Chapter 18
GHOST
The Black Crowns rolled out after dark, splitting across the canyon roads before converging around the remote storage property from three directions.
Nobody was riding blind or guessing where the assholes inside might run.
Stryker held overall command, Hawkeye controlled the outer containment, Nomad had the rear service road, and the rest of us moved into positions that matched the work we had done before we ever wore a Black Crowns cut.
Cipher remained at the compound with Tamsin, watching the property’s cameras and communications.
Wraith and Breach rode with the side-entry group, Trigger and Smoke would hit the front, and Skyfall held the eastern ridge.
I carried the surveillance photograph of the damaged Bellamy case folded inside my cut.
We left the vehicles out of hearing range and moved through dry brush while Cipher fed updates through our comms. The exterior cameras still showed an empty road, and the men inside were shifting cases toward two trucks parked nose-out in the yard.
Stryker waited until every brother reported ready, then his voice came through my earpiece in a low tone.
“Take it.”
Nomad’s truck surged across the rear service road at the same time Hawkeye closed the main drive.
Wraith and Breach cut through the side gate, Trigger and Smoke hit the front, and Skyfall’s first shot shattered the yard light above the roll-up door before anyone inside understood the dark no longer belonged to them.
Men shouted, weapons came up, but the Black Crowns were already through the openings they had believed were covered.
The first gunman stepped from behind a pickup and fired toward Wraith.
Breach drove him back behind the engine block while Smoke crossed the open yard, grabbed a second man by the back of his jacket, and slammed him face-first into the side of the building.
Trigger kicked a dropped pistol away and hauled the bastard to the ground as I cleared the side entrance with Wraith at my shoulder.
A truck engine roared outside, followed by the violent grind of tires biting into loose gravel. The sound tore through the yard toward the narrow road behind the building. Nomad’s voice cut across the comm.
“Rear runner’s moving.”
“Put him in the ditch,” Hawkeye answered.
Metal crashed hard enough to rattle the building. Then Nomad reported the truck was on its side in the drainage cut and the driver was crawling out through the passenger window.
My attention stayed inside where men were trying to turn Bellamy property into something they could carry or destroy.
One of them came through the center aisle with a case under each arm.
He dropped one when he saw me, reached for the pistol at his waist, but he never cleared leather.
I drove him into the concrete, trapped his wrist beneath my boot, and took the weapon.
Wraith hauled him away while I checked both cases for obvious damage and ordered them left exactly where they had fallen.
“Hands off every Bellamy case until I clear it,” I barked into the comm. “Anybody gets curious, I break the hand before the fucking device does.”
A man near the rear shelving spun away from Smoke and lunged toward a small black controller sitting on a workbench. I crossed the distance before his thumb came down, knocked the controller onto the floor, and drove him over the bench with my forearm across the back of his neck.
He fought until I twisted one arm high enough to grind his shoulder against the edge.
“What’s it tied to?” I asked while his boots scraped uselessly across the concrete.
“Fuck you.”
“Wrong answer.” I bounced his face off the workbench, then passed him to Trigger when the brother reached us. “Keep him breathing for now.”
The controller stayed where it landed while I examined the room.
Bellamy cases crowded the center aisle, close enough for one blast to ignite the rest. I pulled out the surveillance photograph, matched the damaged corner to a dark case on a low pallet, and found the newer latch Tamsin had noticed from the grainy image.
“Clear this section,” I ordered, pointing toward the side entrance. “Wraith, hold the door. Nobody crosses it unless I call them.”
He shoved the last unsecured man into Breach’s hands and planted himself at the opening.
Gunfire still cracked beyond the walls, mixed with engines, shouted orders, and the ugly impacts of brothers putting down men who had chosen the wrong territory to work in and were stupid enough to try to face off with a Black Crown.
I let the noise fall away while I crouched beside the pallet and studied the damaged panel without touching the case.
The bowed corner had been altered rather than crushed. A narrow gap revealed a receiver behind the panel, and the case rested against an anti-handling switch that would react if someone lifted or opened it. The controller was only one path to the device, one careless movement could finish the job.
I slowed my breathing and let years of EOD training narrow the world to the case. The first trigger died cleanly, but the setup still felt wrong beneath my hand. I checked again and found the concealed backup.
“Ghost?” Stryker’s voice came through the comm.
“Working.”
“That room’s yours. Yard’s almost locked.”
I did not answer again until I had neutralized the backup and separated the trigger from anything capable of setting off the material around me.
My hands remained steady while sweat tracked beneath the collar of my shirt and the wound at my ribs pulled every time I shifted.
Tamsin’s face stayed in the back of my mind—not as a distraction, but as the reason failure had never entered the list of outcomes I would accept.
I checked the altered corner one final time, then sat back on my heels and let air fill my lungs. The device was dead, and the word every brother had been waiting for went out over the comm. “Clear.”
Wraith stepped into the doorway but stopped where I had told him. His gaze moved from the case to the photograph beside my knee, and one brow lifted. “Your girl caught that shit from one picture?”
I rose and retrieved the controller from the floor. Pride in Tamsin colored my voice, and I did not give a shit who heard it. “She’d be pissed you sound surprised.”
“Wasn’t surprised.” His mouth twitched as he glanced toward the case. “Fucking impressed.”
“Better.”
The device was dead, but the men who had placed it were still making noise outside.
I turned the secured section over to Wraith and Breach, ordered every case photographed and left in position until we had a complete count, then followed the sound of a fresh struggle through the rear door.
Smoke had one man facedown beside a truck while Trigger traded punches with another near the fence, and Skyfall was moving down from the ridge now that the outside guns had gone quiet.
A third bastard broke from behind the damaged truck and ran toward the rear road. He had one hand pressed to his side and panic in his stride. I cut across the yard, caught him before the gate, and drove him shoulder-first into the fence hard enough to make the chain links rattle.
He swung wild. I slipped the punch, buried one fist in his stomach, and dropped him with an elbow across the jaw when he folded. Nomad appeared from the road, looked down at the unconscious man, and shook his head.
“Could’ve left me one,” he grumbled.
“You got the truck,” I reminded him, jerking my chin toward the drainage ditch.
Nomad glanced back at the wreck and shrugged. “It didn’t complain as much.”
By the time Stryker called the property secure, every surviving man was restrained and separated.
The outside crew leader was not among them, and none of the phones we found carried a real name for the company insider.
Cipher began stripping information from the devices as fast as the brothers photographed screens and sent him identifiers, but the messages referred only to a coded contact who supplied schedules, access, and material.
In the building, Bellamy firing components sat beside equipment used to start fires and make destruction look accidental, while a locked cabinet held lists of local businesses and notes about owners who resisted pressure.
These men had been using stolen material to frighten people into giving them money, property, or silence.
We recovered part of the fundraiser shipment and smaller amounts marked for jobs years earlier. Other cases held components matching the records-room incendiary and the device beneath Tamsin’s truck. Every piece tightened the circle around the insider without giving us his name.
The man who had reached for the controller sat tied to a steel chair in the small office near the loading bay.
Blood ran from his nose onto his shirt, one eye had begun swelling, and the arrogance he had worn before the raid was losing ground to the sound of Black Crowns moving through every part of the property.
I set the controller on the desk in front of him and pulled another chair close enough that my knees almost touched his.
“You know what that would’ve done?” I asked, tapping one finger against the plastic.
He looked away. “I moved cases. That’s all.”
“That case was surrounded by stolen pyrotechnics.” I leaned back and watched his throat work as he swallowed. “You hit the switch, everybody on the property burns. And that’s only if the fire doesn’t spread through the canyon and kill a fuck of a lot more.”
“I didn’t build it,” he muttered, as if that would help his cause.
“You fucking reached for it.”
His mouth tightened, and the last bit of defiance crawled back into his face. He tried to sit straighter despite the blood slipping over his lip. “I follow orders.”