Emergency Reunion by Sandra Orchard Page B

shoulder as she bent over a photo. Snatching back his hand, he glanced back at the house and reminded himself not to admire anything else about her, because clearly her father wouldn’t approve.
    â€œDid Eddie recognize any of these guys?”
    â€œNo. I showed him the stack last night, but he said none of them looked like the guy who told him to raid your ambulance.” Although, he wasn’t 100 percent confident his brother had been telling the truth. When he’d first arrived at the house last night, Eddie wouldn’t let him in because he’d still been steamed that Cole had turned in his phone. Dad had shown up as he’d searched under rocks for the spare key they used to keep in the flowerbed—when there’d actually been flowers in it.
    Cole cringed at the memory of the “yeah” he’d choked out in response to Dad’s “good to see you.” He’d managed to avoid getting into anything deeper by saying, “I have photos Eddie needs to look at, and he’s refusing to open the door.”
    To Cole’s surprise, Dad had unlocked the door, snapped off the TV and ordered Eddie to look at the photos. Even more surprising had been his “Your brother was doing his job turning in your phone, and you should be helping him find this jerk any way you can.”
    With that Dad had left. But five minutes later, he’d come back and handed Cole a mug of coffee and asked if Eddie had recognized anyone.
    Cole had accepted the coffee, feeling like a traitor to Mom. But at least he’d stopped short of engaging in small talk by rushing out the second Eddie had exhausted the stack of photos.
    Sherri continued flipping through photos, pausing only momentarily on each until she reached the middle of the stack. “I ticked off this guy one time a couple of months back.” She turned the picture of a lanky firefighter Cole’s way. “He was first on the scene, and I criticized him in front of his captain for unnecessarily moving a patient with possible spine injuries.”
    Cole took the picture and looked at the name on the back.
Ned Blum
. “Okay, we’ll check on his connection with Bev and see what we can dig up on him.”
    â€œShouldn’t we show the picture to your brother again?”
    â€œHe’s at school by now. Besides, he said the drug guy had a goatee and beer belly.”
    â€œIt could’ve been a disguise.”
    â€œYeah, but unfortunately Eddie probably wasn’t in great mental condition to recognize that. I’ll try to get a voice recording for him to listen to.”
    Sherri let out a sigh. “That would be easy enough to disguise, too.”
    His heart pinched at the resignation in her voice, the dark circles under her eyes. “I could be off base with my theory that the guy manipulating Eddie was behind the attacks on you. His raid on your ambulance might not be connected to the other incidents.”
    â€œThen his appearance at the drug house the next night seems like a pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?”
    Yeah, never mind finding Eddie’s phone in the woods at the site of the dog attack. He’d hesitated to mention that, afraid it would be the tipping point between her trusting him and not. He rammed his truck into Reverse and backed out of her driveway. “Let’s ask your cousin Jake what he can tell us about Ned. He should know if he’s the kind of guy who’d carry a grudge.”
    When they reached the fire station, Jake was outside polishing the fire engine, and Sherri jumped out of the truck before Cole could stop her.
    Hopefully anyone noticing her arrival would think she was just paying her cousin a visit, not asking about suspects. Thankfully the rest of the crew appeared to be working inside the bay. Cole reached Sherri’s side as Jake said, “No, Ned’s pretty laid-back.” He glanced at Cole and nodded. “We ribbed him about