Wild Fire: A Chaos Novella

by Kristen Ashley

  “I have a clue,” she told him.

  “Oh yeah?” he retorted. “You get that clue watchin’ Sons of Anarchy?”

  “No, I got that clue when Carolyn told me who she was dating, and I watched Blood, Guts and Brotherhood.”

  Well, hell.

  Blood, Guts and Brotherhood was the documentary—more accurately, the award-winning documentary their now-president Rush’s wife Rebel made about the Club.

  “If you did, then you know what we’re about, so what’s with the attitude?” he asked.

  “The director of that movie, Rebel Allen,” she told him Rebel’s name like he hadn’t sat down to dinner at the woman’s table two nights ago, which he had, “wore a leather jacket that said ‘Property of Rush’ on the back of it to the premiere of that film. And women are not property.”

  “Well, Rush wore his Chaos cut to that, but he has about a half dozen tees he wears all the time that say ‘Property of Rebel’ on the back. You got a problem with that?” he shot back.

  She snapped her mouth shut so hard he heard her teeth clatter.

  “Unh-hunh,” he muttered, turning toward the carousel that had begun to churn. “You don’t know dick.”

  “Knowledge of MC culture is not hard to come by, Mr. Black.”

  Yeah, she knew Jag enough to know his last name.

  And his brother might be a guy who enjoyed a good time, but who fucking didn’t?

  Like Dutch, Jag had earned his patch, served the brothers, ate shit, did the grunt work, pulled his weight, and then some. Jag worked on the builds at the garage with Joker and he worked hard (Dutch didn’t work in the garage, somehow—mostly because he was good with numbers, and people (just not Georgiana Traylor, or Carlyle Stephens)—Dutch had become the de facto manager of the auto supply store attached to Chaos’s custom-build garage, both called Ride).

  Jag was a good son. A good brother, of the blood and the patch. A good guy.

  He wasn’t a loser or a user or a cheater or a dick.

  And so…

  Okay.

  She knew his brother, she knew him.

  He was done with this woman.

  When he looked at her again, he only twisted his neck before he bent it to give her his eyes when he said, “How ’bout we get your bag and get you home, Miss Traylor.”

  “Ms.,” she returned.

  Of course she’d have something like that to say.

  Fortunately, she then nodded.

  Their agreement to ride a stalemate until he could get shot of her lasted about seven minutes.

  That being, until she moved forward, and he wanted to be able to ignore it, but he couldn’t.

  Because when his father died, Hound stepped in and became his dad. And when Hound wasn’t around, Tack was. Or Hop was. Or Dog. Brick. The list went on.

  In other words, he’d been trained well.

  So when he saw the bag she’d clocked, he moved. And when she reached for it, he shouldered her out of the way and nabbed it.

  “You did not just—” she began to hiss.

  He strolled away, pulling her bag behind him, and saying, “Protest to the other libbers who give a shit. Let’s just get out of here.”

  He felt her following him mostly because he couldn’t miss she did it seething.

  Dutch further did not miss the irony—and if he wasn’t so pissed, he’d laugh at it—that her bag was a goddamn carry-on.

  When they made it to his truck (fortunately, the way there was silent), he stowed it in the cab behind her seat.

  He then nearly broke her hand when she made a show of reaching for her door to close it after she’d gotten in, but he was making a show of standing there, holding it, waiting for her to get her round ass in, then he made a further show of throwing it to.

  Luckily, she had quick reflexes and got her hand out of the way.

  They were headed to the parking booths when she declared, “I’m paying for parking.”

  And he would admit, though never to her, that it was plain stubbornness when he replied, “Absolutely not.”

  “Caveman,” she snapped.

  “Battle-axe,” he returned.

  She gasped.

  He hit the button to roll down his window to pay for parking.

  Of course, her being her, she did not let it go and they were barely riding free on Peña Boulevard when she stated, “You could have just swung through arrivals and avoided parking fees altogether.”

  “I was picking up someone for my brother, woman or not, and my momma and daddy, both Chaos through and through, raised me better.”

  He heard her huff.

  But she said not a word.

  Yeah.

  That shut her damned mouth.

  In fact, it shut her mouth so good, she was silent for so long, he got tweaked enough to look her way.

  She had her head turned and was staring out her side window.

  And she was a serious pain in the ass, but the look on her face that he caught even in profile, which wasn’t annoyed, frustrated, obstinate or haughty, but something softer, and definitely something concerning, made him wonder what she’d been doing in DC.

  And if maybe something that happened there, or was the reason why she went there, was not only putting that look on her face, but also putting her in a shit mood.

  These thoughts being why he asked, “You okay?”

  He’d turned back to the road, but he glanced and saw she’d done the same and was looking out the windshield when she answered, “I will be when you drop me off.”

  Right.

  No.

  “We don’t get along,” he pointed out the obvious. “And we don’t have to. This is a one-shot deal, this time we’re spending together. It’s soon gonna be over, so set that aside because I’m asking genuinely. You okay?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Right. Whatever,” he muttered.

  She said nothing for so long, they were nearing the highway when she finally spoke.

  “My trip was unfun. And I’m supposed to compartmentalize, and usually, I can do that. But this time, I’m not finding it easy.”

  “I know you’re Carolyn’s sister. I know you don’t let shit go. I know you got serious issues with the way people deal with their carry-ons. But other than that, I don’t know dick about you, Georgiana, so gotta say, I don’t know what any of that means.”

  “The story I’m on,” she explained. “The story I have to write tonight and turn in so they can post it in the morning. It’s not a fun story. And I should lock it tight where it’s supposed to be, until I let it out to write it, and then lock it back up and move on. I can do that, normally. I’ve actually been on worse stories, and I could do it. This time, for some reason, it’s messing with me.”

  “Story you’re on?”

  “I’m a journalist.”

  That explained the not-letting-go part of her personality.

  “The Post? The News?” he asked. “Westword?”

  “No. Online. National. Or international. The Worldist. We’re redefining news. Or bringing it back to its roots. Like Vice on HBO. Where it’s about news, information. Not graphics and makeup and hairstyles and graying men with bushy mustaches standing up in front of screens with attractive women thirty years younger than them who’ll be cast out the second they reach a certain age, but the guy will be up there until he keels over. News that is not news because it’s shaping a narrative, even if that narrative is hooey crafted carefully to gain ratings. But a narrative isn’t news. Isn’t information. It’s a point of view. And news does not have a point of view.”

  Well, shit.

  He’d heard of The Worldist, and after getting over its relatively stupid name, he’d checked it out. When he did, not only for their video reports, but their written ones, for the last year or so, if he wanted the real story, he went there. To the point he had a subscription.

  “That’s the problem,” she carried on. “My job is not to have a point of view. My job is to gathe
r facts and write them in a manner they’re relayed in a way that people can understand them. The end. But this story, I have a point of view. It happens. I’m human. But this one…”

  She had more to say, she just didn’t say it.

  “What’s this one?” he asked quietly.

  “The student loan crisis.”

  “And?”

  “Well, there’s aid. Not a lot of it, but there’s aid. The thing is, you can’t tap into it if your parents have money.”

  “Yeah, and that makes sense.”

  “Yeah, it does. The thing is, some parents aren’t parents. But the aid agencies regard them as parents. So, say your mom looks after you in all ways, including financially, and you’re barely scraping by. But you want to go to college. She can’t pay for it. You can’t pay for it. You apply for aid you can’t get because your dad’s a high-powered attorney in DC, who makes seven figures, but he’s not given you or your mother a single dollar or even seen your face or asked to do so since he took off when you were two years old. But his salary is calculated, and you have no shot at aid. So you have two choices. Don’t go to college, or eventually start your life weighed down by crippling loans. And it’s alarming how many kids pick door number one.”

  “College isn’t the only choice and it isn’t the only road to a good life,” he told her.

  “You’re correct,” she replied. “But schooling to learn to be a plumber, an electrician, a hair stylist, an HVAC tech, a vet tech, a massage therapist, and the list goes on, isn’t free either.”

  She was right.

  “So, you’re back from DC after meeting with a filthy-rich, deadbeat dad whose kid is deciding not to go to college because he’s a deadbeat,” Dutch surmised.

  “Yeah. And he wasn’t big on the way our chat went, and I assume with his demonstrated prowess in the courtroom he has a great command of the English language, but in communicating that to me, he chose to use words far worse than the ones you use.”

  “You blindside him?” he asked.

  When she answered, the snap in her tone was back.

  “Of course not. I told him the article I was working on and why I wished to speak to him. Prior to me flying out, he had a great many things to say about ‘making your own way in the world,’ when he’s a trust fund baby, his college and law school were paid for by his folks, and his parents also have chosen not to claim the results of his first marriage, a marriage they did not approve of. He thinks she…his daughter, that is…will improve her character by having to work for her future. Not that he has any clue what her character is, considering when he left her, she couldn’t form sentences.”

  Dutch was of a mind, if you had it, and it didn’t make them spoiled brats, you gave it to your kids. Otherwise, what was the point of having kids in the first place, if you didn’t give them the things they needed to have a decent life? If you didn’t give them whatever you had to in order to give them a good life from the start until you dropped dead.

  What his mother had given him and Jag.

  What Hound had given them.

  What Chaos had given them.

  But bottom line, no kid of his would be a kid he’d ever walk away from.

  “He was unprepared for the fact that I was prepared,” she went on. “Benefit of the doubt, it was my age. But the truth of it, it was probably my gender and he underestimated me. So he didn’t think I’d dig and find out that, being a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney and all, he’d managed to come out on top every time the mom took him to court to get some support. He stuck to the line he had no responsibility for a girl he did not know, he did not want, even before his wife got pregnant, something he alleges he told his wife before she conceived against his will, and was happy to allow to be adopted, if his ex would simply move on and stop harassing him. How this made it through in this day and age, I have utterly no clue. Accept he makes a lot of money, he comes from even more, and knows the legal system and those who work in it like the back of his hand. Credit to the woman, she didn’t give up, until the trying nearly bankrupted her and she had no choice but to go it alone.”

  “What a dick,” Dutch muttered.

  “Correct again,” Georgiana agreed. “Needless to say, he wasn’t a big fan of me mentioning all of that in correlation with the life his daughter is leading, which hasn’t been bad, because she has an awesome mom. But it certainly isn’t what it would be if he just paid child support. And matters deteriorated when I questioned him about how he felt about his part in the decisions she’s now facing.”

  “Sucks for the kid,” Dutch noted, not having anything else to say.

  Georgiana had more to say, though.

  One thing was certain, she had a weight to get off her chest.

  In other words, her trip to DC was seriously unfun.

  “The daughter wanted to be a midwife. Certified midwives can earn anywhere from forty-five to one hundred and twenty K a year, depending on their experience and where they live. She’s now downgraded her goal to patient care technician, and even if that’s the most in-demand job in the US, and a necessary one, they make about twenty-five grand. That’s double the single-person-family poverty level, as defined by Federal Poverty Guidelines, but almost half of the lowest salary she’d make if she did what she’s been dreaming of doing. I don’t make much more than that. So I know the tough financial decisions you have to make, earning that much. Decisions you wouldn’t have to make if you brought in twice as much as you do.”

  Dutch still didn’t have anything to say, except what he’d already said.

  This was the way it was.

  And it sucked.

  “So how do I write this article without making the father out to be what he is, a total jackhole?”

  Dutch didn’t quite clamp down on his bark of laughter before he asked, “A jackhole?”

  “What would you call him?” She asked the question, but didn’t let him answer. Instead, she kept talking and doing it fast. “Don’t tell me. I can guess.”

  “I bet you can,” he mumbled, smiling at the busy highway he was navigating. “It’s the truth he’s a jackhole. So tell the truth.”

  “My editor requires objectivity.”

  “Okay. So then objectively, he’s still a jackhole.”

  There was a moment of silence and then she busted out laughing.

  And that just cut it.

  Because the woman had a generous mouth, a generous head of wild, dark, curly hair, a generous body…

  And a generous laugh.

  She also had a generous amount of attitude, he reminded himself. And not a lot of it was good.

  He could see she’d had a shit trip.

  He could not see her taking it out on a stranger who was doing something nice for her.

  “My dad was…not around, maybe that’s it,” she muttered like she was talking to herself.

  Christ, he shouldn’t have asked if she was okay. He didn’t need her to give him reasons to understand why she was behaving like a bitch.

  “But I think it’s that somehow, I got on the kids beat,” she kept at it. “And it’s wearing me down.”

  Even if he knew it was no good for him, Dutch again couldn’t stop himself from asking, “The kids beat?”

  “If it has to do with kids, they assign it to me,” she told him. “The state of CPS. Foster care. Social media shaming. Vaping in schools. Now this. Meeting this young girl with good grades that don’t set the world on fire, but she also has a part-time job to help mom out at home, not hours to kill to do extra credit or go the extra mile. Her mom works a data desk at an insurance company, and she doesn’t do badly, she just doesn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to toss around. She doesn’t even have what it takes to make sure her daughter has the most recent iPhone and the bevy of other status symbols kids find important these days, to the point the girl’s prom dress was rented. And good or bad, that kind of thing matters to a kid.”

  “All of that’s a lot to compartmentalize, Geor
giana,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, it’s my job. I know journalists who’ve been at it far longer than me and they don’t act like harridans, raving about freaking carry-ons because they met a douchebag who was all down to make a kid, and even more down to walk away from her.”

  Yup.

  He shouldn’t have asked if she was okay, because he sure as shit did not need to like this woman.

  His brother was dating her sister, for one.

  And even if there was a reason behind it, she absolutely did not make a good first impression. No man (or woman, undoubtedly) wanted to be someone’s punching bag on a consistent basis when that someone was in a bad mood.

  Then, of course, there was her bullshit about bikers.

  He knew she was looking at him when she asked, “Did I blow your afternoon?”

  “My plans got sidetracked so I was free,” he told her.

  “What were your plans?”

  “Seems we share a theme,” he muttered.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’ve been recruited to try to help reach a kid at King’s Shelter who’s fucking up his life.”

  “King’s Shelter? You?”

  And there it was.

  A reason why he wasn’t going to be able to like this woman.

  “Yeah, bikers do more than get drunk, bang biker bunnies, start bar fights and get arrested,” he said sarcastically.

  “It’s not that—”

  He cut her off.

  “You ever heard of BACA?”

  “Sorry?”

  “BACA. Bikers Against Child Abuse.”

  “Yes, I have. They do good work.”

  “Well, essentially, they’re an MC. An MC that does good work. Not all bikers are Hells Angels and the Bandido Nation. That’s the fuckin’ point of the term ‘one-percenter.’ Ninety-nine percent of bikers are just bikers. One percent are outlaws. Chaos is not a one-percenter.”