The town council meeting was inside the Cedar Falls Community Center, which used to be a church. You could still smell it, the faint musty hymnbook smell, mixed with something like old potluck casseroles baked into the wood. About thirty people sat on folding chairs in a wide semicircle. It wasn’t a crowd, but it was more people than I’d been around in months. And definitely the most public I’d been since we were shoved into witness protection.
Margaret Walsh, the council chair, clapped her hands together once and smiled at me. “Elena Martinez, everyone,” she said, motioning for me to stand. “She’s finishing her graduate work in psychology, focus on rural mental health.”
I stood, feeling every eye land on me. I knew Agent Williams was posted at the back, four hours he’d driven from Cheye
