Wild Fire: A Chaos Novella Read online

  All right.

  Time to end this.

  “Brother,” Dutch called.

  Jag looked at him. “Am I wrong?” He then looked to Georgie. “Am I wrong, sweetheart? You got family now, the good kind that doesn’t spit on you. You get that? Yeah?”

  “Can this just be done?” Georgie asked in a small voice.

  Yup.

  This needed to be done.

  Dutch gave Jag a look he could not misinterpret.

  In turn, Jagger looked to Carolyn and raised his brows.

  “I think I loved you,” she said.

  “I know I don’t care,” he replied.

  Fucking hell.

  “Jag,” Dutch bit out.

  Jagger nodded, went to the door, opened it and held it that way.

  Carolyn looked to him, to Georgie, her face started collapsing, then she ran out.

  Jagger shut the door after her.

  Georgiana turned in his arms and started burrowing.

  Then her body hitched when she stated crying.

  He held her closer.

  “Mwrr?” Murtagh asked from their feet.

  “No, boy, she’s not okay,” Dutch answered.

  Georgie hiccupped with a sob.

  Murtagh collapsed on his side at Georgie’s ankle.

  “When’d Dutch get a cat?” Roscoe asked.

  “It’s Georgie’s,” Jagger told him.

  “Right,” Roscoe muttered.

  “You guys need food?” Jagger called.

  “Gather the men for a meet,” Dutch ordered. “I want to talk to them about what we can do about Carlyle’s dad.”

  Jagger’s expression opened up huge, this accompanying the grin that spread on his mouth.

  There it was.

  Georgie was right.

  Dutch needed his family.

  And his family needed him.

  “I got her,” Dutch finished.

  “I want a breakfast toaster from Sonic,” Georgie snuffled in his neck.

  Dutch couldn’t stop his smile.

  That was his girl.

  Take a hit.

  Bounce right back.

  “I could eat a toaster,” Roscoe decreed.

  “Three a’ those for us, brothers,” Dutch told Jagger and Roscoe. “And some Cinnasnacks.”

  “I want Cinnasnacks too,” Georgie blubbered.

  “On it,” Jagger said, sounding amused. “And by the way, sweet robe, Georgie.”

  Dutch looked to the ceiling.

  “Shut up, Jagger,” Georgie said to his neck.

  Dutch turned his eyes back to his brother just in time to catch Jag’s usual congenial-asshole grin.

  “Yo, I’m Roscoe,” Roscoe called.

  “Nice t’meet you, Roscoe,” Georgie sniveled into his neck, taking an arm from around him to reach it behind her and wave a hand a Roscoe.

  Now Dutch was finding it hard not to bust a gut laughing.

  “Brother, that ass,” Roscoe declared in the tone you used to say, Niiiiice.

  “Fuck off and get us food, Coe,” Dutch ordered.

  He got a jerk of a chin from Roscoe, another grin from Jagger, and they took off.

  Dutch gave her a minute and then he leaned back a bit and forced her to face him with a hand gentle on her jaw.

  Christ, she was even gorgeous with red eyes and crying face.

  “You gonna be okay?” he asked.

  “That was off-the-hook bad,” she answered.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “Like, I could think of a lot of ways that would go, all of them ranging from bad to baddest of bad, and that was worse than all of them…by far.”

  “Yup,” he said.

  “But maybe it’ll be what she needs to get better,” she suggested.

  He doubted it.

  That was extreme, but addicts usually had to fall a lot farther than that before they sorted their shit.

  “Maybe,” he allowed.

  “And bright side, your biker brother digs my ass.”

  Dutch didn’t consider that a bright side, but for her, he’d roll with it.

  “Yeah.”

  Her gaze moved over his face before she rested her cheekbone on his chest and her weight into his body.

  He gave her more than a minute to do that.

  Then he said, “Babe, I wanna be there for you, but we got a day to tackle. And I think that’ll help you get your mind off shit. So, since you got a thing about mascara and foundation, and I absolutely do not, except I dig what you do with it, you get the shower first.”

  He heard and felt her draw in breath, then her cheek slid on his chest when she nodded.

  She gave him a squeeze.

  He gave her one back and let her go.

  “Come on, Murtagh, time to shower,” she called to the cat, and kept talking as she started walking. “Warning, Dutch, he’s a bathroom cat in all the incarnations of that.”

  Dutch had already discovered this fact.

  “So noted,” he said, moving to the kitchen, and his phone to see if anyone reported in about Carlyle.

  But he stopped when Georgie cried, “There it is! You’ve stolen my cat!”

  He looked to her, then down to the floor where Murtagh was entering the kitchen behind him.

  “He’s a bathroom cat and he knows I’m going there and he’s sticking by you,” Georgie said.

  He looked to her. “Babe, grab a shower.”

  “I can’t believe you stole my cat,” she snapped.

  “Georgie, get in the shower.”

  “This is unacceptable,” she decreed.

  “You can get in the shower or I’ll carry you there and take one with you, which means we’ll be fuckin’ in there when Jagger and Roscoe show, and they won’t knock on the door before they come in my house. So they’ll hear me fuckin’ you because you make noise, gorgeous. And I like it. And I bet the boys will like it too because they’ll have it as fodder to give you shit about until the day you die.”

  That got her.

  Though she glared at him before she whirled and flounced down his hall.

  But when she did, he learned she was right.

  Because, even when Dutch went to the bedroom to rescue his coffee, then came back to the kitchen, Murtagh stuck by him the whole way.

  So he’d stolen her cat.

  He wasn’t too cut up about it.

  And he suspected, neither was she.

  Chapter Eight

  Gone to the Loss

  Dutch

  “Before we vote, we need to talk a minute about Dutch goin’ to fuckin’ Nightingale before he brought this to his brothers,” Arlo declared, interrupting what Dutch was saying in order to do it.

  “There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe what a massive waste of time that would be,” Shy replied.

  “There are less of them to describe how little I care,” Chill added.

  “Are we even gonna waste time voting? I mean, this kid is out there looking for his dad’s killer and he might have a target on his back,” Boz stated.

  “My vote is in,” Hop said.

  “Same,” High grunted.

  “Totally,” Dog said.

  “Dutch hasn’t even told us what he wants from us,” Rush pointed out.

  Dog looked to Dutch and asked, “You want us wadin’ in? Sortin’ out this fucked-up mess for this kid?”

  He hadn’t quite gotten to that part, but to put a point on it in order to get a move on, he answered, “Yeah.”

  Dog turned back to Rush. “Again, in.”

  “I’m in,” Snap added.

  “Me too.” That was Roscoe.

  “Obviously.” And that was Jag.

  “Dad, you wanna get off your phone?” Rush suggested to the man sitting at his left.

  “Son, I’m texting Slim. Want him to get his hands on the casefile,” Tack replied.

  Slim, also known as Brock Lucas, one of Tack’s best friends, even if he was a cop.

  Th
at meant Tack was in.

  This coming from Tack—one of the originals, the original, who took the Club off the trajectory to hell they were riding and brought them back from the deep, which meant he’d been in the trenches with the others all along the way—Dutch dropped his head and looked at his lap.

  “Hound?” Rush called.

  “Boy, you gotta even look at me?” Hound asked from his usual place when they sat the table, that being not sitting, but holding up the back wall with his wide shoulders.

  “That means in,” Jagger translated.

  “No shit?” Hop sounded entertained.

  “Arlo, you over your tantrum?” Rush asked.

  “Fuck you and yes,” Arlo answered. “I’m in.”

  “Joker, Shy, Chill?” Rush prompted.

  “In.” Joke.

  “In.” Shy.

  “In.” Chill.

  “Do I even have to ask you, Pete?” Rush queried.

  “Nope. But I’ll say it anyway. In,” Pete replied.

  A gavel landed.

  Then a number of fists pounded.

  When that subsided, Rush asked, “Dutch, you wanna coordinate this or what?”

  He looked up.

  The room grew still when he did.

  And feeling that, he wondered how he could ever think this was just his.

  He took a second and looked into the eyes of every man in that room.

  He lingered on Jag. On Hound. And on Tack, his father’s best friend.

  Then he said, “I’ll tell you what we got so far, and we can decide how it’s gonna go from there.”

  Rush nodded.

  Dutch rolled his chair closer to the table and launched in.

  * * * *

  He was in the lead an hour later when they all walked out.

  So he was the first to see her.

  But he was far from the only one.

  And what he saw, sitting at the bar in the common room where he left her, in front of a laptop, was Georgie swiveling around when she heard them coming.

  But now, clustered around her and a bunch of laptops, were his ma, Tyra, Elvira and Tabby.

  Georgie jumped off her stool, and he stopped dead, as did every man behind him, when his woman skipped…

  Actually skipped…

  Through the Chaos Motorcycle Club Compound.

  Her face was beaming.

  Good that she appeared to be over that scene with her sister.

  But…

  Skipping?

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” she chanted on her way, “you won’t believe what we found.”

  She stopped in front of him, slapping both hands on his chest.

  Then she leaned to the side, looked beyond him and called, “Hey, guys.”

  Hey, guys?

  He heard some chuckles. A few “Yos.” A, “Hey, darlin’” from Big Petey. And Arlo asking, “This is Dutch’s new tail? Jesus, is she an ex-cheerleader like Carrie?” To which High replied, “Who cares, Arlo.”

  “Did they vote yes?” Georgie asked him, either oblivious or wisely deciding to ignore the byplay.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “Told you,” she singsonged, beaming even brighter.

  So much, he was blinded.

  “Anyway, come and look.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the bar, all the way babbling. “So, I had my laptop, as you know. And Tyra came in and asked what I was doing, so I told her, and hers was in the office at the garage, so she grabbed it. Then your mom showed, and they live close, as you also know, so she popped back home to get hers. And finally, Elvira and Tabby showed, and Vira had hers in her car, so she went out and got it. And I showed them how to Google up a storm, even though Vira knew how to Google even better than me, and we got a lot. But you gotta look at some of it.”

  She stopped at the stool she’d left and looked up at him.

  “Do you want to sit or…?” she asked.

  “You sit,” he grunted.

  She nodded, slid up on it, but did it being bossy.

  “But you gotta look, so get close.”

  He got close all right.

  He came up to her back and leaned into it as well as both of his hands in the bar, trapping her between his arms and putting his jaw to the side of her hair.

  After he did this, all the women gave each other looks.

  Georgie didn’t miss a beat.

  “So, last night, before Jackson got handsy—”

  Dutch growled.

  She twisted her neck to look at him. “It wasn’t fun, but it’s over, honey.”

  “We still haven’t talked about that.”

  “I know, we’ll debrief, sometime later, but now, listen.”

  He felt the men come up behind him as he nodded go to Georgie.

  She looked back to her laptop.

  “So, okay, before Jackson proved he was a total dick, he told me the neighbor’s name, which I think Eddie and Hank kept from us because I acted like a lunatic and I think they feared for her life.”

  This was not an incorrect assumption.

  “And?” he prompted.

  “So, yeah, we got busy on Google and Facebook and we found her.”

  He was not certain what the excitement was about.

  “And this is good because…?”

  She turned to look at him again, her eyes dancing. “Because she has friends.”

  “Babe, not sure black-market bad guys have Facebook pages.”

  “How about we check,” she suggested. “We’ve compiled pictures of all her male friends. Then we collected other info about her Facebook friends so we’d be ready to roll if this dude is one of them. I’ll click through and you let me know if any of them are the ones you saw Carlyle with at that bar.”

  It was worth a go, so he lifted his chin.

  She turned back to her laptop.

  He leaned deeper into her and gave the screen his attention.

  She clicked.

  “No,” he said.

  Another click.

  “No.”

  This went on for fifteen fucking clicks, he was getting over it when shit had to get done, and she hit her mousepad and the guy showed up on her screen.

  “Fuck, that’s him.”

  “Ohmigod,” Georgie breathed.

  “Name,” Elvira demanded.

  “Gary Bronson,” Georgiana told her.

  “He’s one I looked up,” his fucking mother said. “What do you want? Address? Car he drives? What?”

  Before anyone could answer, one of a cluster of cells sitting on the bar started sounding.

  Since the screen said Kraken Calling, he knew it was Georgiana’s.

  She snatched it up, engaged, put it to her ear, and his head dropped once again that day, this time in disbelief at what he heard and the no-nonsense tone in which it was said from his cute, sweet, skipping Georgie.

  “Talk to me, bro,” Georgie demanded.

  Honest to fuck, he had no idea if he wanted to laugh or shout.

  “Can someone tell me what the fuck is happening?” Boz asked.

  “Really?” Georgie squealed.

  At that, Dutch lifted his head, put his hands on her hips and whirled her around to face him.

  She was back to beaming.

  “Where? Now? We’ll be there as soon as we can! Thanks! I owe you one! Text the address and we’re on our way! See you soon!” She hung up and cried, “They have Carlyle!”

  Dutch put both hands to her thighs, got close to her face, and sucked in a massive breath.

  “Okay, did we just spend an hour sitting around the table talking about doing what our women were sitting at the bar actually doing?” High sounded harassed.

  “Seems like it,” Hop answered.

  “Who’s Kraken?” Tack asked.

  Tack didn’t miss much, and he was close, so he didn’t miss that.

  “A street tough Georgie knows,” Dutch answered, staring up close in Georgie’s eyes.

  “The chick that sk
ips knows street toughs?” Arlo queried low.

  “Brother, clearly she’s an all-rounder. You should see the woman in a robe. I’m gonna dream about that until the day I die,” Roscoe put in.

  Dutch would not be surprised if his body started buzzing since the noise in his head was so goddamned loud.

  “Am I in some kind of biker’s babe trouble?” she asked quietly.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that,” he told her.

  “That means I’m in some kind of biker’s babe trouble,” she surmised.

  “I would tell you to be less you, but that would suck, because I like all that’s you. But I do not need Roscoe dreamin’ of you in your sweet robe.”

  “I didn’t ask my sister to come to your place and throw a tantrum,” she pointed out. “And I didn’t ask Roscoe to be there to witness it. But since she arrived in full-bore drama, I couldn’t exactly take a sec and get dressed before I saved you from it.”

  Dutch sighed.

  “Are we gonna go get Carlyle?” she demanded.

  He straightened from her but did it grabbing her hand and pulling her off the stool.

  He then turned to the men. “Hound, Jag, with me and Georgie. We’re gonna need a safe house for Carlyle. Who’s on that?”

  “He can stay up the mountain with Red and me,” Tack said. “Distance means more safety. And we got room. But if he’s as big as you say, we’ll need two, three guys on hand to lock him down if needed.”

  “I’m up,” High said.

  “I’m there too,” Shy added.

  “And me,” Joker finished it.

  “Right. We’re covered,” Tack decreed to Dutch.

  “How big is he?” Tyra asked.

  “Probably six nine, three hundred pounds,” Dutch told her.

  “I better get to the grocery store,” she mumbled.

  “I’m in,” Elvira said.

  “Me too,” Tabby said.

  “And me,” Keely put in.

  “I’m on Gary Bronson and I want Snap, Chill and Dog with me,” Rush declared. “Keely, give us everything you got.”

  Rush moved toward his mom.

  “As discussed at the table, Pete, Boz, Arlo, you men are on the neighbor,” Tack reminded them. “We need to know everywhere the woman goes, get shots of anyone in and out of her house, anyone she meets with, anyone she even gives eyes to. Yeah?”