Chapter Ten
Lockjaw was out of bed before the sound registered, muscle memory pulling him vertical while his brain caught up. Beside him, Tamsin was already moving—rolling off the mattress, reaching for the rifle she kept propped against the nightstand like a woman who'd never fully trusted sleep.
"Perimeter breach." Tundra's voice crackled through the radio on the dresser, flat and clipped. "Eastern fence. Twelve, maybe fifteen. They've got vehicles on the access road."
Twelve to fifteen.
Not a probe. Not intimidation.
This was a full assault.
"Safe room." Lockjaw was pulling on boots, grabbing his cut from the chair. "Now."
"I can fight—"
"I know you can fight." He caught her arm, pulled her close, pressed his mouth to her forehead hard enough to bruise. "But I can't fight if I'm worrying about you. Safe room. Please."
The please did it. Not the order—she'd have argued the order until they were both dead. But the rawness in his voice, the admission that she was the thing that could break his focus, made her jaw tighten and her eyes go bright.
"Come back," she said.
"Planning on it."
She grabbed her rifle and her dog and moved for the stairs. Lockjaw watched her go—three seconds he couldn't afford and wouldn't trade—then grabbed the radio and headed for the perimeter.
The compound was already awake.
Brothers poured from the main building in various states of dressed, but every one of them armed.
Permafrost's voice cut through the chaos from the front entrance, issuing orders with the efficiency of a man who'd drilled for this.
Ironside materialized from the garage with his sledgehammer and a sawed-off, moving toward the eastern fence with the unstoppable momentum of a freight train.
Lockjaw hit the yard at a dead sprint.
The eastern fence was already down.
Three trucks had punched through the chain link, headlights blazing, men spilling from the beds with weapons up and the coordinated movement of professionals who'd done this before.
Not lodge staff playing soldier—these were Duluth enforcers, the kind of muscle you hired when property damage wasn't the point anymore.
And leading them, stepping out of the lead truck with a boxer's rolling gait and a shotgun in his hands, was Eddie Stamm.
Six-two of professional violence with a rap sheet and a smile.
Pruitt hadn't come himself. Of course he hadn't. Men like Pruitt paid other men to do the bleeding.
"Contact east!" Lockjaw screamed into the radio. "Twelve-plus through the fence. Eddie Stamm leading. They've got long guns."
"Copy." Ice's voice, calm as frozen water. "Flanking from the south garage. Give me ninety seconds."
Ninety seconds.
An eternity.
The first wave hit the yard like a battering ram.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the darkness, bullets chewing into the main building's exterior, shattering a window in the bar.
Lockjaw dove behind the concrete foundation of the generator building and returned fire—two shots, controlled, the first catching an enforcer in the thigh and spinning him into the dirt.
Tundra appeared ten yards to his left, moving through the shadows with military precision. The VP didn't speak—just took position behind a stack of lumber and started picking targets with the cold patience of a man who'd done this in places far worse than Minnesota.
"They're pushing for the main entrance," Tundra said between shots. "Trying to breach the building."
"They won't make it."
"Not if we hold the yard."
An explosion rocked the eastern fence line—Coldstart's work, something rigged to the access road that turned the trailing truck into a fireball.
The blast lit the compound like daylight, and for one frozen second Lockjaw saw everything: the attackers fanning across the yard, Ironside wading into a cluster of them near the garage with his sledgehammer swinging, Permafrost on the main building's porch laying down covering fire with a calm that bordered on supernatural.
Then the light died, and the fighting turned close and ugly.
Two enforcers came around the generator building and Lockjaw met them with his fists and a fury that had been building since Bryce Hedlund's gas can.
The first caught an elbow to the throat that dropped him choking.
The second swung a rifle butt at Lockjaw's head—he ducked, felt it whistle past his ear, and drove his knee into the man's gut hard enough to fold him in half.
The rifle clattered to the ground. Lockjaw kicked it away and put the man down with a right hand that cracked something in his face.
His knuckles split. He didn't care.
"East fence, flanking now." Ice's voice on the radio, and then the south side of the compound erupted with gunfire as the road captain's team hit Eddie's force from the angle they hadn't planned for.
The assault broke.
Not all at once—professional muscle didn't panic that easily.
But the coordinated push toward the main building fractured into scattered firefights, attackers caught between Lockjaw and Tundra in the yard and Ice's flanking force from the south.
Men who'd expected to overwhelm a sleeping compound found themselves in a crossfire that shredded their formations.
Eddie Stamm didn't break.
The enforcer rallied four of his men near the downed fence, using the trucks as cover, pouring fire into the yard with the controlled aggression of someone who'd decided this was a fight worth finishing.
His shotgun boomed twice—the second blast caught a prospect in the shoulder, spinning the kid into the dirt with a scream that cut through the chaos.
"Brother down!" someone shouted.
Lockjaw's vision narrowed.
He moved through the yard the way he used to move through repo lots—fast, low, reading the geometry of cover and threat with instincts that had been sharpened by years of running from armed debtors. A bullet snapped past his ear. Another punched into the dirt at his feet. He didn't stop.
Eddie saw him coming.
The enforcer swung the shotgun around, that boxer's smile spreading across his face like he'd been waiting for this—the one-on-one, the personal confrontation, the chance to prove that professional muscle beat outlaw grit.
The shotgun roared.
Lockjaw was already moving, diving left, feeling the buckshot tear the air where his chest had been a half second before. He hit the ground rolling, came up inside the shotgun's effective range, and crashed into Eddie Stamm with every pound of repo-built muscle he had.
They went down together.
Eddie was bigger. Stronger. Had fifty pounds of boxer's build and reach that should have ended the fight in seconds.
But Eddie fought clean.
Lockjaw didn't.
He drove his thumb into Eddie's eye socket and felt the man scream more than heard it.
Eddie's fist connected with his ribs—a sledgehammer blow that cracked something and sent white light flashing behind his eyes—but Lockjaw held on, gouging, biting, fighting with the desperation of a man who'd learned his combat skills pulling trucks from armed debtors who wanted to kill him.
Eddie threw him off. Scrambled for the shotgun.
Lockjaw got there first.
Not the shotgun—the tire iron wedged into his belt, the same tool that had ended Bryce Hedlund, the same weight in his hand that felt like justice every time he swung it.
Eddie's hand closed on the shotgun barrel.
The tire iron caught him across the temple.
The sound was wet. Heavy. Final.
Eddie Stamm's hand went slack. His body followed, crumpling sideways against the truck's rear tire, eyes open and confused like a boxer who'd heard the count but couldn't believe the ref was calling the fight.
Lockjaw hit him again.
And again.
Because Eddie's shotgun had put a prospect in the dirt. Because Eddie's boss had sent him to take what belonged to the Savages. Because somewhere in the safe room, a woman with a rifle and a dog was waiting for him to come back, and Lockjaw intended to keep that promise.
Eddie stopped moving after the third blow.
The compound went quiet by degrees.
Ice's flanking maneuver had broken the remaining attackers into scattered retreats—men dropping weapons, running for the tree line, abandoning the assault with the frantic energy of professionals who'd realized their leadership was dead and their exit was closing.
Tundra's team ran them down methodically, zip-tying survivors and letting runners carry the message back to whoever was listening.
Lockjaw stood over Eddie's body, breathing hard, ribs screaming where the boxer's punch had landed. Blood—his and Eddie's—dripped from the tire iron onto the gravel.
"Report." Permafrost's voice on the radio, steady as bedrock.
"Eddie Stamm's down. Permanent." Lockjaw wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand. "His people are scattered. I count eight hostiles on the ground—dead or restrained. The rest ran."
"Casualties?"
"Prospect took a shotgun blast to the shoulder. Coldstart's got a graze on his arm." Lockjaw surveyed the yard—the downed fence, the burning truck, the bodies scattered across ground that belonged to the Savages and would keep belonging to the Savages. "Two wounded. None dead."
"Copy. Secure the perimeter. I want every approach locked down before sunrise."
"Already on it."
The radio went silent.
Lockjaw looked at the tire iron in his hand. Blood-dark. Heavy. The weight of it familiar now in a way that should have bothered him more than it did.
Two of Pruitt's lieutenants dead in a week.
The gambling king was running out of men to send.
Ironside appeared from the smoke near the garage, sledgehammer resting on his shoulder, splattered with blood that wasn't his. The massive Swede surveyed Eddie's body with professional detachment.
"Clean?"
"Close combat." Lockjaw's ribs pulsed with every breath. "He hit hard."
"Boxers do." Ironside looked at the cracked ribs Lockjaw was favoring, then at the tire iron, then at Eddie's ruined skull. "You hit harder."
"Had more to lose."
Ironside's expression shifted—something that wasn't quite a smile but carried the weight of understanding.
"Yeah," the big Swede said. "You did."
He moved on, joining Tundra's team to sweep the perimeter, and Lockjaw stood alone in the compound yard as the first gray light of dawn crept over the tree line.
The burning truck threw shadows across the gravel.
Brothers moved through the wreckage with purpose—collecting weapons, restraining the wounded, repairing what could be repaired and documenting what couldn't. The compound had held.
The eastern fence was down and the bar had a shattered window and a prospect was getting his shoulder packed in the kitchen, but the compound had held.
Because this was Savage territory.
And Pruitt had just learned what that cost.
Lockjaw's phone buzzed in his pocket.
Let me out.
Tamsin. Three words. An order, not a request.
He almost smiled despite the cracked ribs and the blood on his hands and the body cooling three feet away.
Coming, he typed back.
He pocketed the tire iron and walked toward the main building, toward the safe room, toward the woman who'd told him to come back and meant it.
Dawn broke over the compound. Cold light on hot wreckage. Brothers standing in the ruins of an assault that should have overwhelmed them, grinning at each other with the savage satisfaction of men who'd been tested and held.
Two brothers wounded. None lost.
Eddie Stamm dead in the gravel.
And somewhere in Gordon Pruitt's fishing lodge, a man who'd sent twelve professionals to destroy a compound was learning that money couldn't buy what the Savages had earned with blood and iron and the stubborn refusal to give up what was theirs.
Lockjaw pushed through the main building's door, jaw clenched, ribs burning, heading for the safe room with the particular urgency of a man who had a promise to keep.
She was waiting.
He intended to be worth the wait.