Chapter Two
Jessica loved her little apartment above the empty storefront across from the bookstore. It was like her sanctuary. When everything outside these walls got to be too much, here she was safe.
From what?
The little snippet of a thought stopped her in her tracks this morning. What…was she afraid of?
Her doctor said that she shouldn’t worry about before. That she should focus on her present. After two years of having this big blank for a past, she thought she’d become quite the expert at that.
But the past few days, ever since she’d had that dream with a bloody Ellis, she felt…
anxious. She should probably call to set up an appointment with Dr. Leigh.
She marched over to her refrigerator, where she kept a magnetic pad of paper and a neatly printed to-do list, and added make an appointment to the list next to all her Christmas preparations.
Get a real tree. Buy more lights. Buy Faith a present.
She’d call the doctor first thing Monday morning when the office opened, then start on her errands. Once she had an appointment, she’d talk through it and, like it always did, her brain would settle and she could go back to focusing on her present.
Feeling a little bit more settled, she got ready for the day.
It would be a long, hopefully busy one. Faith did good business for a small bookstore in a tiny postage-stamp town, but the holiday season was one of the most important for the bookstore.
And Small Business Saturday was the kickoff to all that.
Bundled up for the cold, complete with snow boots, Jessica opened her front door and stepped into the hallway.
At the end, the staircase would take her to the main floor and out the back door of the building.
The storefront she lived above was still empty, but Zach had been making noise about renting it out to the “right person.”
Before she pushed out the main floor door, she stopped. There was a kind of…envelope sticking in the crack of the door, like someone had tried to shove it in from the outside.
Confused, she reached out and tugged it out of the spot it was wedged. In dark block letters was typed: Mrs. Sutton.
Jessica could only stare at it for humming seconds where everything inside of her seemed to squeeze tight, like she was bracing for a blow.
Once she managed a breath, she shook her head. Why was she getting upset over an envelope? But the building felt…threatening, all of a sudden. She looked one way and then the other.
Someone had been right outside the door, shoved this envelope into the crack, and she didn’t know who.
She shook her head. Anyone could be outside a building in Hope Town. That was why she had locks and a security system. Besides, that envelope wasn’t addressed to her. There was no reason to feel fear. She was overreacting to a clearly misdelivered note.
Someone had made a mistake.
Ellis was the only Sutton she knew in Hope Town, so either someone had gotten…confused about their relationship, or was making a really weird joke, or this had simply been delivered to the wrong address.
There was no address or postage on the front of the envelope. Just Mrs. Sutton.
Jessica rubbed at the tightness in her chest. It felt like panic. But that was an overreaction to a mistake.
Ellis lived in the building across the street. Someone had just gotten confused with directions. This letter had to be meant for him. Some mistake or confusion. She’d just…take it to him.
Still, she didn’t make the move to go outside. She was struck by a strange thought. It was addressed to Mrs. Sutton.
Did he have a wife?
She realized she was scowling at the idea of it, when she had absolutely no reason to be scowling about that.
Except a married man should not be flirting with you.
Not that she’d ever really fully believed Ellis was flirting with her.
He was very, very careful around her. Kind.
Nice. He’d never touched her. Never asked her out.
He’d been there, but it wasn’t flirting.
Not really. No matter what anyone else said.
Maybe because he had a wife.
Maybe this was some kind of…jealousy thing? Maybe he did have a wife, and she suspected there was…something between Ellis and her?
Okay, this was ridiculous. She shook her head and forced herself to move to disengage the alarm. She shoved the envelope into her bag and then, on a deep breath, opened the door. She didn’t mean to brace herself for a blow, but she did. Still, none came, except the bright blue of the morning sky.
She glanced all around the mostly empty parking lot, trying not to be paranoid and terrified. There was no one there. Whoever had left that note, mistake or not, was gone.
She locked the outer door, made sure the alarm was reengaged, and tried to calm her too-quick breathing.
Maybe she’d mention to Zach that…
“That what?” she muttered to herself. That someone misdelivered a note to your building?
She tried to shake the ridiculous sense of unease as she crossed the street and walked around to the back of the bookstore so she could enter from the storeroom.
Happenstance. Weird, weird happenstance.
She dropped off her bag, offending note still inside, shrugged off her coat, then stepped into the front room of the store. Even though the doors weren’t open yet, Faith was already flitting around, and Jessica jumped right in to help.
“I think people are actually lining up,” Faith said excitedly about ten minutes before opening.
“Lane did a great job with all that advertising. Hopefully we’ll see all of Bent County today.”
“Here’s hoping,” Faith said.
When they opened the doors, Jessica thought maybe she was right. For a solid two hours, there were streams of people. Not everyone bought stuff, but the store was always packed.
When their usual delivery driver arrived with a couple packages, Faith was deep in a conversation with a family, so Jessica motioned him over to the counter. He dumped the boxes on top.
“Can you sign for this stuff, Jessica?” Steve asked, handing her his little machine.
“Of course.” She took the little stylus he offered and touched it to the screen—she wasn’t thinking about what she was doing, she was mentally calculating how many people had gone through the doors.
Until she’d written out her first name. Except… She blinked down at the screen.
That wasn’t her name.
She stared at the signature. Kirsten. What the hell had prompted her to write that in looping cursive? Was that her middle name maybe? Someone she knew from her mysterious life before?
Kirsten. It had just felt like second nature, but she’d signed for a bunch of packages over the last year and never once…
“Uh… You okay, Jessica?”
She nodded jerkily, coming back to the moment. “Sorry, Steve. I had some kind of…brain fog.” She managed a smile and lied outright to the man. “We’re just so busy. Signed my middle name instead of my first name.”
“That’s okay,” he replied cheerfully. He clicked a button on his little machine. “Just start over.”
This time she signed Jessica Smith very forcefully.
But the idea of someone named Kirsten stuck in her head no matter how busy the store got.
THE SNOW WAS HOLDING, and cars were parked all along Main thanks to the efforts of Lane Webb and the other business owners here in Hope Town advertising their Small Business Saturday events and sales.
Ellis couldn’t help but smile. Jessica would be thrilled. It was obvious she’d come to love working in the bookstore, and it suited her. She’d always loved to read. She’d always loved people.
She’d been a great teacher, but with her soft heart, those tougher case kids had always weighed on her. And she’d been constantly starting over, taking new teaching certification tests when they had to move states for his job.
Why she’d ever agreed to that, he couldn’t understand these days.
He’d ruined her life.
Pushing that depressing thought away, he stepped into the store.
Inside it was warm, the buzz of conversation everywhere.
Packed. It lightened his mood some. Jessica would be happy.
She loved this store, put everything she was into it, and even if she didn’t remember who she’d been, she’d bloomed here.
Maybe he’d live the rest of his life just a spectator to her life, but if she was happy, if she was settled, he didn’t care. He probably deserved it anyway. And she deserved everything good after what she’d put up with, then suffered.
He spotted the shiny halo of her blond hair behind the counter, checking people out, so he pretended to browse even though he spent so much time in here he had every title practically memorized. Hell, he’d read at least half of them too.
Ellis tried to stay out of the way, but the store was small and the crowds were big for the cramped space. He found a little awkward corner to stand in and picked up a random book on Wyoming history he hadn’t paged through before.
It was easy to lose himself in the book.
He was an old pro at biding his time, entertaining his mind while keeping a low-level awareness of what was going on around him.
Which was why, even though he was reading a passage about Esther Hobart Morris, he was very cognizant of the fact Jessica was just a few feet away helping an older gentleman find a title he was looking for.
When she was done with that, she moved toward him, and he looked up from his book at the same time.
“Oh, Ellis. I’m glad you’re here.” She didn’t smile at him though. There was something…strange about her expression, about the way she was talking to him, even though she’d clearly sought him out. “Give me just a minute.”
She disappeared into the back room then returned—waylaid by Faith, then a customer before she finally made it back to him, standing awkwardly in a corner trying not to get into shoppers’ ways.
“I think this must have been delivered to me by mistake,” she said, handing him an envelope.
Frowning, he took it. What could have been delivered to her—
For a moment there was nothing. No sound. No movement. He certainly didn’t breathe.
Typed in bold black letters was Mrs. Sutton.
Though he hadn’t been an agent for years now, all the old instincts clicked back into place easy and quick. “Where did you get this?”
“It was stuck in my building’s door when I left this morning. I guess someone just…misdelivered it.” There was a beat of a pause. “I didn’t know you had a wife.”
For a full moment, he had no words. He could hardly say he didn’t. But she wouldn’t understand and…
It didn’t matter. The look on her face, her tone of voice—how to explain it?
Someone knew. Someone knew who she was. Besides him. Besides Zach. Besides Lane and Faith. People who wouldn’t play any kind of trick like this.
Which meant she wasn’t safe.
He took her by the arm without thinking the movement through. In his head, there was only a beat of panic. The clear need to move and act. “We have to go see Zach.”
She pulled out of his grasp, stepped away from him. Like she was afraid of him. She should be, he had to remind himself. “I’m not going anywhere. I have work,” she told him firmly.
He had to work very hard not to reach out for her again.
“Kir—” He stopped himself in the nick of time.
“Jessica…” But what was there to say to her?
She didn’t understand this was a threat, and the psychiatrist had warned him about overwhelming her.
The traumatic brain injury might have caused some of the memory loss, but some of it was born from a deep psychological trauma, and to dump the truth of that on her might prove too much.
“What did you start to…?” She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears. “Something is wrong. I don’t know what, but it is. Just…leave me alone.” She turned away from him and hurried toward the back of the store.
He couldn’t leave her alone. This was a threat. How could he explain that to her without getting into the nitty-gritty of…everything? Without scaring her even more than she already was?
He swore under his breath and looked back down at the envelope. She hadn’t broken the seal.
Maybe…maybe it really was some kind of strange mistake. She’d already touched it. He’d already touched it, and if it was a legitimate threat there wouldn’t be prints or clues anyway.
Better to see what was inside than be too precious. He broke the seal, pulled out a card. It was all white, but on the inside, typed again was a very simple message.
Mrs. Sutton,
It’s good to see you’re doing well.
—A friend
Ellis narrowly resisted the urge to crumple the card in his fist. This was from no friend.
This was a damn threat.
He swore again and surveyed the swarm of people in the bookstore. Jessica was helping a frazzled looking woman who held a toddler on her hip and a baby strapped to her. He scanned the store. It would be impossible to identify threats in this crowd. Too many strangers.
He wanted to drag her out of here. He had a million contingency plans for if the danger followed them here, but he hadn’t considered that someone might just…leave a warning.
He shoved the offensive card in his pocket. A warning meant someone was playing with him. They wanted him to panic.
He wouldn’t.
He needed Zach. He needed help. He was about to pull out his cell phone, when he spotted a familiar face enter through the door.
Lucy. Zach’s wife. In her professional life she was Daisy Delaney, famous country singer, but here in Hope Town she was Lucy Simmons. And while that still was weird to fully absorb sometimes, now was not one of those times.
He had to get Kirsten somewhere safe. So he crossed the room to Lucy, where she had stopped at a display of picture books. Ellis didn’t know how much Zach told her about everything that was going on, but he knew it was enough that she wouldn’t ask a bunch of frustrating questions. She’d help.
“Lucy.”
“Oh, hey, Ellis. Man, business is booming.” She had her own baby strapped to her, and the little girl was fast asleep as Lucy flipped through a picture book.
“Is Zach here with you?” Ellis asked. Demanded, probably, based on the sharp look Lucy gave him.
“No, but he’s just down the street at the bakery with Coop,” she said, referencing their toddler before looking back down at the book in her hands.
“Could you get him to come down here? I need to talk to him, and I can’t leave.”
Her smile flattened out as she looked up from her book, concern replacing cheerfulness. “Yeah, I can text him to come down. Everything okay?”
He tried to smile, but he couldn’t manage. “No, it isn’t.”