“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.
