Page 43 of Property of the Bikers

Greer says, from the far end of the table, “What about something more direct? We know where he operates. We know where he lives.”

The room hears that and sits with it.

I look at Greer.

“No,” I say.

One word. I don’t argue it, and I don’t explain it, and I don’t offer Greer the courtesy of a reason because the reason is not something I’m going to debate in this room or any other. I’ve made that particular refusal before in a different context with different stakes, and it cost me something I’ve never gotten back, and I made it anyway, and I’d make it again.

There are methods that create civilian exposure, and there are methods that don’t, and I won’t authorize the former regardless of the target or the justification.

Cade looks at Greer. “We heard Reeve.”

Greer looks at the table. The room moves on.

I drive back to the compound at half past seven, with the photographs on the passenger seat, the burn pattern mapped in my head, and the thing I haven’t said in church sitting behind my sternum, where I keep the things that require more thought before they become words.

The fire was round four.

Round four is Viktor shifting from clean administrative pressure to something that leaves physical evidence and physical damage. He made that shift because the administrative pressure didn’t move us. He’s escalating the method because the previous method didn’t work.

The problem with that pattern is where it points.

Escalation from financial pressure to property destruction has a next step, and that next step is not another building. A man who has exhausted property damage as a lever and still hasn’t produced the result he needs will move to the thing that property damage was always pointing toward, which is people.

Not Mira. He needs Mira intact, or he needed that until recently, and I’m no longer fully certain that’s still true. But the men in this club. The women associated with it. The people on the edges of the compound aren’t protected by the same infrastructure that protects the inner circle.

I pull through the gate, park, and sit in the truck for a moment.

I need to talk to Cade about this before the counterstrike executes. The counterstrike is right and necessary, and it will hurt Viktor in ways he’ll have to divert resources to manage. But a man who is already escalating his methods will read this as confirmation that his escalation is working, and he’ll escalate further.

We need to be ready for what comes after the strike, not just the counterstrike itself.

I get out of the truck.

Mira is on the porch of the main house. She’s standing with her arms crossed and her jacket on, and she’s looking at the compound entrance with an expression I’ve seen her wear before, the one where she’s running an assessment she doesn’t want to be running. She saw me come through the gate, and she’s looking at my face and reading it, the way she reads everything.

She knows something happened.

She doesn’t know what yet. She will within the hour, when Maya or Jax tells her, or when she asks me directly and I give her the accurate information she deserves to have.

I walk toward the main house, and she watches me come, and she doesn’t ask the question yet, just looks, and I stop at the bottom of the porch steps and look up at her.

“Auto shop,” I say.

She processes that. Looks at me. “Fire?”

“Yes.”

One second of silence. The assessment is running behind her eyes.

“Viktor,” she says. Not a question.

“Yes.”

She looks at the compound entrance again, at the gate and the road beyond it, and whatever she’s seeing in her head. Her arms tighten across her chest slightly, not from cold, and then she breathes out slowly and looks back at me. “How bad?”

“Total loss on the building and equipment,” I say. “No casualties.”