Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(14)

At his words, she was the one who looked like she’d been smacked. Her head jerked with it, the whole thing.

Jesus, shit.

“Right, well, okay, guess I deserved that,” she whispered. “But thanks, truly. And good luck with Carlyle. I hope you break through.”

She yanked up the handle on her bag and had started rolling it away when he called her name.

“Georgiana.”

She turned back and gave him no shot to apologize.

She said, “You know, you were right. This was a one-time thing, thankfully short, and now over. But really, good luck with Carlyle and…whatever else you do with your life.”

He didn’t call out again as she jabbed a code into a box, shoved through the front doors and went right to the elevators.

When she disappeared in one without even glancing his way was when he rounded his truck and got back in.

She’d been a bitch, and she’d apologized.

He’d been a dick, and it was left at that.

And as much as that burned in his chest, and fuck, but it burned and he had no idea why it burned so hot and so deep, leaving it like that…

He was going to leave it like that.

Whatever else you do with your life.

Yeah, there it was.

Whatever else he did with his life.

Which was nothing.

He was doing nothing with his life.

He had no drive.

He had no goals.

He had no mission.

He had no passion.

He had dick.

On that thought, he started up his truck and headed for the Chaos Compound.

There was beer there. Tequila. Brothers.

He wasn’t big on getting drunk.

But for once he was feeling like tying one on.





Dutch did as he planned.

He didn’t get puke-and-act-like-an-asshole drunk, but he’d gotten to the point he’d had to crash in his room at the Compound instead of getting in his truck and going home.

But after he woke up the next day, brushed his teeth, splashed water on his face and got dressed, he went home.

To his laptop.

Which he opened while the coffee was brewing.

And he pulled up The Worldist website.

Then he read an article about student loans that had Georgiana Traylor’s byline.

He found he was right.

She was good at her job.

Because the article was succinct, but thorough, he was keen to read the next installment that was coming the next day, and the father didn’t come off as a total jackhole.

He came off, subtly, as a complete bastard.

Dutch read the article again.

Then he made himself a cup of coffee and took it to the bathroom, since he was going to shower.

And after that, go to the offices of Nightingale Investigations.





Chapter Three



Meanwhile



Meanwhile…

As Dutch Black was getting drunk with some of his brothers at the Chaos Compound…



Georgiana Suzanne Traylor had written the first five hundred words of what would be a fifteen-hundred-word series that would run on The Worldist over the next three days.

She’d turned it in.

Half an hour later, she’d had a twenty-minute phone conversation with Cristina, her editor.

Five minutes of that was about changes Cristina wanted in the article.

Five minutes were Georgiana telling Cristina what she could expect in the next two installments.

Three minutes were Cristina approving and giving Georgiana food for thought.

Seven minutes were Georgiana explaining, and Cristina agreeing to give her different stories and take her off the “kids beat.”

Georgiana had hung up and then given herself some time to feel relief that a huge concern that had been bugging her since she met seventeen-year-old, midwife-hopes-dashed Madison McGill in her bid to find an angle on her student loan piece.

However, she did not allow herself time to give silent, ineffectual (considering he was gone, gone, gone) thanks to Dutch Black for (apparently, time would tell) solving a problem that had been plaguing her now for weeks.

She’d done her tweaks to the article.

And she beat the deadline of the final submission by forty-seven minutes.

Which heralded her opening a bottle of wine.

She knew what she was going to do before she pulled up Grubhub and ordered from Little India.

And while she waited for Little India, she unpacked, started a load of laundry, changed her sheets, and took a shower to wash off the feel of the plane.

Through this, she sipped wine and accepted the icy chill from her roommate’s Scottish fold cat.

A cat which had—considering her roommate had unexpectedly taken a second stint with Médicins Sans Frontières, which meant she was supposed to be gone for a year, but now it would be two—officially become Georgiana’s.

Or so said Georgiana.

Because when (if?) the woman ever got back, Georgie was claiming the damned cat.

“It was only a day,” she told Murtagh, who her roommate Cela had named Angus, but Georgie had renamed Murtagh after her favorite character from the Outlander TV show.

Murtagh turned his bushy gray body and showed her his butthole.

And thus, Murtagh shared neatly that he was not a fan of being left alone overnight.