She wondered about Chevy, if she’d be a credible witness. Tess hadn’t talked to her, but Oliver had. It was a good thing that Bass had approved Oliver being let in on the secret. The girl asked to talk to someone, “like a priest or a counselor,” after almost insisting that she be let go, that she didn’t want to testify against Beck, who she was certain still loved her. Oliver defused the crisis. He had a way of talking that made people stop and think.

“She’s wounded and angry,” Oliver told Tess after the episode. “Sadly, she thinks she’s in love with Beck, and she’s having doubts about stealing the tablet. She hopes Beck will forgive her for that. But her emotions are a seesaw. It’s good she’s hidden and can’t contact him. I’m afraid she’d go back to him if she could.”

“Will she stay in the shelter?”

Oliver held his hands out.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if she tried to leave. I hope Takano is prepared for that,” Tess said.

Oliver nodded. “Stockholm syndrome. I’m sure you’ve dealt with that.”

“I have,” Tess agreed. Too many women stayed with abusive men for reasons often complicated and twisted with unhealthy emotions.

Tess knew that in domestic violence and human trafficking, a sick side effect was that women believed themselves to be in love with their abusers. In the case where her father had been murdered, the woman had been put in the hospital five times by her boyfriend. That was before a law was passed to allow the state to prosecute when the victim was unwilling. Not that it mattered in her father’s case; the woman refused to prosecute every single time.

Considering Chevy and her predicament funneled Tess’s thoughts to Livie Harp. Was Harp so antisocial and secretive because of a toxic relationship? Then there was the TV-inspired reason: she was a witness in the federal witness protection program.

Tess doubted that theory, just like Steve Logan had, as being not really plausible. The only other options that made sense to Tess were that she was a true prepper or that she was a fugitive from justice. And if she was a fugitive, she’d hidden everything well. Tess had spent a day trying to find out anything she could about Harp. There was nothing. Even the house was not in her name, but in the name of a corporation. Livie Harp had an Oregon driver’s license and three vehicles registered to her, and a one-page bare-bones website touting her skills in combating cybercrime, and that was it.