Hunted in Hope Town (Hope Town Secrets #2)

Chapter One

Jessica Smith did not know very many things. For example, she did not know where she’d gone to high school, if she’d ever broken any bones, where she had been born or any of the normal things a person should know about themselves.

But she did know that she really liked coffee. She knew how to decorate beautifully and creatively for holidays. And she really knew how to sell books.

She also knew, no matter how nice and unthreatening and totally cute he was, Ellis Sutton made her nervous.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad kind of nervous. Jessica couldn’t characterize it as unease. It was just like…when he was there, something in her world didn’t quite stabilize. Something felt…just out of reach.

And he was there a lot.

Like this morning, as she pushed into the Hope Town Bakery with snow swirling around her. It was early, but the bakery had great coffee so it was no surprise Ellis was sitting at one of the tables with a mug and a plate in front of him with a half-eaten cinnamon roll on it.

It was no surprise that he’d lift those hazel eyes to see who was coming in the door and then curve his mouth into a welcoming smile.

It was no surprise that his deep rumbling voice would say, “Morning, Jessica.” And definitely no surprise that he made the chair and table look tiny holding his very large and impressive frame.

But every single time—whether it was here, or at the bookstore, or just on the street—Jessica felt a strange kind of jolt of what she could only describe as surprise when he looked at her or said her name.

She couldn’t say she had gotten used to it, even these two years later, but she had come to expect her reaction to him.

Today though was more. Because something seemed to…

flash inside of her. An odd, unsettling memory.

No, not a memory. A dream. She must have had a bad dream last night, because she could see in her head so clearly Ellis Sutton with blood all but spurting from his shoulder, his white shirt stained with blood.

So much blood.

She shuddered right there in the entrance to the bakery, like the dream was a terrible memory, when of course it was just a disturbing figment of her imagination while asleep.

“Cold one,” Ellis offered.

Jessica nodded, feeling mute. The sudden memory of such an awful dream created physical reactions she didn’t care for.

Thankfully, the bakery owner, Lia Blair, stepped out to the counter. “Morning, Jessica,” she greeted cheerfully. “The usual?”

Jessica liked having a usual. When her entire past was a blank—no doubt traumatic and terrible, which, hey, maybe was why she was having weird, bloody nightmares—it was nice to have things in Hope Town that felt like roots.

Jessica stepped forward to the counter. “Yes, please,” she managed to say without sounding as strangled as she felt.

Lia began to make the coffee, and Jessica couldn’t seem to help herself. She glanced over her shoulder at Ellis.

He was facing the door, so she just saw the back of his head.

He was reading a book—another normal thing.

He was their most consistent customer at the bookstore.

So much so that Faith, her boss and the manager of the bookstore, had started hiring Ellis to do little projects around the store.

He was the only male member of the bookstore’s book club and often had interesting and insightful things to say about whatever book they read.

Jessica looked back at the cash register, where Lia was ringing her up. Jessica paid in cash, like she did every day, then she took her to-go cup with a “Thank you.” When she turned back around to brave the cold and walk down to the bookstore, she did not look at Ellis. She kept her gaze forward.

Some of the other women she was friends with here in Hope Town liked to tease her about Ellis, saying that he had a crush on her. She always just laughed it off. It wasn’t like he’d ever made a move on her.

But if he did, what would you say? Albennie had demanded at the last book club after Ellis had left and Albennie had stayed behind to help clean up.

Albennie worked with Lia at the bakery, and Jessica always felt drawn to her because she was…

direct. Jessica didn’t feel uncomfortable with Albennie because a person always knew where you stood with her.

Ellis Sutton… Jessica didn’t have a clue. Where she stood with him. What she might say if he asked her out. It all left her feeling so unsettled she just…pushed it out of her mind and didn’t deal with it.

She thought about that flash of an image of him bleeding.

A dream. Just a dream. She should push that away with all her mixed-up feelings.

But she couldn’t seem to.

ELLIS SUTTON WAS TIRED.

He supposed two years of pretending your amnesiac wife was just a nice woman at the local bookstore might do that to a guy. But he had been an FBI agent for years, one who’d done a lot of undercover work. He should be a little mentally tougher.

Some days, he considered ignoring the doctor and the psychiatrist’s recommendations and just telling her.

Your name is Kirsten Sutton. I am your husband. You suffered a traumatic brain injury thanks to my job. We’re both still targets, but Hope Town seems to be okay.

He never did.

Obviously.

What he did do was spend way too much time at the bakery drinking coffee and eating pastries anytime he knew she might stop by.

He volunteered his time at the bookstore—building shelves, cleaning, running errands, whatever Faith needed him to do—whenever Jessica was working.

Any remaining time he spent doing some freelance security work, exercising to work off said pastries and all that frustration, or keeping careful tabs on the mob boss who no doubt wanted him dead—and would like to take anyone he loved out along the way.

Ellis might not be an FBI agent any longer, but he was determined to keep his body ready for whatever might come their way if that threat ever came to be. So research, exercise, and otherwise acting like an FBI agent even though he wasn’t one any longer all went with the territory.

He wouldn’t fail Kirsten a second time.

He could still remember the first time he’d seen her.

She’d been on campus at their alma mater, sitting on the edge of the student union’s fountain.

She’d had her head bent toward a friend’s she was sitting next to.

They’d looked like they were sharing juicy secrets, and then she’d grinned—at her friend, not him—the sun glinting off her blond hair just right.

Ellis had been a different man then. Determined. Certain. Always so damn certain. And in that moment, he’d been certain that he was going to marry that woman.

It was silly. He could see that now, but in the moment, twenty and filled with purpose, he’d been sure. He’d gone right up to her and asked for her number.

She’d laughed at him. But she’d also given him her number.

It hadn’t been smooth sailing from there, though there’d been a lot more smooth than storms. They’d never broken up in all those years, though they’d fought or had rough patches.

When he’d been in Quantico, they’d both been a little miserable and maybe nearing the end of their proverbial ropes with each other.

But then he’d survived it, gotten his first FBI assignment, and he’d proposed. She’d said yes, and that she’d be willing to go wherever he did. Marriage had been pretty good, even with his demanding undercover schedule.

At first.

Toward the end there, they’d been heading toward miserable. Well, she had been. She’d been ready to start a family, like they’d always planned, and he’d wanted to chase glory. One last time.

Now here they were with neither the kids nor the glory. Technically, Kirsten Sutton was dead and Ellis Sutton allegedly worked at an FBI office in Anchorage on a desk assignment, so he wasn’t sure where that left them legally in terms of being married.

But to Ellis, they were married. To Ellis, he’d learned the hard way just how little he cared about glory without Kirsten.

Jessica, he reminded himself.

He couldn’t even let himself think of her as Kirsten Sutton, because he might slip up if he did. She had to be Jessica Smith, even in his memories.

Because Ellis Sutton knew all about how to survive undercover work. Some days, he figured it was the only thing he knew.

Frustrated with the circular thinking, Ellis glanced up from his book only to find Jessica walking out the door, which hadn’t been the plan for this morning.

Rolling his eyes at himself, he tucked the book under his arm and hopped up and put his used dishes in their receptacle.

He’d meant to have this conversation with her in the bakery.

Now he’d have to have it with her on the street.

He glanced up at the counter to find a pair of blue eyes studying him suspiciously. Sammy, the teen who helped Lia out on weekends, must be on Thanksgiving break if she was working on a weekday.

And clocking him for being a creep. He needed to be more subtle. So he smiled kindly at her, and when he left the bakery, he went in the opposite direction Jessica had gone.

Even though it was cold and snowy, he took a long walk down Main Street, cut over behind the storefronts on the other side of the street, and didn’t cut back until he was past the bakery—just in case Sammy Fairhurst was still watching him.

Everyone in Hope Town knew him as Ellis Sutton, but on every legal document he had—rental agreement, driver’s license, et cetera—his name was Mark Jones.

If he went out into the broader world of Bent County—rare—he went by Mark.

But here in Hope Town he’d gone by his real name in the hopes someday it might… jog some piece of Jessica’s memory.

So he couldn’t raise any suspicion where he might need to explain two identities, even with a random teenager, because things would get…complicated. Even more complicated than they already were, and that was saying something.

Jessica was walking at a quick clip down Main, coffee in hand, honeyed-blond hair dancing in the wind. Just like that day almost twenty years ago, something about her just struck him, tightened his heart in a vise.

And every time he felt it now, he wondered how he’d gotten so deep, so lost, he’d been willing to risk their marriage for a job.

There was no good reason to be wondering that right now. It was irrelevant. She didn’t know who he really was, and until her brain clued her in—if it ever did—he had to pretend he didn’t know her either. Psychiatrist’s orders.

He caught up with her just as she made it to the bookstore front door. She was turning the key in the lock, so once she pulled the key out, he reached forward to open the door for her.

She looked up at him in surprise, though he hadn’t exactly been stealthy in his approach. But she was staring at him like she wasn’t sure if she should let him in.

“Faith said you had some Christmas decor ideas that might need my help,” he offered. “I thought I’d see what you had in mind. See if I need to buy any supplies.”

She inhaled, and he supposed anyone else might not notice the slight shake in that sound. But he noticed everything about her.

“Oh. Well. Right.”

She got nervous around him more often than not, but this was different. He cataloged every different. Always looking for some hint that the past might come back to her.

He was never sure if he wished it would or wouldn’t.

But today she didn’t just look nervous or unnerved in any of her normal ways, she actually looked a little…afraid.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concerned. She hadn’t seemed afraid of him in well over a year.

She nodded. Then she waved it away. “Sorry. I had this horrible dream last night that I didn’t remember until I saw you. It’s just left me feeling a little…off-kilter. Can’t seem to shake it.” She stepped into the warmth of the store, so he followed.

“Horrible dream about me?”

She grimaced, her cheeks going a little pink. “Well, you weren’t being horrible. You’d been shot. It was…awful and bloody.” She lifted her shoulders in a kind of shrug, then shuddered.

Everything inside him froze for a moment. He almost lifted his hand to the spot on his shoulder where he still had a scar from the gunshot wound that had caused him considerable muscle and bone damage.

That had stopped him from saving her from the fall from the second-story balcony, after she’d been thrown off of it.

At the last second, he stopped himself from touching the spot, but he was struggling to find words. To breathe.

He was too busy reliving that night, and the terror and pain and, yes, blood.

Jessica was…dreaming about that? Did that mean she might remember?

He shook that thought—that hope, that dread—away.

“Hey, guys,” Faith greeted them, appearing from the back room. She was carrying a big box, so Ellis took that as an excuse to look away from Jessica and move over to help Faith shoulder the burden.

There were three people in this town who knew he and Jessica had a past. Zach Simmons, also a former FBI agent who’d built Hope Town and was the reason Ellis and Jessica were here.

Lane Webb, the original member of Hope Town’s privatized witness protection program who ran the antique store and acted as mayor and a kind of liaison to all the women under protection.

And Faith Anderson, the bookstore manager who employed Jessica.

Ellis had needed to fight for that one with Zach. The whole point of any witness protection program was keeping people’s pasts on the down-low, but Ellis knew that Faith would need to understand that if Ellis was lurking around, it was only for Kirst—for Jessica’s safety.

“Thanks,” Faith said. “We need to get as much stock as possible out today. Hoping this stupid snow doesn’t screw up Small Business Saturday for us.”

Ellis tried to make his mouth curve. He wasn’t sure he succeeded, but he managed a few reassuring words about the weather.

And spent the rest of his day trying not to wonder if Jessica’s dream hadn’t been a dream at all.

But an actual memory.