AT EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT, FOOD dictated my life. I was tired and ached everywhere, and it seemed like every night, I had a new craving that needed to be fed.
Luckily for me, Birdie had stuck around and offered to be my personal shopper, making runs to the grocery store every night for ice cream or whatever else I deemed necessary at the moment.
Tonight, we were supposed to be having dinner with Ace and Father Hawk. It had become our Sunday night ritual, and even though it was a very odd combination to have sitting at one dinner table, it just worked.
But as I prepared the pasta, I couldn’t help but notice that Birdie had been gone for a long time. I’d sent her out for garlic bread, and she promised to be back in few minutes. That was over an hour ago. When I walked out to the driveway to check that I hadn’t missed her pull up, Ace was already out there.
“She still isn’t back yet?” I asked.
He grabbed his helmet and hopped on his bike. “No. I’m going to check on her to make sure she didn’t have any car trouble along the way.”
He tried to make it seem like that was a logical explanation, but the store was only a couple of miles down the road. If she had car trouble, she could have walked back by now, barring that her phone didn’t work, which it definitely did. Per my instructions, she always had a burner phone, and she always changed it out at the beginning of the month, loading it up with minutes.
“Hang on,” I said. “Let me try calling her really quick.”
I punched in Birdie’s number since habit taught me long ago not to store it in my phone under contacts. Ace waited, watching as it rang several times and then someone picked up. Someone who definitely wasn’t my sister.
“Hello?”
“Hello?” I answered. “Who is this?”
“My name is Tom,” he said. “I’m a medic with the Clark county ambulance service. Can you tell me who this phone belongs to?”
My stomach dropped, and it felt like the air had been punched from my lungs. Ace got off his bike and made it to me just in time before I collapsed against him and grabbed the phone.
“Who is this?” Ace demanded.
The previous conversation was repeated on speakerphone as Ace explained the phone belonged to Birdie, and she hadn’t made it home for dinner.
“It looks like she may have been involved in a car accident,” Tom explained from the other line. “We’re en route to Kindred Hospital now.”
Ace mumbled a few more words and hung up, somehow managing to load my heavily pregnant body into the passenger seat of Lucian’s Dodge Demon. He disappeared inside for a few seconds and returned with the keys.
“He didn’t say if she was okay,” I said. “Is she okay, Ace?”
I didn’t know how I expected him to have the answer to that, but I wasn’t thinking logically at that moment. I couldn’t go through this again. I just couldn’t.
“She’s okay,” Ace promised. “She’ll be okay. Birdie’s tough, remember?”
He gunned it down Summerlin, and I thought about what he said. “She isn’t that tough.”
Ace looked at me from the driver’s seat, his voice as steady and certain as I’d ever heard it. “She is.”
“She has a broken arm,” the doctor said, “a concussion, and a lot of bumps and bruises. But she’s extremely lucky to be alive.”
“Can we see her now?” I asked.
He nodded. “She’s probably a little groggy from the pain medication, but you can see her.”
Ace and I walked into the room, and I nearly broke down all over again at the sight of my sister in the hospital bed. It felt like history was repeating itself, the universe determined to take out everyone I loved.
“Birdie, what happened?”
She blinked as though she was trying to figure it out herself, and her voice was scratchy when she spoke. “Something was wrong with your car.”
“What do you mean?” I frowned.
“The steering wheel.” She made a gesture with her hand. “I don’t know what happened. It felt like something just gave out, and I lost control.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
Beside me, Ace was tense and growly when he spoke. “It does if someone’s been fucking with the car.”
Blood rushed from my head to my heart as I looked at Birdie. “I told you it wasn’t safe here. This is why.”
“It was your car,” she shot back. “So obviously, whoever did it wasn’t after me.”
That thought was sobering. It could have been me. I could have lost the baby or my sister. I sat down while I tried to process that. “Who would do that?”
“Do you think…” Birdie’s voice trailed off as her senses caught up with her and she realized Ace was still in the room.
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
There’s no way it could have anything to do with our past. Or at least, I needed to believe that.
“The book,” she said. “Maybe someone put it together.”
“No,” I insisted. “It must have been an accident. Maybe something was faulty on the car.”
“I’ll look at it,” Ace said. “But either way, I’m calling some of my buddies to keep an eye on you two for now.”