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“Hey, imp.” Her mother smiled gently, softly. “There you are. It’s about time you woke up.”
“So mad at you,” she told her mother, but the sound wasn’t angry, just sad.
“So mad at you, too,” her momma assured her with that loving fierceness she’d used when Angel was little. “Get better and we’ll yell at each other.”
Get better.
She had to get better. She had to get off her ass and make sure Bliss was safe.
“Bliss.” It was so hard to stay awake. Just for another minute. She had to stay awake another minute. Feel this feeling for just a little while longer.
“Bliss is fine, Angel,” Chaya promised, the gentleness in her voice, the sound only a mother has, filling it.
Angel gripped her mother’s fingers, fought to hold her eyes open just a little longer.
“Momma . . .” She stared up at Chaya; she had to tell her.
“I’m here, baby,” Chaya promised. “Just sleep. Everything’s fine.”
“I love you,” she whispered. “Always loved you.”
“I always loved you, Angel. Always . . .”
The words drifted away as she slipped into sleep once again. There were dreams, as there always were. That parade of figures from her childhood and bits and pieces of things she knew she needed to remember but never did.
She’d remember eventually, though; she could feel it. And when she did, the past would be over. . . .
• • •
Angel was still weak, shaky the next morning when Duke helped her to the kitchen, and more than a little put out. Hell, she was pissed off. She wouldn’t speak to Ethan for keeping her under for so long, and when he came at her with the syringe loaded with antibiotics, she threatened to skin him if it knocked her out again.
“Sure you feel up to this?” Duke asked her as Bliss placed a cup of coffee, heavy with sugar and cream, in front of her.
She thanked Bliss softly, then shot Duke a disgusted look.
“Stop babying me, Duke,” she muttered. “You’re embarrassing me already. I need to see the pictures you have.”
Dawg and Rowdy were both smirking, but for once Natches wasn’t.
“Sorry, badass,” Duke drawled, his lips quirking in a grin. “I’ll just slink away in shame now.”
“Yeah, you do that,” she told him, shooting him a disgruntled look as she lifted the coffee and sipped at it gratefully, aware of Bliss standing behind her in case she needed anything else.
“Seth and Saul hit the area where the sniper was located above you and found the body. You got your man,” Natches said, and winked at her. “I knew you would.”
“Lucky is more like it,” she griped. “I’m not much of a shooter. Duke could tell you that. But I’m a damned good watcher.”
“Well, you were a damned good shooter when it counted,” he assured her. “The DNA came in and we have pictures of that one as well as information on the two dead men that hit the safe house.” He looked behind Angel. “Bliss, honey, you shouldn’t be here.”
Angel stared at Natches in surprise and disappointment. Bliss shouldn’t be there? It was her life that was being threatened; she needed to know what was going on. Didn’t she?
“Natches,” Chaya said softly behind him. “You can’t protect her from this at this point. We discussed it, remember?”
Natches’s lips tightened and he rubbed at the back of his neck in irritation, but didn’t say anything more on the subject.
“You’re sure you remember the men from the cabin?” he asked, pulling the photos he’d turned over in front of him. It had been months ago when Angel had tracked the young man Bliss was interested in to a secluded fishing hole several miles from the marina. She’d seen the cabin and the men outside it, but hadn’t paid much attention to them. The same cabin the August twins had learned the dead men had been staying at.
“I have a very good memory,” Angel answered him, a little stiffly.
