Chapter Twelve
Nail was behind the compound bar, pouring coffee for the handful of brothers who'd woken early, when the crack of gunfire split the air and every man in the room moved at once.
"Gate!" someone shouted from outside. "They're hitting the gate!"
Nail was already moving, grabbing the shotgun from under the bar, his mind clicking through scenarios faster than his body could follow. Fisk had found them. Fisk had finally stopped hiding and come to take what he wanted.
Then his phone buzzed. Beltway.
Bar under attack. Six men. Armed.
Two targets. Simultaneous assault. This wasn't desperation—this was coordination.
"Stevedore!" Nail caught the big man's eye across the chaos. "The bar. They're hitting Flynn's too."
Stevedore's face went hard. "How many?"
"Six. Maybe more."
"Take two prospects." Cull appeared at Nail's shoulder, already checking his weapon. "I've got the gate. Go."
Nail hesitated for half a second. The compound was his home. His brothers were here. And somewhere upstairs, Sadie was—
"I'll find her." Cull's voice cut through the spiral. "Go save your bar. We've got this."
Nail went.
The ride to Fell's Point was the longest three minutes of his life. Harbor fog clung to the streets, muffling the sound of his engine as he tore through morning traffic. Behind him, Stevedore and two prospects followed, their bikes a thunder of reinforcement.
Flynn's came into view—and so did the damage.
The front windows were shattered. Muzzle flashes sparked from inside, and he could hear the distinctive crack of return fire. Someone was already fighting back.
Nail killed his engine a block away and approached on foot, Stevedore flanking right while the prospects covered the alley. The fog gave them cover, turning the street into a gray maze that worked both ways.
He slipped through the back door—the same door he'd used a thousand times, the same door his father had installed thirty years ago—and found chaos.
Three of Fisk's men were pinned behind the overturned bar, trading shots with someone in the back hallway. Two more were trying to flank through the kitchen. The sixth was down, bleeding from a wound that looked fatal.
Nail moved before they saw him coming.
The first man in the kitchen died without knowing what hit him—Nail's knife finding the soft spot between his shoulder blades, dropping him like a puppet with cut strings.
The second spun, gun rising, but Stevedore was already there, massive hands closing around the man's throat and squeezing until bones cracked.
"Back room!" someone shouted. "There's another—"
Nail burst through the kitchen door and found the bartender he'd left to close last night crouched behind a filing cabinet, bleeding from a graze to his arm but still firing. The kid looked up, saw Nail, and sagged with relief.
"Three more," the kid gasped. "Behind the bar. They came in fast—I barely got the shotgun."
"You did good." Nail grabbed a bottle from the shelf and hurled it at the bar, drawing fire while Stevedore flanked. "Stay down."
The next sixty seconds were noise and violence.
Stevedore came over the bar like a freight train, scattering Fisk's men like bowling pins.
Nail picked off the runners, efficient and ruthless, his father's bar becoming a killing floor for men who'd made the mistake of thinking it was just a building.
When the shooting stopped, six bodies littered the floor and Nail's hands were steady despite the adrenaline screaming through his blood.
His phone buzzed. Beltway again.
Compound holding. Twelve hostiles at the gate. Cull engaging.
Twelve at the compound. Six at the bar. Eighteen men total.
This wasn't just an assault. This was Fisk throwing everything he had left.
"Hold here," Nail told Stevedore. "I'm going back."
"The hell you are." Stevedore was already reloading. "I'll hold the bar. You go make sure your woman's still breathing."
Your woman.
Nail didn't argue.
The compound was a war zone.
Nail could hear the gunfire three blocks out—sustained, organized, the kind of firefight that meant both sides were dug in and neither was backing down.
He abandoned his bike at the corner and approached on foot, using the fog and the familiar streets to slip past whatever perimeter Fisk's men had established.
The front gate was a mess. Bullet holes pocked the brick walls. Three of Fisk's men lay in the street, and two more were pinned behind a shot-up van, trading fire with Cull and Formstone at the entrance.
But the main assault had stalled. The compound's reinforced walls were doing their job, and the brothers inside were making every shot count.
Nail circled to the side, looking for a way in—and that's when he saw her.
Sadie.
She was in the garage bay, crouched behind a tool chest with a wrench in one hand and a gun in the other. A man lay at her feet, unconscious or dead, blood pooling beneath his skull. And another was coming through the side door, trying to flank through the bike bay.
Nail raised his weapon, but he was too far. The angle was wrong. He'd never make the shot in time.
Sadie didn't hesitate.
The wrench flew from her hand, catching the flanker in the temple with enough force to drop him where he stood. He collapsed into a row of bikes, sending chrome and metal crashing, and Sadie was on him before he hit the ground, the gun pressed to his head, her voice cutting through the chaos:
"Stay down or I'll finish what I started."
Something fierce and possessive roared through Nail's chest.
That's my woman.
He covered the distance in seconds, arriving at the garage bay just as the last of Fisk's assault team realized they were surrounded. Cull had pushed through the gate, Formstone was cutting off the retreat, and Dredge—
Dredge was gone.
"Where's Dredge?" Nail demanded.
Sadie pointed toward the street. "He took off two minutes ago. Said something about the brain."
The brain. The coordinator.
Ray Hollis.
Nail understood immediately. Someone had to be directing this assault—coordinating the two-target hit, managing the timing, making sure eighteen men hit their marks at exactly the right moment. That wasn't grunt work. That was logistics.
And Hollis was Fisk's logistics man.
"Stay here," Nail told Sadie. "Keep the garage secure."
"Like hell—"
"Sadie." He grabbed her face between his hands, holding her gaze even as gunfire crackled in the distance. "You just dropped two men with a wrench and a gun you probably haven't fired in years. You've done enough. Let me finish this."
She held his gaze for a beat. Two. Then she nodded, sharp and reluctant.
"Don't die."
"Wasn't planning on it."
He ran.
Nail found Dredge three blocks from the compound, standing over a body in the fog.
Ray Hollis lay crumpled beside a parked sedan, his meticulous planning spread across the passenger seat in maps and timelines and schedules. A tablet computer glowed beside him, still showing the real-time positions of men who were now mostly dead.
"He was coordinating from here," Dredge said. His voice was flat, emotionless. The voice of a man who'd seen the harbor floor and stopped being bothered by bodies a long time ago. "Thought he was invisible."
"Fisk?"
"Not here. Sent his logistics man to manage the hit."
Nail stared down at Hollis—the thin face, the meticulous clothes, the expression of surprise frozen in death. This was the man who'd kept thirty cars a month moving through Baltimore. The man who'd decided which garages got used and which problems needed solving.
Now he was just another body in the fog.
"Fisk is going to feel this," Nail said.
"That's the point." Dredge wiped his knife on Hollis's jacket. "The muscle chief is dead. Now the operations man. Fisk's got nothing left but drivers and a kid with a grudge."
Kyle Eaton. The one who'd been escalating the pressure on Sadie personally.
"He'll come harder now," Nail said. "Desperate."
"Good." Dredge's eyes were cold, certain. "Desperate men make mistakes."
They walked back to the compound together, leaving Hollis's body for the cleanup crew. The fog was starting to lift, revealing the damage in harsh morning light—bullet holes in the walls, broken glass, bodies being dragged out of sight by prospects who knew not to ask questions.
Sadie was still in the garage bay, the wrench in her hand, the man she'd dropped being zip-tied by Formstone. When she saw Nail, something released in her face—relief, fear, fury, all of it tangled together.
"You're alive."
"Told you I would be."
"You also told me not to die." She crossed the bay and stopped in front of him, her hands shaking despite her steady voice. "I dropped two men with a wrench, Nail. Two men."
"I know." He pulled her against him, not caring who saw, not caring about the blood on his clothes or the chaos around them. "I saw you. You were magnificent."
She laughed against his chest—shaky, half-hysterical. "That's not the word I'd use."
"It's the word I'm using." He pulled back just enough to look at her face. "You held the garage. You covered the flank. You did what needed doing without hesitation."
"I killed someone." Her voice cracked. "Maybe. I don't know if he's—"
"He's alive. Formstone's got him." Nail cupped her face in his hands. "But you need to understand something. What you did today? That's what this life requires. Not everyone can do it. Most people freeze, panic, run. You grabbed a wrench and you fought."
She met his eyes, searching for something—judgment, maybe, or horror at what she'd become. She wouldn't find it.
"I couldn't let them hurt the bikes," she said weakly.
Nail laughed. He couldn't help it—the absurdity of it, the courage wrapped in mechanic's logic, the woman who'd defended an MC compound because she'd be damned if anyone touched the engines she'd just fixed.
"The bikes," he repeated. "Of course."
"They're valuable. I just rebuilt half of them."
"I know." He kissed her forehead. "I know you did."
Cull appeared at the garage entrance, surveying the damage with flat eyes. "Two dead on our side. Prospects. Gate held, but they got close."
Two prospects. Brothers in training who'd died defending their home.
The compound had held. The bar had held. But it had cost them.
"Hollis?" Cull asked.
"Dredge handled it." Nail kept his arm around Sadie, feeling her tremble against him. "Fisk's operation is crippled. No muscle chief, no logistics coordinator. He's got drivers and one angry kid."
"Then we hit him before he can rebuild."
"That's the plan."
Cull nodded once and walked away, already organizing the cleanup, the bodies, the endless work that came after violence.
Nail stood in the ruined garage bay with Sadie pressed against his side and counted the cost. Two prospects dead. His bar shot to hell. The compound walls pocked with bullets and the courtyard stained with blood.
But Fisk had lost more.
Mercer was dead. Hollis was dead. Half his remaining crew lay scattered across Fell's Point, and the man himself was hiding in Dundalk with nothing left but desperation.
Desperate men make mistakes.
Nail pulled Sadie closer and watched the fog lift over the harbor.
The endgame was coming. And when it arrived, Dominic Fisk was going to learn exactly what happened when you threatened something that belonged to the Charm City Killers.