Page 21 of Lone Star Secrets

Hell. Of course, it was unsettled. Yesterday, someone had tried to kill her, and there were no guarantees that wouldn’t happen again today.

“I’m guessing from your expression you haven’t gotten any good news this morning,” she said, walking closer to him.

He shook his head. “No sign of the shooter and the blood found by the tree wasn’t a match to anyone in the system.”

“So, the guy didn’t have a criminal record,” she muttered. “And it rules out Dwight because he does have one.”

True, but sometimes there were occasional glitches in the system, in the search itself or even the way the blood sample was collected or processed. So, Angel intended to request that it be run again.

“What about the drone feed? Any images of his face?” Mia asked.

This wasn’t going to be a positive report. “None. He kept on the ski mask the whole time. And he didn’t leave any fingerprints on the spent shell casings. There were also no trace evidence or fibers on the tree. No reports either of anyone matching his height and weight being treated for a gunshot wound.”

Mia stayed quiet a moment, obviously processing all of that. “Maybe he’s dead?” she speculated.

“Not enough blood. The CSIs followed a short trail of blood drops to a trail where it appeared there had recently been a motorcycle. That’s probably what he used to escape.”

She sighed. “Both the CSIs and you have obviously worked most of the night… wow,” she muttered when she made it to the window. “Wow on steroids. What an awesome view.”

“I find it soothing,” he settled for saying. “A far cry from the traffic noises in the city.”

She made a sound of agreement and stood there several long moments before she turned to him. “I hacked into some files,” Mia said, definitely causing that soothing moment to vanish.

“What files?” he was quick to ask.

“The latest police report on Kenton.”

Angel groaned. “There was no need for you to do that. Presley got an update by talking to a few of his cop friends.”

“Yes. I saw a note about that, and I also saw that the officers weren’t going to keep Presley or you in the info loop until they were sure you were ruled out as suspects.”

“Shit,” he snarled.

“That was my reaction, too, so I kept digging. FYI, cops suck at protecting their files. I mean, really, someone needs to talk to them about that.” She stopped, waved the rest of that off and continued. “What they didn’t tell Presley was that the CSIs managed to find traces of blood in Kenton’s old room when they went through it last night.”

Angel wasn’t the least bit surprised about that. Traces of blood spatter could stay around for a long time, and while DNA couldn’t usually be extracted from samples that old, the odds were that the blood belonged to Kenton.

And Birdie.

Since he couldn’t undo the hacking, Angel decided to go ahead and hear if she’d learned anything else from those reports. “Did the cops get into any suspicions they have about Birdie?”

She shook her head. “Like us, she got a mention as someone to be interviewed because she was living in the house with Kenton when the crime would have occurred.” Mia paused. “We’re going to have to tell the cops about the knife and the blood on it, aren’t we?”

“We are,” Angel confirmed. “I want to hold off that until we’re all called in for questioning. And I’ll take full blame for removing it. I don’t want you caught up on that. There’s no need—”

She stopped him with a kiss.

A full-blown, hot, hard, right on the mouth kiss.

The kind that twenty years ago would have been that final foreplay kiss before he sank deep into her.

Damn it all to hell and back. The taste of her slammed right into him and took him to another place, another time. But still the same Mia. The one who could fire up every inch of him. Of course, this kiss could have fired up an igloo.

Only after she’d left him breathless did she finally pull back.

She smiled. Shrugged. “That wasn’t a mistake,” she insisted.

“It felt like one,” he lied. It hadn’t felt like a mistake at all but rather a much wanted distraction. One that’d given him an instant hard-on.

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