I looked at him. His voice was steady, but his hands were still. Deliberately still—a controlled stillness that took effort, the opposite of calm. He'd found a thread. Or suspected one.
"Go.” I watched him cross the lot toward Hawk with his shoulders squared and his chin up, the forensic accountant walking through smoke and broken glass to address the president of a motorcycle club, and I felt something shift in my chest. Not fear. Not concern.
Pride.
I didn't hear what he explained to Hawk. They spoke for less than a minute, Nolan talking fast, low, his hand gesturing once toward the clubhouse. Hawk's expression didn't change, but his body did. A subtle shift in weight, a tension in his shoulders that hadn't been there before. He nodded. Once. The nod of a man who'd just received intelligence that changed the shape of the battle.
Nolan walked back toward the church room without looking at me.
The unease in my gut was growing.
Church was standing room only. Every patched member not on perimeter duty, every prospect who could be spared, every associate who'd been on compound when the RPG hit. Twenty-five men in a room built for twenty, the air thick with smoke residue and sweat and the barely contained fury of men whose home had been attacked. Outside, Vega and Marco held the towers with rifles. Santos and three prospects watched the south wall. The compound was armed and awake. The walls seemed to press inward. The overhead light buzzed.
Hawk stood at the head of the table. He looked like what he was; a man at war.
"You all saw what happened." His voice was low. Controlled. A control that cost him. "An RPG through our front gate. Concussion grenades into our lot. Wolves' work, funded by federal weapons that were supposed to be destroyed."
Murmurs. Blade's jaw tightened. Ghost's knee bounced. Axel stood motionless against the far wall, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
"They hit our home." Hawk's hand was flat on the table, pressing down. "They hit our garage. They put a prospect in Rosa's care. They want us angry. They want us stupid."
He paused. Scanned the room. His eyes lingered on faces, reading them.
"And I'll be honest—I am angry." The words came out rough, scraped from somewhere deep. "I'm angry enough to ride out there tonight and burn that compound to the ground."
Murmurs became voices. I heard agreement—low, fierce, the rumble of men ready to fight. A patched member near the door, fists white: "Say the word, Hawk. Tonight." Another, across the table: "They brought military hardware to our front door. We bring it back to theirs."
Hawk raised a hand. Silence.
"That's exactly what they want." His voice hardened. "A bunch of angry bikers charging the front gate. We're not giving them that."
The room settled. Hawk had their attention.
"We hit them back. Hard. The day after tomorrow, at night." He looked at me. "Dec, you and Axel redesign the assault plan. Four-point approach—teams from north, south, east, and west. Snipers on overwatch from the ridge. No single point of entry, no choke points they can defend. We come at them from every direction at once." He scanned the room. "Heavy weapons.Overwhelming force. We take that compound apart piece by piece."
I stared at him.
The day after tomorrow. Four-point assault. Overwhelming force. Everything we'd built—the stealth insertion, the guard rotation gaps, the synchronized evidence collection—scrapped. Replaced by a full-scale military operation against a position where the enemy had forty-eight hours to prepare. Better than a blind charge through the front gate, but still an assault on a fortified compound where they'd be expecting us.
My jaw tightened. I wanted to speak. Every instinct I had was screaming that this was wrong—that any assault on a position where the enemy expected you, no matter how many angles you hit, was a losing proposition. But Hawk was the president, and church was church, and the room was full of angry men who wanted blood, and the moment wasn't mine.
I looked at Sean. His face was carefully blank—the performer's mask, the one he wore when he was thinking too hard to joke. His eyes met mine and I saw the same calculation running behind them. This was bad. This was the wrong call.
Nolan sat beside Sean. Motionless. His face revealed nothing. The glasses caught the overhead light and turned his eyes opaque.
He didn't look worried.
The observation registered and filed itself alongside the conversation I'd watched him have with Hawk ten minutes ago. Something was happening that I wasn't seeing.
"We'll need forty-eight hours to prep," Hawk continued. "Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow we plan. Day after, we ride." He brought his fist down on the table. "Dismissed."
Men filed out. The anger was still there, but directed now—given a target and a timeline. I heard fragments of conversationin the hallway.About time. Should've done this from the start. Hit them so hard they never come back.
I stayed seated. So did Sean. So did Nolan.
So did Hawk, Axel, Tank, Tyler, Blade, and Ghost.
Hawk waited until the last of the departing men cleared the hallway. Then he looked at Nolan.
