Chapter Eight #2
me,” Rush declared. “Keely, give us everything you got.”
Rush moved toward his mom.
“As discussed at the table, Pete, Boz, Arlo, you men are on
the neighbor,” Tack reminded them. “We need to know everywhere the woman goes,
get shots of anyone in and out of her house, anyone she meets with, anyone she
even gives eyes to. Yeah?”
“Who’s got her info?” Boz asked.
“Got you, boo,” Elvira said.
When Dutch returned his attention to Georgie, she was giving
him a happy See? look.
He kissed her quick, looked at his dad and brother, jerked
his chin up at them, then pulled his girl out to his truck.
The scene they rolled into at the flophouse address
Kraken gave Georgie was not what they expected.
Mostly because they walked in not to see Banga and Kraken
guarding a probably pissed-as-shit Carlyle.
But instead, they walked in to three guns aimed at them.
Dutch was first in, even if he had to shove Georgie
physically behind him to go first, which meant Georgie was right behind him.
“Christ,” he bit out.
“Heard of knocking?” Luke Stark, Lee Nightingale’s
right-hand man, bit back before he holstered his weapon.
Vance and Roam were both holstering theirs as well.
“Ohmigod, what in heaven’s name?” Georgie cried, coming
around him.
It was a good question, since not only was Carlyle trussed
up on the floor…
So were two men Dutch suspected were Banga and Kraken.
“I don’t know who to let loose first,” she snapped.
“That would be me,” the man Dutch knew by hearing his voice
over speakerphone was Kraken said.
“It would be me,” by process of elimination, he knew it was
Banga who said that.
“This fuckin’ shit is fuckin’ kidnapping,” Carlyle said.
“Do not cut Carlyle free,” Dutch warned, handing Georgie his
knife so she could saw through the zip ties.
Georgiana took the knife, gave him a nod and headed toward
Banga and Kraken.
“Shizlayaya, we did not sign up
for this shizla,” Banga told her. “You didn’t tell us
the Nightingale mofos were on the case. Shufa!”
“They didn’t believe we had this brother for you,” Kraken
shared. “And I can tell you truth, I coulda
lived my whole motherfuckin’ life without the
experience of Luke Goddamned-Fuckin’ Stark subduing me. Have you been tased?”
he asked Georgie.
“No,” she answered.
“I highly recommend avoiding it,” Kraken shared.
“I’m so sorry,” Georgie told them, going for Kraken first.
“You owe us big, Shizlayaya, for
this shizla,” Banga shared.
On that, Dutch entered the conversation.
“She had nothing to do with your takedown, so get that out
of your head.”
“We’re not gonna ask her to open
up a crackhouse with us, cracker, shizzleazza
owt,” Kraken replied.
“Okay…” Jag said slowly. “The fuck these guys talkin’ ’bout?”
“They have their own language,” Georgie shared.
Finishing up with Kraken, who was pulling his big, lanky,
Black frame topped with its massive Afro with a pick comb stuck in it up from
the floor, she was turning to Banga.
“No shit, darlin’? I got that part,” Jag returned.
“Shizla means ‘shit.’ Shizzleazza means ‘chill,’” she educated. “Shufa is the F-word.”
“Your name from them has the word shit in it?” Dutch
growled.
“Also ‘yaya,’ honky,” Banga snapped. Now also free, he was
hauling his short, stocky Black body topped with a high, electric-blue mohawk
Afro from the floor. “Which means hot mama. Put together it means a hot mama
who’s the shit.”
“Well, that makes perfect sense,” Luke Stark drawled.
“I order brownies,” Kraken declared Georgie’s way.
“The big cookies with the cinnamon,” Banga put in.
“Snickerdoodles,” Georgie corrected.
“Shizlayaya, I do not say words as
stupid as the word ‘snickerdoodles,’” Banga retorted.
To that, Hound snorted.
Banga and Kraken’s eyes narrowed on Hound.
Dutch stepped in.
“Okay, men, thank you for what you did and we’re sorry shit
got confused but you’re off the case.”
Dutch tensed when Kraken got close to Georgie and stabbed a
finger in her face. “Brownies.”
He then stared when she threw her arms around his neck, gave
him a hug and promised, “Give me a couple days. I have a new boyfriend and he’s
keeping me busy.” She let go and finished, “But I’ll text you after I make
them.”
“Gotcha, sister, stay shizzleazza,”
Kraken replied.
Then, fuck him, they did a complicated handshake with a
dizzying variety of moves that spanned them from waists to over Georgie’s head
before they finished it.
Dutch glanced at Jag and Hound to see both of them staring
at his woman with huge motherfucking grins on their faces.
Christ.
Banga moved in next, got his hug, handshake and promise of
cookies.
Then Kraken bellied up to Dutch before they took off,
noting, “I would share, you fuck her over, I’ll fuck you up, but then I’d have
Chaos all over my ass, and I ain’t sheerashaka dumb. So hear me, shanakaka,
you fuck her over, know you’re just the stupidest shanakaka
out there. Ya dig?”
Dutch kinda did, he kinda did not.
However, since he had absolutely no intention of fucking
Georgie over, he jerked up his chin.
Banga just stared him down and spat, “Sharashena,”
before he left.
The door closed.
All eyes turned to Georgiana.
“‘Shanakaka’ means ‘asshole.’ The
rest of it, I have no clue. And I bribe them for their help with baked goods
because I have a talent in that area. It used to work with Jackson too, but
that bridge has been irretrievably burned,” she explained.
Dutch already was not real thrilled with this Jackson sitch he knew about, but also didn’t.
That made him less so.
Though, he was intrigued about her talent with baked goods.
“I’d find this farce amusing, if I wasn’t still
tied up on the goddamned floor,” Carlyle stated.
Dutch moved to him where he was still sitting on his ass on
the floor and crouched.
“I gotta share you’re gonna stay that way until we get you safe, unless you
promise you’re gonna be cool.”
“Fuck you, let me go,” Carlyle returned.
“I know what you’re doing, Carlyle, and it doesn’t seem like
it now, but everyone in this room is here to help,” Dutch told him.
“You don’t know dick and I don’t need your help,” Carlyle
retorted.
“He saw you, didn’t he? The guy who shot your dad.”
Carlyle’s eyes told the truth even as the kid himself shut
up.
Georgiana crouched beside him.
“Hi, Carlyle, I’m Georgie.”
“Don’t give a shit who you are,” Carlyle replied.
“I can imagine,” she murmured. “But you know, uh, so we can
get this situation taken care of as fast as possible, we have pictures we want
you to look at so you can let us know if one of them is the guy you saw that
night.”
That caught his attention. “What pictures?”
“From Jessica, your neighbor’s Facebook.”
“Bitch, you think I didn’t look there first?” he sniped.
Okay, the line was far for Dutch that Carlyle couldn’t
cross.
But he’d just leaped over it.
“You don’t know me,” Dutch said low. “And I get you don’t wanna know me. But know this, you do not call my woman a
bitch. Are you feelin’ me right now?”
Carlyle’s eyes shot to Dutch, and he didn’t even look at the
men who had gathered at Dutch’s back at hearing his tone.
The kid he really was, the kid his father raised, came out
and he looked wrecked for a beat before he hid it.
But Dutch zeroed in.
“That’s your father’s son, do not lose what you’ve got left
of him by losing hold on that.”
“You don’t know dick about my father,” Carlyle spat.
“You’re very wrong. A few seconds ago, I was looking him
right in the eye.”
Carlyle’s entire big body shuddered before he closed his
eyes tight and turned his head away.
Dutch knew that feeling.
He’d felt it just that morning.
And his father had been dead for twenty-three years.
“Now, we’re pickin’ up Gary
Bronson, and we’re gonna be talkin’
to him,” Dutch shared, and Carlyle looked back, too young, or too broken, to be
able to hide his shock. “And we’ve got men on Jessica, and we’re gonna be watchin’ every move she
makes. And we know where the warehouse is, and we’re gonna
be on that too. You got more for us, we’ll be all over that. In the meantime,
we got a safe place for you to stay with a roof, a bed, food to eat and good
people who’ll look out for you. And if you’ll let me, I’ll go to your ma and
share you’re good, you’re safe, and I can bring her and your sister to you so
we can prove that to her. But she’ll be safe the way I do it. And then you
leave this to me, to my brothers, to the men who’ve waded into this, because we
got you.”
“I got there before he was down.”
It came out beyond his control.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
“Cut him free,” Georgie whispered urgently.
Carlyle’s eyes were locked to Dutch.
“I saw him take it in the neck.”
Roam was behind his back, working fast.
“Give it to me, man,” Dutch urged.
“I saw it. I saw him take it in the neck.”
Dutch shuffled closer, muttering, not to Carlyle, “Get her
back.”
Georgie disappeared.
“He went down. He’s a big guy like me.”
“Give it to me.”
“Made a big noise when he hit. Bitch screamed. Loud. So
loud. All of that. Seemed louder than the gunshot.”
“I can see that,” Dutch told him when he stopped talking.
“‘Not the kid,’ she said, then shoved the guy out the door,”
Carlyle continued.
At least she did that.
“Dad was down, but his arms were moving, he was looking at
me, motioning me to get out of there. I didn’t do what he told me to do. I went
to him.”
After that, Carlyle jerked suddenly, slammed his large fists
into the floor beside him, then curled instantly into a ball, his hands one
over the other on the back of his head.
“He went down. Never got up. Never got up. Never gonna get up,” he said to his thighs.
“Do I need to call Jules?” Vance asked quietly.
“No,” Dutch answered.
He didn’t touch him. Dutch didn’t move.
Carlyle started rocking.
It didn’t last long.
Carlyle’s hands slid away. They fell to the floor like they
weren’t flesh he could control, but useless appendages made of nothing.
He lifted his head and eyes filled with everything Dutch had
felt all his life, all at once, caught on Dutch’s.
Dutch heard Jagger suck in breath and knew Jagger recognized
it, just like Dutch.
“I gotta find him, for my dad.”
“We’ll find him for you, man,” Dutch promised.
“It’s gotta be me,” Carlyle said.
“You gotta stay safe, because
there is one thing I know in this world above all other, your mom’s gonna need you. Do you understand me?”
Carlyle swallowed hard.
“Do you understand me, Carlyle?” Dutch pushed.
Carlyle just stared at him, gone. Gone to the pain. Gone to
the memories.
Gone to the loss.
“Do you understand me?” Dutch demanded.
He sounded like a little kid when he answered, “Yeah.”
“Will you come with us?” Dutch asked.
Carlyle nodded.
Dutch didn’t waste a second.
He straightened from his crouch and held out his hand.
Carlyle studied it.
And then…
He took it.