Chapter 2
Two
I speak four languages. English, profanity, sarcasm, and real shit.
—Creed’s secret thoughts
Creed
“Fuck!” I called out, feathering my brakes when I saw the woman on the moped start to slide.
The snow on the ground kept me from slamming on them, which is what I really wanted to do.
The truck rocked to a halt seconds later, but the woman on the moped kept going, sliding right into my truck and hitting it with a clunk of metal.
I threw the truck in Park and got out, my hand going to my pocket as I rounded the hood of the truck.
I dropped down onto the cold asphalt and placed the phone to my ear, already having dialed 9-1-1 in the time it took me to get to her.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” the dispatcher called out.
“A woman riding a moped,” I said as I felt for a pulse of the woman who was unmoving. “Slipped on the ice and slammed into my truck. She’s unconscious, but has a pulse.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
I gave her the coordinates quickly, leaving her on the line as I checked to see if the woman was breathing.
She was, thank God.
She had a sizable gash from where her face connected with my truck, however.
“Shit,” I said as I held C-Spine. “Wake up, darlin’.”
The woman’s eyes fluttered, and she stared at me with shock in her eyes.
“Who’re you?” she asked.
My lips twitched despite the horrible setting in which we’d just met. “Creed.”
“Creed,” she said. “You hit me.”
“I didn’t hit you,” I automatically argued. “You slipped on the oil and ran into my rig.”
She started to move her head, but I didn’t allow her to move.
“Shit,” she hissed. “Ouch.”
Sirens sounded in the distance, and I let out a relieved breath.
“You called the ambulance?” she gasped, then groaned, her eyes squeezing shut.
“Sure did,” I said. “You’re going to the hospital to get checked out. You hit my truck really hard.”
She swallowed hard, flickering her eyes open once again.
“Will you call my sister to let Brawny out?” she slurred. “He needs fed, and he needs to go outside to potty.”
I frowned, the name of the dog sounding damned familiar. “Who is your sister?”
“Cody.” She licked her cracked lips. “Cody.”
Everything started to click into place at once.
Cody was a name that I knew.
Cody and her best friend, Mable, were together quite a bit. Mable was engaged to a good friend of mine, Romeo.
Cody and Mable had a sister, Birdee.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Are you Birdee?”
Birdee opened her eyes and looked at me with pain clouding her vision. “That’sssss meee.”
Shit.
The helmet that she’d been wearing was blocking most of her face and hair from me, and the winter coat was concealing the rest.
Had I seen her in the light of day, with her jeans and a long-sleeved tee, I could’ve told you who she was instantly.
I’d know those curves anywhere.
But the way she was bundled up—which made sense since she was riding a damn moped in the middle of winter—I couldn’t see any of those curves.
“I’ll call her the moment we get you on the bus,” I said.
“What bus?” She frowned.
“Ambulance,” I corrected. “You’re going to be going for a ride on an ambulance.”
“Great.” She grimaced. “Is my moped okay?”
I hadn’t spared a single thought for the state of her moped.
Moreso, what kind of crazy bitch was driving a moped in the dead of winter?
“I have no clue,” I said, even though it probably wouldn’t be seeing as it was tucked up underneath the front end of my cruiser.
“Dammit,” she grumbled. “How will I get to work now?”
That seemed like a later problem…
“Let’s focus on the state of your face,” I suggested. “Does your head hurt?”
She pursed her lips, her gaze slightly unfocused, and said, “The majority of my head feels fine. The front right side, however, feels like I hit your bumper.”
“That’s because you did, gorgeous…”
“What happened?” she groaned, shifting her legs from side to side.
“Well,” I said, “some dumbass decided to change their oil in their front yard. Then when they got done with their oil, they changed everyone else’s oil. Then when they were done, they dumped it down the storm drain.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I was actually out here running a call on a couple of baby moose covered in it. Seems they just dumped it into the drainage area, then sprayed water until they kind of sort of got it mostly down the drain.”
“You ran a call about some moose?” she wondered. “Really? Why would you be doing that?”
I backed up so that she could see the lapel of my jacket. “Montana FWP—Fish, Wildlife, and Parks—at your service.”
“Ahh,” she said. “I missed some baby moose in my neighborhood?”
“You did,” I said. “They’re gone now. Tranqued mom and babies and got them cleaned up. They were here most of the morning.”
“Dangit, I always miss everything,” she grumbled.
The ambulance was closer now. Close enough that I could now see the lights.
“There they are.” I blew out a breath of relief.
“I think I’m probably going to be just fine,” she said. “I think I can skip going to the hospital. I have to go let my stepsister’s dog out anyway.”
“Ahhh,” I said as the ambulance pulled practically up to our backs. “We’ll just let the hospital decide that, but I can handle letting Brawny out. I know Rome.”
Other people pulled up as well, and soon people started to filter out of their houses.
Nosy bitches.
Just having their eyes on me made my skin crawl.
I hated being watched.
I hated even more being the center of attention.
And with police officers and paramedics surrounding me, there was nothing else I could do about it.
They would watch.
It didn’t help that I was in my department-issued vehicle for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks.
The only saving grace I had was that we had a dashcam on the truck. There was no way that this wouldn’t be her fault—even if it was an accident despite it being her that caused the accident.
“What do we have here?” the paramedic asked as he dropped down with his medical bag.
The next fifteen minutes went about as expected. They got Birdee’s name, age, date of birth, and any other necessary medical information.
By the time that they loaded her into the back, she was complaining and much more aware than when I’d first gotten to her.
As the ambulance pulled away with her, Gentry, who’d arrived somewhere in the middle of the chaos, sidled up to me and studied the moped under the cruiser.
“I have two questions,” Gentry, my good friend and fellow prison escapee, said. “One, why the hell did she slide eight feet under your truck when it wasn’t snowing out? And two, why was she on a moped in the first place?”
I pointed out the oil slick. “County is supposed to be out momentarily with a cleanup crew to deal with this.”
Gentry frowned. “Why didn’t Folsom Sheriff’s Department get called for this?”
“Because your sheriff ‘couldn’t spare the manpower’ for it.” I rolled my eyes. “As to why she was on a moped in the first place? That I don’t know.”
“Crazy,” he muttered.
“Even crazier is that you know her,” I said. “Birdee.”
“Birdee?” Gentry’s gaze went wide. “That’s great, man. Kill the sister-in-law, why don’t you?”
I snorted. “At least they don’t like her.”
Or, they hadn’t liked her originally.
A few months ago, when all of this went down with Romeo, Mable, and Mable’s stepmother, the stepsister had also been involved. The two women’s mom had been pretty much stealing from them, though she’d done it a lot more sophisticatedly than stealing the cash out of their pockets.
From what I’d understood, Whitney Watts had married Mable’s dad, Tom Watts, when Mable was young.
Whitney had brought a young child around the same age as Mable—Birdee.
Before she’d met Tom, Whitney had stolen her daughter’s identity and pretty much used her credit as her own.
When Mable came into the picture, she’d done the same to her, even mixing the two of them up and going out of her way to make things as confusing as possible.
On top of that, she’d done her level best to make the two young girls hate each other.
They’d pretty much been intolerable to each other until just a few months ago when Apollo, Romeo’s brother-in-law and the man that’d broken me out of prison, had come into the picture.
Apollo, the computer genius that he was, had dug deeply into Mable’s life as she tried to bring a civil claim against Birdee for “emotional damage.”
In all honesty, Mable had suffered blow after blow, starting with her engagement dissolving, and ending with Mable thinking that Birdee had been responsible for stealing her identity and wedding funds.
It all turned out to be Whitney responsible for the mayhem, and the two women had bonded over the shared injustices thrust upon them.
I wouldn’t say they were close, per se. They were trying, though.
Which was why I had my phone out and Romeo’s number pulled up seconds after I’d had the thought.
“What’s up?” Romeo asked.
Romeo, along with Gentry, Weaver, Odin, Courtland, and Koen, had all been broken out of prison. We’d all been serving at least one life sentence for killing someone.
Though, in my case, I hadn’t actually done the act that’d sent me to prison.
I had, however, killed plenty of people over the years.
Most of them had been child abusers and assholes that thought it would be fun to jump me when I was too young and dumb to know better than to trust some people in the prison system.
I’d even taken out a guard at one point—a man that’d had it coming to him after his fourth punishment.
Lucky for me, no one knew exactly who’d taken him out.
The dumbass cop had tried to play it sneaky to get to me when no one was around.
The only problem was, no one was around to save him from me when he’d tried to take me off guard.
“Creed.” Romeo’s impatient voice jolted me out of my thoughts. “What do you want?”
I winced. “Okay, so I think she’s okay, but your sister-in-law was in an accident. She slipped on some oil that was coating the road and slid headfirst into the grill of my department vehicle. She’s on her way to the hospital.”
Romeo cursed. “Goddammit. We can’t get out of here tonight, either. We’ve already tried. Vito and Grace were in an accident involving an elk in Idaho.”
“Damn,” I murmured.
Vito was Birdee biological father and Cody’s stepfather.
Cody was Mable’s best friend, and Birdee’s stepsister.
Grace was Cody’s mom.
All of them were still somewhat hesitant when it came to Birdee.
Vito and Birdee’s mother had a tumultuous relationship. From the moment Birdee was conceived, Whitney had started her scheming. In the end, Whitney kept Birdee away from Vito. Vito had stayed away from Birdee because he’d given up trying to fight Whitney.
Honestly, if you asked me, Vito had fucked up.
He should’ve never stopped fighting.
I wouldn’t have.
If I had a child out there that was mine, I would move goddamn mountains to be a part of that child’s life.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“I’ll call Cody and tell her what’s going on. But she’s likely going to be with her parents. Nothing against Birdee but…”
But Birdee was still a bit of an outsider.
It was understandable.
You couldn’t change your opinions on someone when you’d been thinking you hated them for your entire life.
Cody had despised Birdee because of what she’d done to Vito—or what she’d been told that Birdee had done.
Vito had been the father to Cody that he should’ve been to Birdee.
Sure, they were trying to work together to become what they always should have been, but things like that took time.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m keeping tabs on your dog, and I’ll keep you updated if I hear anything.”
Romeo grunted out a “Thanks” and I hung up.
Shoving the phone back into my pocket, I turned to Gentry.
“What’s the next step?” I asked.
“Well, first off we’re going to document the oil spill like it should’ve been documented.
Then we’re going to get the city out here fast to clean it up so we don’t have anyone else hurting themselves.
Then we’re going to have to make a few calls, because if I was Birdee, I’d contact a lawyer and sue the pants off the sheriff’s department.
If they’d been out here like they should have, this wouldn’t have happened. ”
“No,” I agreed. “It wouldn’t have.”
It took another forty minutes to get the scene cleaned up, and I left just as the cleaning crew from the city arrived.
I headed home after checking on Brawny, even though something inside of me told me that I should go to the hospital instead.