Chapter Sixteen
Scout found Jay Sikora in under four hours.
"Brighton Park," he reported over the phone. "Bar called The Rusty Nail. He's three beers deep on Frank's tab, telling anyone who'll listen about how he gutted the flower shop. Got three of Frank's guys with him."
Blast was already pulling on his cut. "Armed?"
"Probably. But they're celebrating, not working. Sloppy drunk."
"How many civilians?"
"Handful. It's a Tuesday night in Brighton Park—nobody's there on purpose."
"We will be." Blast grabbed his weapon from the lockbox under his bed. "Fang. Stockyard. Ten minutes."
Fang materialized from the hallway like he'd been waiting for the call. Stockyard was in the common room, halfway through a plate of leftovers that he abandoned without a word when he saw Blast's face.
No jokes. No chatter. The three of them moved through the compound garage with the economy of men who'd done this before and would do it again.
Blast paused at his bike.
Becca was upstairs. He could feel the pull of her—the urge to go up, tell her where he was going, promise he'd come back. But she'd been asleep when he left the room twenty minutes ago, curled on her side with one hand tucked under the pillow and her face soft in a way that made his chest hurt.
She'd told him to find Jay Sikora.
He was going to deliver.
The Rusty Nail sat on a dead-end block between a shuttered tire shop and a liquor store with bars on every window. The kind of bar that existed because someone had to sell cheap beer to men who didn't want to go home.
Blast killed his engine two blocks east and walked the approach. Fang took the south side. Stockyard circled north. Standard three-point convergence—cover the exits, compress the space, leave nowhere to run.
Through the bar's grimy front window, Blast could see them. Four men at the far end of the counter, surrounded by empty bottles and the particular posture of men who thought they were untouchable. Jay Sikora sat in the middle, holding court.
He was younger than Blast expected. Late twenties, aggressive jaw, gym muscles straining against a jacket that probably cost more than anything he'd ever earned honestly. He was talking with his hands—big, expansive gestures, the kind of performance that said look at me, look what I did.
Blast watched him pantomime smashing something.
The coolers. He was acting out destroying Becca's coolers.
The men around him laughed.
Blast's vision went red at the edges.
"In position," Fang's voice came through the comm. Flat. Ready.
"North side clear," Stockyard confirmed.
"Back entrance," Blast said. "Fast and hard. Jay runs—he's the type."
He moved through the alley behind the bar, stepping over broken glass and garbage bags. The back door was steel, dented, propped open with a cinder block because the kitchen ventilation had quit sometime around the Clinton administration.
Blast went through first.
The kitchen was empty—grease-caked grill, stacked dishes nobody had washed, the smell of old fryer oil and stale mop water. Music thumped through the wall from the main room. Some classic rock station playing Zeppelin loud enough to cover footsteps.
He pushed through the swinging door.
Jay saw him first.
Credit where it was due—the kid's instincts were fast. His hand went for his waistband the moment he registered the leather cut and the expression on Blast's face. But fast wasn't fast enough when the man coming through the door had spent four years reaching into bombs while people shot at him.
Blast closed the distance in three strides and drove his fist into Jay's wrist before the gun cleared his belt. Bone cracked. Jay screamed—high and sharp, the sound bouncing off the bar's low ceiling.
The three men around him scrambled.
Stockyard came through the front door like a wrecking ball. The first guy reached for his weapon and Stockyard put him into the bar hard enough to crack the wood, then caught the second by the back of the neck and drove his face into the counter. Both dropped.
The third ran for the back. Made it four steps before Fang stepped out of the kitchen doorway and hit him once in the throat. The man went down choking, and Fang stood over him with the patient stillness of someone waiting for a traffic light to change.
Four seconds. Start to finish.
The handful of civilians pressed themselves against the far wall, eyes down, hands visible. Smart people who understood that the men in leather weren't interested in bystanders.
Blast grabbed Jay by the collar and hauled him off his barstool.
"You had a busy day yesterday," he said.
Jay clutched his broken wrist, blood draining from his face. "Who the fuck—"
"The flower shop on Twenty-Sixth. Ring a bell?" Blast shoved him toward the back door. "You and four guys, twenty minutes inside, broke everything she had."
"I don't know what you're talking about—"
Blast hit him. Open-handed, across the mouth, hard enough to snap his head sideways and send blood spraying across the bar.
"Try again."
Jay spat red onto the floor. His eyes were wild now—the arrogance crumbling, replaced by the particular fear of a man realizing he'd picked a fight with something bigger than him.
"It was a job," he said. "Dvorak told me to send a message—"
"You sent it." Blast grabbed his jacket and dragged him through the kitchen, through the back door, into the alley where the streetlights didn't reach. "Smashed her coolers. Killed her flowers. Bent her grandmother's wire cutters in half and left them on the counter like a trophy."
"She was supposed to sign! Everyone else signed!"
"She's not everyone else."
Blast shoved Jay against the brick wall. The younger man tried to swing with his good hand—desperate, off-balance, the kind of haymaker that worked in bar fights against drunk civilians. Blast caught the fist, twisted the arm behind Jay's back, and slammed him face-first into the brick.
"You enjoyed it," Blast said into his ear.
"I could tell from the damage. The way you took your time.
Pulled every flower out of the buckets, laid them on the floor, ground them flat.
" He wrenched Jay's arm higher, feeling the shoulder joint strain.
"That's not professional work. That's personal. You liked it."
"Fuck you—"
Blast drove his knee into Jay's kidney. The scream bounced off the alley walls and disappeared into the Brighton Park night.
"Frank Dvorak hired you because you're mean," Blast continued. "Not smart, not skilled—mean. The kind of guy who follows women home and leaves accelerant cans on their doorsteps because scaring people makes you feel big."
"I was following orders—"
"You were having fun." Blast spun him around, pinning him against the wall with a forearm across his throat. "I watched you through the window just now. Acting out the job for your buddies. Showing them how you smashed her things."
Jay's eyes bulged. His good hand clawed at Blast's arm, but the forearm didn't move.
"She built that shop from nothing," Blast said. "Four years. Savings from a decade of hotel work. Every vase, every shelf, every tool—she earned it. Earned her place in that neighborhood. And you walked in and tore it apart because a fifty-one-year-old arsonist told you to."
"Dvorak will—"
"Dvorak will what? Send more men?" Blast leaned closer. "Tony Reznik's dead. Carl Witte's dead. The three idiots you brought to the bar tonight are done. Who's Frank going to send, Jay? Who's left?"
The realization hit Jay's face like a slap. The fear deepening into something worse—understanding. He was the last one. The final piece of Frank Dvorak's operation, standing in a dirty alley with a man who'd already dismantled everything around him.
"Please." Jay's voice dropped to something small. "I'll disappear. Leave Chicago. You'll never—"
"You left bleach on her flowers." Blast's voice went quiet. Cold. The manic energy draining away until what remained was something harder and darker and absolutely certain. "You dumped bleach on living things and watched them die. Because Frank told you to. Because it was fun."
Jay opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
"She told me she wanted you to understand something." Blast shifted his grip, his scarred hand closing around Jay's throat. "That some things don't burn. Some things don't break. Some things you can pour bleach on and grind under your heel, and they come back anyway."
"I'm sorry—"
"You're not. But you will be."
Blast ended it in the alley behind The Rusty Nail, with the muffled bass of Led Zeppelin bleeding through the walls and the Brighton Park wind carrying the sound of nothing into the empty street.
It took less than a minute.
Jay Sikora had spent his career making people afraid. Following them home. Leaving threats on their doorsteps. Enjoying the power that came from being the last face someone saw before their life went up in smoke.
The last face he saw was Blast's.
It wasn't smiling.
Blast walked back inside wiping his hands on his jeans.
Fang had the three crew members zip-tied on the floor. Stockyard stood by the front door, keeping the civilians calm with nothing more than his presence and a look that suggested moving would be inadvisable.
"Done?" Fang asked.
"Done."
They left through the front. No rush, no scramble—just three men in leather walking out of a Brighton Park bar like they'd stopped in for a drink and found the selection lacking.
Blast pulled out his phone on the sidewalk.
"Scout. It's finished. Sikora and his crew."
"Copy. How many?"
"Four total. The last of Frank's muscle." He looked back at the bar. The neon sign buzzed and flickered in the dark, casting red light across the pavement. "He's got nothing left. No fire starters. No coordinator. No enforcer. Nobody to answer when he calls."
"Frank's alone."
"Frank's alone." Blast straddled his bike, feeling the engine rumble to life beneath him. "Tell Alpha I want church tomorrow morning. Full briefing. It's time to end this."
He rode through Brighton Park with Fang and Stockyard flanking him, three bikes cutting through the South Side dark. The streets were quiet—late enough that even Chicago's restless energy had dimmed to a hum.
Frank Dvorak was sitting in his Gage Park warehouse right now.
Surrounded by accelerant and blueprints and fifteen years of documentation from a career spent turning other people's lives into ash.
Maybe he was making calls. Trying to reach Tony Reznik, who was dead.
Trying Carl Witte, who was dead. Trying Jay Sikora, who would never answer another phone again.
One by one, the numbers going to voicemail. One by one, the silence telling him what the Wolves had been saying all along.
This territory isn't yours. This woman isn't yours. This city will eat you alive.
The developer who'd hired Frank would hear about tonight.
Would do the math—three crews destroyed, an entire operation dismantled, every man who'd touched a match or a buyout offer or a can of accelerant now dead or running.
The developer would make calls of his own.
To lawyers. To accountants. To the people who helped men like him disappear when their investments went sideways.
And Frank would be alone with his blueprints and his work boots and the professional pride that wouldn't let him walk away from a job he'd already lost.
Blast smiled into the wind.
One more target. One more job. The craftsman who thought he was an artist, sitting in his workshop, waiting for the demolition man to come.
The compound lights appeared through the darkness.
Becca was in there. Probably awake by now, probably sitting on the bed with her hands clasped and her jaw set, waiting for the sound of his engine.
He'd told her he'd find Jay Sikora. He'd told her some things don't burn.
Now he was riding home to tell her the message had been delivered.
And tomorrow, he'd finish it.