41. Ace
ACE
It’s so surreal to see Phoenix getting read his rights and being cuffed.
It’s like I’m watching a movie. A cop got shot today on our compound.
We’re so fucked. It’s going to take every single bit of negotiating skills Jack has in order to bridge the wound this will create in our relationship with the local department.
I rush to Camile to make sure she’s okay after all this shit. I’m surprised she’s not totally lost her mind with everything that keeps happening around here.
Taking her hand, I squeeze reassuringly.
“He didn’t do it.” She leans in close to me, keeping her voice low.
“What?”
“Phoenix. He didn’t do it, Ace. I saw exactly what happened because the bikes weren’t between me and them, and it was Shelley. She shot the cop.”
Holy shit. I stare over at Phoenix and glance at Jack, but he’s busy talking with Dawson.
“Why would he take the blame?” she asks. “He’s going to go away for years for something he didn’t do.”
I can’t say for sure, but if I know anything of Phoenix, it’s that he’s a chivalrous bastard, and he’s as tough as they come. I expect he made a split-second calculation and figured out he was better equipped to survive whatever comes next than Shelley is.
The paramedics arrive and immediately rush to the wounded men.
They pull Shelley off Bear as she screams and kicks, not wanting to be separated from him.
Someone tells her that she needs to allow the paramedics to do their job, or Bear might die, and that seems to calm her down, though she cries like her heart is breaking.
Ghost finally finishes talking to the cop and brings Megan over to us. Shelley is going to ride in the back of the ambulance with Bear, which kind of leaves Megan on her own again until her husband gets here.
Megan covers her face with her hands as she sobs, her shoulders heaving. “I just freaked out without thinking. I thought the men who grabbed me had only pretended to be cops. I hadn’t known they were actually a part of the sheriff’s department. Oh, my God, now Bear has been shot because of me.”
“The cop who got shot was responsible for grabbing you on behalf of Hector?” Ghost asks.
She sniffles and nods. “There was another one, too, but I don’t see him here. I thought they’d just used it as a disguise.”
Ghost frowns. “The deputy needs to know the back story to this, that the cop who’s been shot is corrupt and that he hurt Megan.”
I look over at him. “How are we going to explain that without needing to tell him the rest of the story?”
“We’ll just have to say that they abducted her off the side of the road, but that she managed to escape.” He looks to Megan. “Do you think you can make that believable?”
She blinks up, her eyelashes wet with tears and clinging together in spikes. “I’ll try my best. What if they ask why I didn’t report it?”
I think of something. “Say they were in uniform, so you pretty much knew it was corrupt cops and that meant you couldn’t trust any of the department. How were you supposed to know who was in on the corruption?”
She blows out a breath. “Makes sense.”
“It could help Phoenix’s case if it’s proved the cop was corrupt,” Ghost tells her.
“Poor Phoenix,” Camile says, her voice thick with tears. “Why did he do that?”
“Yes,” Megan echoes, “why did he do that?”
Ghost sighs. “Because your family has gone through enough, and he sees that.”
But Zoo must have overheard the conversation, as he steps in.
“Nah, there’s more to it than that. His mom died in jail when he was just a kid.
They said it was suicide, but rumor was that she was being messed around with by a couple of the guards, and when she tried to speak out about it, they killed her. ”
Megan clamps her hand over her mouth. “Jesus Christ, that’s terrible.”
“So my guess is that he didn’t want Shelley to go through the same fate.
We all know how corrupt Verona Falls’ prison is, and there are bad rumors about the women’s wing.
My guess is he wanted to save Shelley from that.
Phoenix is big and bad enough to take care of himself, and he knows we will all be working on getting him out, if it even goes that far. ”
I shake my head in disbelief. I’m not sure I’d be so brave as to take the fall for shooting a cop.
If it had been Camile who’d done the shooting, I wouldn’t have hesitated, but not for some woman I barely know.
I wonder if Phoenix has other motives for getting himself locked up, or if he figures once they learn the cop was corrupt, that his sentence will be slashed to nothing.
I have no idea, but either way, it’s a damned big gamble.
At least now, though, we know how the cartel found Shelley.
They must have asked their paid-off contacts in the local PD for any information on people in the club, and the corrupt cops would have easily been able to see how vulnerable Megan and Shelley would be to blackmail, especially after all their family has faced.
I put my arm around Camile and kiss the top of her head, thankful that whatever the fuck just happened is over, and none of the people I consider family got hurt. I feel terrible for Shelley and Phoenix and Bear, but the ones I love most are safe, and that’s all that matters to me.