Living with the Dead - By Kelley Armstrong Page 0,80
goose bumps from her arms, started to sit, then felt the cold, wet grass and changed her mind. Arms wrapped around her chest, she looked at the forest.
“What happened back there?”
“I don’t know. You said that guy seemed to know Adele and know she was after you, but he definitely wasn’t planning to rescue you, at least not in the sense of letting you walk away—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
The wail of an ambulance filled the silence. They both turned to follow the sound. It seemed to be heading for the fair, but with all the flashing lights, it was impossible to tell. After a moment, Robyn wasn’t even sure it was an ambulance at all, not just the sirens on a ride.
When it stopped, Robyn waited. Still Hope didn’t respond.
“That’s not what I meant,” Robyn repeated.
Hope nodded. And said nothing. At least thirty seconds passed before she looked over.
“What did you mean?” she asked.
Robyn blanched under that look—a hard challenge that dared her to elaborate and maybe warned her not to, told her she was better off letting it go. Robyn knew it would be better to forget. Chalk it up to exhaustion and strain. Hope was offering her an easy way out. A safe way out. But nothing in Robyn’s nature would let her take it.
“Tonight I saw my best friend pull a gun I never knew she had, and know how to use it. A man threw me like a rag doll, then I watched another man do the same to him. I heard a man talk about demons and witches and werewolves like I knew what he meant, like he was discussing something as undeniable as the trees around us. And I know that man is now lying in the woods, beaten to death by a guy I thought wouldn’t know how to throw a punch.”
“Did you see a body?”
“No, but—”
“Yes, Karl beat the crap out of him. That’s all. Now he’s checking his ID to see why he was following you, then he’s getting himself clean enough to walk out here. Yes, Karl knows how to fight. That story I told you about him being in security? A lie. Any security Karl did was from the wrong side of the law. That’s all in the past, but he has a reputation and he has enemies and he knows that at any time he might need to protect himself, so he keeps in shape. As for the talk of were-wolves and demons and witches? Someone is off his meds.”
In the world of public relations, there are two kinds of spin. One is the totally plausible alternative explanation, like “Yes, my client was arrested for DUI, but the reports show she was barely over the limit so she must have picked up the wrong drink at the party.” The bigger and more convoluted the problem, the harder it is to find a perfect excuse. In that case, publicists have to settle for the second type, the kind that says “I know it’s far-fetched, but work with me on this one, okay?” like explaining that yes, your client blew double the legal limit, smashed into a Victoria’s Secret window, stripped to her underwear and posed for pictures, but she must have picked up the wrong drink and it reacted badly with her cold medication.
Hope’s explanation fell squarely under type two.
“I want to know the truth,” Robyn said.
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do.” The bite in her words hid the undertone of hurt. “I’m your friend. Of course I want to know—”
“Then, as a friend, I’d suggest you spend a little more time thinking about it. Decide whether you really want to know more. As a friend, I’d suggest maybe you don’t.”
HOPE
Robyn didn’t ask any more questions after that. She didn’t get a chance.
First Hope had to deal with the problem of getting Karl, unnoticed, through the stream of exiting fairgoers. He’d taken the T-shirt from the mutt—Gilchrist—and put it on backward to hide the blood on the front, then topped it with his jacket. To anyone drawing near, the skintight shirt riding up his abs clearly wasn’t his. It might not have looked out of place on any of the strutting teens surrounding them, but when worn by an impeccably groomed guy Karl’s age, it was noticeable. It didn’t help that every time he so much as twitched his lips, the split reopened, trickling blood. Hope had Karl and Robyn wait in the shadow of a closed convenience store as