gives anything back. "
Kate let that settle before she moved forward. "We noticed that your activity on the forum is quite different from your activity on your public Facebook page. Different tone, different engagement style."
Hanover considered this for a moment without any apparent anxiety about it.
Kate didn’t even see the slightest indication of anger.
"My Facebook is a mess, I’ll admit,” she said.
“My brother posts things and I argue with him constantly about politics.
I've been trying to mute myself more but it just…
" She paused and made a small helpless gesture with the dish towel.
"It gets away from me. I know I'm a completely different person in those two spaces.
The forum just brings out something better in me. "
It was, Kate thought, a completely believable answer. Frustratingly so. And yes, that was also true no matter how vile or confrontational the comments had been.
"Tell me a little about your own experience with the program," Kate said. "How did you find it?"
"My therapist recommended it, actually. After my divorce was final.
I was—" She stopped and corrected herself.
"I was married at twenty-two, and we were married for almost twenty-four years, and then we weren't. Just like that. It just sort of fell apart and we realized we weren’t in love with each other… that we’d fallen out of love several years before.
I went through the program and I did all of it.
I finished every component." She said it with a quiet pride, but it was tinged with sadness given the nature of the news Kate had just delivered.
"And now I'm dating." She laughed a little at her own delivery of the word.
"That's a very strange thing to say at fifty-three.
I've been on six first dates in the past six months. Not exactly a success story."
"How has that been going?" Kate asked.
"About how you'd expect," Hanover said dryly.
"One man talked about his ex-wife for two hours.
One showed up with a gift on the first date, which sounds nice until I tell you it was a monogrammed hand towel.
One seemed completely perfect and then texted me the following day to explain that he'd decided to pursue things with someone else.
" She ticked these off with the weary good humor of someone who had turned the material into something she could laugh at.
"So, I haven't found my person yet, no. But I'm still out there.
" She gestured vaguely at the vision board. "Hence the board."
Kate glanced at it, now feeling even worse that she had viewed it as cheesy. "You mentioned that the forum helped you. Did you feel like it was a safe space? That people were careful with the personal things members shared?"
"Always." She answered immediately and firmly, nodding her head. "That's one of the things I try to reinforce when I see new members come in. What goes in the group stays in the group. We're very clear about that. And from what I always saw, everyone respected it."
"Did you ever feel that any member was using the forum in a way that seemed off? Not in the spirit of the thing?"
Hanover thought about that with genuine effort, her brow furrowing as she worked back through her memory.
"There was that CoachSteve, who was pushing his services.
Carol dealt with that very professionally.
But I can't think of anyone who gave me a bad feeling.
" She looked at Kate with a directness that was not challenging but honest. "Is that what happened? Someone from the forum?"
"We're following several leads," she said, keeping her tone level with a bit of bass. A way of saying That’s not up for discussion.
Hanover nodded slowly. She looked down at her lap and then back up. "Well... what should I do? Is it safe for me to be a member of that forum right now?"
It was a fair question, and Kate didn’t have an easy answer.
If the killer was selecting victims specifically from posts in that forum, any active member was a potential target.
But issuing a broad warning to every Fresh Horizons graduate would almost certainly reach their killer before notifying all of the women it was meant to protect.
"I'd recommend limiting what you share publicly there for the time being," Kate said. "And if anything feels off to you—a message, an interaction that seems strange—I want you to contact me directly." She took a card from her jacket pocket and held it out.
Hanover took it and read it carefully, turning it over. "Okay. I can do that."
Kate stood to leave. Hanover walked her to the door and opened it, holding it again in both hands, that same slightly wide-open gesture that seemed less about hospitality and more about wanting to be useful in whatever way she had available.
"I'm sorry I can't be more help," Hanover said. "I just—I love that group. I know that sounds small given what you've told me tonight, but I do."
"It doesn't sound small," Kate said. "I’m glad you found a community that you feel so passionately about when you needed it the most.” She smiled and wrapped up with a simple: “Thank you for your time."
She walked back down the path to the car. The neighborhood was quiet and dark now, the kind of late November stillness that settled in after nine or so on a weeknight. She sat behind the wheel for a moment without starting the engine.
She typed a reply to Sloane's earlier text: Nothing here either. She's genuine. Enthusiastic about the forum, recently divorced, back in the dating pool with not much to show for it. Nothing that raises a flag. See you at HQ?
She set the phone in the cupholder and stared through the windshield at the quiet street.
The night had turned up nothing useful, but something was stuck.
Not a suspicion, exactly, and not anything she could point to and name.
But she could sense a small, persistent friction somewhere at the edge of her thinking, the way a word or the lyrics to a song sometimes refused to surface even when you were certain you knew it.
There was something about the conversation that didn't sit quite right, and the frustrating part was that she couldn't locate what it was.
She thought back through it all, slowly: Hanover's easy explanation for the two-faced social media presence. The divorce at twenty-two, the twenty-four year marriage, the six first dates and the vision board. The enthusiasm for the forum, immediate and fluent and entirely consistent.
Kate finally started the car. Whatever was catching on the edge of her thinking would reveal itself eventually. She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, the porch light of 714 Aldermoor Drive still burning in the rearview mirror.