Chapter Nineteen

With RJ on one side of him and Mia on the other, Angel stood at the back of the hospital room as a petite blonde nurse checked the IV in Presley’s arm. Presley was flirting with her, so Angel took that as a very good sign.

There were a lot of good signs.

And Angel was thankful for each and every one of them.

Mia had managed to donate the blood that Melanie needed, the blood that might give her a chance to survive. Along with that, Mia and he were alive and unscathed.

For the most part anyway.

Just a few scrapes and bruises. Of course, they’d have to deal with the mental aftermath, but for now, that was on the back burner while they still had so much on the front burner to handle.

Presley hadn’t gotten the unscathed diagnosis what with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. And Birdie had topped him in the injury department by taking a bullet to her side. In both cases, nothing vital had been hit, and the shots had been a clean through and through. Both of them were expected to make a full recovery.

That didn’t apply to the two gunmen who’d been in the parking garage.

No recovery for them. They were yet to be IDed, but they were both dead. And Melanie was still in the ICU, and her chances of survival were touch and go at the moment.

The nurse finished with the IV, flashed Presley a smile that practically yelled “Call me,” and she walked out, easing the door shut behind her.

If she hadn’t closed it, Angel would have because even now, he couldn’t be sure that they weren’t in danger. Yes, the two gunmen were dead, and it appeared that Birdie had been behind the attacks, and she was restrained in a hospital bed just up the hall. But there were still a whole lot of unanswered questions. Until Angel had those answers, he wasn’t letting Mia out of his sight.

Maybe he wouldn’t even after that.

Soon, he’d need to figure out a way to keep her in his life. Now that they’d found their way back to each other, he didn’t want to lose her.

Correction: he couldn’t lose her.

And, yeah, this was about that l-word. He’d need to tell her how he felt about her and let the cards fall where they may.

“I suspect that nurse will be back in soon for a visit,” Mia remarked. “Hard to resist that Presley charm.”

He winked at her. “You’ve resisted it.”

“Because you never aimed it in my direction. You knew Angel would throttle you if you aimed those goo-goo eyes at me.” She went to Presley and brushed a gentle kiss on his cheek. “Are those drugs in the IV good enough to stave off the pain?”

“Oh, yeah.” He flashed her a grin. “Not feeling a thing. Well, maybe a little floaty. And Angel would indeed have tried to throttle me for goo-goo eyes, whatever the hell that is,” he added, obviously backtracking. “But I wouldn’t have messed with what you two had. It’s one of those soulmate kind of deals.”

Angel frowned. Hell. He was just getting used to the l-word, and now there was soulmate shit involved? But he had to concede that he’d never thought of a woman the way he had Mia.

“So, how’s Melanie?” Presley asked, his expression turning serious.

RJ stepped closer to the bed. “They’re waiting for her to come out of the anesthesia.” He groaned and scrubbed his hand over his face. “This feels like a bad dream, and I keep hoping I’ll wake up, and…” He stopped. “I wish I could go back twenty years and undo all of this.”

Part of Angel felt the same, and he hated to see RJ suffer like this. And the suffering wasn’t over, not by a long shot.

“What’s the verdict on Birdie?” Presley went on.

“She’s out of recovery, and Detective Asa Walker is in with her getting her statement. I have no idea what she’s going to tell him,” Angel admitted. “It’s obvious she tried to kill us, but then that gunman tried to kill her.”

Presley tried to shrug. Then, winced. “Maybe she reneged on a payment or something. Or maybe she hired them, and they wanted to eliminate anyone who could tie them to the attack. Kill the boss, and she can’t rat them out.”

Angel had considered all of that, but it still didn’t feel right. Unfortunately, the only person who could give them answers was Birdie, and he wasn’t sure they were going to get the truth from her.

“You gave your statements to Walker?” Presley asked.

Mia and Angel nodded. “You?”

“Not to Walker but to Lieutenant Landrieu,” he said referring to his former boss at SAPD. “She did a multitask drop by to take my statement, check on me, and try to talk me into coming back on the force. I declined and told her despite being shot, I was very happy at Maverick Ops.”

Presley seemed to be on the verge of adding more, but he stopped when RJ’s phone dinged with a text. It was one that he was clearly anxious to get because he yanked the cell from his pocket.

“It’s the ICU nurse,” RJ rattled off. “Melanie’s awake, and they’re going to let me in to see her.”

“You want me to go with you?” Angel asked.

RJ shook his head, already hurrying toward the door. “I’ll give you an update once I’ve talked to her.” With that, the man practically ran out of the room.

Presley muttered some profanity. “I don’t believe any of this shit was his fault, but he’s having to pay a damn high price for what happened.”

Angel believed the same, and the bottom line was even if Melanie made a full recovery, their lives were forever changed. Then again, he could say the same about his own life. Before Kenton’s body was found, he hadn’t known just how much he needed Mia. His world had felt complete.

Now, he knew it hadn’t been.

Soulmates and l-words. What an ass kicker.

“Please tell me Detective Walker’s going to interview Dwight and Roger,” Presley added a moment later.

“It’s on his agenda,” Angel assured him.

Walker had made that clear in the brief conversation Angel had had with him before he’d gone into Birdie’s room to interrogate, and charge, her.

“Detectives are also going through Birdie’s house,” Mia added.

Presley smiled. “I’ll bet Roger’s mightily pissed off about that. Did he try to stop that?”

Angel nodded. “Ruby messaged to let me know that not only did Roger try to block it, he’s threatened legal action against, well, pretty much every one of us. Apparently, he believes we’ve defamed Birdie’s and his character.”

“So, he thinks she’s innocent?” Presley questioned.

“Yep. Of course, he has no explanation for why his squeaky clean wife would fire point-blank shots at us. Or why she would have been carrying two semiautomatics in her purse.”

“Love is blind,” Presley remarked. “Mia knows about that. Love has caused her to overlook your faults.” He grinned.

Angel scowled and would have tossed back a required insulting comeback, but he mentally tripped over what Presley had just said. Not the faults part. But the other.

Love has caused her …

He was still trying to wrap his mind around the possibility that was true when his own phone dinged. “It’s Detective Walker,” he relayed. “Birdie wants to talk to Mia and me.”

“Well, that oughta be an interesting conversation,” Presley concluded. “Fill me on what she says first chance you get.”

“I will,” Angel assured him, and he put his hand on the small of Mia’s back to get them moving.

Since Birdie was just up the hall, it didn’t take them long to get there. Not enough time for Angel to speculate about what the woman would say.

There was a uniformed officer standing guard outside her room, but he had apparently been given a heads-up about their arrival because he let them right in after he checked their IDs.

Like Presley, Birdie was in a hospital bed and hooked up to a variety of machines to monitor her vitals, but she had the addition of being cuffed to one of the metal bed rails. A good precaution because despite her injuries, Angel thought Birdie might run if she got the chance.

Walker, an imposing man with his six-foot-six height and muscular build, was at the back of the room, and he nodded a greeting to them. Angel spared Birdie a long once over, and a scowl, before Mia and he went over to have a word with the detective.

“She’s confessed to killing Kenton Barker, but that’s about it,” Walker informed them. “I’ve reminded her that anything she says to you can be used to bring additional charges against her,” he added in a raised voice that Birdie no doubt had trouble hearing.

Good. Angel was glad that Walker had made that clear.

“Oh, and we just got IDs on the two dead guys you shot,” Walker said, taking out his phone. “Lou Trainor and Quinn Stephens. They were friends with the other two men who tried to kill you.”

So, connected. The question was—who had hired them?

“What about Birdie’s financials?” Angel asked.

Walker shook his head. “All tied up with her husband’s, and they have lots of money going in and out. Our forensic accounts will need some time to see if there was a payment to hitmen.”

That tightened his chest. Angel just wanted this over and done. Hoping to accomplish that, he turned, and Mia and he went closer to Birdie. However, Birdie spoke before he could say anything.

“Kenton deserved to die,” Birdie spat out. “You know it. Mia knows it. And I know it.”

Since it appeared Birdie was in a chatty mood and not hampered by the gunshot to her side, Angel just stood by and let her continue.

“That night when I went to confront him about Mia, he spit in my face, told me I was just a good fuck, that was all. That the girl he really wanted was Mia.”

Birdie sobbed out Mia’s name as if the insult was fresh and not something from two decades ago. The tears came, spilling down her cheeks, but Angel couldn’t help but wonder who she was crying for. Certainly not Kenton.

“So, you went to Kenton’s room, and he spit in your face,” Angel said, making a circling motion for her to continue.

Birdie did, eventually, after several snail-crawling moments. Her fit of temper seemed to have been spent, and she sighed. “I slapped him and shoved him hard, and he fell. He got up to come after me, and I knew he was going to punch me so I grabbed his lamp and bashed him on the head. Over and over again, until he quit moving.”

Birdie paused again, shuttered, and was no doubt battling the motherlode of flashbacks.

“And?” Angel pressed. “What did you do then?”

She cleared her throat and continued. “I dragged him to the window. God, he felt so heavy, like he weighed a ton, but I rolled him out. Ruby was right about that. I grabbed his keys that he kept on his nightstand and the lamp so I could get rid of it. After that, I hurried downstairs, managed to get him into his car and drove him to the woods. Since it’d rained the night before, the ground was soft. I used a rock to scoop out a shallow grave and put him in it.”

Angel figured it wouldn’t have been easy for her to do all of that. Kenton and she had been about the same size. But adrenaline would have given Birdie the boost she needed.

“What did you do with Kenton’s car and the lamp?” Angel asked.

“I threw the lamp in a trash bin in the parking lot of the strip mall, and I left his car there with the keys in the ignition.” Birdie gathered her breath. “I figured someone would steal it.”

Yeah, in that part of the neighborhood, it wouldn’t have stayed in the parking lot long. And since no one had reported it stolen, the cops wouldn’t have been looking for it.

“Did you lie when you said Kenton was trying to set us up with the hat and knife?” Mia asked.

Birdie’s mouth tightened. “Partly. Kenton did have Angel’s hat that he’d taken from his room.” She paused a long time. “But I put the knife there after I got back from, well, disposing of the body. Yes, I know it was petty,” she snapped, “but I was angry with him. And angry with you for him wanting you. Hell, for everyone wanting you. You were the princess of the house, Mia, and I hated you for it.”

Angel hadn’t seen that hatred in Birdie’s eyes back then, but he sure as heck was seeing it now. He was seeing a lot of things.

“I hated you,” Birdie repeated, “but I swear, I went back to the room to get the knife. And I nearly got caught. By you,” she added, looking at Angel. “I saw you coming out of Kenton’s room, and I waited until you were gone before I went in. The knife wasn’t there.”

“Because I took it,” Angel said. “How did your blood get on it?”

Birdie lifted her right hand. “I cut myself on the lamp. It had a sharp edge around the base. I thought I’d cleaned all the blood off, though before I picked up Mia’s knife.”

Apparently, she’d missed some, enough for the blood to show up after all this time. But for a teenager, Birdie had done a damn good job of covering her tracks. Still, if Kenton’s disappearance had been investigated as a murder, the CSIs would have almost certainly been able to piece together what had happened because they would have processed every inch of the room. Kenton’s car, too, if they’d been able to find it.

“I didn’t want Melanie to notice Kenton’s lamp missing so I put the one from my room in Kenton’s,” Birdie added. “Then, the next day I bought a nearly identical one to replace mine.”

So, there it was. All spelled out. Well, mostly anyway. But there was one huge question he needed answered.

“Why try to kill us?” Angel demanded.

Birdie glanced away, and her mouth trembled. She quickly steeled herself back up though. “Because I thought you knew I’d killed Kenton and had some kind of proof that would get me locked away. And I had no doubt that none of you would be on my side. You’d be on Mia’s. You’d throw me under a bus to protect her.”

“Yes, I would,” he snarled, the anger shooting through him. “But it turns out, the only person I needed to protect Mia from was you. Why did you believe we had proof you’d murdered Kenton?”

Birdie opened her mouth to answer, but the sound of someone shouting stopped him.

“I will see my wife now,” Roger bellowed.

“Roger,” Birdie shouted, and the woman moved as if to get out of the bed before Angel and Mia moved in to stop her.

On a heavy sigh, Walker went to the door and opened it. Roger was right there, his face tight with anger and determination. Walker simply stepped back and let him come in.

“Roger,” Birdie repeated. “Where have you been? I thought you’d be here sooner.”

The man stopped at the foot of her bed, and he ignored Birdie’s outstretched arms that were beckoning for him to come to her. “I was dealing with the cops who showed up at the house and my office. At my office,” he repeated in a snarl. “Do you know how humiliating that was? It’ll take years for the gossip to die down about this.”

“It’ll take longer than that,” Angel informed him. “Your wife just confessed to murdering Kenton Barker.”

Roger whipped back around to face Walker. “You questioned her without a lawyer and while she was in a hospital bed?”

“She waived her rights, said she just wanted the truth out in the open. The truth,” Walker emphasized. “Got anything you want to confess?”

“Like what?” Roger snapped.

“That you hired those gunmen who tried to kill Mia, Angel, Presley, and your wife,” Walker was quick to say.

The color drained from Roger’s face. “I didn’t hire them.”

That rang true to Angel. The man seemed stunned that the cop would have even suggested it.

“He didn’t,” Birdie spoke up. “Roger’s innocent in this. I’m the one who hired them to set the fire and eliminate any witnesses. I sold some jewelry to pay them in cash.”

“You have proof of that jewelry sale?” Walker asked.

She nodded. “A receipt in the glove compartment of my car from the pawn shop.”

Walker fired off a text, no doubt to the CSIs who were already likely going through the vehicle.

“How did you even meet these two men?” Angel asked. “And the other two, McBride and Crawford?”

“I met McBride at a party at Roger’s office. He was wearing a class ring from our high school, and I asked him about it. We got to talking, and I realized that I knew his mom. She didn’t go to our school, but I knew her when we worked part-time at the coffee shop over on Harrison Street.”

That hadn’t come out in the background checks. Then again, it would have been hard to dig up that kind of data since most of the high school workers at that particular coffee shop had been paid under the table. Angel knew that because he’d worked there himself for a couple of months.

“McBride had three friends that he said would do the job, so I paid them each five thousand,” Birdie went on. “And I told them I’d give them the rest when the job was done. When McBride and Crawford were killed, the other two said they’d do it. For double the money,” she tacked onto that.

“And you agreed?” Angel asked.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she insisted. “But when I met them a block up from the hospital, they demanded the rest of the money then and there. I said no, for them to do what was needed, and then I’d pay them.” Anger raced through her eyes. “That’s why one of them shot me.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Walker said. “You just confessed to murder for hire on two separate occasions and arson to attempt to destroy any potential evidence in a murder investigation?”

That got rid of the anger and instead put some panic on Birdie’s face. She looked at Roger. “I can explain—” she started, but she didn’t get a chance to finish.

“I’ll start divorce proceedings,” Roger snarled, and with that, he hurried out of the room.

A loud wail streamed from Birdie’s mouth, and covering her face with her hands, she broke down into sobs. Angel didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her. He felt nothing but complete and total contempt for this woman who’d nearly succeeded in killing them.

And that left Angel with the question he needed answered.

“Why try to kill Melanie, RJ, Mia, and me?” Angel demanded.

“Because you knew I’d murdered Kenton,” Birdie said through the sobbing.

Mia and Angel exchanged glances. “But we didn’t,” Mia assured Birdie. “We certainly didn’t have any proof of it anyway.”

Birdie took her hands from her face and gave them a fierce glare. “But you did,” she argued. “You had pictures of me going to Kenton’s room that night. He showed them to me.”

Everything inside Angel went still. “ He ?” Angel questioned.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Dwight managed to steal the pictures and destroy them after he showed them to me. I paid him for that with money from more jewelry I sold. But then, I figured with you being an ex-cop, you wouldn’t need the pictures to have me arrested. You could both just confirm the pictures had existed, and I’d be locked away.”

“Shit,” Angel grumbled just as Mia said, “Hell.”

Gathering his breath, Angel looked the woman straight in those tear-filled eyes. “Dwight conned you. There were no pictures. If you’d just stayed quiet and not hired those gunmen, Birdie, you could have probably gotten away with murder.”

Birdie seemed to freeze with her gaze fixed on him. After several seconds, she let out another of those loud wails. Angel ignored her, slipped his arm around Mia and turned to Walker.

“I’ll get an APB out for Dwight,” Walker assured him. “I can charge him with extortion.”

That was a small price to pay, considering the man had spurred a deadly plan into motion. Obviously, Birdie thought the same thing.

“Dwight is responsible for this,” Birdie yelled. “I wouldn’t have done this if he hadn’t lied. I should be cleared of charges. I shouldn’t have to go to jail.”

Angel heard Birdie’s shouts continue, and then trail off, as Mia and he walked out of the room.

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