Alexa
TWO DAYS LATER, after yet another sleepless night, I dragged myself into the abbey’s kitchen and poured my third cup of coffee of the morning.
“Alexa?”
I turned to find Sadie walking in and my stomach churned. “Hi, Sadie. You here to see your aunt?”
She smiled. “No.”
“Everything okay?”
“You tell me,” she said, and sat at the long banquet table.
“I’m not following.”
“Reese—”
“No.” I shook my head. “Sorry, Sadie, I don’t mean to be rude, but that subject is off limits.”
“I don’t want to pry,” she said. “Consider the subject dropped.”
I relaxed. “Thanks.”
“Gosh, he was distraught the other night... so worried he’d scared you.” She flicked away non-existent lint off her jeans. One thing about Sadie was, she might not be a nun anymore, but she was always dressed immaculately.
I rolled my eyes, but didn’t comment.
“Poor man. I was sure I saw a tear in his eye.”
“Ohmigod, Reese Alden does not cry,” I snapped.
“Maybe not, but he was pretty upset.”
“You’ve got that Catholic guilt thing down, don’t ya?” I accused.
She rose to her feet and faced me. “Look, I’m really not trying to pry. But if you ever need to talk to someone, I’m a really good listener. And Reese is a good man... which I’m sure you know. He doesn’t always say the right thing, and tends to grunt instead of using real words, but I’ve never seen him the way he was the other night, so you must mean something to him.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m prying. I’ll stop.”
“Thanks, Sadie. I appre—”
“After I say just one more thing,” she interrupted.
I squeezed my eyes shut and sipped my coffee while I tried to keep my cool.
“He feels horrible—”
“No. I’m shutting this conversation down, Sadie.” I pushed away from the counter. “Please. You have no idea what went on with me and Reese and without my best friend to talk to, I just want to forget about all of it. No offense, but Paisley’s the only one I want to talk to. Any chance of getting her here?”
Sadie bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alexa.”
“I’m working with the kindergarteners today, so I should really get going. Take care, Sadie.” I walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance. I had thirty minutes before I started my shift reading to the kids, so I escaped to my bedroom, and gave myself five minutes to melt down.
I couldn’t keep doing this. I needed to find out how to separate myself from Reese once and for all. If I didn’t, I’d break again, and I didn’t think I could put myself back together this time around.
* * *
Reese
I walked out my front door to find Alexa’s best friend, Paisley, screeching her silver Mercedes to a halt in front of me. She climbed out of her car, marched up to me, and shoved me... hard.
“What the fuck, Paisley?” I snapped.
“Stop it!” she demanded.
“Stop what?” The last time I’d seen Paisley was the day before I’d broken up with Alexa, so the fact she knew where I lived unsettled me somewhat... but she’d always been good at finding shit.
“Ohmigod, Reese, sometimes I want to shoot you.” She jabbed a finger at me. “And you know what? I own a gun now, so watch your back!”
Paisley had turned her love of subterfuge into a career and now worked for the Vancouver Police Department as a detective, but not one on the street... she “found” people who typically didn’t want to be found, from behind a desk.
I crossed my arms. “You wanna fill me in on what’s crawled up your ass, babe? ’Cause I got shit to do and you’re preventin’ me from doin’ it.”
“You broke her!” she bellowed.
“Paisley,” I ground out.
“No! You need to back off, buster. You broke her once and I won’t let you do it again.”
“Buster?” I smirked. “You wound me, Paisley.”
“Oh, suck it, Reese. You have businesses to run. Bars to open for people to get drunk. You don’t have time to ‘handle’ Lex.”
“Ryder’s got the bars covered, Paisley. My attention won’t be divided.”
“Regardless, Reese. You need to find someone else to handle her or I’m comin’ for you.”
“Not gonna happen, babe, so you better get used to the idea.”
She let out a screech and came flying at me again, but this time I was prepared. I caught her and gently pinned her arms at her side.
“You can’t do this to her again, asshole,” she hissed.
“Everything okay here?”
I craned my neck to see Cullen Wallace walk out my front door. Cullen was doing some work on my house, and he just so happened to be the brother of Hatch, who was the Sergeant at Arms for the Dogs of Fire.
“All good,” I said.
“He’s being an asshole,” Paisley hissed.
“Settle, Paisley, and I’ll let you go.”
“Let me go and I’m kicking you in the family jewels.”
“Noted,” I said, and held her a little tighter.
She tried to wiggle away, but I had her locked in. “Let me go,” she demanded.
“Feel better if you let the lady go, Reese,” Cullen said, but it was more of a warning.
“You gonna calm down?” I asked Paisley.
“Yes.”
“You lyin’?”
“Yes.”
“Reese,” Cullen warned again, and stepped toward us.
I released her and stepped out of kicking distance. “Always liked your honesty, babe.”
“Well, that’s good, because I’m going to cut you.”
“Not a fan of your viciousness, however.”
Cullen crossed his arms and Paisley studied him. “You don’t have to stand there all manly and stuff, Reese would never hurt me.”
I was glad she knew that, but a little surprised she admitted it out loud.
“I’m gonna go ahead and stand here ‘all manly and stuff’ anyway,” Cullen informed her.
“You do you, BooBoo,” she retorted, then turned her rage back on me. “You need to forget about her.”
“No.”
Tears flooded her eyes. “You really must hate her.”
“How do you figure?”
“If you ever loved her, you’d let her go. Let her live her life.”
“Paisley, I don’t hate Alexa,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “I’m gonna fix this. And I’m not lettin’ another handler near her. No one else can protect her right... obviously. I won’t let her end up in jail or on the radar of the people she’s testifyin’ against.”
“You broke her,” she repeated in a whisper, wiping a rogue tear from her face.
“Babe, I’m gonna fix it,” I rasped. “I love her. Never stopped, so I’m gonna make this right.”
“She won’t have it.”
“She will, Paisley. But when all this shit’s over with the Russians... if she wants out, I’ll walk away.”
Paisley snorted. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“It’s gonna be her choice.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then I’m gonna do whatever I can to make sure she stays strong and resists you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So you don’t want your best friend to be happy. Good to know,” I deadpanned.
“See, here’s the problem,” she said, wagging a finger at me. “You make her miserable. She was good... really good, and then you broke her and there wasn’t enough duct tape in the world that could put her back together. I can’t watch her go through that again.”
“Paisley, I’m gonna fix this,” I said... again.
She studied me.
“You gonna make this more difficult?” I asked.
Paisley shrugged. “Maybe.”
I crossed my arms again. “It’ll go better if you support her in this.”
“You mean, support you. You don’t give a damn about Alexa’s feelings. If you did, you wouldn’t be back dragging all this crap back up.”
“Enough,” I ground out. “We’re done with the conversation, Paisley. I gotta head out. You want to stick around and yell at my front door...or Cullen, knock yourself out.”
I climbed onto my bike and took off. I saw Paisley flip me the bird in my side mirror and almost laughed. I’d hoped she wouldn’t give me grief, but now that I knew what I was up against, I’d have to step up my game.
Pulling into the Dogs of Fire compound, I parked my bike and headed toward the entrance. I raised my face to the camera at the outside door and the door buzzed, so I stepped into a dimly lit hallway and made my way to another door, raising my head again. I was buzzed in and I walked inside to find Hawk waiting for me. He gave me a chin lift. “You got somethin’?”
Hawk nodded. “Follow me.”
He led me down a side hallway and to a control room of sorts, waving to a chair. I dragged it to where Hawk sat in front of a computer. “I had Booker do a search and Sergei’s in some deep shit.”
Booker was the VP of the Dogs and a computer whiz. If you needed someone found, or their identity erased, he was the man to do it.
“Figured.”
Hawk pulled up a series of photos. “Here’s your FBI mole.”
I leaned in. “Don’t know him.”
“Jaxon does,” Hawk said, facing me.
Jaxon Quinn was FBI and related to a few of the Dogs. He had helped get a couple of Dogs’ kids out from under Brick’s thumb.
Maverick was a recruit for the Club, married to Hawk’s daughter, Lily, and he and his sister had been kidnapped by Brick. That’s how Brick had met his maker. I wasn’t entirely sure who killed him, but honestly, I didn’t care.
“Once Jaxon and his team knew who Sergei was informin’ to, they dug deeper. His “handler” is Sean May and he’s a Spider.”
“I doubt that,” I countered. “I know all the Spiders.”
Hawk shook his head. “You know Crystal?”
“Yeah.”
Crystal was Shovelhead’s old lady and had been a club whore before that.
“It’s her son,” he said.
“Shit, seriously?” I breathed out.
Hawk nodded.
“This feels eerily like sleeper agent type shit,” I said.
“Agreed.”
“So Crystal groomed her kid to get into the FBI and work for the Spiders within the system?” I asked, sitting back.
“I think it’s more likely he made the FBI and she has somethin’ on him... or the Spiders do, and they’ve used that to their advantage.”
“Shit,” I hissed.
Crystal had fooled us. Admittedly, she was never really on our radar, but from what I could remember when it came to Crystal, she was either drunk, high, or both and not the sharpest tool in the shed. Apparently, she was smarter than anyone realized.
“Jaxon’s reading Cameron Shane in on this,” Hawk said.
I nodded. “Okay.”
“We’re gonna figure out how to get Sergei out. It won’t touch Alexa.”
“’Preciate it, brother.” I stood. “Keep me posted?”
“Yeah, man. No problem.”