"Down!" I pulled Nolan flat, covered his body with mine. Sean pressed against my back, shielding Nolan from the other side, the three of us compressed behind the van's wheel well while the flashbangs strobed and the air cracked and the lot filled with the disorienting pulse of light designed to blind and stun without killing.
Concussion grenades. Not fragmentation. If they'd wanted casualties, they'd have used frag. The distinction registered in my assessment even as my body held Nolan against the concrete and my hand pressed his head down and my pulse hammered in my ears.
This wasn't an assault. This was a message.
The strobing stopped. The world came back wrong—muffled, tilted, my inner ear scrambling to recalibrate. The ringing was a solid wall of sound, high and piercing, drowning out everything beneath it. My vision swam at the edges. The smoke tasted likecopper and burnt chemicals on my tongue, thick enough to coat my teeth.
I blinked. Blinked again. The lot resolved slowly, shapes pulling free from the haze one at a time. Sean was already pushing himself up beside me, one hand braced on the van's fender, his jaw clenched against the vertigo I could see in the way his weight shifted. Blood trickled from his left ear—not much, a thin line, but enough.
Nolan was between us, pressed flat, his face turned sideways against the concrete. His eyes were open. Dazed but tracking. Our bodies had caught the worst of the concussive wave—he'd been cocooned by two hundred and forty combined pounds of muscle and bone—but his pupils were dilated and his breathing came shallow and fast.
"You with me?" I gripped his shoulder.
"Yeah." His voice sounded like it was coming through water. "My ears?—"
"It'll fade. Stay low."
Through the smoke, the sound of engines—not bikes, larger, heavier. Jeeps. Two of them, at least, accelerating hard, the sound dopplering away to the north. Retreating.
I raised my head. Scanned the lot through the haze. The gate was wrecked—the reinforced door torn, the gap now wide enough for a man to walk through, the edges still glowing. The east tower guards were on their feet, weapons up, tracking the sound of the retreating vehicles. The west tower guard was bleeding from a cut above his eye, probably from shrapnel, but standing.
"They're running," Sean’s voice was tight.
"They were always going to run." I stood. Pulled Nolan up. His glasses were askew, his face pale, but his eyes were already moving—not in panic, in calculation. The analyst processing variables while his hands still shook.
Across the lot, Hawk was on his feet, a shotgun in his hands, his face carved from granite. The fury coming off him was physical—a heat I could feel from twenty yards, radiating from his shoulders, his clenched jaw, the way he stood with his boots planted like he was holding down the earth.
I watched his eyes sweep the damage. The gate. The smoke. His men—disoriented but alive, most of them. One prospect on the ground near the east wall, Kai already beside him, hands working. Rosa would be out in minutes. The garage behind the gate—visible through the gap—was burning. Tools, bikes, the bay doors blown inward. The livelihood of the club, the legitimate front that kept the lights on, charred and smoking.
"Anybody hit?" Hawk's voice carried across the lot. Not shouting. He didn't need to shout.
"Prospect's got shrapnel in his leg." Kai, looking up. His hands were red. "Superficial. He'll hold."
"Tower guards?"
"Rattled." Axel, materializing from the smoke like he'd been born in it. "Ears ringing. They'll be fine."
Hawk nodded once. His knuckles were white around the shotgun grip.
"Vega! Marco!" His voice cracked across the lot like a rifle shot. "Replace the tower guards. Full kit, rifles up. Anyone approaches that gate who isn't wearing a Phoenix patch, you put them down." He turned. "Santos, take three prospects to the south wall. I want eyes on every approach road. Move!"
Men moved. Vega jogged toward the east tower, rifle already slung across his back. Marco followed toward the west. Santos gathered prospects with a sharp whistle and pointed south. The disorientation was still there—I could see it in the way men moved, the careful steps of people whose balance hadn't fully returned—but training was winning over vertigo. Boots ongravel. Weapons being charged. The compound transforming from a wounded target into a defended position.
Hawk watched them go. Waited until the perimeter posts were being filled, until the first rifle barrels appeared on the tower platforms. Then, quieter: "Church. Twenty minutes. Everyone who isn't on a post."
The aftermath of an explosion has a specific quality of silence. Not quiet—there were still sounds, the crackle of fire, the settling of debris, men's boots crunching on broken glass. But the silence underneath it, the held breath of a place that had just been violated, was louder than all of it.
I stood beside the wrecked gate and catalogued the damage while Sean and Nolan joined the cluster of men moving toward the church room. The RPG had been fired from approximately sixty yards—the angle of impact and the blast pattern on the reinforced door were consistent with a shoulder-launched weapon at medium range. The flashbangs had been thrown through the gap, not launched—close enough to put a man's arm through the opening. Coordinated. Professional. Two vehicles, maybe three operators. In and out in under ninety seconds.
Iron Wolves didn't have this capability six months ago. The weapons pipeline had changed everything.
Nolan appeared at my shoulder. He'd found his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on. The analytical shield restored. But underneath it, a process was running—I could see it in the set of his jaw, the way his eyes kept moving to the gate and back, the slight furrow between his brows that meant data was assembling into patterns he didn't like.
"Dec."
"Yeah."
"Can I talk to Hawk? Before church?"
