Chapter Twelve
The first fire started at nine-fourteen p.m.
Blast was in the compound garage, reviewing the accelerant pattern data Scout had compiled, when his phone lit up with the alert.
Silent alarm at Marquez Auto Body on Ashland—one of three Wolf-connected businesses along the Pilsen border that he'd flagged as probable targets after studying Frank Dvorak's operational playbook for the last week.
Frank was predictable. That was his flaw.
Fifteen years of successful arson had made him confident, and confident men repeated what worked.
The bodega, the laundromat, the shoe repair—all hit in the same sequence.
Perimeter targets first, then the center.
Weaken the borders, isolate the holdout, close the trap.
Blast had been waiting for this.
"Contact," he said into his comm. "Marquez Auto Body. It's starting."
"Copy." Alpha's voice was immediate. "Brothers in position?"
"Stockyard's got Marquez. Lakeshore's on the dry cleaner. I've got the third target." Blast was already moving toward his bike, adrenaline singing through him like current through a detonator wire. "Scout, what's the scanner say?"
"Fire department's getting a call about a gas leak at Thirty-First and Halsted." Scout's voice was dry. "That's six blocks from Marquez. Someone's stretching the department thin."
"Carl Witte." Blast kicked his bike to life. "He used to be an insurance investigator. He knows exactly how to time fake reports to pull resources away from real fires."
"So he's running this?"
"Frank wouldn't come himself. Not for a coordinated hit—too much exposure.
" Blast pulled out of the compound lot, Fang's bike rumbling behind him.
"Carl's his operations man. He'll be nearby, timing each burn from a car, calling in diversions, making sure everything looks like electrical faults when the marshals show up. "
"How do you find him?"
"He's got to see all three targets. That means high ground or mobile position with line of sight.
" Blast's mind was already mapping the geometry—three businesses, three fire points, the sight lines between them.
"He's in a car. Probably parked where he can watch the first one go up and confirm before triggering the next. "
The second alert hit his phone at nine-twenty-one.
Kim's Dry Cleaning on Damen. Lakeshore was already there—Blast heard the confirmation over the comm, calm and flat, the way Lakeshore handled everything.
"Smoke showing at Kim's," Lakeshore reported. "Origin point near the electrical panel. Classic Dvorak signature. I've got it contained—fire was set but didn't fully catch. Whoever lit this was in a hurry."
"Because they're on a schedule." Blast pushed his bike harder, weaving through traffic. "Carl's timing these in sequence. He needs each one confirmed before he triggers the next."
"What's the third target?" Fang's voice came through the comm, close behind.
"Reyes Grocery. Corner of Twenty-Sixth and Troy." Blast's jaw tightened. "Two-story building. Family lives upstairs."
He'd known it would be Reyes. The pattern was obvious once you understood how Carl Witte thought—the man had spent a decade investigating arson before switching sides, which meant he knew exactly how fire marshals worked.
He'd target businesses with residential units above them because apartment fires stretched department resources and generated enough chaos to cover the real objective.
The real objective was sending a message: the Wolves couldn't protect their territory.
Carl Witte was about to learn how wrong he was.
Blast and Fang hit Twenty-Sixth Street at nine-twenty-eight.
The grocery was dark—closed for the night—but the apartment lights on the second floor glowed warm through curtained windows.
A family up there. Kids, probably. People who had nothing to do with territorial disputes or arson operations or the war between a motorcycle club and a man who burned buildings for a living.
"Check the back," Blast told Fang. "If Carl's crew already set the device, it'll be near the gas line. Same placement as the laundromat."
Fang dismounted and disappeared around the corner with the silence of a man who'd been erasing himself from sight lines since before most people learned to walk.
Blast scanned the street.
Two blocks west, a sedan idled at the curb. Dark blue, rental plates, driver's window cracked two inches. The glow of a phone screen illuminated a face that Blast recognized from Scout's surveillance photos.
Carl Witte. Sitting in his mobile command post, timing his fires, watching his spreadsheet come to life.
"Found him," Blast murmured into his comm. "Blue sedan, two blocks west of Reyes on Twenty-Sixth. He's watching the target."
"Hold position," Alpha ordered. "Let him commit."
"Copy."
Blast waited. The hardest thing in the world—harder than defusing bombs, harder than breaching doors, harder than any of the violent work he'd built his second life around. Waiting meant stillness, and stillness meant silence, and silence meant—
His phone buzzed. Becca's name on the screen.
I can see smoke from the compound roof. What's happening?
He typed fast: Stay inside. We're handling it.
Her response was immediate: Where?
Becca. Stay inside.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Be careful.
He pocketed the phone as Fang's voice came through the comm.
"Device confirmed. Back wall, near the gas meter. Accelerant and timer. Set for—" A pause. "Nine-thirty-five. Seven minutes."
"Can you disarm?"
"It's not complicated. Give me two minutes."
"You've got one. Carl's checking his phone—he's expecting confirmation."
Blast watched the sedan. Carl raised his phone to his ear, spoke briefly, then lowered it. His head turned toward the grocery, waiting for the glow that would mean his third fire was burning.
The glow didn't come.
Carl checked his phone again. Made another call. Blast could see the frustration in his posture—the way he leaned forward, the sharp gesture of his free hand.
"Device neutralized," Fang reported. "Clean pull. Timer's dead."
"Beautiful. Now get the family out of that apartment."
"Already moving."
Blast watched Carl make a third call, then a fourth. The man's operational composure was cracking—his schedule was off, his third fire hadn't caught, and somewhere in the back of his insurance investigator's brain, the math was starting to not add up.
"I'm going to him," Blast said into the comm. "Fang, get those people out and hold the building."
"Copy."
Blast walked his bike two blocks with the engine off, approaching the sedan from the driver's blind spot. Carl was focused on his phone, jabbing at the screen with the irritation of a man whose spreadsheet had betrayed him.
He didn't hear Blast until the passenger window shattered.
"Evening, Carl."
Witte screamed—a high, ugly sound that bounced off the empty storefronts. He lunged for the ignition, but Blast was already through the broken window, his hand closing around Carl's wrist and wrenching it away from the steering column.
"Let's talk about your schedule." Blast hauled the man across the center console and out through the passenger side, dumping him on the sidewalk. "Three fires, timed six minutes apart, diversionary calls to stretch the fire department. Textbook work. Except you made one mistake."
Carl scrambled backward, his glasses askew, blood running from a cut on his forehead where the glass had caught him. "You don't know who you're—"
"Carl Witte. Former insurance claims investigator, currently Frank Dvorak's operations coordinator.
You manage client relationships with developers, handle payoffs to building inspectors, and schedule burns to avoid pattern detection.
" Blast crouched beside him. "You're meticulous about documentation.
I bet there's a laptop in that car with records of every fire Frank's set in fifteen years. "
Carl's face went white.
"Here's your mistake." Blast leaned closer. "You targeted businesses on the edge of Wolf territory. You thought that was smart—hit the borders, test the response, see how fast we react."
"I was just—"
"You timed your fires six minutes apart because that's how long it takes the CFD to dispatch a second company.
You called in a fake gas leak to pull resources from Ashland.
" Blast's grin was sharp enough to cut. "That tells me you've done the research.
You know how fire departments work. What you don't know is how we work. "
"Please—"
"We pre-position. We anticipate. We read operational patterns the way you read insurance claims." Blast stood, hauling Carl up by his collar. "Your first fire is contained. Your second never fully caught. Your third was disarmed before the timer hit zero."
Carl's mouth opened. Closed.
"Three-for-three failure rate, Carl. That's going to be hard to explain to Frank."
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.
Then another buzz. And another. Blast pulled it out—Becca's name, three messages in rapid succession.
Smoke at Reyes Grocery. I can see it from here.
I'm going.
People live upstairs. I'm going NOW.
Blast's blood went cold.
"Fang." His voice was a blade. "Tell me the family's out."
"Working on it. Father's cooperating. Mother went back for the baby's—"
"Becca's coming to you."
Silence on the line. Then Fang's voice, flat as a headstone: "Copy."
Blast looked at Carl Witte, crumpled on the sidewalk with blood on his face and the ruins of his operation scattered around him like the spreadsheets he loved so much.
He didn't have time for this.
He had exactly enough time for this.
"Frank Dvorak sent you to burn three businesses tonight," Blast said. "He sat in his warehouse in Gage Park and drew lines on a map and told you which buildings to light. He didn't come himself because that's not what generals do. They send soldiers."
"I'm not a soldier—"
"You're right. Soldiers fight back."