Chapter Four
Cute
Dutch
“Get twenty feet from this truck, you’re on camera.
Most of the entire perimeter,” Vance said.
It was late at night.
They were in his truck, outside a warehouse, at the back,
both their eyes to that warehouse that wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small, it
wasn’t well-lit, but it also wasn’t dark.
And even from their distance, which was the same as the
rest—not far, but not close—you could see the cameras.
“Except there,” Vance continued. “The back north corner.
There are no doors or windows there to breach or see in, so they left it
unprotected. But you only got about ten feet of leeway, then you’re fucked
because you’re on camera.”
Dutch turned his head to look at Vance Crowe, Juliet’s
husband, and one of the Nightingale men.
Vance was also looking at him.
“They send a man out. Random. To do a check. They’ll clock
you in a vehicle. We’re takin’ a chance right now, bein’
here, and them seein’ us. That happens, they probably
won’t approach. Guys like this, they don’t want mess, distractions or problems.
But the minute you go, they’ll pack up everything in that warehouse, it’ll be
gone within an hour and we’ll be back to square one.”
Dutch nodded. “So park elsewhere, get to that back corner,
hunker down around the side, and watch from there?”
Vance nodded. “You wanna see if
the guy the kid was meeting at Shady’s goes in or out of that building, then
follow him, that’s your only shot. Good news, they don’t use the front door so
if he comes around, that’s where you’ll see him. Bad news, it’ll be seriously
uncomfortable staking out like that, it could take days for the guy to show, if
he ever does, and you run the risk every time of being seen if the guy they
send out decides to do a full perimeter check.”
Dutch didn’t ask if Vance knew if the guy often did a full
perimeter check. This situation was in its infancy. Recon had been swift, and
it was patchy. He was lucky Vance had this much information to relay. He was
lucky Vance and the men at Nightingale Investigations had waded in at all.
But this was about one of Jules’s kids, so maybe it wasn’t
that lucky.
“You’re gonna have to melt,
brother,” Vance advised. “That guy comes out, you have an exit strategy
planned. Which means no watching in the daylight. You can become a shadow, but
even I can’t do that shit when the sun is shining. If they catch you, they
won’t make an approach if you’re sitting a vehicle. You’re close to their
operation, they’ll deal with you fast and no one will ever see you again.”
That caught Dutch’s attention.
“You know who these guys are?”
Vance shook his head. “I know how these guys are.
But you do what you do, and we’ve got Brody looking into who owns that
warehouse, running the plates of vehicles I took down, and the guys will be
gathering word we pick up on the street. When we get something, I’ll relay that
to you.”
Dutch nodded.
“We don’t got a lot of man hours to help you out with this,”
Vance warned. “Your brothers gonna pitch in?”
Dutch had already decided.
He was not taking this to Chaos.
First, it’d have to be discussed at the table and voted on.
And honest to God, after the nightmare his Club had been picking its way
through for decades got sorted, and they finally were free and clear of all the
shit that included drugs and guns and porn and whores, kidnappings and death,
he did not know how that vote would go.
And he didn’t know how he’d feel if the vote didn’t go his
way.
Second, he also didn’t know what he would be asking them to
do and how deep it would get.
They weren’t a highly trained, skilled, experienced
investigation team, like Nightingale. They were bikers. And they could take
care of business, they’d proved that often. But this was not riding close to
the bone where your motivation was keeping yourself breathing, your brothers
the same and your families safe.
But last, and most importantly, this was his.
It was his and Carlyle’s.
And for some reason he was not currently evaluating, he
wanted it to stay that way.
At least for now.
“Don’t know what I’m asking them to do and it’ll need to go
for a vote,” Dutch told Vance. “So, until I know, not right now.”
Vance, who had pulled himself into Dutch’s passenger seat
when Dutch met him there, gave him a chin lift before he looked beyond him,
back toward the warehouse.
And then everything about the man changed.
This made Dutch return his attention to the warehouse.
And at what he saw, he was pretty fucking sure he
experienced his head exploding even if it didn’t actually explode.
Because first, she was there at all.
And second, she could get caught on camera, and then just
get caught.
“The fuck?” he bit out.
“Seems we’re not the only ones interested in this building,”
Vance said.
Yup.
It seemed that way.
It also seemed he told a goddamned bitch of a journalist
about a tragic situation with a kid and she was tired of her beat, so she took
the information he gave her and was looking into the black market in Denver.
He heard the fury in his tone, even as he watched her and
felt his heart start to race, as he said to Vance, “You go, I’ll take care of
her.”
“Take care of her?” Vance asked.
“I know her. She’s a journalist. Not thinking she’d nose
around this, I told her about it.”
“Shit,” Vance muttered.
“Right,” Dutch agreed.
“You need my help with her?” Vance asked.
“I got it.”
“Take care they don’t see you first,” Vance advised. “They
see her before you get her, she can deal. I’ll keep an eye. You get her out of
here, then I’m gone. You catch trouble, I’m in.”
She couldn’t deal, he could tell by the way she was moving
she had no idea what she was into.
“You got it,” Dutch said, thinking fast and moving faster.
He opened his door just as he heard Vance open his.
Then he moved swiftly.
Trying to stay out of camera range, which Georgiana was
wandering close to, he took as direct a route to her as he could.
She was wearing all dark clothing, a knit cap over her hair,
fluffing out the dark curls at the bottom, and she was slinking through the
night, staring up at one of the cameras.
He approached from behind, and she was so bad at this, she
didn’t hear him until it was too late.
He had her, one arm around her stomach, the other hand over
her mouth.
She screamed behind it, arched hard and started to struggle,
so he hissed in her ear, “Quiet! It’s Dutch.”
She stilled, twisted, he semi-let her go, keeping an arm
around her, and his hand lifted so he could clamp down again on her mouth if he
needed to.
And for some fucked-in-the-head reason, she caught his eyes
in the dim light, hers got bright and happy, as did her entire gorgeous face.
She smiled huge and began, loudly, “We had the
same—!”
“Shut it,” he bit. “They’re gonna
see. Or hear. Let’s go.”
Only then did he take his arm from her, but he did it to
grab her hand and drag her ass to his truck.
He practically picked her up and dumped her in before he
jogged around the front bumper, got in himself and started up.
“Dutch, we—”
He turned to her, leaned her way, she reared back at his
actions—the way he made them and probably the look on his face—and he ground
out, “Serious to God, Georgiana, shut the fuck up.”
“You’re angry,” she whispered, looking surprised at this
fact.
But she was wrong.
He was not angry.
He was enraged.
He could not believe anyone would hear Carlyle’s story and
use any part of it to further their own career.
She’d figured it out, like he had.
And if she investigated it, blew it open for her news
website, she’d get off the kids beat for certain.
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ angry,” he replied. “And you best pray I
get a lock on it on the way to my place.”
“Your place?”
“Christ woman, shut up,” he hissed.
With big eyes, she closed her mouth.
He turned back to the wheel, checked his mirrors, slid out
of the spot, and drove the ten minutes to his crib.
He parked at the side, got out, walked to the hood of his
truck, and saw she was out, moving hesitantly toward him.
He gave a fake-gallant sweep of his arm toward the side
door.
She looked at it like a doomed woman looked at the gallows
on her way to the noose.
Then she took in a big breath and marched her sweet ass
toward his door.
She stepped aside so he could unlock it.
After he did, he stepped aside so she could precede him.
She’d stopped in his mudroom and he moved past her, going
into the living room, doing it walking around, turning on lights.
He did this deliberately, taking his time, because he sure
as shit didn’t get a lock on his temper on the drive there.
When he finally turned his attention to her, she was looking
around the room, her mouth hanging open.
“Yeah, bikers read,” he said snidely.
Her eyes snapped to him.
“Dutch—”
“Shut your mouth, I’m talking.”
She shut her mouth, but she did it with her expression
changing.
She didn’t look confused or concerned.
She looked like she was getting angry.
What this fucking woman had to be angry about, he had no
clue.
But he was about to ream her with what was pissing him
off.
“I cannot believe you sat in my goddamned truck—”
he was losing it, he clamped down, and started again, “—with me doing you a
goddamned favor, driving all the way out to fucking DIA to pick your ass up,
and I told you about Carlyle, and you were struggling with your job, your own
shit, when this kid is struggling with his dad getting shot fucking dead,
and you used me sharing that with you to do something for yourself.”
“What?” she asked, back to looking confused.
“Investigating the black market info I gave you to write
something for your website,” he rapped out. “Bet the crime beat is more
interesting than the kids beat. Bet it also has a fuckuva
better career trajectory too. Staff writer writing stories about vaping in
school make squat. Investigative reporters probably make a bucketload more.”