“We’re all fine,” Emma adds. “It happens.”
Robert stares both of us down. “Not on my watch.Pleaseget back in the vehicle while we wait for backup.”
Emma nods and gives me thewe need to humor himlook as another engine hums around the corner. She flings an arm in front of me, stopping me from heading to enter the van from the road side until the car passes.
But the car doesn’t pass.
It slows.
Then slows more.
And more.
Until it comes to a stop right next to her.
The passenger window rolls down. “Emma? What the fuck? Are you okay?”
Chandler.
FuckingChandler.
“Just fine,” she replies mildly. “You shouldn’t stop in the middle of the road. Especially not here. Thanks for checking on us.”
He looks at me. Then at the van. Then at Robert. Back to me. “I figured out who you are.”
Emma’s entire body goes stiffer than the drink I’ll unfortunately be declining when we get to Hayes’s house. “We’refine,” she says again. “Thank you for stopping. Please go before someone rear-ends you.”
The engine of Chandler’s car shifts noises like it’s been put in park. “This douchebag isn’t kidnapping you, is he?”
Robert, who’s halfway to the car, stops and blows out a breath.
Must’ve heard that one.
Emma waves her phone at Chandler. “Free to call anyone I like. I’m fine. Once again, please go.”
“Emma hates the spotlight,” Chandler says to me. “You know what the spotlight would do to her, don’t you?”
Fuck me.
That’s a threat.
I tighten my grip on Bash, who’s leaning into me like he, too, is picking up on the bad vibes.
“The sheriff’s on her way,” she replies evenly. “Please go.”
Robert steps between me and the car. “There a problem?” he says.
“Robert, this is Chandler. My ex-fiancé. He doesn’t live on this road. Chandler, this is Robert. My—let’s call him one of my special friends who have ways of finding out things that even Sabrina won’t know.”
Chandler must be angling in the car to look at me again, because Robert shifts, then shifts again.
“Are you giving me some kind of warning with that?” Chandler says to Emma.
“Do I need to?”
My ears tingle. My body tenses.
Another car is coming around the bend.
