Page 5 of Two Favors Repaid
“Here,” she said, helping him pull the shirt off. “Woah.”
He looked down to see what she was referring to but didn’t see anything unusual beyond a small section below his ribs where he’d scraped himself with broken glass and had gotten a few stitches. But that wasn’t what she seemed to be staring at.
“Impressive abs, Mr. Hope. I think you’d have a lot more luck with Emma if you took your shirt off once in a while, you know? She doesn’t realize what she’s missing.”
“Give me that,” he said, picking up his clean shirt and doing up the buttons quickly.
“Relax, Rob, you’re not my type,” she said. “I’m into bad boys, and you’re so not a bad boy, Chief Deputy. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind either.”
“Get back to work, Officer Lopes,” he said, laughing now. “I’m sure there’s something else you could be doing.”
Rob’s cell phone rang as he was getting back to his desk. It was the hospital, letting him know Joe had woken up and was going to make a full recovery. Rob smiled at that piece of news.
His smile dimmed as he proceeded to spend most of the afternoon dealing with paperwork from the morning’s incident. Finally, just before heading home, he called Jimmy’s Car Shop.
“Chief Deputy! Great to speak to the hero of the day!” Jimmy shouted over a loud engine noise. Rob moved the phone away from his ear.
“Hey, Jimmy, just calling to check up on things.”
“Well, we cleared everything up and towed the truck—or what was left of it—back to the shop. How’s Joe? Is he going to be okay?”
“I think so. Probably won’t be happy about his truck.”
“You can say that again!” Jimmy said, laughing. “But it beats the alternative.”
“Sure does,” Rob agreed. “Thanks for taking care of it so quickly, Jimmy.”
He hung up and sat back, feeling every muscle in his back as he did so.
Rob hoped nobody would call the sheriff to tell her about the incident. He’d promised Natalie he would hold down the fort for a couple weeks while she and Hunter enjoyed their honeymoon, and he wanted to make good on that promise.
His mind flew back to Emma. He hoped she wasn’t as sore as he was. She’d kept her promise, allowing him to drive her to the hospital, but had left before he’d been discharged. He was still half angry at her for her refusal to move away when he’d asked her to. He was also aware that he and Joe might both have died if she’d done as he asked.
The phone rang. For a moment, he entertained the foolish notion that it might be Emma. Just before his hand reached the phone, he registered it was an unknown number.
Not Emma.
Cursing himself for his foolishness, he hit the green button.
“Hope speaking,” he said gruffly.
“Rob.” Though they hadn’t spoken in almost nine months, Rob recognized Lorraine Vasquez’s raspy voice. He leaned forward in his chair, all aches and pains suddenly forgotten. The FBI psychologist wouldn’t be calling him unless something important had happened.
“Lorraine,” he acknowledged, waiting for the woman to speak. In their previous interactions, while searching for Doctor Stephen Ford, the rapist turned killer who’d terrorized Sharp’s Cove and almost killed Emma a year earlier, they’d gotten to know each other on a first-name basis.
“I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but Natalie told me last week she was finally going on her honeymoon and that I should reach out to you if anything happened.”
“You did the right thing. What’s going on, Lorraine?”
His voice sounded calm, but inside he was screaming. He gripped the phone so hard he heard it crack, already knowing what she was going to say before she said it.
“We found him, Rob.” Lorraine swallowed then spoke again. “We found Ford.”
Chapter 2
Emma
To say everything hurt was an understatement. Emma wished she’d gone back to the grocery store for another bottle of wine, but there was no way she was going out again. It might only be seven p.m., but she was already in her pajamas.
