Season 1, Episode 2 — Part A
"Seeds: How to Aim a Wildfire"
Morning came in two colors: the soft hospital blue that made everything look forgivable, and the harsh shop light at Teller-Morrow that forgave nothing. Cian split his time between them like a man walking the stripe down the middle of a two-lane.
At St. Thomas, Abel slept inside a plastic cathedral while machines hummed lullabies. Jax stood at the glass, jaw set in that new way that meant he was holding his breath across an entire day. Tara briefed, efficient and gentle, and Gemma made promises to God she could cash without His signature. Cian said little. He didn't belong in prayers. He belonged in plans.
At the shop, plans were oxygen. Clay had the crates tucked away and victory boxed in his grin, but Alvarez wasn't the kind of man who let you enjoy a win without an invoice. There'd be a sit-down. Ritual. Threats dressed like compliments.
"Church in twenty," Clay said, rolling a shoulder like it owed him range of motion. "Then the charming part of my day."
"Which part's that?" Tig asked.
"Lying to a liar," Clay said.
Cian leaned on the bench like furniture, listening. His laptop idled on a county portal; his phone ran a quiet crawl through Lodi invoices for bodywork that matched a blue tow with a dent that wouldn't stop giving. Juice hovered, a surplus of caffeine in human form.
"You got that plate tree?" Cian asked.
"Branching nicely." Juice tapped a printout. "Luis R.'s cousin did cash work on a Chevy hauler same week your orchard burned. Same cousin pays dues at a Mayan-friendly bar in Stockton. I got a bartender who hates tips more than snitches."
"Send him love," Cian said. "And a list of dates he didn't see us."
Gemma swept through, sunglasses on indoors. "You boys gonna look like professionals for once?"
"Define professional," Tig said.
"Hair combed, guns hidden, mouths shut," she said, and the room pretended to meet her halfway because that's how you kept the peace.
---
The sit-down had to look like respect even when it wasn't, so they chose a diner with coffee that could take rust off a bumper and a waitress who knew to clear the knives. Alvarez came in casual—jeans, leather, a smile you didn't turn your back on. Two Mayans with him. Clay had Chibs at his left, Jax at his right, and Cian a chair back, the extra shadow you notice after you leave the room.
"Terrible thing," Alvarez said, sliding into the booth. "Fires. Lucky nobody got hurt."
"Lucky," Clay said, bland as a cinderblock.
"Shame about product," Alvarez went on. "Shame about trust. Men start thinking they can take what isn't theirs." He smiled like a man on vacation.
"Men start thinking they can test fences," Clay returned. "Fences bite."
Alvarez's gaze wandered Cian's direction, clocked the baby-faced Teller with the lazy eyes, and filed him wrong on purpose. "You bring your choirboy to threaten me? That's cute."
Cian raised his coffee in a toasting motion. "I sing out of key," he said.
Alvarez ignored him like a man who'd decided whose names mattered. "You want to accuse me, Clay? Let's have the courtesy of a story."
"No story," Jax said, voice flat. "Just a question. Why are your boys repainting a blue tow with a dented fender in Lodi?"
The smile cut. Small, involuntary. Alvarez hadn't heard that part yet. He eased back, playing patience. "Lots of blue tows. Lots of dents."
"Fewer with overspray on the plate," Cian said, setting a glossy still on the table with two fingers. He slid a second across. Overspray pattern at the orchard barn. "I brought pictures because I'm not much of a talker."
The Mayan to Alvarez's right leaned, scowled. Alvarez didn't look down. He watched Clay, weighing: bluff or bite. Clay held the gaze with that heavy, don't-flinch stillness he wore like steel.
"We don't start shit we can't finish," Clay said. "So either your idiots moonlighted or someone wearing your patch rented stupid from Stockton. Either way, we corrected it."
"By burning my orchard?" Alvarez's smile failed again around the edges.
"By teaching amateurs not to use our roads," Jax said.
Silence with knives in it. Then Alvarez laughed—not from the gut; from the throat. "You want me embarrassed. I get it. Fine." He tapped the photos without touching them. "I'll find out which of my friends are making me look sloppy."
"We already did," Cian said pleasantly. "We just prefer the man with the crown to act like he's wearing it."
Chibs coughed into his fist to hide the grin. Tig would have cheered if he were there. Clay didn't twitch, but Cian felt the heat of a look like a hand on his neck later.
Alvarez stood. "Polite," he said, and the word meant not tonight. "But politeness expires. Tell your boys not to loiter near my fences."
"We don't loiter," Clay said. "We visit."
They left it there because ritual had been satisfied. Out in the sunlight, Jax lit a cigarette he didn't finish. Clay rolled his shoulders like he'd dodged one bullet and lined himself up for another.
"You want to stop poking the bear through my ribs?" he said to Cian without turning.
"Hard to resist when the bear keeps napping on our porch," Cian said.
Clay gave him a look, raw father and ruthless president wrestling in the same skull. "Mind your mouth in another man's church."
"I'm agnostic," Cian said. It earned him nothing and cost him less than it should have.
---
Back in Charming, Deputy Chief David Hale arrived with a clipboard and a smirk that had passed all its inspections. He came with a building inspector in a city windbreaker, the kind of little power that liked to be used.
"Routine safety sweep," Hale said. "We like our auto shops not to explode."
"Us too," Gemma said, stepping between the bays and the men like a velvet rope. "You bring a camera? Want to take a picture with the sign? Souvenir for your desk?"
Hale's smile made an effort. "We'll be quick."
Cian drifted behind the inspector like a polite ghost. The man checked tags on compressors, squinted at wiring harnesses, took a tape measure to nothing. Cian's phone buzzed in his pocket three times—the signal he'd set for a county server queue. He'd loaded it an hour earlier with two competing "urgent" work orders in Hale's district: suspicious package at the courthouse (turns out to be a lunch pail) and a traffic light failure at the school crossing (turns out to be a city crew that forgot to file a permit). Dispatch would start calling Hale in two minutes. Cian watched the inspector's pen hover, hesitating between "violation" and "not observed."
The inspector's phone chirped. Then Hale's. Hale tried to let it go twice. The third time, dispatch must've escalated. He backed toward daylight, jaw tight. "We'll finish this later."
Gemma's smile was a sunset. "We'll be here."
As Hale vanished, the inspector exhaled like a man who hated his job less than he hated being caught in the middle. "Your tanks need fresh stickers," he muttered to Cian, low enough not to be heard. "Don't make me come back with him."
"I like you," Cian said, and went to the supply cabinet for the right adhesive ovals he'd forgotten to put up last week on purpose.
Gemma waited until the windbreaker was in his car to turn on Cian. "You doing magic tricks with my permits?"
"Just crowd control," he said.
"You play with cops, you get burned," she said.
"I play with schedules," he said. "Different game."
She stepped closer, scent of cigarettes and hair spray and the perfume of a woman who refused to apologize for taking up space. "Don't get cute with Clay today."
"Wasn't planning to."
"Even if you weren't, you would," she said, and flicked his collar straight with a tenderness that clanged like a warning bell.
---
Jax didn't come back from the hospital for a few hours. When he did, he wore that shellacked calm that fooled nobody who loved him. He went straight to the back room, pulled the storage box page he'd copied and folded, and set it on the chapel table like he was laying down a card he wasn't sure could win the hand.
Bobby, reading upside-down, hummed. "JT always did have a poet's itch."
"Poets die broke," Tig said, wandering in. "And moody."
Chibs took the page in his scarred hands, read twice, slower the second time. "Not wrong, though."
Clay came in last, caught sight of the paper, masked the flinch with a snort. "We doing book club now?"
"Seeds," Jax said. "Dad's talking about what we are growing."
Clay's smile was patient the way a vice is patient. "What we're growing is the only thing keeping your kid in Pampers."
Jax's jaw ticked. "Maybe we can do it without turning the town into a target."
"Town's always a target," Clay said. "Best thing we do is make men think twice before they aim."
Cian could feel the line draw taut between them. He cut it with a different blade. "We got a leak," he said, and silence shifted its weight to listen. "Men knew exactly which racks were loaded, how long we'd be blind, and what response time they had. That's not luck."
"Inside?" Opie asked, voice rough with something that wasn't just smoke.
"Or close enough to smell our laundry," Cian said. He slid a short list across—three names in pencil, not because he was sure, because he wanted them to see he was thinking: a warehouse temp who'd lasted two weeks too long, a city utility worker whose truck kept showing near their fences, and a hang-around who asked more questions than a carb rebuild ever needed.
Clay's eyes flicked over the names and then up to Cian's face, assessing whether the boy was throwing a rock or casting a net. "You vet this with Unser?"
"Unser's busy running daycare for Hale," Cian said. "I'll loop him when I have something to feed him that doesn't bite his hand."
"Start with the hang-around," Chibs said. "Less paperwork if he's guilty."
"And less regret if he's not," Bobby added.
Tig cracked his knuckles. "I like regret. Builds character."
"Talk first," Jax said, and he said it like a man who knew talking might not be enough but wanted the attempt on record. "We make sure this isn't a game Alvarez wants us to burn time on while he moves his next piece."
Clay let the moment breathe and then killed it gently. "Fine. Talk. Then we hit if it smells wrong." His gaze skipped to Cian and stayed. "And you—keep your nose in the wires. You're useful there."
Useful like a tool. Cian nodded like he liked being a wrench.
---
They found the hang-around at a parts store, comparing prices he couldn't afford. Name was Eddie. He had the soft edge of a man who wanted in and didn't know the toll yet. Cian went in alone while Tig and Opie loitered by a stack of oil pallets, friendly gravity with bats in their hands.
"Eddie," Cian said, taking his shoulder with the kind of grip that was two degrees short of aggressive. "Let's chat."
Eddie tried on a laugh. It fit poorly. "Hey, Cian. What's up?"
"You asked about warehouse schedules three times last week," Cian said, steering him toward the alley where the smell of rubber and hot tar made lies slippery. "You also asked who had keys to the camera room. That's a lot of curiosity for a man who thinks carburetors are the one with the belt."
Eddie's eyes did that jittery thing rats' eyes do when they can't find the hole they came out of. "I was just… you know. Interested."
"In what?"
"In… helping."
"Help me now," Cian said, pleasant as a razor bath. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and stared until the man had to fill the silence with something. "Who you talking to?"
Eddie swallowed. "Nobody."
Cian smiled, small. "You're about to be."
Opie's shadow fell across the alley mouth like a door closing. Tig's grin did all the threatening Cian didn't have to. Cian held Eddie's gaze and didn't blink until the man's breath came quick and his hands decided to move before his brain did.
"Alvarez's cousin," Eddie blurted. "Guy at Soria's. Said they were looking to even a score, asked if I knew when you boys were light or heavy. I told him I didn't know. Swear to God."
"See, the problem with swearing to God," Tig said, delighted, "is He's a terrible witness in court."
"Show me your phone," Cian said. Eddie handed it over like he was donating an organ. Cian scrolled, lazy, until he found a half-deleted chain. He read, face blank, and pocketed the phone. "You're done hanging around us."
Eddie's panic jumped. "Come on, man. I was just—"
"Done," Cian repeated, a flat tone that turned the air colder. "Tell your cousin we're not polite twice. And if you ever stand within a mile of our fences again, Tig here will introduce you to a very disappointed raccoon."
"Named Mr. Regret," Tig said solemnly.
Opie stepped in with the bat resting against his shoulder in a way that said mercy had been extended and might not be again. Eddie nodded too fast, too many times, and skittered away toward a future that didn't include a patch or a quiet conscience.
As they walked back to the bikes, Tig elbowed Cian. "You went soft."
"I went efficient," Cian said. "If he's bait, we don't bite the hook."
"Efficient is just soft with better PR," Tig said, and Cian didn't argue because it was funny and because sometimes Tig stumbled into philosophy like a drunk into a couch.
---
By late afternoon, the shop had the hum of a hive that knew where to sting. Hale hadn't returned. Unser had, briefly—he stood in the doorway like a man listening for thunder. Cian gave him the hang-around's name and the Lodi cousin and the orchard paint. Unser nodded, catalogued, and left a warning like a tip on the counter: "ATF asked again for your warehouse cameras. I told them the tapes burned. Don't make me a liar to feds I don't like."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Cian said, thinking of the coffee can labeled BOLTS.
When the day started to redden, Jax reappeared with a hospital band still creasing his wrist. He smelled like antiseptic and baby, which was somehow more dangerous than gasoline. He found Cian by the lift, handed him a folded scrap—the next page he'd copied.
Do not mistake the business for the brotherhood. If the former kills the latter, bury both.
"Dad wrote that?" Cian asked, not because he doubted, because he needed to hear Jax say it.
"He did." Jax watched his face like the page might change him in front of his eyes.
Cian tucked it with the other truth under his shirt, the dog tag cold as a coin over scripture. "Then either we change the business," he said, "or we build more shovels."
Jax exhaled, and for a second the world thinned: two brothers, a child, a crown they hadn't asked to wear. Then Gemma's voice cut the air—a mother's summons wrapped in hospitality. "Dinner before church. Move."
They moved. You always did when Gemma said the word.
Cian paused at the office door, palmed the wall where the hidden drives slept, and told himself he could keep aiming chaos without breaking the bow. Outside, engines coughed awake like animals stretching. Inside, the Reaper on the wall looked like it was listening.
"Seeds: How to Aim a Wildfire"
Dinner at Teller-Morrow was noise pretending to be peace. Gemma ran the kitchen like a short war—casserole as ordinance, coffee as troop morale. Men ate because she told them to. Jax showed late, Tara's hospital smell still in his clothes, and sat where his back could see the room. Cian took the end of the table—lazy posture, eyes busy.
Clay tapped his fork against a glass. "Alvarez had his say. We had ours. Nobody's bleeding yet. Let's keep it that way until we choose otherwise."
"Polite is boring," Tig muttered.
"Try it," Chibs said. "Might extend your life expectancy."
Gemma topped off plates, then leaned into the doorway, eyes doing their private inventory. "Jax, you'll go back after church?"
"Yeah."
She nodded like she'd approved a deployment. "I'll swing by Wendy's."
Tara's name wasn't said. She didn't have to be in the room for Gemma to control it.
Gemma's power play landed soft and mean—the way only Gemma could. She slipped into Wendy's room in daylight, sunglasses off, mouth kind, words sharpened just enough to cut.
"You want to be a mother?" she said, setting flowers down like a blessing. "Then be one. Which means you don't get to be anything else, not for a long time. Not weak. Not selfish. Not high."
Wendy stared at the ceiling. "He would've died."
"And you helped," Gemma said, voice a velvet hammer. "You say Abel's name to anyone with a clipboard before you've got thirty days of clean and a priest's letter, I will erase you. Not legally. Actually."
Wendy's chin tipped, a surrender crowned as defiance. "You don't scare me."
Gemma smiled—maternal, merciless. "I scare everybody, sweetheart. It's a gift."
She left a pamphlet for a rehab she'd already called and promised to pay for, because control worked better when it looked like charity. On her way out, she stopped at the nurses' station and thanked Tara for "all her help," which sounded like blessing and came packaged with warning.
Tara's eyes didn't blink. "I'm here for the baby," she said.
"Good," Gemma replied. "So am I."
They both were telling the truth, and that was what made it dangerous.
Alvarez's "polite" answer arrived the way all real messages do—without knocking. Midafternoon head-turn: a sputtering pickup eased to the curb out front, a kid barely old enough to shave hopped out, and dropped something wrapped in butcher paper at the gate. Then the truck was gone, taillights laughing.
Tig fetched the bundle and set it on Clay's desk like Christmas. Clay peeled back paper. Inside: a dented blue fender, cut down with a torch to the shape of a crow—crudely elegant—overspray still gritting the edges. Taped to the metal: a single .45 round and a white carnation.
"Apology and a promise," Bobby said.
"Embarrassed Alvarez," Juice grinned.
"Embarrassed men tend to overcorrect," Chibs warned.
There was a note under the tape, sharpie block letters:
> I CLEANED MY SIDE. KEEP YOURS CLEAN. —A
Clay's mouth did that thin line he got when a man advertised leverage. "We'll send a thank-you," he said. "Polite back."
"What kind?" Tig asked, hopeful.
"The kind that doesn't end up on Hale's desk," Clay said.
Cian turned the cut-steel crow over in his hands, feeling the heat Alvarez had put into it. It was truce and dare, both. He set it down, palms clean, and logged the weight in his head.
Hale's screws tightened the way bureaucrats like best: with paperwork and witnesses. He showed up with CPS and a social worker who looked tired of being used as a weapon.
"Routine welfare follow-up regarding the infant," Hale said to Jax, badge polished, conscience for rent. "Given the mother's history, we need assurances of a stable home environment."
Jax's jaw worked. "He's in a hospital."
"Which he'll eventually leave."
Gemma inserted herself like a lawyer with teeth. "We have a big, loving family. Stable employment. Health insurance. A lawyer, too."
The social worker flicked eyes between the three of them and then at the garage—lifts, noise, the Reaper stenciled where customers could see it. Hale watched the discomfort like a chef admiring a simmer.
"An infant doesn't belong in a machine shop," Hale said. "Or around violent felons."
"No felons here," Gemma said sweet as arsenic. "Just small business owners."
Cian leaned against a column, bored posture hiding a sprinting brain. Two swipes on his phone and he pushed a flag to CPS's scheduling system—an "audit sync" that would kick their field app offline for ten blissful minutes. The social worker's tablet froze, spun, and asked for a login she didn't have.
"Sorry," she said, weary and real. "We'll need to reschedule."
Hale's smile cracked. He knew he was being gamed and couldn't prove it. "Soon," he said to Gemma. "Very soon."
"We love visitors," Gemma lied.
They left with nothing, which made Hale itch. On his way to the car, he detoured to Opie, who was under a hood trying to keep his life between the lines.
"You're a decent man," Hale said low. "Decent men don't last long in there."
Opie wiped his hands clean because he couldn't wipe the truth. "At least I know what I am in there."
"Your kids don't," Hale said, and that was a punch thrown below the belt on purpose.
Opie's shoulders squared. Cian watched, saw the moment a good man wanted a bad choice, and stepped in without stepping in.
"Chief Hale," Cian called. "You left your conscience on the curb."
Hale looked at him, really looked—the lazy blue eyes that weren't lazy, the math behind them. "One day, Teller," he said. "You'll run out of screens to hide behind."
"Maybe," Cian said. "Till then, enjoy the show."
The "leak" thread kept tugging. Cian followed it where it snagged. He pulled warehouse logs—paper ones, because paper didn't crash—and cross-checked who had keys to what and when. The office had four authorized: Clay, Jax, Bobby, himself. Chibs had a loaner. The main roll-up's lock had been a barrel type he could pick in under thirty seconds. The prying marks on the office door were textbook Halligan—fire tool—and clean. The part that itched wasn't the pry; it was the timing.
He replayed the gray footage, slowed to insult. The first shadow in the bay moved with the confident economy of a man who didn't expect an alarm. Not proof—but feel. He logged gait, counted beats. He mapped it against other angles—parking lot, roofline, the off-time that showed who came and went the week before the fire.
Three days prior, late: Clay had come alone, a quick in-and-out, no bikes moved, no lights on in the bay. Could be nothing—the President checking his kingdom. Could be something—the man setting a routine someone else could watch.
Cian didn't believe in spooky coincidences. He believed in tells.
He waited until late, after the shop thinned and the clubhouse noise turned soft. Clay sat out back, cigarette a small star in the dark. Cian brought him a beer because you don't arrive at a man with questions empty-handed.
Clay took it, nodded at the chair. "Speak."
"Keys," Cian said, easy. "I want to standardize. Audit, swap cylinders, move to a numbered issue so we can track. We've got duplication out there we didn't authorize."
Clay watched him through smoke. "You accusing your brothers?"
"I'm accusing time and laziness," Cian said. "We've been sloppy. Sloppy gets us burned."
Clay leaned back, the old leather creaking. "You think a key opened that door?"
"I think the office pry was theater and the real entry was earlier. Somebody rehearsed the room."
Clay's jaw made that small grind like he was reminding it who was in charge. "You staring at tape until you see ghosts is not a job. Your job is to make sure next time, there's no tape to stare at."
"Copy," Cian said. "Still changing locks."
Clay took a long pull. "Do it. But you come to me before you start narrowing eyes at men with the same patch you wear."
"Always do," Cian said. It was almost true.
Clay's gaze lingered, heavy with all the words neither would use. "And Cian," he added, voice dropping into that father-shaped place Clay never acknowledged in daylight, "whatever you think you know—don't let it make you stupid."
"Wouldn't dream," Cian said lightly. Inside, something bristled. He left before the truth under his tongue learned the way out.
Out front, the cut-steel crow Alvarez had sent leaned against the Reaper wall like a joke that had learned to walk. Cian set it upright, adjusted the taped bullet so it gleamed. I cleaned my side. Keep yours clean. He heard it as truce; Clay heard it as challenge; Jax would hear it as proof that men can choose better. Gemma would make it a weapon.
Night brought the hospital blue back. Jax stood at the glass again, shoulders squared against everything that didn't care about babies. Tara touched his elbow. He let her.
"How's he breathing?" Cian asked, coming up quiet.
"Like he wants to be here," Tara said, soft, professional. It sounded like hope's cousin.
Jax gave Cian a look he didn't give anyone else—one that admitted there were rooms he didn't know how to stand in yet. "Hale brought CPS."
"System glitched," Cian said. "They'll try again."
Jax almost smiled. "You always got a screen."
"Two or three," Cian said. He looked at Abel—wires, fingers the size of paper clips—and then at Jax. "I'm gonna make this town harder to hurt you in."
"Me?" Jax asked, surprised by the specificity.
"You and him," Cian said. "The rest of us are made to take punches."
Tara watched them and understood something no one had said out loud. "You aim chaos," she said to Cian, a diagnosis delivered without judgment.
He grinned, a little crooked. "Sometimes I just ask it nicely."
A nurse passed, checked a monitor, smiled at Jax like life wasn't always a fight. The hallway hummed. Cian's phone buzzed—a message from Juice: LAPD friend says Stahl's name floated near our arson. Clock's ticking.
He typed back: Then we stop being sloppy. Pull cameras near storage and warehouse. Scrub.
Juice: on it.
Cian slid the phone away. "ATF's coming," he told Jax. "Sooner than later."
"Let 'em," Jax said, and it wasn't bravado. It was exhaustion sharpening into intent.
Cian tapped the glass with two fingers like a benediction. "You read more of your dad?"
"Yeah."
"Any good news in there?"
"Depends," Jax said, and something like a smile finally appeared. "You like hard work?"
Cian laughed, quick and quiet. "Absolutely not."
They stood until their legs reminded them they were men, then walked back toward the world that expected them to be wolves.
On the way to the bikes, Cian cut through the storage facility alone. Habit. He glanced at the keypad, saw the log still clean, felt the small thrill of a good lie behaving. He stopped inside Jax's corridor and listened to emptiness. The unit door rattled once in the night air, a metal animal asleep.
When he rolled into Teller-Morrow, Hale's crown vic was parked across the street with the lights off—watching, or resting, or both. Cian coasted past, chin up, nothing to hide on the outside. The lot smelled like old oil and new resolve.
In the office, he tucked the folded JT page with the other, under the dog tag, under the leather, over the heart. He palmed the wall where the hidden drive slept and told it a secret: We're going to keep you until we need you, and if we never do, I'll die happy and a liar.
He switched the scanner volume low. It hissed and muttered and coughed. He could hear tomorrow coming: Alvarez wanting his face back, Hale filing busy paper, Unser exhausted, Stahl's name entering the room like smoke, Gemma turning love into a weapon you didn't survive unless you bowed.
He settled onto the hood of a primer-gray Cutlass, boots crossed, laptop open, the glow painting him a ghost again. Control's a lie. Chaos tells the truth. But truth, he'd learned, could be taught manners.
"Night, Kid Chaos," Juice called from the door.
"Night," Cian said. "Set the alarms."
"Always," Juice said.
Cian smiled into the screen and started drawing a different shape around Charming—one that bent patrol routes, softened cameras, and made bad decisions harder to aim in their direction. Not order. Just… better odds.
He worked until the moth hit the fluorescent and learned nothing, and then he killed the light to give the idiot a chance.