Page 47 of Lone Star Secrets

Hell.

Presley was obviously now Birdie’s target, and Angel had to do something about that fast.

“Stay down,” he told Mia.

He slid open the side door of the van, and since Birdie no longer had her attention on him, she didn’t see him coming. Angel didn’t shoot her. He tackled her, using the force of his entire weight to knock her off her feet and slam her face first onto the concrete.

She howled in pain, and he heard something snap. Her arm, he thought, and he hoped it was enough to stop her from firing again. Unfortunately, the fall hadn’t knocked the gun out of her grip. She still had her hand wrapped around it, and her finger was on the trigger.

With Angel on her back, pinning her down, he latched onto her right wrist, twisting and turning her hand so that her gun was no longer pointing in Presley’s direction. Once he’d accomplished that, Angel bashed her hand hard against the ground.

“Damn you,” Birdie snarled, her voice trailing off to a hoarse sob. “You have to die.”

Angel ignored her and rammed her hand down again and again, well aware that he was breaking more bones. He’d break every damn in her body to stop her from killing them. The fourth slam did the trick, and the gun went skittering away from them.

He didn’t take any chances though since she might have brought even more weapons with her. Angel yanked off her purse from her shoulder and tossed it aside as well.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, he glanced up, already knowing that it was who it was. Presley. With his gun ready and aimed, Presley was making his way toward them.

Birdie started screaming and bucking to get out from beneath him, but Angel kept her pinned down. He definitely didn’t want to let her up so she could try to make a run for it.

Or, hell, attack them again.

“I called the cops, and they’re on the way,” Presley let him know. “Are Mia and you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Angel muttered, and he looked over his shoulder to see Mia in the still-open side door of the van.

She was pale and a little shaky, but she was very much alive and unharmed. No thanks to Birdie.

“Your chin’s bleeding,” she murmured.

Yeah, he felt it, but it was nothing. “The back of her head hit me when I tackled her.”

In the distance Angel heard a welcome sound. Police sirens. Soon, he’d be able to turn Birdie over to them, and since she was very much alive, the cops could grill her and maybe get her to confess to whatever the hell it was she’d done. Angel was betting for starters she’d been the one to murder Kenton.

“Let me go,” Birdie shrieked. “I have to end this. I don’t have a choice,” she sobbed out.

Angel was about to tell her that she had choices all right, but she’d clearly made the wrong one. But then he caught some movement from the corner of his eye. Two things happened at once.

Someone—a man wearing a ski mask—came up from the back of the van and caught hold of Mia, dragging her out and pulling her in front of him. He was holding a Glock, and he put it directly to Mia’s head.

Angel turned, his gun ready.

But he was too late.

The man pulled the trigger.

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Chapter Eighteen

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The sound of the blast tore through Mia, the noise and compression slamming into her ears. So much pain. It ripped through her, and for a horrifying moment, she thought she’d been shot.

She hadn’t been.

From the corner of her eye, Mia saw the barrel of the gun, and it wasn’t aimed at her. But at Angel.

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