Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

I gnoring the bitter cold, Demo ran out of Paige’s house and up her long driveway. His boots weren’t even laced up, causing him to stumble along the way in the fresh snow. Fuck , he’d meant to shovel her driveway before leaving. Damnit! And based on the phone call he’d just had with Steel, he doubted there would be any free members or prospects to come over and help her.

He was tempted to tell her not to leave her house. At the very least, he knew she and the boys were safe and away from club property.

Headlights nearly blinded him as he saw his Bronco make the curve before the entrance of her driveway a little too fast. Thankfully, Pumpkin was an excellent driver, regardless of the road conditions.

The truck never came to a full stop. As soon as he was within arm’s reach, Demo opened the passenger door and hopped inside. He nearly lost a boot in the process, but luckily didn’t. Pumpkin executed a nail biting U-turn that had Demo grabbing the Oh Shit handle and then gunned the Bronco back towards the clubhouse.

“What the fuck is going on?” Demo demanded.

He put his foot up on the dashboard and started lacing up his boot. It had taken some time with an occupational therapist after the accident that had taken his three fingers to learn how to do certain tasks with only the use of his left thumb and pinky finger. On a bet, he’d once taped the pointer, middle, and ring fingers of several of his club brothers to their palms and then had them complete certain tasks they claimed should have been easy regardless of the number of fingers in use.

They’d all failed. Mind, most of them had also been a bit drunk, but Demo still liked to rub it in their faces that they’d lost the bet.

“Bones got up in the middle of the night to get something from his cage. Found a duffel bag lying between his cage and mine. When he opened it, he found a fucking bomb .”

A fucking bomb. On club property. A cold sweat coated his skin. This was Demo’s area of expertise, but he also hadn’t been near a bomb since one took three of his fingers. “Timer?”

Pumpkin shook his head. “Not that Bones saw. He alerted Steel and Bulldog, then started working on evacuating the clubhouse.”

“The women and kids?” Demo lowered his right boot and lifted his left.

“Back at the trailers with Frankie and the prospects. We weren’t taking any chances there was more than one.”

Demo agreed. “If there’s no timer then it’s remote activated. Does Keys have a signal jammer?” Demo had one in his equipment bag in his clubhouse apartment but couldn’t call Keys to tell him that. Pumpkin and he were nearly to the club property gates.

“I don’t know. I was sent to get you. Steel ordered everyone to turn off their cell phones after he called you and told the ol’ ladies not to take theirs.”

Well, that was something at least. Though Demo wished Steel hadn’t called him himself and had Pumpkin a safe distance away while on the road. But Steel calling Demo did get him ready for pickup faster. He knew better than most that every second mattered when dealing with an explosive device.

“Can you tell me anything about the device?”

Pumpkin shook his head. “I threw SJ into Angel’s arms and bolted to get you.”

Demo caught the wavering in Pumpkin’s usually steady voice and realized his friend was afraid. Pumpkin had always been a loner. Other than his mom, he didn’t have family. There was no one Pumpkin had ever had to look after…until SJ. Demo could only imagine the fear his friend had felt when he’d been woken up to be told there was a bomb outside the clubhouse where he and his son slept. If Paige and the boys had been there… Christ.

They turned the corner and flew past the open gate to the club property. Demo saw Starbucks in the guardhouse and knew his brother was there to close and lock the gate once Pumpkin and Demo were through.

The drive down to the clubhouse was around three hundred feet. The former distillery had been popular enough to warrant the large parking lot area outside their main building before sales had started to decline. Demo had looked over the distillery’s books before the club had purchased the property, though not as carefully as he would have if the club had been planning on continuing in the distillery business. It had been more to appease his own curiosity than anything.

Partway up the drive, two of the club’s SUVs were placed nose-to-nose in a barricade formation. The headlights from his Bronco illuminated Steel, Bulldog, Lucky, Keys, Ghost, and Ranger. A look in his rearview showed Starbucks running down the drive after them. The bright lights surrounding the gate showed the shadow of the security arm blocking off entry to the club property.

Pumpkin slammed on the brakes. Demo leapt out of the passenger door, grabbing his jacket and cut. He donned both of them as he approached.

“Pumpkin said there’s no timer. Tell me you have a jammer,” he said to Keys. He only gave a chin lift of greeting to the others. There was no time for niceties.

“I do, but the range isn’t great. I also turned off the power source to the router.” He turned a tablet around towards Demo. It showed a couple of quickly shot pictures of an open duffel bag. Demo could make out at least four wires of different colors, what looked like a white plastic bucket, and plastic explosive of some sort. C4 wasn’t the only clay-like plastique on the market, but it was the one most widely known.

Unfortunately, the pictures on Keys’ tablet did not get him the details he needed. He was going to have to get closer.

He handed the tablet back to Keys. “I don’t suppose any of you grabbed my equipment bag from my room while you were fleeing for your lives?”

Pumpkin snorted. Steel did not look amused.

“No,” Ghost answered. Demo saw the ginger’s lips twitch at his dry humor. “Grumpy’s on his way with his tools.”

Now that Bulldog, Bear, Lucky, and Angel had built homes on club property, Grumpy, Jumper, and Pirate were the only ones who lived off property. Grumpy had a house outside of town while Jumper and Pirate shared a two-bedroom apartment with Jasmine in town. Demo had no idea if Jumper and Jazz had any plans for a house in their postnuptial future.

“He won’t get here in time,” Demo told them all. “Just because you don’t see a timer, doesn’t mean one isn’t there. Only Hollywood and amateurs put timers on the top or in plain sight. Statistically, they hide them so you don’t see it coming.”

Demo looked at the SUVs placed between them and the bomb. The men might not be demolition specialists like Demo, but they knew enough from their various military experiences to know to place anything large and sturdy between themselves and the blast zone. Without knowing the range of the bomb or the impact, there was no way for Demo to know if the SUVs would accomplish that task.

“I need pliers at the very least.” Demo reached into the inside of his jacket pocket. He kept a pocket knife there, but the worst time to learn it had fallen out would be when he was staring down at an active bomb.

Ranger opened the trunk of one of the SUVs and brought back a pair of needle nose pliers with bright yellow grips.

“Do we have any idea who—” Pumpkin started but Demo cut him off.

“Who put it there and why are later issues. Right now, we need to focus on disarming that bomb or detonating it somewhere safe.”

“You want to move it?” Keys’ eyes grew comically wide.

Demo shook his head. “I need to examine it first.”

“I’ll go with you,” Pumpkin said.

“No,” Steel snapped. “I will.”

“None of you are going with me and we don’t have time to argue,” Demo interjected. “I do not need amateurs in my blast zone. Stay here and hunker down. I’ll notify you once I know something.”

“You have no protective gear—” Lucky started, but Demo ignored him. He was very aware he was heading towards a bomb with no protection.

Demo tucked the pliers into his jeans pocket and started down the snow covered lane. Every step felt like he had cement in his boots. His heart was pounding in his head. It had been nearly nine years since he’d last faced off with a bomb, but his training took over like it was only yesterday. The objective was to identify and disarm.

He needed to block out everything else. His club brothers, his father, his club nieces and nephews, his woman and her adorable sons… He pushed it all to the back of his mind. Laser focused on the duffel bag in front of him, Demo continued forward.

The last bomb had taken three of his fingers. He would not allow this one to take anything from him—especially his life.

The bomb itself was crude. After checking for tripwires, Demo used his pocket knife to cut away the duffel bag to give him an unobstructed view of the bomb. Red, blue, green, and white wires twisted around the explosive material in an intricate braid. The grayish plastic explosive was molded to a white bucket with a sealed lid, blocking Demo from seeing if the wires continued inside the bucket. Since he didn’t see a power source outside the bucket, Demo could only assume they did.

Kneeling down in the snow covered driveway, Demo used Bones’ cage to help protect him from the winter winds. The bright security lights outside the clubhouse blocked out the darkness of the predawn morning.

Demo wore no gloves. They would only impede the use of his fingers. He needed to feel as much as he needed to see.

With a gentle slide of his pointer finger, Demo checked the rim under the lid for tripwires. Though his heart was beating fast, his hand was steady. The rim seemed clean, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something inside that would trigger when he lifted the lid.

Fuck, he wished he had his equipment bag. Hell, right now he would give his remaining left digits to have the portable x-ray machine his old unit used to use. It was more out of habit than anything for him to even have an equipment bag. Demo wasn’t afraid to admit that it was a bit of a crutch and let him sleep better at night knowing he had it.

He never expected to actually need it.

Or for the first night in years that he slept away from the clubhouse to be the night he would need it and wasn’t sleeping next to it.

Demo shook off those thoughts. They did not help him. He would not get anywhere if he kept going over what if and if only thoughts in his head.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Demo turned his head to yell at Steel for disobeying him—and would probably die in the process of getting those words out—only to freeze when he saw who was standing over him.

Scar knelt down in the snow next to Demo. He handed out the black folded carrying bag that held all of Demo’s tools.

Demo shook off his bewilderment that Scar was here and that Scar had gone into the clubhouse, not knowing what was going on with the bomb, to risk getting Demo’s equipment bag for him. Demo took the equipment bag. With a quick pull on the strap, the folded canvas unraveled on the snow by Demo’s right knee. He’d specifically gotten this bag to carry his tools and equipment in so he wasn’t wasting time fiddling with a zipper.

“I’m not even going to ask where you came from or what you’re doing here,” Demo said dryly.

A quick glance at his former club brother showed that Scar had started to gain the weight back he’d lost when he’d first left the club. Nearly a year had gone by since Scar had gone rogue and slaughtered most of the offending members of the Heaven Haven Community, the cult that had held Abby captive for sixteen years. Bulldog had called for blood and Steel had stressed caution. They didn’t have enough information for the full-scale attack Bulldog wanted. Per Bulldog, Scar knew that Bulldog was going to go with or without Steel’s approval. Rather than have Bulldog risk his life, Scar had gone in his stead.

Demo still didn’t know how Bulldog knew that. Maybe it was a guess, maybe it was fact. Bulldog was the only one in the club who knew Scar’s past. Hell, Demo was pretty sure Bulldog was the only one who knew Scar’s legal name and had ever heard him speak. Given their history together, Demo could only assume Scar had served in the Army, but no one knew for certain. Bulldog had always said that was Scar’s story to tell…which, obviously, the silent man was not telling.

Bulldog still insisted that Scar could talk and chose not to.

After nearly six months of no contact, Steel, Jumper, Bulldog, and Ghost had run into Scar at a rival MC’s clubhouse. Or, rather, Scar had randomly shown up exactly when they needed him to and covered their backs while they made their escape. Since then, Scar had been ‘around’, but he hadn’t been reinstated into the MC or been to any of their meetings, club runs, or events. No one had seen him over the holidays, though he’d left every club kid a gift. Lucky also said the present Harper had left Scar under their Christmas tree had been gone Christmas morning.

Demo did not know how he would feel if he had a home and knew that Scar just spontaneously went in and out of it as he pleased. Per Scotty, Scar was a magician who could magically appear and disappear anywhere.

“Thanks, man,” Demo said sincerely. “Now get out of here. You don’t need to be risking your life too.”

Scar stayed exactly where he was.

Not having the time to argue with him, Demo pulled out a small drill. It looked like a screwdriver but for the carbon steel hole saw bit at the end. Carefully, he placed his left hand on the lid to keep the bucket steady without applying pressure. With his right, he drilled a thirteen millimeter hole into the side of the bucket just under the lid.

His former commander would rip him a new asshole for drilling blind into an IED but Demo had little choice. He needed to see inside.

“If you’re staying, you’re going to be useful. Take this.” Demo held out the drill. Scar took it, careful not to touch Demo’s skin.

Demo pulled out a borescope camera. He secured the screen to the inside of his left forearm with the attached Velcro straps. Carefully, he pressed the tip of the camera to the hole he’d created—and frowned.

Other than what looked like two batteries taped together with electrical tape, there was nothing inside the container. No screws, nails, shrapnel… Nothing to cause additional damage outside of the blast itself.

Not wanting to waste any more time looking at the device through the camera, Demo quickly turned it upwards to look at the underside of the lid. It was clear. No wires or pressure plates.

Demo withdrew the camera. “Something’s not right,” he told his former club brother. “This is a bomb to scare, not to create mayhem.” With where it was by Bones’ cage, it could have been placed there to destroy the vehicle. But Demo didn’t think so. The duffel hadn’t been under the cage.

Demo was still not convinced there wasn’t a timer. If it was remote activated, how was the bomber to know when Bones had entered his cage. It was on the passenger side. Maybe it was meant for Pumpkin’s cage on the other side?

Demo disconnected the scope from the screen attached to his arm. He didn’t want to waste time playing with the Velcro again. He handed the scope to Scar next. “I’m opening the lid. Last chance to step back.”

Scar stayed where he was.

The lid popped open as soon as Demo lifted the edge slightly. It wasn’t a secure seal. What the hell was going on? The bomb was complex in its design but not in materials. He half-wondered if the explosive clay was even real plastique. Why wasn’t the lid boobytrapped? Or even made to look like it? A simple hidden wire would have done the trick and easily created a time delay in opening the container.

Demo looked for thin wires as he lifted the lid barely an inch up. Grabbing a penlight with a push button, he shined the beam at various angles to ensure he hadn’t missed something. There was nothing.

Straightening, Demo removed the lid fully. He placed it on the snow next to his left knee. What the hell?

A glance up at Scar showed the other man was just as perplexed as Demo was. Inside, just as the camera had shown, were two battery packs, maybe six inches long each, taped together in two places with black electrical tape. Small holes were drilled into the bottom of the bucket, much like Demo had just done, to feed various wires through to the batteries.

It reminded Demo of a spiderweb.

Any IED needed five basic components: a trigger, a power supply, an explosive material, a charge, and a containing unit. The rest was just showmanship.

This bomb had everything but a trigger. There was no timer, no remote switch, not even a manual detonation. If the wires were attached to the batteries, why hadn’t the bomb gone off? What was containing the conduction?

Why hadn’t it gone off already?

Demo stripped the coating from a wire and pulled out his multimeter. It came back with nothing. There was no voltage between the batteries and the wires, yet the wires were clearly attached to the batteries. Even old batteries could hold enough of a charge to spark an ignition. The batteries would have to be completely and utterly dead to not have gone off the moment the bomb maker touched the wires to the batteries.

Scar put the scope and drill down, bending closer to examine the device.

“You see it too?” Demo asked him, wanting to ensure he wasn’t so out of practice that he was missing something.

Scar’s eyebrows scrunched in a way that told Demo he was just as confused by the device as Demo was.

“What the fuck is going on?” He was not surprised when he got no answer. “Just to be safe, I want to disconnect these wires. Can you start pulling off as much clay as you can without touching the wires?”

Scar gave a nod. He pulled a knife out and used the blade to scrape away the excess plastic explosive on the outside of the bucket. Taking a wire cutter out of his bag, Demo started to clip the wires. One of the first lessons he’d learned in basics was that “a wire was a wire was a wire”. It meant that just because the rubber coating on the outside of a wire meant something specific to each country, it did not mean the wire underneath changed or had different functions.

It wasn’t like in the movies when the hero automatically knew to “cut the yellow wire!” two seconds before the timer went off. Even electricians knew better than to trust the color coding system because amateurs did not always follow the National Electrical Code. Cutting a random wire senselessly was reckless and extremely dangerous.

But these were all dead wires. There was no electricity flowing through any of them. Still, Demo was careful and took nothing for granted. It could all be a trick.

Finally, he severed the last one. After checking for a pressure plate and finding none, Demo lifted the two batteries out of the bucket and away from the explosives.

His knees and lower pants were soaked through from the snow. He hadn’t even noticed, concentrating solely on the bomb.

Demo called out, “All clear!” to the others at the SUVs.

Though the bomb appeared to have been a dud, Demo’s shoulders sagged in relief. That could have ended very differently. He turned around to thank Scar for his assistance, only to find the other man was gone.

The collective feel inside the clubhouse was anger mixed with confusion.

Pumpkin clasped Demo on the shoulder—thankfully his right—and laughed, “Good to see you didn’t lose any more fingers!”

Now that the adrenaline was leaving Demo’s system, many things became apparent. His left shoulder was throbbing relentlessly, he was freezing cold, and he needed to take a piss. Once the clubhouse and all of the homes had been swept to ensure there were no other devices, the patched members all entered the clubhouse. Most of them were still in pajamas of some sort. Demo hadn’t noticed before, but Keys was wearing pajama bottoms with penguins wielding lightsabers on them. Most of the others were in sweatpants and hastily donned boots with their jackets.

As soon as the others noticed Keys’ pants, they started to razz him about them.

“We leave the women and children where they are for now,” Bulldog informed everyone in a loud voice. It immediately halted all the jokes and taunting at Keys.

“Jumper and Grumpy are on their way down the drive,” Ghost told the SAA. “Jumper did not want to bring Jazz with him nor did he want to leave her alone so Pirate stayed behind.”

As an officer, Jumper’s presence was required. Pirate could be filled in on everything later.

Demo understood Jumper’s reluctance to leave Jasmine alone. They lived off property. Then again, until this morning, Demo had believed the club’s property was the safest place. If the bomb hadn’t been a dud?

He shuddered at the thought—and then flinched as his shoulder protested.

“Contact Carlos,” Steel told Bulldog. “We don’t know what this is yet, but it might not be isolated.” He looked between Keys and Demo. “Is the jammer off?”

Keys nodded. He had two tablets and his laptop set up in front of him on the front bar. “I am also running a trace for any external signals.”

“No point,” Demo told him. “There was no trigger. Even if someone had ‘pressed the red button’,” he said with air quotes using his right hand only, “nothing would have happened. They either forgot to add it or had no intention of adding it.”

“What would that do?” Lucky demanded. “Why build a bomb but not add a trigger?”

Demo shrugged. “First time in my experience but any idiot has access to Google nowadays. Just be grateful the batteries had no charge left in them. At least, that’s what I’m assuming the issue is.”

Which Demo still found extremely odd. Most batteries had a reserve, which was how devices recognized being at low battery level. A controlled discharge was the best way to ensure draining the entire battery, like leaving a cellphone’s flashlight on. Who was dumb enough to let the batteries they intended to use for a bomb be drained first?

Not satisfied with that train of thought, Demo walked over to where he’d placed the taped batteries on the bar. With his pocketknife, he removed the tape that held them together. He expected to find that the wires weren’t even touching the terminals, but they were .

“Son of a bitch,” he let out a nervous laugh. Others came over to take a look, but Demo spoke to Steel. “This bomber is either the luckiest or stupidest person I’ve ever not met. He used rubber glue to secure the wires to the terminals. Otherwise, he likely would have blown himself up. I’d bet my last dollar these batteries are fully charged. It’s only the rubber that’s keeping the connection from forming.”

“Rubber glue?” Ranger questioned. He had his arms crossed over his broad chest. The edges of his Army Ranger tattoo peaked out from the black muscle shirt he was wearing. “Who the hell uses rubber glue?”

“Construction workers do,” Cage said at the exact same time that Keys yelled out, “Son of a bitch!”

Everyone turned to Keys. He typed for another couple of seconds on his laptop and then turned the two tablets around to face the room. “Yelizaveta’s husband came to pick her up yesterday evening. Guess what wasn’t there when he came in and what was there when he pulled out.”

“The duffel?” someone unhelpfully supplied as they all watched the security footage of a beat-up old pickup truck, the club’s new housekeeper, Yelizaveta, and her son, Carter. Carter was one of Harper’s students at the high school. He was high-functioning autistic and had been hanging out in the clubhouse after school while Yelizaveta finished working in the afternoons.

As the pickup pulled out of the parking spot, the duffel could be seen on the driver’s side door of Pumpkin’s cage. A few minutes later, Bones pulled into the same spot. With the duffel on the other side of the cage from him, Bones did not see the duffel before walking into the clubhouse. The video then sped forward through the dark of the night until Keys slowed it down in time to see Bones walking out to his cage in nothing but sweats and sneakers. Man wasn’t even wearing a shirt in the freezing cold weather. As soon as Bones saw the duffel, he ducked out of sight to examine it. Then they saw him running back inside the clubhouse.

Everyone would have evacuated out of the back doors.

Something occurred to Demo then. They had two prisoners in the clubhouse. Nathan Moore, the child predator who had abducted and raped Bree when she was only twelve years old and held her for over two years, was below in the cellar. Angel owed the man a lot of pain for what he’d put Bree through. The other prisoner was a more unique situation. Veronica Banks was Aaron’s biological mother and Cage’s one-time high school lover. She was extremely religious and had arranged to have Aaron abducted to ‘save his soul’ after he’d come out as gay. Bree and Ollie had been with Aaron and been taken too, though that admittedly had not been her intention. Despite her religious zeal, Aaron had pleaded her case and begged the club to spare her life. Steel’s rather inventive alternative to execution was to lock her in an apartment in the clubhouse. She was allowed to leave at any time, but if she did, she would then forfeit her life. An added bonus to the woman’s confinement was that her only source of entertainment was the gay porn playing nonstop on the secured television in her room.

Demo doubted Steel or Bulldog would have given the prisoners’ safety a second thought during the evacuation. As Star unzipped his jacket, his cat poked its head out from its confinement. At least, the cat hadn’t been left behind.

“Billy’s an asshole,” Cage snorted, “but you guys expect me to believe he built a bomb and left it here? Why? What’s the cause? We employ his wife. His son hangs out here too.”

“You work with him, right?” Bulldog asked Cage.

Cage nodded. “Yeah. Works for a plumbing company we contract with.”

“I met him a few months ago when I was dropping Bree and Aaron off to spend the afternoon with Cage at the construction yard,” Angel added. “Guy’s got a total case of SDS going on.”

“SDS?” Demo didn’t know what that was either, but it was Steel who asked.

“Small Dick Syndrome,” Angel explained with a sly smile.

Demo shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t suffer from that, personally, but he also wasn’t keen to look around and see if any of the other men in the room looked wary because they had SDS.

Cage rolled his eyes at his woman. “Like I said, the guy’s a total asshole. But he also isn’t smart enough to put two and two together.”

“You saw the footage,” Keys argued. “The duffel wasn’t there before he pulled in and it was there when he left.”

Steel looked to Bones. “You didn’t see it when you pulled into the parking spot?”

Bones shifted his weight self-consciously. “No. I was…a bit distracted.”

Bear’s eyes narrowed as he picked up on what the other man wasn’t saying faster than the rest of them were. “Your legs?”

Bones had only been a patched member for a little over a year. He’d survived a parachute accident that had broken most of the bones in his legs, resulting in him receiving a medical discharge from the Army. Though his legs were healed, he had several rods, bolts, and plates holding his legs together. He still went to therapy, but winters were hard for him. The cold weather made his bones ache and, at times, it hurt him to even walk.

Shamefaced, Bones nodded. “I shouldn’t have been driving yesterday. It was stupid. Cage usually offers me a ride to work, but I had therapy so I declined. Afterwards, though, I…” He pointed to the tablets. “You saw me. I barely even made it inside. Only reason I went back out this morning was because I left my phone outside and didn’t realize it until I got up to take a piss a little after five.”

Demo glanced down at his watch. Somehow it was only six-thirty. Paige hopefully went back to sleep. He regretted not still being there. Helping her get the boys ready and then driving her to work. Hell, maybe he should suggest working at her reception desk to help her with patients and organizing between his own work.

Steel walked right up to Bones and slapped the patched member upside the head. “The only reason I am not doing more to you is because your stupidity alerted us to the danger far sooner than was clearly meant to. No doubt, that duffel was placed out there with the intent to get buried by the snow.” Leaning in so the two men were nose-to-nose, Steel practically snarled, “How many fucking times do I have to tell you that you are not a burden? If you need help, you fucking call! That’s what we’re here for. Do I have to take away your rockers and demote you back to prospect to get that through your thick skull?”

Bones paled. “No, sir.”

Steel nodded once, taking a step back. “Then this better be the last fucking time I hear about you not calling for help. In fact,” Steel turned to Bulldog. “You have two new recruits coming soon?”

Bulldog nodded once. “Sara and Will are getting their patches at the end of the month. Viktor and Darrin should be arriving around that same time.”

“Good.” Steel turned back to Bones. “Pick one. He’s going to be your bitch for the foreseeable future. He will drive you everywhere and you will even have to be his backpack on club runs.”

Bones’ eyes widened as his face flushed.

“That’s right, tough guy. You just lost driving privileges until I say otherwise.” Steel turned his back on Bones. “Until the new prospects arrive, Will, Mitch, or Sara will drive you around. If you’re at work,” Steel nodded his chin to Cage, “I expect you to help him out.”

“Of course,” Cage said easily. From the I-told-you-so expression on Cage’s face, he’d had this conversation with Bones himself. Likely not so publicly.

Steel looked to Demo. “What can you tell us about the bomb maker?”

“He’s crude, brilliant, and somehow a complete idiot,” Demo told him. “The intricacies of the wire braiding were extensive. That took time and effort.” Picking up the bucket that was sitting on the bar, Demo pointed to the plastique used. “Do you know where civilians find this stuff?”

“Specifically, no, but I know that explosives are common on the Black Market.”

Demo shook his head. “This stuff isn’t. It’s homemade.” He picked up a piece of the clay-like material and handed it to Steel. “This is known as a ‘poor man’s C4’. It’s less powerful than Semtex or C4, but if you have a large enough batch, it’ll definitely get the job done. Putting the bomb under a vehicle filled with gasoline certainly helps your cause.”

Cage snorted. “Billy can’t even pull his pants all the way up after taking a shit. You expect me to believe he can whip up a batch of C4 in his kitchen?”

“It would need to be in a chem lab,” Demo corrected him dryly. “And I am not saying whether he did or he didn’t. I am saying that ,” he pointed to the plastique in Steel’s hand, “is not real C4.”

Steel rolled the putty around in his hand, deep in thought. “Keys? Anything to add?”

“Other than Billy’s internet searches since right around the time Yelizaveta started working for us have to do with bomb making?” Keys asked him with a measure of sarcasm. “No, nothing else to add.”

Steel’s nostrils flared. He rounded on Bulldog and Ghost. “Wait until Yelizaveta leaves with Carter for school this morning and then bring me Billy.” To everyone else, he said, “The rest of you! Be alert, be mindful, but go about your lives like normal. Don’t leave any of the women and children alone until we get some answers.”

As the others started to disperse, Steel clasped Demo on his right shoulder. “Good job, brother. We couldn’t see much from where we stood with the cages blocking our view of you, but it took ten years off my life to let you walk away like that.”

Demo knew it took a lot for Steel to admit that. “Gotta say. Never thought I’d be facing off with a bomb again. Not after last time. There’s a reason I got my accounting degree when I was discharged. Numbers don’t blow up in your face.”

“You seemed to handle it just fine.”

Demo nodded. “It was nerve-wracking, I’ll admit. Had a hard time concentrating at first. My mind kept thinking of Paige and the boys. My training told me to push it back but it wasn’t as easy as I remember it being.” After a moment, he added, “Having Scar there helped. That guy is sturdy under pressure. I swear, he never even blinked.”

More than one patched member stopped and faced Demo. Shock and confusion covered their faces.

Demo looked to Steel. “What?”

“We didn’t see Scar. Not even with the binoculars,” Bulldog answered. He stepped forward. “You’re telling me Scar was here?”

Demo nodded. “Gave me my equipment bag and then stayed to help. Why?”

Bulldog and Steel exchanged a look. Even Lucky, who was further away than the others with Bear, had a puzzled look on his face.

“Last we heard,” Steel told Demo, “Scar and Ivy were going after a drug shipment in Texas. We haven’t seen either of them in weeks and assumed they were still down there.”

Demo blinked. “Well, I didn’t see Ivy but I can guarantee you Scar is back.”

Bulldog cursed. “He swore to me he’d stop doing that! I told him he can come and go as he pleases but he needs to check in with me! If only to let us know he’s still alive.”

“Well,” Demo shrugged offhandedly, “the next time he comes to help assist me defuse a bomb, I will remind him of that. Until then, I really need to piss and take a shower.”

He wanted to get back to Paige’s house and shovel her driveway before she tried to take the boys out in this weather. They also needed to finish their talk.