"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.