Chapter One #3
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 heard, 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.