Chapter 20
The Jessup staging property sat three miles outside Beaufort, a rental house on two acres of overgrown land that looked abandoned from the road. It wasn't.
Tempest had the property on his surveillance screens before the convoy even stopped. Four vehicles in the driveway. Movement in the windows. And somewhere inside, Dale Polk was probably celebrating the fire he'd just set.
Not for long.
"Marksman, you've got the treeline on the east side," Tempest said into his comms. "Elevation's good there. You'll have sightlines on every exit."
"Copy." Marksman's voice was flat, focused. The sniper was already moving, rifle case in hand.
"Grunt, Gunny—main entrance. Two men visible in the front room, probably more in the back. Breach hard and fast."
Gunny's response was a grunt that communicated volumes. Grunt didn't respond at all—just checked his weapon and started moving.
Tempest looked at the comms rig in his lap, the screens showing real-time feeds from every angle. This was his job. His place. The support role that kept the door team alive.
Not today.
He secured the rig, checked his own weapon, and climbed out of the truck.
"Tempest." Blueprint's voice came through the comms. "What are you doing?"
"My job."
"Your job is running comms. You're not—"
"My job is protecting what's mine." Tempest moved toward the property, keeping to cover. "And the man in that house just burned my woman's life to the ground. I'm not watching this one from a screen."
Silence on the channel. Then Duke's voice, calm and commanding: "Let him go. He's earned it."
The words landed somewhere deep, but Tempest didn't have time to process them. He was already moving, falling into position behind Grunt and Gunny as they approached the main entrance.
The breach was textbook. Gunny's boot hit the door and it exploded inward, splinters flying. Grunt was through the gap before the echo faded, weapon up, clearing corners with the brutal efficiency of a man who'd done this a thousand times.
Two hostiles in the front room. Neither of them made it to their weapons.
Tempest followed through the breach, moving past the bodies without looking. The house smelled like smoke and chemicals—accelerants, probably. The tools of Polk's trade.
"Back room," Grunt called. "Movement."
"I've got it." Tempest moved down the hallway, weapon raised. Behind him, Gunny was securing the rest of the house, making sure no one was hiding.
The back room was a workshop. Shelves lined with supplies—timers, fuses, containers of accelerant labeled as cleaning products. A desk covered with maps and documents. And standing in the middle of it all, trying to shove papers into a bag, was Dale Polk.
Rangy, patient, with the weathered face of a man who'd spent years working outdoors. He looked up when Tempest entered, and something flickered in his eyes—not fear, exactly. More like resignation.
"You're the one from the compound," Polk said. "The comms guy."
"I'm the one whose woman's clinic you just burned."
Polk's hands stilled on the bag. "That was business. Nothing personal."
"You released puppies into traffic." Tempest's voice was ice. "You watched animals scatter across a parking lot while you set fire to everything a woman spent a decade building. You did it on orders from a man who sits in his estate and never gets his hands dirty."
"Harmon pays well."
"Harmon's going to pay for everything. But you're not going to see it." Tempest raised his weapon. "Any last words for the man who signs your checks?"
Polk moved faster than expected.
The contractor who'd spent years demolishing buildings and setting fires knew how to survive. He grabbed something from the shelf—a can of accelerant—and threw it at Tempest's face while diving for a side door.
Tempest dodged the can but lost his angle. Polk was through the door and running toward the treeline before Tempest could adjust.
"Runner heading east!" Tempest called into his comms. "Marksman—"
"I see him."
Polk made it twenty feet before Marksman's round took him in the leg. He went down hard, screaming, trying to crawl toward the trees.
Tempest reached him in seconds.
"Should have stayed inside." He stood over the wounded man, watching Polk clutch his leg. "At least it would have been quick."
"You don't understand—" Polk gasped. "Harmon will kill you all. He's got connections you can't imagine. Money, power, people in every office that matters—"
"Harmon's got nothing but a family name and a dying legacy." Tempest crouched down, bringing his face close to Polk's. "His grandson is dead. His operations manager is dead. And now his arsonist is going to join them."
"Please—" Polk's voice cracked. "I've got records. Everything Harmon's done for the past thirty years. Fires, threats, people who disappeared. I can give you all of it."
"We'll find your records without your help." Tempest stood. "The woman whose clinic you burned? She never hurt anyone. She spent her whole life helping animals and the people who loved them. And you walked in and destroyed everything she'd built because Harmon Jessup told you to."
"It was just a building—"
"It was her life." Tempest's voice went cold. Hard. "And now yours is over."
He pulled the trigger.
Polk's body jerked once and went still, sprawled on the grass twenty feet from the treeline he'd been trying to reach. The man who made problems disappear had finally become one himself.
Tempest stood over the body for a moment, feeling the weight of what he'd just done. Three kills now. Trent in the safehouse stairwell. Webb Farley during the compound assault. And Dale Polk, the arsonist who'd burned a woman's dreams to the ground.
Five years of guilt, converted into purpose.
"Target eliminated," he said into his comms. "Area is secure."
"Copy." Duke's voice was satisfied. "Good work. Sweep the property and bring back everything you find."
The staging area was a goldmine.
Tempest helped Grunt and Gunny search the workshop while Marksman maintained overwatch. They found demolition supplies, accelerants, timing devices—everything you'd need to burn a building to the ground and make it look like an accident.
But the real prize was the documents.
Polk had kept meticulous records. Files on every property fire he'd set for the Jessup family, going back twenty years. Dates, locations, methods, outcomes. Four other fires across Beaufort County, all ruled accidental, all connected to property acquisitions that had benefited Harmon Jessup.
"This is enough to bury him," Gunny said, flipping through the files. "Even with his connections, this kind of evidence—"
"We're not burying him in a courtroom." Tempest gathered the documents, securing them in a waterproof bag. "We're burying him in the ground."
"Duke's call."
"Duke will agree." Tempest looked around the workshop one last time. "Harmon Jessup has been running this county for three generations. He thought he was untouchable. He's about to learn otherwise."
They torched the staging property before they left. A fitting end—the arsonist's workshop consumed by the same flames he'd used to destroy so many others.
The convoy rolled back toward the compound as the sun dropped toward the horizon. Tempest rode in the lead truck, his comms rig secure, the documents in his lap. Behind him, the brothers were silent—the heavy quiet of men who'd done violence and were processing what it meant.
Three down. One to go.
Harmon Jessup was running out of lieutenants. Running out of options. The old man had sent his grandson, his operations manager, and his arsonist, and the club had destroyed them all.
Now it was time to cut off the head.
Alma was waiting at the compound gate when they arrived.
She stood in the fading light with Marmalade on her shoulder—the orange kitten who'd survived the safehouse escape and had apparently decided that Alma's shoulder was the safest place in any situation. Her face was pale but determined, her eyes searching the convoy until she found Tempest's truck.
He parked and climbed out, and she was there before he could take two steps.
"Is it done?"
"It's done." He pulled her into his arms, careful not to disturb the kitten. "Dale Polk won't burn anything else. Ever."
She pressed her face into his chest, her whole body trembling. Not with fear—with relief. With the release of tension she'd been carrying since the phone call that had shattered her world.
"Good," she said into his shirt. "Good."
Tempest held her, feeling the kitten's purr vibrate against his shoulder, feeling Alma's heartbeat slowly steady against his chest. Behind them, brothers were climbing out of vehicles, securing weapons, heading into the clubhouse.
The mission was complete. The arsonist was dead. And somewhere in Beaufort, Harmon Jessup was learning that his empire was crumbling.
But right now, in this moment, Tempest didn't care about the old man or his dying legacy. He cared about the woman in his arms, the one who'd lost everything and was still standing.
The one who'd chosen him despite what it had cost her.
"Your clinic," he said quietly. "We'll rebuild it. The brothers already started talking about it on the ride back. There's money, resources, people who know construction—"
"Later." She pulled back just enough to look at him. "We'll talk about it later. Right now I just need..." She trailed off, struggling to find the words.
"What do you need?"
"You." The word was simple. Devastating. "I just need you."
He cupped her face in his hands, wiping away tears she probably didn't know she was crying. The kitten on her shoulder made an indignant sound at being jostled but didn't jump down.
"You've got me," he said. "For as long as you want me."
"How about forever?"
"I can work with that."
He kissed her there at the compound gate, with the sunset painting everything gold and the brothers pretending not to watch. The woman who'd lost her clinic but not her spirit. The man who'd finally stopped running from everything he'd left behind.
The image of her standing there—the vet with her patient on her shoulder, waiting for him to come home—had steadied something in him that had been unsteady since he'd walked back through these gates.
For five years, he'd been looking for a frequency worth monitoring.
He'd finally found it.