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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.
