“We got a call.” A deep voice spoke from the bathroom.
Faith reached for her weapon, but Luke didn’t flinch. “Come on in here, guys—excuse me, and ladies.” Luke stepped to the side, and a paramedic and EMT entered.
Hope’s flush darkened. “What did you do?” She practically spat the words.
Luke cut his eyes at Faith and twisted his mouth in an “uh-oh, we’ve been caught” expression. Then he knelt beside Hope’s chair, staying out of the paramedic’s way. “I know you know what we’re working on right now.”
She continued to glare at Luke but confirmed his statement with a slight tilt of her head.
“Faith told me you were probably okay, but I couldn’t risk it. Don’t be mad at Faith. This is on me. I’ve lost friends this week, and my paranoia levels are at an all-time high.”
Hope looked to Faith, and Faith mumbled, “Um ... yeah.” Not because she was trying to put the blame on Luke, but because she was in shock that he’d somehow managed to both crawl under the bus and drive over himself at the same time.
Luke pushed back on his heels, then stood, hands on his hips, surveying the closet. “Hope, would it make sense for you to move either into the bathroom or even all the way into your bedroom?”
The young female paramedic piped up. “Works for me.”
“Sure.” Hope frowned and looked down at her chair and the four people squeezed in around her. “It is a bit tight in here.”
It took shifting three more boxes to clear a path wide enough for Hope to navigate the wheelchair out of the closet.
“Go with Hope.” Luke waved a hand toward the closet. “I’ll try to get everything stacked on the other side so we can fix this.”
Faith hesitated in the doorway. “I’ll be right back.”
“Hey.” Luke stood among the boxes. “I can repair this shelf tonight. If I make a run to a home improvement store, we can get her back in the closet business right away. But if you don’t want me to be here, I totally get it.”
Faith looked around the closet. This master suite had been a huge selling point for Hope when she bought the house. The closet was the size of a small bedroom, with wire shelving around all the walls. The room was large enough for her to maneuver easily in her chair, and the double rows of shelving on two sides allowed most of her clothes to be hung in easy reach on the bottom shelf.
The top row held off-season clothes, and the upper shelf held boxes of memorabilia that Hope never looked at but wasn’t willing to part with either. But now? The upper shelf had pulled free of the wall. The clothes had mostly stayed on the hangers, but all the boxes stacked on top had slid down, crashing into Hope and tumbling onto the floor.
Asking Luke to do any form of manual labor was wrong. She wouldn’t ask him for herself. But for Hope? “I’m reasonably handy.” It was a weak attempt at getting him to rescind his offer.
“Great! With two of us working, it will take even less time.” He shooed her away. “Go see if Hope needs to go to the hospital. Then we’ll go from there.”
This was ridiculous. Why did he have to wind up being a decent guy? She did not want to like him. She definitely did not want to be indebted to him. And she could never tolerate needing him. That was unconscionable.
She slid her fingers through her hair, untangling snags and snarls. A quick glance in the mirror as she walked through the bathroom did nothing to improve her confidence. She looked exactly like someone who had worked a fourteen-hour day. She paused before the door to Hope’s bedroom and leaned against the wall, rolling her neck in two slow, tight circles. She did not have the energy to stay up another several hours working on the closet. They could pull out the clothes needed for tomorrow. But what about the day after and the day after? The way this case was going, who knew when she would be free to come back to help Hope. They should probably get the room at least semi-functional.
Could Luke really fix it? He was so exhausted, he probably wasn’t thinking clearly, but he radiated confidence. Strength. Safety.
There were risks being here, but overall, they were minimal. Right? If her theory was correct, she wasn’t in danger. Neither was Hope. And the attacker would try to avoid harming her or Hope. Luke might still be at risk, but as long as he was with her or Hope, was he in less danger?
Luke was an answer to a prayer she didn’t even know she’d prayed. Hope had probably been praying for a handy, smart, good-looking guy to drop into her life. But not Faith.
“Okay, ma’am.” The female paramedic’s deep Southern drawl floated through the door, and Faith pushed herself off the wall and into Hope’s room. Hope sat in her chair, pressing a large white cloth to her head. “I’m afraid that gash on your head needs stitches. It’s too deep for us to bandage. And it’s too close to your face to leave it to heal on its own. A good doctor will stitch that up, and you’ll never even be able to see the scar in your hairline.”
Hope favored Faith with a spectacularly sour expression. “This is all your fault.”
“Your closet crashed on you, you got hit on the head with multiple heavy objects, and there’s a bloody gash on your forehead. You can blame a lot of stuff on me, but not this.” Faith turned to the paramedic. “If I promise to take her to the hospital, can she skip the ride in the ambulance?” Faith tapped the FBI badge at her waist.
“I think we could make an exception.” The older EMT grinned at Faith and Hope. “You two remind me of my girls. They would squabble and squawk, but at the end of the day, they had each other’s backs.”
Hope gave a dismissive flick of her hand. “That one would like to see me wrapped in bubble wrap.”
The EMT chuckled. “Yeah. Well. There are worse things than having someone love you, missy.” He winked at Hope, patted Faith’s arm, and walked out with his bag.
The paramedic gathered a few remaining items and focused a laser gaze at Hope. “Get stitches. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
