Chapter Five

Angel sat in the breakroom of the Blanco Pass sheriff’s office, waiting for Mia to finish her interview. Also waiting for, well, a miracle. He’d already gotten one in that Mia hadn’t been hurt in the shooting. Neither had RJ and him. But Angel was hoping for a couple more.

That Mia and he wouldn’t be arrested for Kenton’s murder.

And that the shooter would be found so that Angel could have a word with him or her.

So far though, no sightings of the shooter. Only some blood beneath the tree where the asshole had been perched during the attack.

Angel was positive he’d shot the SOB, but clearly it hadn’t been a kill shot because there was no body. Now, he’d have to wait for analysis of the blood to know who they were up against. He was hoping the identity of the who would give him the why. Or a more specific angle on the why anyway.

The attack had to be linked to Kenton.

Now, Angel needed to know what the attacker had hoped to accomplish by killing three people who might have witnessed something critical about the murder.

Shortly after Deputy Issac Rivera had arrived on scene, Mia, RJ, and he had been instructed to go to the sheriff’s office. No surprise there. They had to give statements, and that included speculating about the possible motives for the attack. Angel had considered holding back on saying anything about Kenton, but he just couldn’t do that.

As a former cop, he didn’t have rose-colored glasses about a small-town police force. They could be good, bad or anything in between. Ditto for city cops. But Angel hadn’t wanted Sheriff Tyler Banyon and his deputies going into the investigation with a proverbial hand tied behind their backs. So, Angel had spilled about Kenton’s body being found and about the note that had led RJ to Mia’s.

What Angel had kept to himself was the pocketknife.

And his Spurs hat that Mia had found in Kenton’s room.

Yeah, it hadn’t been easy to stay quiet about those, and it’d felt like multiple gut punches to hold back on the two pieces of info. But an admission like that would almost certainly get Mia and him arrested. Now that he knew she hadn’t been the one who’d killed Kenton, he needed to find the killer and make sure Mia’s and his names were cleared.

Identifying the shooter would have almost certainly helped with that. Even if the shooter was someone the killer had hired, knowing who he or she was could still lead back to their boss.

Angel stood when he heard the footsteps, and Mia appeared in the doorway. She was way too pale, clearly shaken to the core, and Angel wanted to throttle the shooter for that alone.

She was also hobbling a bit, and it took him a moment to realize why. Someone had mended up her shot-up flipflop with duct tape, and it had created an uneven surface on the bottom of the shoe.

He went to her, pulling her into his arms. That had a two-fold purpose. He really wanted to hug her, to try to ease the crap she had to be feeling. But the close contact made it easier for him to whisper in her ear. There were no cops around at the moment, but Angel didn’t want to risk this part of their conversation being overheard.

“Did they ask if you’d killed Kenton?” he wanted to know.

“No,” she said, her voice barely audible. “And I didn’t say anything about the hat or knife.”

Angel hadn’t figured she would volunteer that since they’d already discussed it in the drive to the sheriff’s office. Of course, getting their stories to match was a big-assed legal no-no, but Angel had to hold onto the big picture here. If Mia and he were in jail, they wouldn’t be able to find out what the hell was going on.

RJ hadn’t been in on the van conversation since he’d driven his own vehicle here, but as far as Angel knew, RJ wasn’t aware of either the hat or the knife. If he was, that meant he was likely the killer and had used those items to set up Mia and him.

Angel just couldn’t wrap his head around that possibility though.

RJ had been a damn good foster parent, always putting the kids first. Angel couldn’t see him letting someone else take the blame for something he’d done. Or rather, Angel didn’t want to believe something like that was possible. But he had to remind himself that RJ might not be the same man he’d been twenty years ago.

And that his former foster father might be protecting someone other than himself.

Like Melanie.

Yeah, Angel could see RJ doing that, and it was the reason Angel wasn’t going to trust him with full info on the investigation. RJ might be willing to throw Mia and him under a bus if it kept Melanie from facing a murder charge.

“How did your interview go?” Mia whispered.

“As I expected.”

The deputy had been focused on the attack itself, on Angel’s response to the gunfire and on any possible description Angel could give him of the shooter. Angel hadn’t been able to give him squat about that last part, but he had turned over the drone feed.

Well, a copy of it anyway.

The original footage was already with the Maverick Ops’ techs who were analyzing it. They might be able to get something that law enforcement and Angel could use.

And that brought him back to yet another miracle he needed.

He would have to tell Ruby everything, and when he did, Angel only hoped she didn’t yank him off the investigation and force him to do a tell-all with the cops. That would include both the sheriff here and SAPD since the body had been found in their jurisdiction.

“Are you okay?” Mia asked.

Angel eased back enough to see her face and stared down at her. For some stupid reason that made him want to smile. That she would ask how he was doing when she was the one who was clearly shaken the most.

“I’ve been better,” he said. “And you?”

She attempted a smile, too. “Been better,” she echoed.

What she didn’t do was move out of his arms. Angel stayed put, too. And they continued with the full-on eye contact. Gazes locked. Bodies pressed against each other. And despite the crap going on, Angel got a flash of memories that didn’t have anything to do with murder or gunshots.

The memories were of Mia and him naked.

Definitely something he shouldn’t be thinking about right now. Still, the memories came along with that punch of heat he always got whenever he was around her. He suddenly wanted his mouth on hers. He wanted to let the kiss melt away some of the bad.

But the sound of more footsteps nipped that thought in the bud.

Mia and he stepped away from each other, both of them automatically turning toward the doorway. Angel figured it was one of the deputies or the sheriff. But he was wrong.

It was Presley.

A welcome sight, especially since he’d already filled Presley in on the whole truth. He’d done that in a phone conversation during the drive to the sheriff’s office.

Presley had arrived on scene at Mia’s shortly after the deputy, and while he hadn’t actually witnessed any gunfire, he’d had to give a statement, too. He’d done his first and then had left the building to go out to his SUV, where he’d no doubt made some calls and gotten started on digging out any helpful info.

“That hug looked like old times between the two of you,” Presley said, winking at Mia.

Presley kissed her. Not the kind of kiss Angel had been considering but rather a friendly peck on the cheek. Presley followed it up with a glance around the breakroom.

“This doesn’t feel like old times,” he added. “I just talked to the sheriff, and he’s going to cut us all loose once the statements are typed up and signed. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

Good. Angel wanted to get the heck out of there and get started on his own phone calls, his own digging.

“What else did you find out?” Angel asked.

“SAPD is trying to verify if it is Kenton’s body. They’re using dental records.”

That was standard procedure in a situation like that. Dental records could give an immediate ID, whereas DNA took a little longer, especially since the DNA would have to be extracted from the bones and then processed.

“Is it possible it isn’t Kenton?” Mia asked. It was a question that Angel had already been mulling over.

“It’s possible,” Presley verified. “The pendant isn’t common, but it isn’t unique either. In fact, they’re sold in plenty of souvenir shops. And there’s the part that we don’t actually know if Kenton is dead.”

Yeah, that had occurred to Angel as well. Apparently not to Mia though because she made a soft gasp, and Angel could practically see the wheels turning in her head. Taking her to one very nasty conclusion.

“Kenton could be alive,” she murmured. “He could have faked his own death.”

Angel waited for her to grasp one more key point. And he didn’t have to wait long.

“He could have been the one to shoot at us,” she blurted. “Kenton could want revenge.”

Bingo.

And wouldn’t that tie up everything into a neat little bow? Well, neat-ish anyway. There’d still be the question of why Kenton had waited all this time to get back at Mia for defending herself against him.

Angel looked at Presley, knowing he would have been looking into possible answers.

“There’s been no sign of Kenton since he disappeared,” Presley explained. “Of course, he could have left the country or else just been very successful in changing his identity. He could have done that if he thought he would be arrested for assaulting Mia.”

Yep, he could have. But that still brought Angel back to the time lag.

“He could have been in jail or in a situation where he didn’t want to get revenge,” Angel speculated. “Then, the situation changed or there was some kind of trigger that prompted him to get revenge.”

“Melanie,” Mia said. “She could be in danger.”

Presley nodded. “She’s on her way here to be with RJ, and Ruby provided an escort. Melanie will be protected.” He paused. “Ruby’s trying to track down Birdie, too, just in case.”

“Birdie,” Angel repeated.

He took out his phone to bring up the background check he’d already had Danno run on her. Birdie had been somewhat of a wild child during her time in foster care, and that had continued into adulthood.

“At nineteen, she was arrested for shoplifting,” Angel summarized. “At twenty-one, another arrest for assault in a bar fight. A year after that, she got picked up for being drunk and disorderly. After that, she stayed out of trouble with the cops, but according to social media posts, she attended a lot of parties, some of which had busts for drugs.”

Mia sighed. “Birdie had a shitty childhood.” But then she added, “All of us did.”

True. And that included Kenton, too.

From what Angel knew and had learned, all of their placements into foster care had come when the parents or custodial relatives had screwed up enough to lose custody. In Angel’s case, it’d been his father. A widower at the age of twenty-six, his dad hadn’t been able to cope with the loss of Angel’s mother, who’d been killed in a car crash, and his dad’s depression had led to suicide. With no immediate kin to take Angel in, he’d landed in foster care.

Mia’s situation had been in that same wheelhouse. Her mother had been murdered in a botched robbery at the diner where she worked, and with no father in the picture, Mia had ended up in foster care, too.

Presley’s story was slightly different but still went back to absentee parents. As a newborn, he’d been left at a fire station. He had no idea who his bio-parents were or what had led to him basically being discarded. He’d been “discarded” yet once again when his adoptive father had murdered his mother in a jealous rage before ending his own life. Since there’d been no one else to take Presley in, he’d been sent to foster care.

Mia, Presley, and he had all beaten the odds and had come out of the system and stayed arrest-free. Birdie clearly hadn’t taken that path. At least not until very recently.

“Two months ago, Birdie got married,” Angel went on with the report. “No wild child background for him. He’s a very successful, very conservative small-town businessman, Roger Farrow.”

“Opposites attract?” Presley questioned.

Angel had to shrug. “Roger’s worth a fortune.” And he pulled up the man’s photo to show them.

He figured no one would consider him good looking. Unlike Birdie who was a curvy blonde who could have shared Marilyn Monroe’s gene pool.

“So, money attracts,” Presley amended. He leaned in, lowering his voice. “If she killed Kenton, she might not want new rich hubby to find out.”

Angel made a sound of agreement.

“Once Ruby manages to contact Birdie,” Presley went on, “she’ll offer her protection.”

If Birdie was innocent, maybe she would take Ruby up on that. Then again, Birdie might not need such measures since her rich husband could provide her with a bodyguard as well. Of course, that would mean Birdie confessing to him why she might need a bodyguard, and Roger might not even be aware of his wife’s checkered past.

“One more thing,” Presley continued a moment later. He moved in even closer to them and whispered, “After I gave my statement, I drove to your place and got the pocketknife.”

That wasn’t a surprise since Angel had instructed Presley to do that first chance he got.

“I had a courier pick it up and take it straight to Maverick Ops for testing,” Presley spelled out. “The lab techs are already working on it.”

Good. Maybe after all these years, there’d be something on the knife that would help them. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be something that would land Mia or him in even hotter water.

Presley’s and his phones dinged at the same time, and a sense of dread washed over Angel when he saw it was from Ruby. It was possible his boss would demand they all come in right away to give her a briefing.

One with the full facts.

But that wasn’t it.

Angel read the short text and turned to Mia to tell her the news.

“The dental records confirmed a match,” he said after dragging in a long breath. “The body found is Kenton’s.”

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