Chapter Two #2
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 Pena 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 gather 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. Except 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