were open.” He turned to Robyn. “They all deliver. While I’m sure you’re tired of being cooped up in here, you should stick to delivery for lunch. Keep the doors locked and only open them if you’re expecting an order.”
She glanced at Hope, who was dumping her leftover coffee in the bathroom sink. “You’re heading out?”
“Just for a few hours,” Hope said. “We’ll be back after lunch.”
“I’d like to go with you. Help out.”
“You’re safer here,” Karl said, taking out his keys.
“I—”
“Hope and I need to attract as little attention as possible. It’s better if you stay here.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Then what can I do here?”
Hope and Karl exchanged a look.
“I want to do something.”
“We have Internet access,” Hope said. “There are a few things you could look up.”
Scraps to make her feel useful. “Whatever will help. Just tell me—”
Hope’s cell rang and she snatched it from the table, as if grateful for the interruption.
“Lucas, hey,” she answered. A pause. “Yep, I got it last night. Thank Savannah for me. It’s a match.”
A string of uh-huhs. Hope grabbed her notepad and started jotting things down. Robyn tried to see it from where she sat, but Hope’s writing was an illegible scribbled shorthand. She always joked it was so no rival could steal her notes, but Robyn knew she’d always written that way, her brain speeding ahead, pen scrambling to keep up. Like everything else in Hope’s life, function came before form.
Karl seemed to be able to read it, though, murmuring questions for Hope to ask. Robyn had been able to read Damon’s scrawl, too.
“Is that like a scheduled surrender?” Hope was saying.
Hope must be talking to her lawyer friend. Or wasn’t it Karl’s friend? It didn’t matter. Damon’s friends had been Robyn’s, too. Or so she’d thought, until she’d been uninvited from a New Year’s party two weeks before she left Philly.
She shook her head, scattering the memories.
“I’ll call you later, then,” Hope was saying. “I really do appreciate this.”
Pause.
“Yes.” Her gaze shot to Karl. “He’s right here.”
Her fingertips caressed the desktop, face averted as she listened. Then she handed the phone to Karl, gaze following as he took it outside.
“Did you say something about a scheduled surrender?” Robyn asked.
It took Hope a moment to answer. “That would buy us more time, but it won’t work in a murder case. He’s setting up a short-term scheduled surrender, if we don’t find something by six.”
Her gaze tripped to the window, as if trying to see Karl’s silhouette through the drawn drapes.
“So we have—” Robyn checked her watch. “—just over eight hours. Show me what I can do.”
HOPE
Karl had driven three blocks in silence before Hope spoke.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
He made a noise in his throat, as if waiting to hear which infraction she was referring to before committing himself to a response.
“Sneaking around asking Lucas for updates on Jaz. It would be easier if you’d just give him your number, you know.”
“I wasn’t sneaking. I could hardly discuss it in front of Robyn—”
“And what was your excuse the last time? Or the time before that? Did you honestly expect me to think Lucas is just calling to chat?”
Another block of silence.
Karl cleared his throat. “About Jasper—”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
“Escaped?”
“No.”
“In imminent danger of escaping?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t care.”
She turned to the window, nails biting her palms. Did Karl really think she’d want to know how Jaz was doing? Did he think she’d care?
Last year, after their disastrous first attempt to shift from friends to lovers, she’d tried taking the rebound remedy. If there was one word to describe Jasper Haig, it was fun. He bounced through life with enthusiasm, and he’d pursued Hope with gusto, not caring how big a fool he made of himself. In short, Jaz was everything Karl was not—and exactly what she’d needed . . . or so it seemed at the time.
Jaz was currently incarcerated in a maximum-security Cortez Cabal prison, his execution stayed only while they studied his rare supernatural powers.
Hope knew Karl’s main concern was for her safety. Like any good villain, Jaz had vowed to come for her when he escaped, convinced that she was still the girl for him.
And as hard as Karl worked to control his wolf side, there were two instincts that were as strong in him as in any werewolf Hope knew. One was the instinct to protect. As the only person Karl cared about enough to protect, she bore the full brunt of that.
The second was the