Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(13)

She trailed off.

“No?” he asked.

“What’s their market?”

“Pharmaceuticals. Sperm. Maple syrup. Designer shit.”

“Okay, designer stuff, I can see. Kids want that. But Dutch, who is a seventeen-year-old runaway going to deal sperm and maple syrup to? He hardly has those connections and there is no way anyone who wants that kind of thing wants to see a seventeen-year-old front man. And maybe they need all hands on deck, they have so much product to move, but that’s thin. Especially considering they’ve got their fingers in so many pots, there’s way too much at stake to take on a recruit who’s so young, and green, what he can move would not outweigh the dangers of him being a weak link that could lead to it all falling apart.”

He could see she was a good journalist.

He could also see a hella smart kid who was witness to whoever walked into his neighbor’s house before his dad died, now out of that house, out of school, lots of time on his hands, spending that time picking at threads until he found one that led him somewhere.

Dutch’s dad died when he was five.

But straight up, if he’d been twenty-five, or seventeen, and the cops, or the Chaos brothers, did not take care of business…

He’d do it.

“Dutch?” she called.

“What?” he answered.

“You’re thinking about something.”

“It’s nothing,” he lied.

She didn’t say anything for a few beats before she asked, “Now…uh, are you okay?”

He was not.

But this might lead him to being okay.

At least about Carlyle being something closer to it.

“All good,” he said.

“Since we’re on Speer, maybe I should give you my address,” she noted.

“That’d be smart,” he joked.

She gave it to him, and he drove her there, both of them quiet.

Dutch was reflecting.

Georgiana was not.

He could actually feel her watching him and trying to dig into his head.

When he got to the address, he saw she lived in a high-rise condo complex. An ugly one that was probably put up in the '70s or '80s, and it would take at least another thirty, maybe forty years to make it retro cool.

Still, it was a hip location, even if the units probably sucked.

He pulled into the loading area in front of the building and stopped.

He also got out, even though she was out, standing on the sidewalk, with her backpack over her shoulder and her bag on its wheels at her side.

She smiled at him and he wished she didn’t.

“For once, I was faster than you,” she teased.

And he wished she didn’t tease either.

“You’re home safe, good luck with the article,” he said as his goodbye, and began to turn to walk away.

“Dutch,” she called, and he really hated how her kinda husky, but still lilting voice carried his name.

It was like she was touching it…

Him.

Like a tap on his shoulder, a brush of his jaw, her lips skimming his ear.

He turned back to her.

“I was a total bitch, and it’s totally worth using a curse word. I’m sorry. I’m thinking I need a change in direction, that meaning career, because I obviously can’t hack this, and if I can’t hack this, no way I’m going to get where I want to go in journalism. And it’s been bothering me, because I’m not rolling in the dough in a way I can take a year’s sabbatical full of martini lunches with my girlfriends while I write the next Great American Novel before I try to find another position again. And it’s freaking me out.”

“Just ask for a different beat,” he recommended.

Her brows inched together. “Sorry?”

“Tell your editor you need a break from the kids and ask for a different beat. You need something fresh. I can tell you’re good at what you do, you care about it, you clearly got a passion for it. It’d suck, you gave it up because you had a tough story that tweaked you, for whatever reason it tweaked you. Move away from that beat. You got something fresh to sink your teeth into, you’ll be fine. Even Dan Rather sat at a desk after being a correspondent for years. Everyone needs change, and now’s that time for you.”

Her expression was open, and no other way to describe it, glowing by the time he got done talking.

“So you’re a young budding biker guru,” she said on another smile and more teasing.

“No, I’m just not neck deep in it so I see it clearer,” he replied, not smiling and wanting to get the fuck out of there, because her smiling, teasing, glowing meant he needed to get the fuck out of there.

She must have sensed his desire because her smile faded, he wasn’t thrilled to watch it go, but he didn’t say dick.

“Your wisdom I feel made my apology get lost, so I’ll repeat it. I was a bitch, Dutch, and seriously, I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for it. I guess I was just at my end, and you caught that.”

“I’m a biker, something you got issues with ’cause you got a stick up your ass about shit you don’t know, issues for you, and undoubtedly with your sister having fun with one. A biker who walked up to you, so you felt open to smack me with your shit because I don’t matter. I’m just a biker. That is what happened and that’s what you’re apologizing for.”