When the Bough Breaks (Rose Gardner Investigations #6) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,113

and tugged Mikey away, asking him if he wanted to throw rocks into the creek. Ashley ran after them and soon both kids were distracted.

I lifted my gaze to Joe’s. “How did you know where to find me?” I asked, realizing he’d just shown up out of nowhere.

“You can thank Ashley for that,” he said. “I’d been trying to call your number all afternoon, but it went straight to voicemail. Ashley found my number in your phone and called me, telling me there were bad men tryin’ to get you. Jed already suspected Denny Carmichael might have had something to do with why you weren’t answering your phone, so I was already down in the area, trying to figure out a good reason to get onto Carmichael’s property to search for you. But then Ashley called and described where you were, and I remembered it from the investigation last summer. I was less than ten minutes away, but I got here in about five.”

“My niece is one smart girl.”

“Just like her aunt,” he said in a somber tone.

“You don’t have any questions about how I got here or why I was with Dermot?”

He studied me for a moment. “I’m gonna trust that you felt you had no choice. I’d like to think you wouldn’t knowingly put yourself or the baby in danger.” His voice lowered. “Did you do anything illegal?”

I shook my head. “No. Vera sent me a note sayin’ she’d take me to the kids, and Dermot said he’d cover me.”

He didn’t look pleased. “Looks like that plan went awry.”

Talk about an understatement. I told him about everything that had happened, from the note Vera had sent to finding Dermot out in the woods on my way back to the truck with the kids.

“He wasn’t with you when you got the kids off the Collards’ property?”

I cringed. “No.”

“You got those kids out of that icehouse while you were in labor?” His voice was sharp.

“I couldn’t leave them, Joe. Vera ran off. I was gonna have to walk back anyway. I figured it would be safer to take them with me.”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

His mouth twisted into a tight smile. “You have a big heart, Rose. And I would have likely made the same call, but so many things could have gone wrong. I’m lucky I’m holdin’ you now.”

“I know.”

“But we’re also lucky Dermot knew how to deliver Hope. If you’d been out here alone… you both could have died.”

I didn’t want to think about it.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the note?” he asked, sounding hurt. “Or even Jed? Why did you turn to Dermot?”

“We were worried that Vera would get spooked. You know she’d tried to make contact with me several times before and ran. I worried if she saw any hint of a sheriff’s deputy, she’d run. After you found the bodies of Calista and her boyfriend, it felt like there was no time to waste. Dermot figured this was our best option to find them.”

“Dermot,” he said with a frown.

“He’s my friend.”

He nodded with a grim look. “You found the kids all right,” he said, “but at what cost?”

He was right. There were three dead bodies, and soon to be four (unless my vision didn’t come to pass), from this escapade. We had Ashley and Mikey, but had there been a better way?

“Promise me you’ll be more careful from here on out,” he said. “Promise me you’ll tell me what’s goin’ on. While I haven’t hid my general dislike of your role in the criminal world, I think I’ve proven that I’m more tolerable of your Lady in Black tasks. We both want the same thing—we just have a different way of tackling it. If I promise to listen as your boyfriend and not the chief deputy sheriff, will you promise to come to me?”

“Yes,” I said, looking up into his worried face. “I promise.”

Sirens blared in the distance and soon lights were bouncing off the trees as the ambulance pulled into the parking lot, along with several sheriff’s deputies.

Dermot insisted on keeping the kids busy while the EMTs checked out me and Hope, even though it was clear he needed medical assistance too. But he refused care, and the EMTs said they needed to take me, Hope, and Ashley and Mikey to the hospital, which we’d expected, but I was worried about Ashley and Mikey riding in the ambulance without me. Dermot said he’d ride with them in one ambulance; Hope and I were in another,