Blast (Windy City Wolves MC #8)

Chapter One

The warehouse on Ashland had been pissing off the Wolves for six weeks.

Blast crouched in the shadow of a rusted dumpster, studying the loading dock door with the focused attention most men reserved for beautiful women or expensive whiskey.

Three-inch steel frame. Industrial hinges.

Padlock that looked heavy but wasn't—the kind of hardware that screamed "secure" to amateurs and "please, come in" to anyone who understood how buildings failed under pressure.

"You done making love to that door?" Razor's voice came through the earpiece, dry as January wind off the lake.

"Give a man a minute." Blast pulled the shaped charge from his pack, fingers finding the familiar contours in the dark. "She's playing hard to get, but I think we've got chemistry."

"We've got a timeline. Three minutes before their next patrol circuit."

"Plenty of time for a first date."

Blast moved across the alley like smoke, keeping low, his scarred hands already working the charge against the door's weak point—the junction where the lock mechanism met the frame.

Four years in Iraq had taught him exactly how metal surrendered under force.

The warehouse door was practically begging for it.

The charge was small. Precise. The kind of controlled destruction that separated professionals from idiots who just liked loud noises.

Blast liked loud noises too. He just understood them better.

"Thirty seconds," he murmured into the comm. "Tell the boys to cover their ears."

He retreated to the corner of the adjacent building, detonator in hand, and let himself enjoy the moment. The anticipation. The perfect stillness before everything went beautifully, catastrophically wrong for someone else.

The blast punched through the night like a fist through paper.

The loading dock door didn't just open—it surrendered, the lock mechanism shearing clean as the frame buckled inward. Smoke and debris scattered across the concrete, and somewhere inside, men started screaming.

Blast was through the breach before the echo died.

Three guys inside, exactly where Scout's intel said they'd be.

Two diving behind crates of merchandise that definitely wasn't on any legitimate inventory.

The third reaching for a weapon he'd never get to use because Razor came through the ruined doorway like the wrath of God in leather, his . 45 already up and tracking.

"Hands! Now!" Razor's voice carried the particular authority of a man who'd cleared rooms in places that made Chicago look like a playground. "On the fucking ground!"

The crew complied. They always did when the alternative was dying on a cold warehouse floor surrounded by guns they'd been too slow to grab.

Blast moved through the space with manic efficiency, cataloging the cache with a whistle of appreciation. AR-15s in wooden crates. Handguns sorted by caliber. Enough ammunition to start a small war, which was probably the point.

"Well, well." He crouched beside a crate of fragmentation grenades, letting out a low whistle of appreciation. "Someone's been shopping wholesale."

"Focus." Razor zip-tied the third guy's wrists with practiced brutality. "Inventory, not admiration."

"Can't I do both?" Blast pulled out his phone, snapping photos of serial numbers and lot markings. "This is beautiful work. Whoever supplied these assholes has connections. Military connections."

"That's Alpha's problem. Ours is getting this shit loaded before CPD decides to investigate the noise."

The crew on the floor stayed silent, smart enough to recognize that the men who'd just blown their door off the hinges weren't interested in conversation. Blast stepped over them without a second glance, already calculating load distribution for the van Scout had waiting two blocks over.

Ninety seconds. That's how long it took to strip the warehouse of everything worth taking and leave three zip-tied idiots as a message for whoever thought storing weapons on the edge of Wolf territory was a good idea.

Blast paused at the ruined door on his way out, running his fingers along the sheared metal like a sculptor admiring his own work.

"Beautiful," he murmured.

"You're a disturbing individual," Razor said.

"That's why you love me."

The compound smelled like motor oil and stale beer, which meant it smelled like home.

Blast pushed through the clubhouse door to find a dozen brothers already gathered around the bar, the haul from Ashland spread across three tables like Christmas morning for people who celebrated with automatic weapons instead of wrapping paper.

"There he is." Stockyard raised a bottle of Old Style in salute. "The mad bomber returns."

"Controlled demolition specialist," Blast corrected, sliding onto a barstool. "There's an art to it. Any idiot can make things explode. Making them explode exactly the way you want takes finesse."

"Finesse." Fang's voice came from the shadows near the pool table, flat and unimpressed. "That what we're calling property damage now?"

"When it works? Absolutely."

Alpha emerged from the chapel, his eyes sweeping over the weapons cache with the calculating assessment of a man who understood exactly what this haul meant for the club's position.

The Wolves had just sent a message that echoed louder than any explosion—this territory was claimed, and anyone who forgot that would be reminded in the most memorable way possible.

"Clean work," Alpha said. It wasn't a question.

"In and out in ninety seconds." Razor accepted a whiskey from Lakeshore. "Blast's charge took the door like it was cardboard. Crew inside didn't even have time to reach their own merchandise."

"Because they stored it wrong." Blast accepted his own drink—bourbon, neat, the good stuff Scout kept behind the bar for special occasions.

"Weapons cache with the inventory thirty feet from the entry point?

Amateur hour. You want to protect something, you make people work for it.

Create chokepoints. Layer your defenses. "

"This a lecture or a celebration?" Stockyard asked.

"Both. Education is its own reward." Blast's grin never faltered.

"Besides, that door reminded me of one I blew in Fallujah.

Same structural weakness—the frame was reinforced but the junction point wasn't. Manufacturers always cheap out on junction points.

It's like they've never met anyone who actually wants to get through their doors. "

"Most people use handles," Lakeshore pointed out.

"Most people lack imagination."

The brothers laughed, and Blast let the sound wash over him—the crude jokes, the clinking bottles, the rumble of V-twins in the lot as more Wolves arrived to see the night's haul.

This was what he'd been looking for when he came home from Iraq with rebuilt hands and a head full of blast patterns.

Not the silence that came after explosions, but the noise that came before. The brotherhood. The purpose.

The part of his brain that thought in detonation sequences and structural failures had found its pack.

"The crew we left behind," Alpha said, cutting through the celebration with the quiet authority that made men stop and listen. "They'll talk."

"That's the point." Razor set down his glass. "Word gets back to whoever's been supplying weapons to outside crews. They learn that the Wolves don't appreciate competition on our borders."

"And if they decide to push back?"

Blast's grin sharpened. "Then we make a louder statement."

Alpha studied him for a long moment—the kind of assessment that weighed a man's usefulness against his volatility and decided which mattered more. Whatever he saw in Blast's cheerful expression apparently passed the test, because he nodded once and headed back toward the chapel.

"Clean the serial numbers off anything we're keeping," he called over his shoulder. "Burn the rest."

"Burn?" Blast clutched his chest in mock horror. "Alpha, there are perfectly good explosives in that haul. Burning them is a waste. Let me put them to work."

"Controlled work."

"Is there any other kind?"

Alpha's response was lost to the chapel door closing, but Blast caught the hint of a smile before it disappeared. The president understood. Violence was a language, and Blast was fluent in every dialect.

He turned back to the bar, accepting another bourbon while Stockyard launched into a story about a warehouse job gone wrong in the nineties. The compound filled with noise and motion, brothers moving through the clubhouse with the easy rhythm of men who'd found their place in the world.

Blast raised his glass to the room, to the brothers, to the beautiful chaos of a job well done.

His grin never faltered.

It never did.