Chapter 9

chapter

nine

"That can't be a coincidence."Ellie felt like she'd downed five espresso shots and then chased them with a Red Bull. She couldn't relax enough to get into her car and drive home, so she did laps around it in the parking lot instead.

They finally, finally, after all these years, had a solid lead.

Cal leaned against the hood and crossed his arms in front of him, watching her pace. "Hope disappears, and at the same time, the cult starts to change? No, it's not a coincidence."

Ellie nodded and pressed a hand to her chest to keep her heart from trying to hammer out of her ribcage. "What if... what if Hope is still there? Still with them?"

"Except the girl said she's missing."

The girl.

God.

Hope's daughter.

Ellie slammed to a halt at the reminder and swung around to face him. "She was raised there, wasn't she? If Hope has been there all this time, then she's never known life outside of the commune. She's never known her family. Did Hope tell her about us? Did the cult convince her we abandoned her? We never would've left her there if we'd known! We didn't know…"

Cal pushed off the car to stand in front of her. She didn't realize how hard she was suddenly shaking until his hands landed on her shoulders, grounding her.

"Ellie." His voice was gentle. "We don't know anything for sure yet. We have leads, and we need to follow them before we start assuming."

He was right. As always, he was the voice of reason when her thoughts were zooming by at breakneck speed, and her heart threatened to overtake her head. "We know she's my niece."

"Okay. We do know that for sure."

She sucked in a deep breath and released it, feeling it carry away some of her frenzied energy. "We need to be smart about this, not just... run in screaming."

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Exactly. We need more information and a plan."

Okay. Right. Information she could do. It was kind of her whole life, after all. Now that they had a name for the commune, she'd dig up everything she could find on it.

She took a step back, out of Cal's reach, and pulled out her phone, quickly typing into a search engine.

And there they were.

Just like that.

"They have a website," she said incredulously. "It looks like they're still active. They even have a contact number and an address."

Cal leaned over to look as she scrolled through their homepage. "Wait. Go back." He pointed. "What's that?"

She scrolled back to the advertisement that had caught his eye and frowned at it. "It looks like some kind of couples retreat," she said.

"For the low, low price of four thousand dollars." His eyebrows winged up. "And here I thought they were against capitalism."

"Apparently not against profiting from it." She scanned the details of the retreat. It was a five-day immersive experience in ‘building trust and communication,' whatever that meant. She shook her head and moved to scroll past it, but an idea struck. "What if...?"

Cal shook his head. "If it's the same crazy idea I just had, it's not a good one."

A shiver of anticipation rippled through her. She loved Cal's crazy ideas; they were usually incredibly effective, so if his mind had gone to the same place, maybe it would work. "We could sign up for the retreat. It starts on Monday."

"Dammit, Ellie. Don't make me be the voice of reason here. It's too risky."

"But it's an opportunity for us to get inside. If my sister and niece are there, I owe it to them to do everything in my power to get them out. And the girl reached out to you. She wanted you to help her."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "If we do this, we can't stay strictly professional."

Right. Shit. She hadn't thought of that.

"We can... pretend to be a couple for a few days." Her cheeks flushed hot, and she looked back down at the screen, scrolling through the pictures of couples with weirdly ecstatic expressions. Her heart sank. "No, you're right. That's stupid. Nobody will believe us."

He scowled and closed the distance between them. "Why the hell not? We were a couple once."

"Barely." He was too close, and he smelled too good. She swallowed hard as memories washed over her and tried to back away, only to find herself trapped by the side of her car. Yes, they had been a couple. But that was a lifetime ago, and despite the occasional lapse in judgment, like after the wedding, she wasn't about to jump back into that part of their past. "But that was different. We were real then."

Cal's scowl softened as his hands skimmed from her shoulders down her arms. His gaze lowered to her lips before returning to hers. "What I feel for you is still real, Ellie. You may deny it, but it is."

The words hit her like a punch, knocking all the air out of her lungs. She squeezed her eyes closed. As if shutting out the sight of his serious expression would make the feelings he stirred inside her less potent. "This is not the time to?—"

"To what? To remind you that I love you?" His voice was a soft caress. "There's always time for that."

"No." She took a determined step back from him, straightening her spine. "This is about Hope. Not us."

"It doesn't have to be one or the other." There was a vulnerability in his gaze that she'd rarely seen in him. It unnerved her, making her feel raw and exposed.

Ugh. Why had she suggested they pretend to be a couple? Since moving to California, Cal had always been a constant in her life in one way or another, but she'd always been able to push him away when things got too deep, too real. But if they were stuck together for a week in a potentially dangerous situation, she'd have no defenses against him.

What a stupid idea.

"Cal," she warned, but her voice sounded weak even to herself. "Just forget I mentioned it. I'll find someone else to?—"

"Oh, hell no. If you think you're going up there with anyone else, you're mistaken." He closed the distance between them. "You can't fake it convincingly with anyone else. You're not that good of a liar, sweetheart. You wear all of your emotion on this beautiful face." He cupped her cheeks in his hands, his thumb stroking lightly over her lips, sending shivers up her spine. "We can be a couple having troubles, which we technically are."

She rolled her eyes, trying to push down the warmth that was spreading through her at his touch. "No, we're not."

"But we could be if you weren't so damn stubborn."

"Cal..." She couldn't think clearly when he touched her and took a step to the side, breaking their contact. He let her go, dropping his hands to his sides, but he didn't back away. His gaze remained steady on hers, an intensity in his eyes that she didn't care to interpret.

She cleared her throat and looked back down at her phone again to avoid his gaze. "Okay," she said reluctantly. She could do this. She had to do this if she had any chance of finding Hope and her niece.

Cal nodded and let out a breath as if he'd been holding it in. "So we agree? We book the retreat as a couple and use that time to snoop around while we're there."

Ellie shot him a sharp look. "I just want a look inside the commune. We're not spies, Cal."

He grinned, and she hated how much she loved that mischievous glint in his eyes. "Speak for yourself, Summers. I always fancied myself as Bond. James Bond."

Despite herself, Ellie laughed. And just like that, the tension between them eased. Only Cal could make her laugh in the face of danger—albeit danger they were willingly walking into. "Be that as it may, if it starts to get dangerous, we leave."

"Agreed. I'll handle the registration," he said, taking her phone to enter their details into the online form. "We'll be… Calvin and…"

"Elena," she suggested. "It's what people always think Ellie is short for. I don't know why it has to be short for anything. It's just my name."

He sent her a quick grin and typed it in. "Elena. Perfect. Calvin and Elena Smith—no, that's too obvious." He deleted the surname and considered it for a moment. "Miller. It's common enough but not so common that it sounds fake. Cal and Ellie Miller from… Eureka."

Ellie watched him, her heart thumping in her chest. Part of her was thrilled at their plan, and another part was terrified of what it might mean for them. "But what if they check our IDs?"

"I doubt a place like this is big on government identification. They're doing this retreat because they want money and probably converts. They're not going to care who we are or where we're from. Yeah, see?" He showed her the phone. "They want us to bring the payment in cash. Cults don't like digital trails."

As Cal handed back her phone, his fingers brushed against hers. The tiny touch sent an electric shock through her that had nothing to do with static electricity.

She pulled her hand back quickly, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. "Right," she murmured, trying to focus on the task at hand, not the sparks that Cal seemed to ignite in her with his every touch. "What about our story?"

He leaned against the side of her car and crossed his ankles as he pulled a pack of gum from his pocket. He offered her one. She declined, and he unwrapped his piece in thoughtful silence. With it came the bright scent of citrus that she always associated with him.

"We met a couple of years ago," he said finally, folding the stick of gum into his mouth.

"Well, yeah. We did."

"Exactly. We stick as close to the truth as possible." He pointed at her. "It was love at first sight, and we were married within a year."

She snorted. "I wouldn't marry anyone after only a year."

"I swept you off your feet." He gave that crooked smile that had beguiled more women than just her. "You couldn't resist my dashing good looks and charm."

"I have so far."

He ignored that and continued like she hadn't spoken. "I recited poetry to you under the stars, and we danced to a single guitar playing soft music. You realized I was the one for you."

"That's cheesy."

"You like cheesy."

She rolled her eyes but couldn't help a small laugh. He was right. She was a sucker for cheesy romantic gestures. "Right, and I suppose you convinced me to move to Eureka for a fresh start."

"Exactly. And now the honeymoon is over, and we're having trouble. We stumbled on their website and felt a spiritual calling to attend the retreat. They eat that stuff up."

It was a reasonable story, close enough to the truth that they shouldn't trip up over the lie. "What about our jobs?"

"I'm a lawyer, and you're…" He trailed off and rubbed a hand over his face. "Aw, fuck. We can't tell them you produce true crime podcasts. They won't like that." He snapped his fingers at a sudden thought. "But they will if we leave out the true crime part. We'll tell them you're a podcast producer specializing in spiritual and self-help topics. That's close to the truth and might earn us some brownie points with them."

She made a face. "They're going to try to recruit me, aren't they?"

"Oh, definitely. They're going to try to recruit us both, Elena."

Her heart stuttered at the new name, making her feel like a different person already. The invisible strings drawing her closer to Cal tightened around her heart. She forced a laugh through her tightening throat, chiding herself silently. This was just another ruse. Another thing they had to play at.

But even as she told herself this, she couldn't help but wonder if it would feel real — and what it would do to her already shaky feelings for him.

"Just remember this is just a cover, Calvin." She congratulated herself at his slight wince when she stressed the name. "Once we're out of there, everything goes back to normal between us."

Cal just smiled at her, his eyes sparkling with the irresistible, mischievous light that made her heart race. "Nothing about us is ever going to be normal, sweetheart."

She swallowed hard as she met his eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of his gaze. She felt a jolt of something unfamiliar in her stomach— fear? Excitement? She couldn't tell.

"I have to get back to the office and rearrange things for the week." He pushed away from the car. "And you need to find someone to puppy sit."

Oh, crap.

Puzzle.

She hadn't even considered what she'd do with him while they enacted this crazy plan, but now the thought of leaving him for so long had her stomach twisting into knots.

She must have looked shell-shocked because Cal leaned in and brushed his lips against her cheek. "We'll be okay. It's only a week. Go deal with your pup. I'll call you this weekend."