Chapter Seven
Jessica woke up groggy and disoriented. The pretty little bedroom with the comfortable queen bed wasn’t familiar, but unfamiliar was damn familiar, wasn’t it?
Because it all came rushing back as she sat up in the bed.
She wasn’t Jessica. She was Kirsten. Kirsten Sutton.
Except she didn’t really feel like either name right now. She felt like some kind of scrambled in-between thing.
She knew there was some piece of Kirsten in her. Memories locked away, maybe, but they did pop out. And she’d known, this whole time of being Jessica, that her past was a blank. That there was something before this life she was living.
But she had embodied Jessica for two years, and still…knowing it was a lie made it hard to sit here and think of herself as that woman. Jessica Smith. Amnesiac bookseller. But that was a two-year life.
She had been Ellis Sutton’s wife for ten years. They’d been together fifteen years. They had loved each other.
They’d had sex, no doubt, which was an embarrassing thought, but it was just…the truth of the matter. They’d been married. He’d seen her naked. He remembered seeing her naked.
And she remembered him being shot.
She blew out a breath, trying to blow some of these thoughts away with it. She had to work through them, but she needed more information first, and she needed to know what this threat against her was going to entail.
She swung out of bed. The rancher—Noah Carson—who had driven them up here had told them to use whatever they found in the closets or dressers. That anything in this cabin was theirs to use. She wondered what made someone so…open to helping a stranger as she poked through the dresser and closet.
Not much in the way of clothes, mostly sweatshirts and sweatpants and thick socks. It’d do. It was cold this morning. She could use a shower, but she needed to talk to Ellis first. Get an idea of how long this was going to last and what was expected of her.
So she dressed. She redid her ponytail so it wasn’t sleep-frazzled. There was a mirror over the drawers, and she winced at her reflection. Bags under her eyes, makeup from yesterday mostly gone but some smudge of mascara under her eyes. Her hair leaning toward greasy.
Okay, maybe she’d hunt up a shower first thing. On that thought, she left her room, which led into the cozy living room. It was dim, all the curtains drawn. She caught the scent of coffee but didn’t move for it immediately.
The little fake tree in the corner caught her attention. She crossed over to it. There was a string of lights around it, though unplugged. She crouched down and plugged it in. Colorful lights popped on and made her smile.
Life went on even when you weren’t certain, even when you didn’t remember. She had gone through two Christmases as Jessica Smith. She would go through the next one knowing who she really was.
And what are you going to do about it?
Yeah, she didn’t know yet, but she would before the holiday officially rolled around in a month.
She straightened. She felt sturdier this morning. Not happy. Not settled. But…better equipped to deal with the fallout of her real identity. She’d always known she had one. Maybe she hadn’t expected it to come with a husband, but she’d known there were years of her life unaccounted for.
She had always prepared for the moment she would have to face whatever caused her amnesia. A traumatic brain injury caused by a mobster, because her husband was an undercover FBI agent. No, her imagination hadn’t come up with anything like that.
In some ways, it was better. She was just kind of…collateral damage. She hadn’t done anything to deserve her injuries, her memory loss. She wasn’t someone who had failed or cowered. This was Ellis’s deal. She was just along for the ride.
With your husband.
She pulled a face. Okay, still complicated. But something she had to deal with regardless. And since she did, she surveyed the cabin. It was so quiet. Was he still asleep? He couldn’t be. Someone had made coffee.
The door of the little bedroom he’d gone into last night was open. So she moved toward the door, peeked her head in, half expecting to find him asleep in bed.
He stood instead, staring at a wall where he’d taped a bunch of different papers. She’d seen things like this in movies and TV shows. A board with all the pertinent information on a crime. His back was to her, his attention on the wall, giving her a chance to study him from behind.
He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt that seemed to fit him well enough she wondered if he’d somehow packed a bag. He was a tall guy. Broad. Then again, so was the man who’d driven them up here. Ellis’s dark blond hair was a little mussed, but the bed was made as though he hadn’t slept in it at all.
She’d seen him like this before. That she knew with a bone-deep certainty she wasn’t going to talk herself out of.
Fifteen years. They had been together for fifteen years.
And he has seen you naked.
She really needed to stop thinking about that.
“Whenever you feel up to it, I’d like you to go over all this and see if anything sticks out to you.” His voice was low, soft, gentle.
He’d known she was there the whole time.
Yeah, that felt very familiar as well. She sighed and moved a little closer, though kept a careful distance from him.
He’d clearly used the computer at the little desk in the corner to print out some things, as well as written out others in a surprisingly neat hand.
“You didn’t sleep,” she said, unable to hide her disapproval. This was hours of work, and that bed hadn’t been slept in.
“I tried. I needed to lay it all out.” She felt his gaze on her but didn’t meet it. “You slept.”
“Yes.”
“Good. There’s some coffee in the kitchen, though you might want fresh. I’ll make breakfast.” He moved to go, but…
She touched him. Just lightly. Just on the arm. Just to stop him from hurrying away so she could…say something.
But he stopped on a dime, and her words evaporated. She left her fingertips there against his forearm. Light hair dusted the skin over impressive muscle. Two scars stood out, one a kind of little dot, the other a line.
She felt a million little physical things riot through her. Warmth and relief and a little ache that centered itself low in her gut. Far lower than she was comfortable with.
She pulled her hand away, heat creeping into her cheeks. “You don’t have to wait on me.”
“We’ll take turns,” he said gruffly, then walked away. Leaving her alone in the room with her feelings.
And a wall that outlined a group of mobsters who’d threatened her.
IT WAS JUST a touch. On his arm. And it swept through Ellis like wildfire. It took every last ounce of strength not to reach out and grab her to him. Relief and need.
He hadn’t had sex in two damn years, of course he was a little…bottled up. Particularly when it was his wife touching him, no matter how innocently, which also hadn’t happened in two years.
He’d settle for just holding her, he thought. Just feeling the weight of her in his arms. Her hair against his cheek. If he could just…
He shook his head as if he could shake away the sweepingly painful ache and want inside of him.
He jerked open the fridge to survey what was inside.
Nothing perishable. Which made sense, but he felt damn stupid closing it again without pulling anything out.
But pickles weren’t exactly breakfast fare, were they?
He let out a sigh and closed the door anyway, then poked around the cabinets. He found some oatmeal packets that could be made in the microwave with just water.
She came out of the room and walked into the kitchen. “I’ll make more coffee,” she announced.
He nodded, so they moved silently around the kitchen—her filling the coffeepot, him making oatmeal. Not touching. Not saying anything.
And yet he could remember a million mornings spent together where they would have done just this but talked. Touched. Enjoyed simply…being together.
They filled bowls, poured mugs, and moved to the table. She sat across from him and neither drank nor ate. She just frowned at the food.
“So are we just setting up house up here until they catch the guy?” she asked.
“Undetermined. First, we need to identify who left this letter. The only possible explanation that we can come up with is that it came from one of the guys from the crime family I infiltrated who aren’t in jail.
But we need to know which one, why, and what their end goal is if they gave us a warning? ”
“How are you going to determine that from up here?”
“I’m not. It’s up to Zach.”
“Then what’s that little crime wall you’ve got going on in your room?”
He chuckled in spite of himself. “Me being a control freak.” Not being able to let anything go.
Except he thought of all the things he’d had to let go over the past two years. Yeah, he’d learned some damn hard lessons.
“Does this put Zach in danger? And Lucy and Cooper and Rylie and—”
He reached across the table and put his hand over hers, even if it hurt a little.
She needed some…anchoring. “Zach knows what he’s doing.
He’s been doing this a long time. He knows the risks, if there are any for him.
And he’ll protect his family. He wouldn’t live and work in Hope Town if he couldn’t. ”
She swallowed, pulled her hand out from his. She dropped it into her lap so there was no chance he’d touch her again, clearly. “Right. That whole town… All those women… Former FBI.”
She sucked in a breath when he nudged the bowl toward her. A silent plea to eat something.
She nodded, then lifted the spoon, but just swirled it in the oatmeal. “I just don’t understand. Why would they warn you? If someone dropped that off at my apartment, if this is the threat you think it all is, couldn’t they have taken me out right then?”
The thought of it killed him, but he’d had the same one living in his head since she’d handed him that letter.
And he had enough experience with criminals, and the Carusos in particular, to have at least some of a theory.
“Whoever it is could have. If the goal was to kill you, they likely would have.”
“You and Zach both said this is a threat to me. Why wouldn’t they want to kill me then?”
“The Carusos see my infiltration of their organization and case against them an insult. So, they’d like me to suffer—which means they’d probably like to draw out any threat to you.
But I also have to believe…the life we’ve created for you in Hope Town was safe.
Safe enough, they couldn’t really get to you.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I think…
” He didn’t want to scare her, but they were hiding out—wasn’t that scary enough?
“I don’t think they would kill you if they could get to you, but I think if they could have, they would have taken you. Tortured you to torture me. This was the closest they could get.”
“If I was safe, why bring me up here?”
“Safety is an illusion. It never lasts.”
“That’s dire.”
“That’s life in the FBI.”
She stirred absently at her oatmeal again, still not taking a bite. “Living the dream.”
She said it just like she used to. Wry humor, but not bitterness. She’d supported his dream.
Until she hadn’t. He tried to breathe through the pain, but it just kept doubling him over. Because he couldn’t escape it up here like he could down in Hope Town. He could keep his distance. He could not interact.
“What?” she asked, like she could read his thoughts.
She had been able to once, more or less.
“You’ve said that before,” he managed to explain. “Living the dream. When you weren’t too happy with the demands of my job.”
She seemed to consider this with a lot of gravity, then began to nod.
“I may not remember everything, but I am her. Underneath whatever…traumatic brain damage there is or whatever. Believe me, I’ve thought a lot about…
the person I was in the places I don’t remember.
It felt like two separate people then, but now that I have this name, now that I know…
you were part of that past, it feels less like that, and more like…
I can reach whoever I was. Under the right circumstances. ”
“What would be the right circumstances?”
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”
So do I.