Finally, I resorted to throwing myself back against the bed, which banged the headboard against the wall. A sheen of sweat covered my body as I banged and banged. When the door flew open, a red-faced Bishop stomped in, his face buried in some mechanical manual. “Dude, would you pipe down? I’m trying to study for my exam.”
When he finally looked up, the manual clattered to the floor. His mouth dropped open almost as far as his eyes widened, and if the situation hadn’t been so serious, I might’ve laughed at his expression. He jerked the gag away from my mouth. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“Alexandra,” I growled.
“What did you do? Get ready for some kinky sex and piss her off? Man, she’s a feisty one.”
“Just get the fucking keys out of the nightstand and get me out of these.”
Bishop started rifling through the top drawer. Finally, he produced the key. Once I was out of my metal prison, I grabbed a towel off the floor. Pressing down on my wrists, I tried to stop the bleeding.
“You gonna tell me what the hell happened?” Bishop pressed.
“I need to find Alex. ASAP. You think Archer can put a tracer on her phone?”
“Archer went with Alex when she left half an hour ago.”
“Fuck!” I growled as I threw open the bedroom door. I stalked down the hall to the bathroom. While I wrapped my wrists in Ace bandages, Bishop eyed me suspiciously.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t have time to explain. I need to find Alex. Now.”
“Tell me why she handcuffed and left you?”
“Alex lied to me about her meeting with Sigel. She didn’t tell me that he had asked for the cut.”
Bishop’s brows furrowed. “Why would she do that?”
“Sigel ordered Alex to bring him the cut. When I found out what she was going to do, she handcuffed me to the bed, so I couldn’t go with her.”
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
“I wish.”
“Where is she now?”
“She had this Parents Night thing at the school. I don’t know if she was meeting him afterward. …” Then it hit me. Sigel would want a safe place to get the cut—a place with a lot of people and witnesses to foil any retaliation the Raiders could plan. “Fuck. He’s meeting her at the school.”
I raced out the door with Bishop close on my heels. All I could think of was getting to Alex, damn stubborn fool that she was. I hoped to hell I wasn’t too late.
Without a word to any of the other guys, I hopped on my bike and tore out of the driveway. Bishop and Rev caught up with me halfway down the road. When I got to the school, my heart shuddered to a stop. My eyes were blinded by the glaring blue and red lights of the police car and ambulance. Once I parked my bike, I started scanning the crowd for any Knights. The only cut I saw belonged to Archer, who was talking to a police officer.
At the sight of me, his face drained of color. For a moment I felt that my knees would give way and I would collapse onto the pavement. Alex couldn’t be gone. I couldn’t even begin to imagine a world without her smile, her caring heart, her laughter. It was unbearable, and I fought for breath. It felt like someone had roundhouse kicked me in the chest. I wasn’t a praying man, but in that moment I started begging and pleading.
And then Archer held his hands up to me as if cautioning me not to freak out. He said something else to the officer, and then he strode toward me. “Deacon, she’s fine. A few cuts and bruises, but she’s going to be fine.”
Doubling over at the waist, I braced my hands on my knees and gulped in air. “Thank God you were here to protect her.”
“No, man. She took Sigel out on her own.”
Jerking my head up, I stared at Archer in both disbelief and horror. “What?”
And then Archer began to tell a story that was almost too hard to believe. Before I showed myself to her after the explosion, a plan had been masterminded by Alex to ensure that Sigel would never hurt Willow again. A plan for which she had enlisted the help of both Rev and Bishop, although they’d had no idea what her true intent was. No, only Archer knew the truth. He had risked both his life and his place in the club by helping Alex.
As he talked, I tried wrapping my mind around Alex and Sigel in that stall. How someone like her had managed to take down a notorious MCer simply with a knife and some courage blew my mind. When Archer finished, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. I thought it was the best thing for the club and for your family. Even when you came back from the dead, so to speak, it still made sense.”
“It made fucking sense for someone defenseless like Alex to take on someone like Sigel?” I demanded, the blood boiling in my veins.
Surprisingly, Archer didn’t back down. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at me. “Would you let go of your bullshit pride for a minute and truly think? He never saw it coming. He never imagined her capable of it. Any of the rest of us? He would have seen us coming a mile away, including you.”
I still couldn’t wrap my head around it or allow myself to condone what happened. “Where is she?” I demanded.
“They took her over to one of the ambulances.”
Jabbing a finger into his cut, I said, “We are not through talking about this.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
I hated that there was a part of me that could see the reason and brilliance behind Alexandra and Archer’s plan. However, there was a much stronger part that was mad as hell and wanted to take the kid down for his utter stupidity and wavering loyalty. Sure, he’d been brave and done everything within his power to keep Alexandra safe, as well as the club. Regardless of his protection, he had still allowed my old lady to be in danger, and I wanted to kill him for that. And yeah, the fucking irony wasn’t lost on me.