Chapter Fifteen
The call came while Opal was reorganizing the clinic's trauma supplies.
She'd kept busy for two days, throwing herself into compound work while the men planned and strategized and prepared for whatever Henson would try next. Busy meant she didn't have time to think about bullet holes in her store's walls. Busy meant she didn't have to imagine what came next.
When her phone rang, she almost didn't answer. Unknown number. Probably nothing.
But something in her gut twisted, and she picked up.
"Opal?" A woman's voice, shaking. "Opal, it's Margaret Barrett. From the volunteer fire department."
"Margaret?" Opal set down the box of bandages, her heart starting to pound. "What's wrong?"
"It's Mrs. Patterson's house." Margaret's voice cracked. "Honey, I'm so sorry. It's... it's gone."
The world tilted.
"What do you mean, gone?"
"Fire. Started about an hour ago. By the time we got there, it was—there was nothing we could do. The whole place went up like kindling."
Opal's legs gave out. She sank onto the clinic floor, phone pressed to her ear, trying to make the words make sense.
"Mrs. Patterson—"
"She's fine. She's okay." Margaret rushed to reassure her. "She was visiting her niece in Lexington. Wasn't home. But Opal, the house... everything's gone. All of Harold's things. The photo albums she showed you. Everything."
The photo albums.
Harold in his Army uniform. Their honeymoon pictures. Fifty years of memories captured on paper and stored in a little house that had been standing since before Opal was born.
Gone. All of it gone.
"How did it start?" Her voice came out strange, flat.
"Fire chief says it looks deliberate. Accelerant around the foundation. Opal, honey, I know you've been having trouble with those men—"
"Thank you for calling, Margaret." Opal hung up before the woman could finish.
She sat on the clinic floor for a long moment, staring at nothing. Her hands weren't shaking. Her eyes weren't burning. Everything inside her had gone cold and still, like a lake freezing solid in the dead of winter.
Dale Henson targets the people she serves because he can't get to her directly.
She'd heard the intel. Knew that Clyde Henson's son was pushing for escalation, frustrated by the failures his father's operation had suffered. Knew that Dale was the kind of man who measured power in suffering, who believed cruelty was strength.
Now he'd proven it.
Mrs. Patterson. Eighty-three years old. Lonely in ways that broke Opal's heart. Clutching photo albums and talking about wildflowers and a husband who'd been dead for five years.
They'd burned her house down because they couldn't get to Opal.
The clinic door opened.
"Opal?" Rachel's voice, concerned. "Someone said you were—" She stopped, taking in the scene. "What happened?"
"Mrs. Patterson's house." The words came out steady, almost calm. "They burned it down. Everything's gone. Harold's pictures. His medals. Everything she had left of him."
"Oh, honey." Rachel crouched beside her, reaching for her hand. "Is she—"
"She's alive. She was visiting family." Opal looked up, and something in her expression made Rachel pull back slightly. "She wasn't home. So she's alive. But everything that made her life worth living just turned to ash because of me."
"Not because of you—"
"Because they can't get to me, so they went after someone I care about instead." Opal stood, her movements precise and controlled. "That's what this is. That's what Dale Henson decided was an appropriate response to us defending ourselves."
Rachel studied her with careful eyes. "You're not crying."
"No."
"You're not falling apart."
"No."
"What are you doing?"
Opal met her gaze, and something in her expression made the nurse flinch.
"I'm getting angry."
She found Bedrock in the chapel, hunched over a table spread with maps and photographs alongside Slag and Timber. All three men looked up when she entered, and something in their faces told her they already knew.
"You heard," she said.
Bedrock crossed to her in three strides, his hands finding her shoulders, his eyes searching her face. "Just now. Grit called from the scene. The widow—"
"She's alive. She wasn't home."
"Thank God."
"God had nothing to do with it." Opal's voice was ice. "She was visiting family. Pure luck. If she'd been home, she'd be dead. They wouldn't have cared."
Bedrock's jaw tightened. "This was Dale Henson. The son. Intel says he's been pushing his father to make examples, prove they can still reach anyone connected to you."
"And Mrs. Patterson was connected to me."
"She's one of your customers. One of the people you take care of." His hands tightened on her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Opal. I'm so goddamn sorry."
"I don't want sorry." She looked up at him, and the coldness in her chest was spreading, hardening into something that felt almost like power. "I want him to pay."
Something shifted in Bedrock's expression—recognition, maybe. Understanding.
"He will."
"Not just die." She gripped his forearms, holding his gaze with intensity that surprised even her.
"I want him to understand. I want him to know why this is happening to him.
Before you kill him, I want Dale Henson to understand that burning down an old woman's house—destroying everything she had left of the man she loved—has consequences. "
Slag and Timber had gone quiet, watching the exchange with expressions Opal couldn't read.
"That's not how we usually—" Timber started.
"I don't care how you usually do things." She didn't look away from Bedrock. "He didn't just burn down a building. He burned fifty years of memories. Photo albums that can't be replaced. Letters Harold wrote her from overseas. The quilt her mother made for their wedding."
Her voice cracked, finally, just for a moment. She forced it steady again.
"Mrs. Patterson has nothing now. She's eighty-three years old, and the only things that connected her to her husband, her parents, her entire past—they're ash. Because Dale Henson wanted to make a point."
"Opal—" Bedrock started.
"I listened to her talk about Harold every week. Every single week. She'd bring those photo albums and show me pictures I'd seen a hundred times, and I never once told her I was tired of looking at them. Because those pictures were all she had. They were her whole life."
Tears were threatening now, hot behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Not yet. Not until this was done.
"I want him to know that," she said. "Before he dies. I want Dale Henson to understand that he didn't just destroy property. He destroyed a person. And then I want you to make him pay for it."
Bedrock was quiet for a long moment, his hands still on her shoulders, his eyes never leaving hers. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough.
"You want him to suffer."
"Yes."
"You want him to understand exactly why he's dying."
"Yes."
"You want me to make that happen."
"Yes."
He pulled her against his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other wrapped around her waist like he could protect her from the grief that was waiting to crash through once the anger faded.
"Then that's what happens," he said against her hair. "Whatever you need. However you need it. Dale Henson dies understanding exactly what he took from that old woman."
She pressed her face into his chest and let herself breathe, the cold anger in her chest banking slightly against his warmth.
"She saved those albums from a flood in '97." The words came out muffled against his shirt. "Carried them out herself while the water rose. Told me Harold would have been proud of her for saving his pictures."
"I'm sorry."
"She doesn't have family, not really. That niece barely visits. The club is the closest thing she has to people who care about her." Opal pulled back enough to look at him. "When this is over—when Dale Henson is dead and the operation is gone—I want to rebuild her house."
"Done."
"With the club's help. With your hands and your brothers' hands. I want her to have something new that comes from people who actually give a damn about her."
"Done." Bedrock cupped her face in his hands. "Whatever you need. Whatever she needs. It's done."
"I love you."
The words slipped out before she could stop them, born of grief and rage and the overwhelming certainty that this man would move heaven and earth if she asked him to.
Bedrock went still.
"You—"
"I love you." She said it again, stronger this time. "And I want Dale Henson dead. Both of those things are true. I don't know what that makes me, but it's who I am right now."
He kissed her—hard, fierce, possessive—and when he pulled back, his eyes were bright with something that looked almost like wonder.
"It makes you mine," he said. "And it makes him a dead man."
Behind them, Slag cleared his throat.
"We've got a location on Dale Henson. Property being prepped for their next event. He's been there all day, supervising."
Opal stepped out of Bedrock's arms, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"When do we move?"
"We don't move." Bedrock's voice was gentle but firm. "This is club business."
"No." She met his eyes without flinching. "This is my business. He went after my people. I need to see it end."
Slag and Timber exchanged a look.
"She's got a point," Timber said. "This started with her. Maybe it should end with her watching."
Bedrock's jaw worked. She could see him weighing the risks, calculating the danger, wanting to protect her from what came next.
"You stay in the truck," he said finally. "You watch, but you don't engage. And if anything goes sideways, you run. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
He pulled her close one more time, his forehead pressed against hers.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow, Dale Henson learns what it costs to touch what's mine."