Chapter Eight
Gone to the Loss
Dutch
“Before we vote, we need to talk a minute about Dutch
goin’ to fuckin’ Nightingale before he brought this
to his brothers,” Arlo declared, interrupting what Dutch was saying in order to
do it.
“There aren’t enough words in the English language to
describe what a massive waste of time that would be,” Shy
replied.
“There are less of them to describe how little I care,”
Chill added.
“Are we even gonna waste time
voting? I mean, this kid is out there looking for his dad’s killer and he might
have a target on his back,” Boz stated.
“My vote is in,” Hop said.
“Same,” High grunted.
“Totally,” Dog said.
“Dutch hasn’t even told us what he wants from us,” Rush
pointed out.
Dog looked to Dutch and asked, “You want us wadin’ in? Sortin’ out this
fucked-up mess for this kid?”
He hadn’t quite gotten to that part, but to put a point on
it in order to get a move on, he answered, “Yeah.”
Dog turned back to Rush. “Again, in.”
“I’m in,” Snap added.
“Me too.” That was Roscoe.
“Obviously.” And that was Jag.
“Dad, you wanna get off your
phone?” Rush suggested to the man sitting at his left.
“Son, I’m texting Slim. Want him to get his hands on the
casefile,” Tack replied.
Slim, also known as Brock Lucas, one of Tack’s best friends,
even if he was a cop.
That meant Tack was in.
This coming from Tack—one of the originals, the
original, who took the Club off the trajectory to hell they were riding and
brought them back from the deep, which meant he’d been in the trenches with the
others all along the way—Dutch dropped his head and looked at his lap.
“Hound?” Rush called.
“Boy, you gotta even look at me?”
Hound asked from his usual place when they sat the table, that being not
sitting, but holding up the back wall with his wide shoulders.
“That means in,” Jagger translated.
“No shit?” Hop sounded entertained.
“Arlo, you over your tantrum?” Rush asked.
“Fuck you and yes,” Arlo answered. “I’m in.”
“Joker, Shy, Chill?” Rush prompted.
“In.” Joke.
“In.” Shy.
“In.” Chill.
“Do I even have to ask you, Pete?” Rush queried.
“Nope. But I’ll say it anyway. In,” Pete replied.
A gavel landed.
Then a number of fists pounded.
When that subsided, Rush asked, “Dutch, you wanna coordinate this or what?”
He looked up.
The room grew still when he did.
And feeling that, he wondered how he could ever think this
was just his.
He took a second and looked into the eyes of every man in
that room.
He lingered on Jag. On Hound. And on Tack, his father’s best
friend.
Then he said, “I’ll tell you what we got so far, and we can
decide how it’s gonna go from there.”
Rush nodded.
Dutch rolled his chair closer to the table and launched in.
He was in the lead an hour later when they all walked
out.
So he was the first to see her.
But he was far from the only one.
And what he saw, sitting at the bar in the common room where
he left her, in front of a laptop, was Georgie swiveling around when she heard
them coming.
But now, clustered around her and a bunch of laptops, were
his ma, Tyra, Elvira and Tabby.
Georgie jumped off her stool, and he stopped dead, as did
every man behind him, when his woman skipped…
Actually skipped…
Through the Chaos Motorcycle Club Compound.
Her face was beaming.
Good that she appeared to be over that scene with her
sister.
But…
Skipping?
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” she chanted on her way, “you
won’t believe what we found.”
She stopped in front of him, slapping both hands on his
chest.
Then she leaned to the side, looked beyond him and called,
“Hey, guys.”
Hey, guys?
He heard some chuckles. A few “Yos.” A, “Hey, darlin’” from
Big Petey. And Arlo asking, “This is Dutch’s new tail? Jesus, is she
an ex-cheerleader like Carrie?” To which High replied, “Who cares, Arlo.”
“Did they vote yes?” Georgie asked him, either oblivious or
wisely deciding to ignore the byplay.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Told you,” she singsonged,
beaming even brighter.
So much, he was blinded.
“Anyway, come and look.” She grabbed his hand and dragged
him toward the bar, all the way babbling. “So, I had my laptop, as you know.
And Tyra came in and asked what I was doing, so I told her, and hers was in the
office at the garage, so she grabbed it. Then your mom showed, and they live
close, as you also know, so she popped back home to get hers. And finally,
Elvira and Tabby showed, and Vira had hers in her car, so she went out and got
it. And I showed them how to Google up a storm, even though Vira knew how to
Google even better than me, and we got a lot. But you gotta
look at some of it.”
She stopped at the stool she’d left and looked up at him.
“Do you want to sit or…?” she asked.
“You sit,” he grunted.
She nodded, slid up on it, but did it being bossy.
“But you gotta look, so get
close.”
He got close all right.
He came up to her back and leaned into it as well as both of
his hands in the bar, trapping her between his arms and putting his jaw to the
side of her hair.
After he did this, all the women gave each other looks.
Georgie didn’t miss a beat.
“So, last night, before Jackson got handsy—”
Dutch growled.
She twisted her neck to look at him. “It wasn’t fun, but
it’s over, honey.”
“We still haven’t talked about that.”
“I know, we’ll debrief, sometime later, but now, listen.”
He felt the men come up behind him as he nodded go to
Georgie.
She looked back to her laptop.
“So, okay, before Jackson proved he was a total dick, he
told me the neighbor’s name, which I think Eddie and Hank kept from us because
I acted like a lunatic and I think they feared for her life.”
This was not an incorrect assumption.
“And?” he prompted.
“So, yeah, we got busy on Google and Facebook and we
found her.”
He was not certain what the excitement was about.
“And this is good because…?”
She turned to look at him again, her eyes dancing. “Because
she has friends.”
“Babe, not sure black-market bad guys have Facebook pages.”
“How about we check,” she suggested. “We’ve compiled
pictures of all her male friends. Then we collected other info about
her Facebook friends so we’d be ready to roll if this dude is one of them. I’ll
click through and you let me know if any of them are the ones you saw Carlyle
with at that bar.”
It was worth a go, so he lifted his chin.
She turned back to her laptop.
He leaned deeper into her and gave the screen his attention.
She clicked.
“No,” he said.
Another click.
“No.”
This went on for fifteen fucking clicks, he was getting over
it when shit had to get done, and she hit her mousepad and the guy showed up on
her screen.
“Fuck, that’s him.”
“Ohmigod,” Georgie breathed.
“Name,” Elvira demanded.
“Gary Bronson,” Georgiana told her.
“He’s one I looked up,” his fucking mother said.
“What do you want? Address? Car he drives? What?”
Before anyone could answer, one of a cluster of cells
sitting on the bar started sounding.
Since the screen said Kraken Calling, he knew it was
Georgiana’s.
She snatched it up, engaged, put it to her ear, and his head
dropped once again that day, this time in disbelief at what he heard and the
no-nonsense tone in which it was said from his cute, sweet, skipping Georgie.
“Talk to me, bro,” Georgie demanded.
Honest to fuck, he had no idea if he wanted to laugh or
shout.
“Can someone tell me what the fuck is happening?” Boz asked.
“Really?” Georgie squealed.
At that, Dutch lifted his head, put his hands on her hips
and whirled her around to face him.
She was back to beaming.
“Where? Now? We’ll be there as soon as we can! Thanks! I owe
you one! Text the address and we’re on our way! See you soon!” She hung up and
cried, “They have Carlyle!”
Dutch put both hands to her thighs, got close to her face,
and sucked in a massive breath.
“Okay, did we just spend an hour sitting around the table
talking about doing what our women were sitting at the bar actually doing?”
High sounded harassed.
“Seems like it,” Hop answered.
“Who’s Kraken?” Tack asked.
Tack didn’t miss much, and he was close, so he didn’t miss
that.
“A street tough Georgie knows,” Dutch answered, staring up
close in Georgie’s eyes.
“The chick that skips knows street toughs?” Arlo queried
low.
“Brother, clearly she’s an all-rounder. You should see the
woman in a robe. I’m gonna dream about that until the
day I die,” Roscoe put in.
Dutch would not be surprised if his body started buzzing
since the noise in his head was so goddamned loud.
“Am I in some kind of biker’s babe trouble?” she asked
quietly.
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” he told her.
“That means I’m in some kind of biker’s babe trouble,” she
surmised.
“I would tell you to be less you, but that would suck,
because I like all that’s you. But I do not need Roscoe dreamin’
of you in your sweet robe.”
“I didn’t ask my sister to come to your place and
throw a tantrum,” she pointed out. “And I didn’t ask Roscoe to be there to
witness it. But since she arrived in full-bore drama, I couldn’t exactly take a
sec and get dressed before I saved you from it.”
Dutch sighed.
“Are we gonna go get Carlyle?” she
demanded.
He straightened from her but did it grabbing her hand and
pulling her off the stool.
He then turned to the men. “Hound, Jag, with me and Georgie.
We’re gonna need a safe house for Carlyle. Who’s on
that?”
“He can stay up the mountain with Red and me,” Tack said.
“Distance means more safety. And we got room. But if he’s as big as you say,
we’ll need two, three guys on hand to lock him down if needed.”
“I’m up,” High said.
“I’m there too,” Shy added.
“And me,” Joker finished it.
“Right. We’re covered,” Tack decreed to Dutch.
“How big is he?” Tyra asked.
“Probably six nine, three hundred pounds,” Dutch told her.
“I better get to the grocery store,” she mumbled.
“I’m in,” Elvira said.
“Me too,” Tabby said.
“And me,” Keely put in.
“I’m on Gary Bronson and I want Snap, Chill and Dog with