Chapter Twelve #2
Blast ended Carl Witte the way Carl had ended buildings—efficiently, professionally, with the dispassionate competence of a man executing a contract. No drama. No speeches. Just the cold application of force to a problem that needed solving.
Carl hit the pavement and didn't get up.
Blast left the rental sedan idling on Twenty-Sixth Street and ran.
Two blocks to Reyes Grocery. He covered the distance in under a minute, rounding the corner to find exactly what he'd feared.
Smoke was curling from the second-floor windows. Not much—Fang had disarmed the main device, but something residual had caught, maybe accelerant splash that the timer mechanism had already ignited before Fang pulled the detonator. A small fire, containable, but growing.
And Becca was on the fire escape.
She'd climbed the exterior stairs and was standing on the second-floor landing, banging on the window with both fists. Through the glass, Blast could see a woman clutching a baby, frozen in the smoke-hazed hallway, too panicked to move toward the escape route that was right there.
"Give me the baby!" Becca shouted through the glass. "Hand her to me and climb out!"
The woman couldn't move. Fear had locked her joints, welded her feet to the floor, turned her into a statue with a screaming infant pressed to her chest.
Becca didn't hesitate. She shoved the window open—it stuck halfway, and she hit the frame with her palm until it gave—and climbed inside.
Into the smoke.
Blast's heart stopped.
He was up the fire escape in four seconds, through the window in two more, and inside the apartment to find Becca guiding the mother and baby toward the opening. The smoke was thin—more haze than hazard—but it was thickening, and the heat from somewhere down the hall said the fire was finding fuel.
"Move," he ordered, taking the woman's arm and steering her toward the window. "Fire escape. Now."
The mother went. Becca helped her through the window, made sure she had the baby secure, then turned back toward the hallway.
"There might be more people—"
"There aren't." Blast caught her arm. "Fang cleared the building. The father and two kids are already outside."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure. Move."
She moved. He followed her through the window and down the fire escape, his hand on her back, feeling her breathe, counting her heartbeats through his palm because his own heart hadn't resumed normal function since he'd read her text messages.
They hit the sidewalk and he spun her to face him.
"You ran into a burning building."
"It was barely smoking—"
"You ran into a burning building after I told you to stay inside the compound."
"There was a woman with a baby who couldn't—"
He kissed her. Hard. His hands gripping her shoulders, his mouth desperate against hers, tasting smoke and adrenaline and the furious, terrifying courage of a woman who'd climbed a fire escape to save a stranger's child.
When he pulled back, her eyes were wide.
"Don't ever do that again," he said.
"Don't ever tell me to stay inside when people need help."
They stared at each other. Smoke drifted past them, thin and fading. Somewhere nearby, the mother was sobbing into her husband's chest while their children clung to their legs, alive and whole because a florist from Pilsen had climbed through a window.
Fang appeared at the corner, barely winded.
"Building's clear. Fire's contained to the hallway—CFD is two minutes out." His stone eyes moved between Blast and Becca. "Carl?"
"Handled."
Fang nodded once and walked away.
Blast pulled out his phone and called Alpha.
"Three-target assault, neutralized. Marquez is contained, Kim's never fully caught, Reyes is minimal damage." He paused. "Carl Witte is dead. Twenty-Sixth Street, two blocks west of Reyes."
"Frank's response?"
"He doesn't have one. Carl was his operations brain—scheduling, logistics, client management.
Without him, Frank's running blind." Blast looked at Becca, who was crouched beside the Reyes family, checking the baby with hands that were black with soot and steady as stone.
"He's got Jay Sikora and whatever hired muscle he can scrape together. That's it."
"Then we squeeze."
"We squeeze."
He ended the call and crossed the sidewalk to where Becca sat on the curb with Mrs. Reyes, speaking quiet Spanish that he hadn't known she understood.
The baby had stopped crying. The older children were pressed against their father, watching the thin smoke drift from their apartment windows with eyes too old for their faces.
Becca looked up when his shadow fell across her.
Soot on her cheeks. Smoke in her hair. Those steady hands cradling someone else's child like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Don't say it," she warned.
"Say what?"
"Whatever overprotective thing you're about to say about me running into danger."
He sat down beside her on the curb, their shoulders touching, and watched the fire truck round the corner with lights blazing.
"I was going to say you did good."
She leaned into him, just slightly. "Liar."
"Okay. I was going to say you scared the hell out of me and also you did good." He put his arm around her, pulling her close. "Both things can be true."
The fire truck stopped. Firefighters poured out, running hoses, doing the work that the city paid them for while three of Frank Dvorak's arson targets smoldered with minimal damage and their architect cooled on a sidewalk two blocks away.
Sirens wailed in the distance—more trucks, more response, the infrastructure of a city that was finally showing up.
Blast held Becca against his side and watched the professionals work.
Carl Witte's spreadsheet was finished. His timeline was done. His meticulous records of fires set and inspectors bribed and buildings burned—all of it ending on a curb in Pilsen, with a florist who smelled like smoke and a demolition man who was learning that some things were worth more than noise.
Frank Dvorak was alone now. No fire starter. No operations coordinator. Just a craftsman with an empty workshop and a developer breathing down his neck.
The squeeze was coming.
And Frank had nobody left to answer the phone.