Chapter 19
Her phone buzzed. Carmen's name flashed on the screen. Alma almost let it go to voicemail—she was in the middle of the injection, and Carmen knew to text if it wasn't urgent.
But something made her pick up.
"Carmen? I'm with a patient, can I—"
"Alma." Carmen's voice was shaking. Not the controlled shake of a bad day, but the raw tremor of someone watching something terrible unfold. "You need to—there are men here—they're—"
Glass shattered in the background. A dog started barking—multiple dogs, a chaos of barking that Alma knew meant panic, not aggression.
"Carmen, what's happening?"
"They came in ten minutes ago. Four of them. They had—" Carmen's voice broke. "They had keys to the kennels. I don't know how. They opened every cage and just—the animals are everywhere, Alma. They're running into the parking lot, into the street, I can't—"
More glass. And then, underneath the chaos, a sound that turned Alma's blood to ice.
The whoosh of fire catching.
"Carmen, get out of the building. Now."
"I'm trying to catch—the puppies from last week's litter, they're only six weeks old, I can't just leave them—"
"Carmen, LEAVE. The building is on fire. Get yourself out."
"But—"
The line went dead.
Alma stood frozen in the garage bay, the syringe still in her hand, the beagle whimpering on the table. The compound sounds faded to nothing. The world narrowed to the phone in her grip and the silence on the other end of the line.
Ten years.
Ten years of savings. Ten years of work. Every penny she'd scraped together, every loan she'd taken out, every sacrifice she'd made to build something that mattered.
The beagle whimpered again. Alma set down the syringe with hands that didn't feel like hers and walked out of the garage bay into the compound yard.
The sun was shining. Brothers were working on the security fence near the east perimeter. Someone was laughing near the clubhouse.
And thirty miles away, everything she'd built was burning.
Alma walked until she couldn't walk anymore. Until she was standing in the middle of the yard with her hands flat at her sides, staring at nothing, feeling the tears start to fall.
She didn't make a sound. The grief was too big for sound. It was the kind of loss that lived in your chest, crushing everything else until breathing felt like drowning.
Exam rooms. Gone.
Surgery suite. Gone.
The equipment she'd bought piece by piece over a decade, the client records she'd spent years building, the space where she'd saved thousands of animals and comforted hundreds of grieving owners.
Gone. All of it.
"Alma?"
Tempest's voice came from somewhere behind her. She couldn't turn around. Couldn't move. Couldn't do anything but stand there while her life turned to ash.
His footsteps approached, stopped. She felt him behind her, close enough to touch, but he didn't reach for her. He waited.
Because somehow, impossibly, he understood.
"Carmen called," she heard herself say. Her voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else. "They set fire to the clinic. The animals—they let them all out. Into the parking lot. Into the street."
Tempest didn't respond. He just stood there, a solid presence at her back, waiting for her to decide what she needed.
"I built that clinic from nothing." The words came out flat.
Dead. "I worked doubles for years to save enough for the down payment.
I took out loans I'm still paying off. I spent every weekend for three years fixing things that broke because I couldn't afford to hire anyone.
" The tears were falling faster now, running into her collar.
"And now it's gone. Some man I've never met walked in and set fire to everything I've ever worked for. "
"Alma." His voice was soft. Careful.
"They let the animals out." Her voice cracked. "Six-week-old puppies. Post-op patients who can't move fast enough to avoid traffic. They just—opened the cages and watched them run."
Her hands curled into fists at her sides. The grief was shifting now, making room for something hotter. Something that burned just as fierce as the fire consuming her clinic.
Rage.
Pure, incandescent rage.
She turned around, and Tempest was right there—close enough to catch her if she fell, far enough to give her space. His face was carefully blank, but his eyes were burning.
"Where?" she asked.
"Where what?"
"Where is he? The arsonist. Dale Polk. Where is he?"
"Blueprint's tracking him now. The Jessups have a staging property they use for operations like this. He'll go back there."
"Good." Alma's voice was ice. "I want to be there when you find him."
"Alma—"
"Don't." She cut him off with a gesture sharp enough to make him step back. "Don't tell me to stay here. Don't tell me it's too dangerous. Don't tell me to let the brothers handle it."
"I wasn't going to."
She blinked. "You weren't?"
"No." Tempest stepped forward and finally—finally—touched her.
His hands cupped her face, thumbs wiping the tears from her cheeks.
"That man tried to erase you. Everything you built, everything you are.
He walked into your life's work and set it on fire because Harmon Jessup told him to.
" His voice dropped, hard and fierce. "You've earned the right to watch him pay for it. "
She stared at him. This man who'd been so careful about protecting her, so insistent that she stay safe while the brotherhood handled the violence.
"You're not going to fight me on this?"
"Would it do any good if I did?"
"No."
"Then why waste the breath?" His mouth curved, but there was nothing soft in it.
"You held a door with a shotgun during an armed assault.
You shot a man who tried to hurt your animals.
You're not fragile, Alma. You never were.
" He leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers.
"And right now, the man who burned your clinic needs to see exactly who he pissed off. "
The compound erupted into motion.
Alma didn't know who made the call, but within fifteen minutes, brothers were gearing up. Weapons being checked. Vehicles being loaded. The controlled chaos of men preparing for violence.
Gunny found her first. "Doc. You okay?"
"No." She didn't bother lying. "But I will be."
He nodded, understanding more than she'd said. "We're rolling in ten. Tempest says you're coming."
"I am."
"Good." His scarred face shifted into something that might have been approval. "The bastard who burned your clinic needs to learn what happens when you target club family."
Club family.
The words landed somewhere deep, but Alma didn't have time to process them. Grunt appeared with a vest, held it out to her.
"Wear this."
"I don't—"
"Wear it." His voice left no room for argument. "You're coming with us, you're wearing protection. Non-negotiable."
She took the vest and put it on. It was heavy, uncomfortable, and it made her feel like she was going to war.
Maybe she was.
Tempest appeared at her side, fully armed, his cut zipped over his own vest. His eyes swept over her—assessing, checking, making sure she was ready.
"Carmen?" she asked. "The animals?"
"Blueprint made calls. Carmen got out—some minor burns, smoke inhalation, but she's okay. Emergency services are on scene. The fire department is trying to save what they can." His jaw tightened. "The animals... some of them didn't make it. Traffic on the main road."
Alma closed her eyes. Felt the grief threaten to swallow her again.
"How many?"
"We don't know yet. But Carmen said she saw at least a dozen get picked up by neighbors before the fire trucks arrived. Mrs. Patterson's got three in her living room."
Small mercies. Tiny points of light in a darkness that felt endless.
"Okay." She opened her eyes. "Let's go."
They walked toward the trucks together—Tempest at her side, brothers falling into formation around them. The sun was still shining. The compound was still standing. And thirty miles away, her clinic was dying.
But Dale Polk was about to learn that some things couldn't be burned down.
"Hey." Tempest caught her arm, stopped her just before she climbed into the truck. "You don't have to do anything when we get there. You don't have to watch. You don't have to—"
"Yes, I do." Alma met his eyes. "That man released my animals into traffic.
Puppies, Tempest. Six-week-old puppies who couldn't outrun a car.
He watched them scatter and then he set fire to everything else.
" Her voice went cold, harder than she'd ever heard it.
"I need him to see my face. I need him to know who he tried to destroy.
And I need to watch him understand that he failed. "
Tempest studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Get in the truck."
She climbed into the passenger seat. Tempest took the wheel. Behind them, bikes roared to life and vehicles fell into formation.
The brotherhood was rolling out.
And Alma Ruiz—the vet from Hampton County who'd never asked anyone for help—was riding with them.
Because the man who'd tried to erase her was about to see exactly what happened when you targeted something a Crucible Brotherhood member had claimed as his own.