Living with the Dead

ROBYN

Robyn awoke to the smell of breakfast sausage. Caught between sleeping and waking, she lifted her head with Damon's name on her lips; hot breakfasts had been his specialty. One bleary look around the motel room reminded her where she was.

Fighting the impulse to lie back down and pull up the covers, she tracked the smell to take-out boxes on the dinette, pushed aside to clear a spot for Hope's laptop. Hope sat with her back to Robyn as she read the screen. There was no sign of Karl. The bedside clock said it was past nine. So much for her resolution to jump into the investigation first thing in the morning.

Hope was so engrossed in her reading that she didn't hear Robyn approach. The file on the laptop display looked like records with dates and blocks of text. But before Robyn could get close enough to read it, Hope glanced up.

Hope closed the file window and stood. "Karl grabbed breakfast. It should still be warm."

"He's out already?"

Hope handed Robyn a coffee. "Just walking around the block, getting a feel for the neighborhood and stretching his legs."

A rap at the door.

"And there he is."

Hope checked the peephole before opening the locks. Karl greeted Robyn, then set his take-out coffee on the nightstand.

Hope's gaze followed him. "Everything okay?"

He nodded. "There's a convenience store around the corner and some restaurants a block over." He took a sheaf of pamphlets from his pocket. "I picked up take-out menus from the ones that 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."