Chapter Thirteen
Two days of peace was all they got.
Kristin was in the compound garage, shoulder-deep in a Cessna maintenance manual she'd borrowed from Cargo, when the first sirens cut through the afternoon quiet. Not close—miles away, maybe—but enough of them to mean something bad.
She looked up from the manual and found Rebecca standing in the doorway, phone pressed to her ear, face draining of color.
"Say that again." Rebecca's voice was steady, but her hand wasn't. "Say that again, slowly."
Kristin set the manual down.
Rebecca lowered the phone. Her eyes were bright and hard, the look of a woman holding fury behind a dam.
"The Drop Zone is on fire."
The words didn't register at first. The Drop Zone—the bar near Bragg Boulevard, the club hangout, the place Rebecca's best friend managed on weeknights.
"Was anyone—"
"Two staff inside when it started. They got out." Rebecca's jaw tightened. "Barely."
Kristin was on her feet and moving before she'd made a conscious decision. They crossed the compound toward the main clubhouse, where brothers were already gathering—phones buzzing, voices low and tight, the particular energy of men shifting from rest to war footing.
Ripcord met her halfway across the lot.
"Stay inside." His expression was granite. "We don't know if this is a distraction."
"A distraction from what?"
"From hitting us here while we're focused on the fire." He touched her face—quick, automatic, a habit that had formed somewhere between their first kiss and this moment. "Stay with Rebecca. I need to know you're safe before I can think about anything else."
He was gone before she could argue, jogging toward the chapel where Legion's voice was already carrying through the open door.
Kristin stood in the lot, watching smoke climb the sky to the east.
The Drop Zone. A bar where bikers drank cheap beer and played worse pool. A place that had nothing to do with drug operations or stolen evidence or whatever Danny had hidden. A place full of people who'd done nothing except exist in Boyd Stanton's crosshairs.
Rebecca appeared beside her. "Come on. Inside."
"He's burning things that don't matter." Kristin heard the cold clarity in her own voice. "Things that have nothing to do with me or Danny or whatever Stanton wants. He's just—destroying. Because he can."
"Because he's losing." Rebecca's hand found her arm, firm and guiding. "Losing men make stupid, vicious decisions. Come inside."
They went inside.
The main room of the clubhouse had transformed from community space to operations center.
Brothers hunched over phones, tracking police scanners, mapping the fire's location against known club properties.
Allison was behind the bar, not serving drinks—organizing medical supplies with the efficiency of a woman who'd learned that being useful was better than being afraid.
Kristin helped. Sorted bandages, counted supplies, did the mindless inventory work that kept her hands busy while her mind raced.
An hour passed.
Then Ghost's voice crackled through the radio someone had left on the bar.
"Second fire. Bragg Boulevard Cycles."
The room went still.
Bragg Boulevard Cycles—the motorcycle shop. Not just a club front, a legitimate business where brothers worked real jobs and built real things. A place with employees, with inventory, with years of honest work behind it.
Burning.
"Son of a bitch." Allison set down the roll of gauze she'd been counting. "That's where Static stores the—"
She stopped herself. Kristin didn't ask.
But she understood.
Stanton wasn't searching for Danny's evidence anymore. He wasn't trying to recover product or eliminate witnesses. His pilots were dead. His operations manager was dead. His organization was bleeding out.
So he was making everyone else bleed too.
Rebecca's phone buzzed. She read the message, and something in her expression went from anger to ice.
"What?" Kristin asked.
"There was a note. Nailed to a telephone pole across from Bragg Boulevard Cycles before the fire started." Rebecca held up the phone so Kristin could read the text.
Send out the pilot or watch everything burn. This is just the beginning.
Kristin read it twice.
Then she set down the bandages and walked to the window.
The compound spread before her—the converted warehouse, the rows of bikes, the back lot where two days ago children had chased each other at a cookout. Beyond the perimeter fence, Carolina pines stood dark against a sky now smeared with smoke from two directions.
Two fires. Two businesses. Two messages written in flame.
And the demand was simple: surrender Kristin, or Stanton would burn Fayetteville until there was nothing left to protect.
"This is my fault." The words came out flat.
"Don't." Rebecca was beside her instantly. "Don't do that."
"He's burning your businesses because of me. Your people were almost killed because of me. If I just—"
"If you just what? Walk out there and let a drug lord execute you?" Rebecca's voice was sharp enough to cut. "That doesn't stop the fires, Kristin. That gives him what he wants and guarantees he burns the rest anyway, because dead witnesses can't testify and Stanton doesn't leave loose ends."
"She's right." Allison joined them at the window. "Stanton burned bridges the moment he killed your partner. You're not the cause of this—you're the excuse. If it wasn't you, he'd find another reason to go after anyone who threatened his operation."
Kristin knew they were right. Knew it intellectually, the same way she knew altimeter readings and fuel calculations—facts that existed independent of how she felt about them.
But facts didn't stop the guilt.
The chapel door opened, and brothers filed out. Their faces told the story before anyone spoke—hard jaws, flat eyes, the controlled fury of men who'd just been given targets.
Legion stopped in the main room, his presence commanding silence without effort.
"Nolan Peck." The name landed like a verdict. "Stanton's enforcer. Former military contractor, specializes in making destruction look like something else. He set both fires personally—Forge's contacts confirmed it."
"Where is he now?" Allison asked.
"Moving. He's using small airstrips as staging points—landing at one, setting a fire, flying to the next." Legion's eyes found Kristin across the room. "He'll hit again tonight. Stanton's given him a list, and he'll work through it until we stop him or until there's nothing left to burn."
Kristin felt the weight of every gaze in the room. Brothers who'd voted to protect her. Women who'd welcomed her into their homes. A community that was paying for her survival with their livelihoods.
"How do we stop him?" she asked.
Something shifted in Legion's expression. Not surprise—recognition. The same look he'd given her the night of the first firefight, when she'd managed not to fall apart.
"Your man's got a plan." Legion nodded toward the chapel door. "He needs your help with it."
She found Ripcord in the chapel, bent over a map spread across the table. Aviation charts—sectionals she recognized from years of flight planning—covered with hand-drawn marks and annotations.
"Peck's using rural strips." Ripcord didn't look up. "Landing, staging his materials, hitting the target, then flying to the next strip before anyone can track him. It's smart—mobile, hard to predict, keeps him ahead of pursuit."
"Unless someone who knows every airstrip in the region tells you where he'll go next."
He looked up then. His eyes were dark, dangerous, carrying the particular intensity of a man who was about to kill someone and wanted to do it right.
"That's why I need you."
Kristin moved to the table, her eyes scanning the charts. She knew these strips. Had flown over most of them, landed at half, maintained relationships with ground crews and owners across three counties.
"He's been moving east to west." She traced the pattern with her finger. "The Drop Zone, then Bragg Boulevard Cycles. If he's working from a list and using strips as staging points..."
She studied the chart, her pilot's mind calculating distances, fuel ranges, the particular logic of someone who needed to land, load, move, and strike without being seen.
"McCallister Field." She tapped a spot on the chart. "Private strip, owner's been in Florida for six months, no security, no cameras. It's twenty minutes from four different club-connected businesses and has hangar space to hide a plane overnight."
"You're sure?"
"I've landed there myself. Danny used it for overflow when our strip was busy." Her jaw tightened at the mention of Danny's name. "If Peck's thinking like a pilot—and he'd have to be, to use strips this way—McCallister is the obvious choice for a western approach."
Ripcord stared at her for a long moment.
"You know I'm going to kill him."
"I know."
"And you're helping me plan it."
She met his gaze without flinching. "He burned a bar with people inside. He's working through a list of targets that includes places where families live and work. Whatever hesitation I had about violence died when I read that note on the telephone pole."
"What note?"
"The one that said send out the pilot or watch everything burn." Her voice went cold. "He doesn't want me, Kenny. He wants Stanton's mess cleaned up, and I'm just the excuse. The only way this stops is if Peck stops breathing."
Something fierce crossed Ripcord's face. Pride, maybe. Or love stripped to its most primitive form—the recognition that the woman in front of him understood exactly what was required and wasn't turning away from it.
"McCallister Field." He marked it on the chart. "Tonight."
"Tonight." She stepped closer, close enough to feel the heat coming off him. "And you bring every brother you need. No half-measures."
"No half-measures." He cupped her face, kissed her—hard, brief, a seal on what they'd just decided together. "I'm coming back to you."
"You'd better." She held his gaze. "I didn't survive a plane crash and a drug war to lose you now."
He left the chapel to brief the brotherhood.
Kristin stayed, staring at the chart, at the small X she'd drawn on McCallister Field. A strip she'd landed at dozens of times. A place where Danny had probably helped Stanton move cocaine while she was home balancing books and trusting her partner.
Now it would be where Stanton's last lieutenant died.
She walked back to the main room, where the smoke from two fires still smudged the eastern sky. Rebecca and Allison were waiting, their expressions asking questions they didn't voice.
"They're going tonight," Kristin said. "I found where Peck will stage his next attack."
Rebecca nodded. "And you're okay with that?"
Kristin looked out the window at the smoke.
Two businesses destroyed. Two staff members nearly killed. A note promising more unless she surrendered herself to a man who'd already murdered her partner.
"Stanton doesn't care about collateral damage anymore," she said quietly. "He'll burn everything in Fayetteville to get what he wants. The only thing standing between him and ashes is the brotherhood."
She turned from the window.
"So yeah. I'm okay with it."
Outside, the smoke continued to climb. Somewhere in the Carolina countryside, Nolan Peck was loading his plane for another run, another fire, another message written in destruction.
He didn't know that the pilot he was trying to flush out had just drawn an X on his staging point.
He didn't know that the men coming for him had been hunting in these pines since before he'd learned to light a match.
And he didn't know that the woman he'd tried to destroy had stopped being afraid and started being furious.
That was going to cost him everything.