Chapter Twenty
Ellis couldn’t believe he’d been talked into this. He thought about hanging up even as the phone rang.
Boyd had Colleen’s cell from when they’d all worked together in Chicago, so Ellis hoped like hell Colleen had since gotten rid of that number.
He’d get a voicemail, number not in service, something, and then this would all be moot and they could go back to the idea Kirsten’s teaching career was somehow connected to her threats.
It sounded better than this, even if he thought it was a dead end.
But they’d roped Zach in, to see if he could get a ping on whoever answered, and even more importantly, watch to see if someone tried to ping Ellis’s location in return.
“Hello,” a female voice answered suspiciously.
“Colleen?” Maybe he had a wrong number. Maybe this was all for nothing. He prayed it was.
“Who’s this?”
Ellis cleared his throat. It made him sound nervous, and he supposed he was, but it worked for their little ruse. “Ellis Sutton? From Chicago? We worked together about two years ago.”
There was a long, stretched out silence. “It’s been a long time.”
Ellis let out a breath that he hoped sounded like relief, not the inward curse it really was. “It has. I’m sure your busy, and I don’t mean to bother you, I’ve just been…making the rounds to catch up with everyone.”
She didn’t answer right away, but when she did, she sounded just as Ellis remembered her. Sharp, confident, straightforward.
“Really? Where did I come in at?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, am I twentieth on your list? Have you talked to everyone at the Chicago office before you got down to me? Who was your first call? Just wondering where I rate.”
“Well, uh, Boyd was my first call,” Ellis said, figuring the truth or as close to it as he could get was best.
“Yeah, that tracks. Then who?”
“Well…then you.”
She didn’t say anything to that. The silence stretched out and out, until Kirsten nudged him from behind.
“Uh, Boyd said you’d moved to South Carolina,” he said, purposefully getting the state a little wrong.
Colleen hesitated. “Raleigh, actually. Got away from cops for a while. Into the private sector. Things are more…lucrative here.”
Ellis didn’t like the way she said lucrative, at all. But he had to stuff that reaction down. “Yeah, I get it. Well, no I don’t. I’m still doing desk work. Up in Anchorage though.”
“Yeah, Tom told me you’d gone to Alaska. I guess grief makes people do weird things.”
“Yeah, yeah it does.” And they were talking about Kirsten, but he thought about all the ways he’d run away from the woman he’d loved in his own marriage. Through work. Through distance. Through whatever.
It had been fear, yes, but it had been grief too. A grief he’d never really allowed himself to deal in. All the grief from his childhood he hadn’t wanted to contend with. Running away was better.
But it wasn’t. Not anymore.
“So what’s this about, Sutty?” Colleen asked, clearly a little bored with his silences. “I don’t mean to push you along or whatever, but I’ve got things to do.”
“I just wanted to reach out to everyone I cut off while I was…dealing with everything. Apologize for it, and hopefully make some kind of amends. I really hope you’re doing well, Colleen. You were a good friend for a while.”
“A while.” She laughed bitterly. “You mean until your wife thought I had designs on you and you couldn’t be man enough to tell her to sack up?”
Sack up. That old frustration with Colleen sizzled to the surface quickly. Because she was fun to hang out with. She’d been great at an office party. But she crossed boundaries—because she was the problem, not Kirsten.
This whole bizarre scenario case in point.
But he couldn’t say any of that. Well, maybe he could but he didn’t want to go digging into ancient history.
He wanted to put an end to it. “I don’t…
I don’t like to talk about her, if you don’t mind.
” He glanced over at Boyd, who was hunched over his computer, waiting for a message from Zach.
“Maybe I do mind. Maybe I mind a hell of a lot,” Colleen said. “And maybe you’ve got some nerve calling me up out of nowhere.”
“I’m…sorry.”
“Yeah, you should be.” The line ended with a click. Ellis swore under his breath. “Was it long enough?” he asked Boyd.
“Not to get her exact location, Zach doesn’t think.” Boyd typed something, clearly communicating with Zach through some kind of messaging service. “But it was confirmed she was trying to trace you.”
“She’s the one who ended the call. She must have gotten what she wanted. So now what?” Ellis tossed the phone on his table.
“We wait for Colleen to make her way up here,” Boyd replied.
“She won’t be alone.”
“No, but luckily, neither are you.”
KIRSTEN WAS BEYOND NERVOUS, there was no denying that. Ellis and Boyd had a way of preparing for things where they talked in a weird kind of shorthand she didn’t understand, and she felt bad about constantly having to ask what they meant.
But a plan was taking shape, forward motion.
Ellis was mad at her for pushing this. He was mad at Boyd for being here. He was just plain mad, and she couldn’t even blame him.
She was a little mad herself, but mostly at a woman she didn’t understand.
Maybe it was the teacher in her, or whatever had marked her childhood, but she wished she could.
She wished she could find a reason for Colleen’s behavior.
Pathologize it. So she didn’t have to accept that some people just sucked.
“You two will leave the cabin, talking loudly about Kirsten’s fake ailment and how you have a snowmobile not far into the woods,” Ellis was explaining, even though they’d gone over it multiple times.
This was the final plan. They were ready to enact it. Kirsten felt like she was going to shake apart, but she tried to appear brave.
Boyd was checking his guns. “I’ll even fake a call to a doctor or something. Really play it up.”
“They won’t see through that?” Kirsten asked.
“It won’t matter if they do. If they follow us, they want you,” Boyd replied. “If they go for Ellis, they want him.”
“What if there’s enough to split up and go for both of us?”
“We’re prepared. And they don’t think we are. Sometimes, all you need is the element of surprise.”
Kirsten didn’t take Boyd’s confidence at face value. She just couldn’t, but she liked that someone could pretend. It sure wasn’t her.
Ellis crossed to her and handed her a gun. “You know how to use it, and I need you to use it if it comes to that.”
Kirsten swallowed. She didn’t want to take the gun. She didn’t want to shoot anyone. But she remembered the last time, and all she’d suffered because she hadn’t been strong or brave enough or whatever to move beyond her fear and protect herself.
So she took it from Ellis and nodded, not trusting her voice to say anything. She knew how to use it.
And she prayed she wouldn’t have to.
With her free hand, she reached out and gripped his sweater.
They would separate now, and she didn’t want to panic, but…
“Please, don’t take any unnecessary risks.
” As much as she wanted to push this, to end this, actually separating left her feeling sick to her stomach.
“We didn’t come this far to lose each other now. ”
He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone, then pressed his mouth to hers briefly. “I love you,” he said.
But he didn’t promise.
“Do what Boyd says, okay?”
Kirsten nodded. She trusted Boyd almost as much as she trusted Ellis. She would follow instructions. Anything to get through this and come out on the other side knowing everyone was safe.
Boyd and Ellis were good at what they did. They’d survived every mission this far. She was too clear on the risks, yes, but she also knew that there was a real chance the end was near.
She’d hold on to that chance.
So, all bundled up against the cold, she followed Boyd out into a bright, frigid winter day. Her boots crunched in the snow.
“Showtime,” Boyd muttered. Then pulled a phone out of his pocket. “Hey, yeah, I need a doctor or a nurse or someone, to meet me down where you’ve got those lookouts. Kirsten isn’t feeling well.”
She leaned a little against Boyd to add to the sickly of it all. She wanted to look back at the cabin, at Ellis, but she couldn’t.
She just had to move forward.