Wild Fire: A Chaos Novella

by Kristen Ashley

  She pressed her lips tightly together before she unpressed them to ask, “What? Drugs?”

  “Black market.”

  “Black market what?”

  “Black market everything. Designer gear. Pharmaceuticals. Maple syrup. Freakin’ sperm. Anything and everything.”

  She looked surprised. “Maple syrup?”

  “Yeah. That was my reaction. I looked it up. It’s a thing in Canada. Farmers sell it under the table.”

  “Whoa,” she muttered.

  “This guy is part of a bigger operation,” Dutch told her. “An operation that gets their hands on a kid like that, with a brain like his, he’s hacking for the Russians at a million dollars an hour or worse.”

  He now saw humor in her expression as she said, “You have a very inventive mind.”

  He saw no humor in this situation at all and therefore laid it out.

  “No, my dad’s throat was slit in the parking lot of a pizza joint when he was gettin’ into his truck to bring dinner home to his family. This put my mother in a tailspin it took nearly two decades for her to haul herself out of, which meant the man who loved her who was breathin’, a man she also loved, didn’t have her until it was almost too late for them to make their own family. And I know, along that road, no matter how much support I had, I asked myself the question of what the fuck’s the point? A good man tries to do good, and gets his throat slit. A good man tries to do good, and gets a bullet to the neck and bleeds out on his neighbor’s bedroom floor. So my mind isn’t inventive, Jules. I know that dark place it goes when you think this world is so fucked, the only course you got is to get what you can for yourself and fuck everyone else.”

  “Point taken,” she murmured.

  “Talk to Vance,” he ordered.

  She shook her head. “I had Roam come in, chat with Carlyle, the wall he has up…” She paused, got closer, lowered her voice, and kept going. “I’m not saying I’m giving up on him. I don’t give up on them even if they walk out that door and give up on us. I’m just warning you, Dutch, that sometimes, there’s no help they’ll accept. Sometimes, they’re so set to stay in that dark place, you could run yourself ragged, and there’s no pulling them out.”

  Roam used to be a kid in that shelter.

  Roam was now known off the street as Roman, and he was a member of the badass brotherhood at Nightingale Investigations.

  “It isn’t a Black thing,” he told her, because Roam was also Black.

  “Roam was in this shelter. Roam gets it.”

  “It’s a murdered father thing, Jules.”

  She nodded.

  “I fucked up, making it a Black thing,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed quietly.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  She read his face again and went back on what she’d said earlier. “You could still get in there, Dutch. I mean, he was reading Tom Robbins last week.”

  “Yeah, but now I’m that well-intentioned, clueless, white dude biker so I’m out before I was ever really in,” he returned.

  “I don’t think so. Roam told him about your dad.”

  Dutch clenched his teeth.

  Jules kept talking.

  “Roam told him about your dad, and he picked up that book, Dutch. There are different kinds of brotherhoods, and sadly, you two belong to an unusual one. And Carlyle is not one of those smart kids who’s so topped out in brains, he’s got no room for logic. He’ll put it together that a biker wearing a cut isn’t coming to a shelter and focusing on him because he wants to brag over cocktails that he’s giving back to society. Just give him time.”

  Dutch looked over her head, something he could do, because the woman was not short, but he was six two.

  “Vance dropped that bug in your ear about Carlyle for a reason, Dutch,” she said.

  He looked right at her.

  It was not lost on him they’d played him. It was not lost on him that Vance, who was sober, was hanging at the Chaos Compound while the guys were throwing some back, when he rarely hung at the Compound, and he was talking about one of Jules’s kids for the exact reason he was hanging at the Compound, talking about one of Jules’s kids.

  He was maneuvering Dutch’s ass to be right there in an effort to get shit sorted with one of Jules’s kids.

  Nope, Juliet Crowe never gave up on any of her kids.

  “I’ll figure something out,” he said.

  She smiled at him.

  And taking that smile in, knowing the woman she was, the heart she had, the grit, he had no idea how old she was, he just knew she was older than him by more than a decade.

  But if she was not married to a man who she made clear was her heartbeat, and the mother to their three kids, Dutch would want in there.

  Permanently.

  He nodded, muttered some words of farewell, and moved out.

  His phone rang as he made his way to his truck.

  He pulled it out again, saw it was Jagger, and felt a frisson of disquiet slide up the back of his neck.

  Three calls in less than an hour, that wasn’t about going out and tying one on.

  It could be their mother. Hound. Their little brother, Wilder. Any brother, really, in Chaos, their woman or one of their kids.

  This on his mind, he took the call as he angled his ass into his truck.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Hey, you busy?” Jagger asked in return.

  That wasn’t the lead-in to trouble.

  And regrettably, he was not busy.

  Though Jag could need or want anything, most of that something Dutch wanted no part of, so he didn’t share that news.

  “What’s up?” he repeated.

  “Listen, I’m elbow deep in a build with Joker and unless we bust ass, we’re not gonna make the deadline on this ride. And Carolyn has taken an extra shift because her landlord’s an asshole and raised the rent. Again. So we need someone to go to the airport and pick up her sister. Carolyn thought I could do it. I thought I could do it. But we can’t get this bitch to turn over and we don’t know why, so I can’t do it. Which means I need to ask you to do it. Her flight lands in an hour.”

  Dutch did not like this.

  Carolyn was Jag’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. There was no future to it, and both of them were down with that. They gravitated to each other when one of them was lonely or one of them wanted a good time or something familiar.

  Carolyn lived in an apartment that was outside her reach because Carolyn had champagne tastes and a Diet Coke budget. Though one thing you could say about Carolyn, she worked for what she wanted. Which meant extra shifts as a CNA in a nursing home, a lot of house sitting, dog walking, babysitting and anything else she could do to earn a buck to pay for her trendy pad and her designer shoes.

  Eventually, though, Carolyn would marry white picket fence. That wasn’t Dutch’s judgment. The woman was honest to the point of bluntness. She made no bones she was enjoying some rough trade before she pursued, then settled in with the real catch.

  For some reason, Jag took no offense to this.

  Dutch did.

  He’d been around Carolyn a lot.

  He’d never met the sister, but he’d heard about her, seeing as the sister was not a big fan of Carolyn’s lifestyle and all that entailed and that bugged the shit out of Carolyn, who was a fan of sharing just about anything, including how much of a pain in the ass her big sister was.

  Carolyn could loosen up enough to find her good times.

  But from all reports, the sister had a stick up her ass lodged so high and tight, it’d take surgery and a miracle to extract it.

  In other words, he had zero desire to drive to DIA to pick that woman up.

  “Can’t she Lyft?” Dutch asked.

  “She’s got some issue with Lyft, and Uber, I forget what it is. Reports of driver attacks on women or they’re not paid enough or whatever it is with her, which is always something,” Jag answered.

  Yeah, from what he’d h
eard, it was always something.

  “Right, so she can take a taxi,” Dutch pointed out.

  “It’d cost a mint.”

  “Light rail goes out there, Jag,” Dutch kept at it. “It also comes back.”

  “Dude, if you’ve got nothin’ on, can’t you do your brother a solid?” Jagger demanded.

  This was a good question.

  Shit.

  “Yeah, I can do you a solid.”

  “Thanks,” Jagger replied. “I’ll text her flight details and I’ll get Carolyn to send a picture of her so you know who you’re looking for.”

  “Great.”

  “Seriously, appreciate it, Dutch.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Later, brother.”

  “Later.”

  He disconnected, fired up his truck, and was at a stoplight before he checked his phone after he heard several texts come in.

  The flight details, her name and…

  Fuck.

  A picture, and she couldn’t be any different than her blonde-haired, blue-eyed sister.

  It was a candid, no doubt taken in portrait mode on an iPhone.

  It looked like it was a posed shot done by a top-notch fashion photographer.

  Goofing off, head slightly turned, brown eyes twinkling, wind in her dark, curly hair, sunshine lighting her flawless skin, making a kissy face with full lips.

  Georgiana Traylor was movie star gorgeous.

  “Fantastic,” he muttered, shoved his phone back into his pocket, and headed to DIA.

  Chapter Two

  Carry-Ons

  Dutch

  With what seemed like a thousand other people, Georgiana Traylor was spewed out of the wide opening that was at the top of the escalators from the underground train at DIA.

  Flight details indicated she’d come direct from DC.

  A long flight.

  And she looked bright, rested, and way more gorgeous IRL than in her picture.

  Dutch approached.

  She took him in as he did, walking in a way she did not intend to stop, the expression on her face all he needed to know.

  Beautiful.

  And a bitch.

  One look at his MC cut, she thought she had his number, and she didn’t like it.

  Even though she could read the patch stitched into the leather on the front of his cut that said Chaos, and she had to know his brother was in the same Club. And he knew she knew Jag.

  He also knew, as he watched her opening her mouth to say something, he’d better get there first or the woman was going to have to get over her issues with Lyft.

  “Yo, I’m Dutch. Jagger’s brother. Carolyn and him got tied up, so they asked me to come and get you.”

  She made a show of stopping, blasting him with an unhappy look, then drooping a shoulder to allow a beat-up leather backpack to fall off. She caught the strap in her hand, dug into the pack, pulled out her phone, then made a further show of taking it out of airplane mode and waiting until it binged with her texts.

  “Should turn off airplane mode the instant the wheels touch down like every other loser who can’t breathe without an electronic connection,” she mumbled irritably to her phone then looked at him. “Carolyn shared. Thanks for coming all the way out here to get me.”

  She said that last like she wasn’t thankful even a little bit.

  “Not a problem,” he lied right back.

  Her eyes narrowed like him not meaning what he said was rude, but her doing it when he’d just met her and was doing her a big, freaking favor was a-okay.

  Jesus.

  This was Carolyn’s sister, all right, totally the pain in the ass Carolyn had described her to be.

  “You gotta pick up a bag from baggage claim?” he asked in order to get this show on the road.

  “Yeah,” she answered, her gaze scanning for the screens that shared baggage claim info.

  “You’re on seven.”

  “Right,” she muttered and started motoring.

  He watched her go.

  More accurately, he watched her ass as she went.

  Okay, he’d give friendly a try.

  “Not a carry-on person?” he asked, falling into step beside her.

  She was tall-ish. Maybe five six. Five seven.

  And something the photo didn’t share, she was curvy as fuck.

  Carolyn was tall too, but reed thin, no tits, but even he had to admit she had a great ass.

  Georgiana had it all. Tits. Ass. Thighs. A belly.

  She was Ashley Graham and then some.

  And just as fuckable.

  Fuck him.

  “I like to shampoo my hair, and sadly, I can’t shake my dedication to mascara and foundation. Too many liquids to get through security,” she said to the space in front of her, like she was talking to air, and he didn’t exist. “And I detest all those jerks who cram all their crap in the overheads, making boarding last a million years instead of twenty minutes. They act like getting one over on the airlines and not paying to check a bag is akin to their own personal V-E Day.”

  Right, well, it wasn’t like he didn’t know she was opinionated.

  He definitely knew that.

  And now it was confirmed.

  “And when they shove their stuff in the bins over first class, and they don’t sit in first class, it makes me want to scream,” she ranted on. “I mean, the folks in first class either pay through the nose for those seats or travel so much, they have the miles to upgrade and earn a guaranteed section of overhead bin. It isn’t like the flight attendants won’t find a place for your bag because every other blockhead has taken up all the remaining space. And they’ll use first class if they have it. And a bag checked at the gate does not spontaneously combust when it’s put in the cargo hold. But you didn’t pay for that privilege, and you take it anyway, because you somehow think it’s your due, so how the world revolves around you, I do not know.”

  Okay then.

  He’d given it a shot by asking what he thought was an innocuous question.

  He decided it was quiet from here on out.

  “Needless to say,” she carried on even though he’d given her no indication he wanted to hear more, “I’d upgraded once, long flight, like this one. To New York. I was running late, got to the plane, so I didn’t get to board at the beginning. I had my laptop bag, which isn’t very big, mind you, and my backpack, and I had to put one in the overhead bin, no way I was going to check either. The plane wasn’t fully boarded, but some buffoon in the back had shoved his bag in my bin and the rest of first-class stowage was totally full. The guy sitting next to me was already there, saw it and told me. So I had to shove my laptop bag in a bin halfway up the plane. It sucked. I had to work on that flight, and it was a nuisance walking back there to get my laptop. Jerk.”

  They’d made it to carousel seven, and as they stopped to wait, Dutch kept his trap shut in hopes she’d catch his drift and stop bitching about shit that did not matter.

  He was feeling optimistic about this when she was silent for long beats.

  Unfortunately, this didn’t last.

  “Do you not travel?”

  He looked down at her. “What?”

  She was staring up at him. “Are you not a traveler?”

  “I got somewhere to go, I get there on my bike.”

  She visibly fought a lip curl before mumbling, “Of course.”

  “Though, I’ve been on a plane more than once and I don’t care what other people do with their bags. I check. It’s less hassle. The rest is not my business.”

  What made him share that, he had no idea.

  It was a mistake.

  “It’s literally impossible, not only scientifically, for the world to revolve around seven point seven billion people,” she declared.

  “What?”

  “The world’s population,” she informed him.

  “You do know, you bitchin’ about this shit means you think the world revolves around your opinion about it,” he r
eturned.

  Her eyes got huge.

  It was cute.

  Goddamn it.

  “You got the power to just let it go,” he told her.

  Now she looked like she was going to be sick.

  Somehow, that was cute too.

  Shit.

  “I’m not one to let things go,” she said, and he honest to God thought the last three words were going to make her gag.

  And he had never before felt the sensation, but all at once he wanted to laugh, kiss her, tell her to chill the fuck out and share he was going to go get his truck and bring it around to pick her up, and then walk away from her.

  In that order.

  “Like you cursing,” she went on. “You don’t even know me and you’re using foul language. I could let that go, but that’s not in me.”

  Hang on a second.

  He turned fully to her. “Seriously? You’re gonna give me shit about my language when you don’t know me either, and your language since we met, both the shit that’s been comin’ out of your mouth, and your body language, has been nothin’ good from the start?”

  She didn’t deny either.

  She stated, “I haven’t cursed at you. And you’re still doing it with me.”

  “But you do throw attitude and negativity around with no shame. In my estimation, it’s not the words you say, it’s the way you say them and the meaning behind them that holds the power, good, or in your case, bad.”

  She simply couldn’t deny that.

  But even if she kept her mouth shut, for some reason, he didn’t let it go.

  He asked, “You don’t use cuss words?”

  “Not with someone I don’t know.”

  “You’re not the kind of woman to let things go, I’m not the kind of man to let anyone tell him how he can be.”

  Her eyes dipped down to his cut then back up. “Right.”

  “Like that, Georgiana,” he told her. “Carolyn’s like you and she says it like it is, so it isn’t like I don’t know about you, because she’s shared. But I love my brother and he needed a favor so I’m here when I could be doin’ a lot of other shit. Now you got a tick in your skin about MCs or bikers or whatever, and you can’t let shit go, even when some guy you don’t know is doin’ you a solid when he could be doin’ a lot of other shit that’s far more preferable than listening to you bitch about shit that makes no difference. And just acting like a bitch because you got some shade to throw about how I live my life when you have no clue the man I am or how I live that life.”