Chapter One #2
He was sitting at a table on the outskirts.
That was Carlyle.
The outsider.
Even at a shelter for runaway kids.
“The wig’s gonna go, wait and
see,” he declared as Dutch made the table.
Dutch turned his head and looked at the TV.
Carlyle was right. One of the women was shrieking because
another one had pulled off her wig.
Dutch sighed and looked back to a boy who was really no
longer a boy.
The kid was six nine if he was an inch. Three hundred pounds
if he was an ounce. Dark skin. Brown eyes hard as marbles.
He was also seventeen, and if something wasn’t done, soon,
he’d be free to do whatever he wanted.
And Dutch did not see this going in the right direction.
He knew why Carlyle was there.
And Dutch could be the only guy in Denver who could get him
out of there.
And he needed to get this kid out of there.
Outside the obvious, Dutch had no idea what was at stake for
the future.
The cure for cancer.
A Nobel Prize.
Or just this kid becoming a billionaire.
All he knew was that whatever was at stake was big.
He tossed the book on the table.
Carlyle didn’t look at it, kept his eyes glued to the TV.
“Your mind’s gonna turn to mush,
you stare at that shit too long,” Dutch warned.
That brought Carlyle’s eyes.
“Yeah?” he asked, the word short and belligerent.
“Yeah,” Dutch confirmed.
Carlyle said nothing.
“I’m adding to the shelter’s library,” Dutch told him,
dipping his head toward the book.
“And why would I give a shit?” Carlyle queried.
“Because you’d do better reading a decent book than watching
zombie television.”
Carlyle’s heavy brows went up. “Zombie television?”
“There’s nothing worthwhile to TV like that. It rots your
mind. Turns you into a zombie.”
Carlyle straightened in his chair, and to a man who had not
spent his formative years under the wing of the entirety of the Chaos MC,
particularly a brother called Hound, Carlyle straightening might make his
sphincter tighten.
But Dutch knew how to handle himself with fists, with a
blade, with a piece, in most any situation. Chaos had seen to that.
More precisely, Hound had seen to that.
So when Carlyle’s attention focused more fully on him, Dutch
didn’t twitch.
“Man, who gives a fuck?” he asked.
“I think me standing here is pretty good indication that I
do,” Dutch replied.
Carlyle looked back to the TV, muttering, “Fuck off.”
“Carlyle—”
That was when he got the treatment he’d given Duke at
Fortnum’s.
But Carlyle style.
“Do you think I’m invisible? Do you fuckin’ think I’m
invisible?” Carlyle spat.
Somehow, even without looking at it, the kid had seen the
cover of the book.
“What I think—” Dutch started.
“I’ve already read this book, motherfucker, and even if I
hadn’t, hear me, I don’t need some white guy to show me the way of my people.”
With that, he shoved the book off the table. It fell to the
floor, and Dutch and Carlyle had the attention of the room even before Carlyle
pushed his chair back so hard, it fell over as he stood and stalked to and out
the front door.
Dutch drew a sharp breath into his nose, put his hands to
his hips, and stared at the closing door thinking, That didn’t go very well.
Then again, every approach he’d made for the last three
months hadn’t gone well.
“Dutch.”
He heard her call his name, but he knew she was there before
he heard it.
He turned, saw her standing about ten feet away, and serious
as shit, Juliet Crowe was the most beautiful woman he’d seen in his whole
goddamned life.
Movie star gorgeous.
Fuck.
He went to the book, bent, picked it up and set it on the
table, headed to the chair and righted it, all before he moved her way.
He’d barely stopped in front of her when she asked, “You all
right?”
“Tryin’ to find a way to get in
there, like we talked about.”
“What was the book?” she asked.
“Invisible Man.”
She nodded, and even though he didn’t sense any disapproval,
Dutch kept talking.
“It’s not lost on me he’s a Black guy, but it’s just a
really good book.”
“He read Skinny Legs and All last week,” she
shared.
Dutch felt something in his chest loosen.
As far as he knew, nothing he’d tried these last months had
gotten in there, and it wasn’t just books. He’d offered Carlyle his time. He’d
offered to share his story. He’d asked the kid if he wanted to work out with
him at his boxing gym.
Nothing got in there.
But he’d brought Skinny Legs and All the week
before.
“Shoulda brought in Bluebeard,”
he muttered.
“Cops came yesterday, looking for him,” she went on.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Any news?” Dutch asked.
She shook her head, letting the concern leak into her eyes.
“I talked to Eddie, the case is cold. They’re closing loops, moving on.”
Shit, shit, shit.
Dutch just stared at her, but he did it meaningfully.
She got closer so he knew she read his meaning.
“Dutch, every time a kid with promise, which is every kid
that walks through those doors, comes here, and there’s a situation, I have to
weigh whether or not I ask my husband and his band of badass brothers to wade
in and sort out that situation. Carlyle is no different. And Vance and the guys
cannot spend all their time sorting out the problems of the kids at King’s.
They all have mortgages to pay, for one. For another, that’s my job.”
“Carlyle is a kid with a one hundred and forty-nine IQ who
has full rides to MIT, Stanford and Columbia whose dad was shot dead while
saving the life of a neighbor who had an intruder who was set on doin’ more than stealin’ from the
woman. Carlyle is this fuckin’ close,” he held a thumb and forefinger in front
of her eyes to demonstrate a point she knew better than him, “to flushing his
entire life down the toilet. So I think Vance, Lee, Luke and company should tap
in on this one and find the person who killed Carlyle’s dad because the cops
obviously cannot.”
Vance—her husband—Lee, Luke and company being part of the
band of badass brothers that made up Nightingale Investigations.
And while the cops had limited resources and rules they had
to abide by, the boys at Nightingale did not.
“You know that I know about your dad, Dutch,” she said
softly.
He dropped his hand and stepped away.
“I know he was targeted because he was fighting the good
fight,” she kept at him.
“We’re not talking about my father,” he bit out.
“Aren’t we?” she asked carefully.
“I had a mountain of support and I’m not a certified
genius,” he shot back.
“Carlyle has the same support, it just takes some kids time
to work the hurt out, and the best we can do is make sure they don’t stray too
far while they’re doing it,” she returned.
“And what if he strays too far?”
Her eyes narrowed.
Her husband might be in a badass brotherhood, but Juliet
Crowe used to be known as The Law. Years ago, she’d gone rogue when one of her
kids overdosed, and she’d set about vigilante-ing the
shit out of the drug dealers of Denver.
She’d been good at it.
She’d refocused her attention to King’s, but the Lore of The
Law had not died, which was most of the reason why she had so many kids there,
they’d had to build onto the shelter.
And her years with the kids, her husband, her own brood of
boys she and Vance had made, and her time on the streets meant she didn’t miss
much.
And she wasn’t missing much now.
“What do you know?” she asked.
“He’s not keeping good company, Jules.”
“And you know this…how?” she pushed.
“I know it because when he clocked me, I saw him slip out
the back of Shady’s when he’s too damn young to be in Shady’s in the first
place. Shady’s is Resurrection’s hang. I asked one of the Resurrection brothers
who Carlyle was talkin’ to and he shared it was a
dude I did not want to know, and he wouldn’t be comin’
back to Shady’s because Resurrection wasn’t down with his presence there. And
he hasn’t been back. And neither has Carlyle.”
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