Chapter Eighteen
Kirsten cleaned up the dishes, while Ellis and Boyd went over what they both knew about the case.
Ellis didn’t like thinking about it like a case, because he didn’t want to go back to using work as some kind of shield against emotional hurt, but it essentially was a case. There was danger, and he had to get to the bottom of it, regardless of the personal aspect.
And now, whatever security that had accomplished since they got up here was potentially breached.
“We could set a trap,” Boyd suggested.
A suggestion Ellis had certainly considered but rejected because… “It’s too dangerous. Too many risks. And at the end of the day, it’s an unnecessary risk as long as we don’t know where this is coming from.”
Ellis had been so deep in it with Boyd and the case, he hadn’t realized Kirsten was paying attention from her place in the kitchen.
“Are those risks on my account?” she demanded.
Ellis glanced at her, noticed the battle light in her eyes. “Kirsten.”
“I realize I’m not an FBI agent, but I’m here because I am already in danger. Already a target. Already a victim of these people. You can’t move forward pretending like I’m just some…” She made a few hand gestures, like she couldn’t quite come up with the words.
“You’ve only just remembered,” Ellis said, trying to remain calm and reasonable. He got to his feet, hoping he could explain this in a way she would understand. “You haven’t even talked to a doctor. It’s not that we can’t take any risks, but we have to be careful and rational.”
She pointed around Ellis to the man still at the table. “Boyd doesn’t think so.”
“Boyd is not getting in the middle of a marital argument,” Boyd said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Ellis is lead on this one. I’m just going to follow orders.”
Kirsten scowled at him, and Boyd hunched his shoulders, but he didn’t relent.
Thank God. Ellis didn’t know how he was going to explain this to her in a way that would get her to back down, but it’d be harder if she and Boyd ganged up on him.
“A trap involves risks,” he told her.
“So did bringing me up here. So did going on that last mission. Hell, it was a risk every day I walked into a classroom, Ellis. Life is risk.”
He didn’t like how damn true that was, but nevertheless… “Yes, and we determine how to mitigate those risks. Particularly in dangerous situations.”
She moved around him, took his seat at the table, and pinned Boyd with a look. “What would your idea be for a trap?”
When Ellis tried to say something, she held up a hand, fixed him with her stern teacher look. “We can’t mitigate anything if we don’t discuss ideas,” she told him primly. Then she turned her gaze back to Boyd. “Now. Explain your idea.”
Boyd, clearly uncomfortable with being put in the middle, cleared his throat, but neither that nor the daggers Ellis was glaring his way were apparently enough to stop him.
“I would suggest Ellis and I bundle up and pretend like we’re going to leave—not permanently.
Hunt or act like we think someone is out there and have an idea to track them. ”
“You’d leave me alone in here, and you think that would entice whoever might be out there, if anyone is out there, to come…try to get to me?”
“Maybe.” His gaze moved from Kirsten to Ellis. “It depends on what they’re after.”
Ellis frowned at that. It was clear what they were after. Punishing him for his role in the undercover sting that hadn’t done what it had set out to do, but had killed a few and put some of the Caruso family in jail.
Kirsten looked up at him. “I think it’s pretty clear. They’re after me to hurt you, or there was no point in that stupid warning letter. Except to scare the hell out of you.”
“Or…” Boyd tapped his fingers on the table, clearly thinking through something. “The thing is, the warning makes no sense. They certainly didn’t warn you, Ellis, when they found out your identity and went to your house.”
“No, but…”
“And you’ve been safe for two years, tucked away in this little town, with Kirsten having some memory issues. Why now?”
“These are some of the questions I kind of hoped you’d answer yourself. Far away from here,” Ellis muttered. He was uncomfortable and frustrated and Kirsten had stolen his seat.
“We’ve got potential leaks in Colleen and Tom, but again, why now? Tom set up your Alaska cover.”
“He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m in Alaska.” But that was weak at best, because it wasn’t like Ellis had done a lot of work to maintain an identity in Alaska.
“Maybe,” Boyd agreed. “It could explain the two years of relative safety.”
Ellis didn’t like the way Boyd let that sit there. Maybe. What were the other options?
“But the connection to Kirsten’s psychiatrist has me wondering if there’s something…more complicated in play. Particularly since you’ve never caught wind of a threat to you or Kirsten in those two years.”
Ellis tried to work through it, but whatever Boyd was considering, Ellis couldn’t get there. “What bigger complication could there be?”
Boyd cocked his head, studied Kirsten. “You’ve been thinking about you as the target, Ellis, and I get it. But what if it was Kirsten, all along?”
“Me, but…how?”
“I don’t know,” Boyd said equitably enough that it set Ellis’s teeth on edge. “What do you know, Kirsten?”
KIRSTEN FROZE. IT WAS such a direct question, one she didn’t even know how to answer, but something internally…seemed to shutter away from her reach. Like a thought, or more likely a memory, had been just within her reach and was now gone.
A familiar feeling, all in all, but one she hadn’t had in days. She turned away from Boyd’s dark, steady gaze. It was making her feel…all those old crawling feelings she thought she’d left behind when she’d remembered.
But Boyd kept talking.
“Whoever left that letter wanted her scared. They wanted her running to you, for help. They wanted to force your hand to tell her who she was, or why bother addressing that note to Mrs. Sutton? Why connect with her psychiatrist?”
“Because of me,” Ellis insisted, but Kirsten saw that Boyd was planting seeds of doubt. Ellis might refute them now, but eventually he’d water them and let them grow. Eventually, he’d come around to whatever Boyd was saying, even if it didn’t make any sense.
Boyd shrugged, and Kirsten didn’t like how careless it was. How detached.
“Maybe,” Boyd said. “Unless there’s something Kirsten saw or heard that they want.”
Kirsten shook her head. “I remember now, and I don’t remember anything about… How could I know anything about them? They broke into my house while I was asleep. They threw me over a balcony.”
She didn’t realize she was getting upset until she felt Ellis’s hand on her back, slowly rubbing up and down her spine to calm her. She took a deep breath, leaned into him a little. “This is upsetting. I don’t know anything.”
“Okay,” Boyd said. And he didn’t push it, but Kirsten knew…it wasn’t okay. He had a theory. About her. And he’d keep digging until he proved it right or wrong.
But Ellis changed the subject. They discussed some of the places Boyd had traced the remaining Carusos to. It was purposeful. To leave her out of it. They’d probably reconvene after she went to bed and talk about it behind her back.
She wanted them to. She knew she shouldn’t, but she hated this feeling. That it was back. That nagging, headachy strangeness in knowing something was hiding right here inside of her.
She excused herself into her room, but she didn’t get into bed. She paced, trying to will her brain to remember, while she heard the low tone of men’s voices.
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.”