Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(28)

Hell, just the way she looked at him when she opened her door.

Years ago, Hound had told Dutch and Jagger to watch their mother to know what kind of woman to look for to make their own.

And after watching Keely Black grieve for nearly two decades, at the same time watching his mom and Hound dance around each other, both feeling deep for the other, neither going there, and now them having what they had, it wasn’t nauseating, the love they had they did not bother hiding.

His mother was not cuddly and gross.

But she was affectionate and loving and open about it to all her boys. The ones she made and the one she made hers.

He and Georgiana hadn’t even been out on a date, and she already communicated with more than words.

Communicated the important stuff.

The deep stuff.

The right stuff.

Georgie couldn’t be any different than his ma.

Keely Black Ironside was biker babe through and through.

But yeah.

Evidence was coming clear Georgiana Traylor had the right stuff.

Through and through.

“So I’m gonna talk to her tomorrow,” she said, cutting into his thoughts.

It occurred to him she was in his truck, working Carlyle’s situation with him, and now was dealing with her sister, and she had a job.

“Is your latest story suffering because of all this?” he asked.

“Well, uh…” She did not answer.

“Babe,” he grunted.

“Okay, so I am who I am, and once I got my teeth into Carlyle’s case, and because I, uh…well, watched Blood, Guts and Brotherhood again and I’d been so awful to you, I kinda got obsessed and called my editor and asked for some time off.”

Dutch again held his silence.

“I haven’t had a vacation in over a year, and our PTO accumulates, all the way up to eight weeks, so I have a ton of it. I think she was actually relieved to give me a couple of weeks off. And she said that I needed to do this more regularly, or burnout wasn’t a possible, it’d be an inevitable.”

“You watched that film again?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she answered.

He smiled big at the windshield. “You are so into me.”

She whacked his arm again with her, “Shut up.”

But he caught her hand this time before she took it away and held it against his thigh the rest of the way to the restaurant.

Eddie and Hank weren’t there yet, so they got a table, regrettably. He’d prefer a booth and to have her cornered in it, his thigh pressed to hers and her close enough to touch. But they needed a table for the discussion. Better and freer eyelines.

They got chips and salsa, their drinks.

But neither of them even opened a menu.

If you knew LD, you knew what you were going to order at LD.

The end.

Hank and Eddie showed, introductions were made, and it wasn’t only Dutch who noticed the intensity of interest they had in Georgie.

And it wasn’t about her being with Dutch.

Eddie, the more direct of the two, cut right to it.

“You’re a reporter.”

“I’m on vacation.”

“And you’re here because…?” Hank asked.

“Because she’s with me and she’s helpin’ me out by using her sources,” Dutch answered.

His tone was undeniable, and these men were cops, neither of them even owned a bike, and the cloth they were cut from might be a different color, but it was the same cloth.

So they read the tone, understood it, and that was the end of that.

Hank nor Eddie looked at the menu either before they all ordered and then they didn’t waste any time with it.

“We both read through it before we came here and the Khalon Stephens case stinks, man,” Eddie started it.

Dutch straightened in his chair. “Stinks how?”

“Fishy,” Hank said shortly. “From start to not-quite-end.”

“What do you mean?” Georgie asked.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Eddie answered.

“How about the beginning,” Dutch suggested.

“Well, first, cops at the scene report, and pictures prove it, the resident of the duplex opposite the Stephens family had visibly been beaten. Bloody nose. Swelling. Contusions on face and arms. Like she’d been held by them and hard. There was also sign of a struggle in the room,” Eddie said.

“Or a fight,” Hank added.

Dutch knew that distinction meant something, but Hank left it at that, and Eddie carried on.

“Bed had been slept in, but it does not appear there was a struggle there. The covers were thrown back like she got out. Not like she was awakened in surprise by an intruder and was pulled out.”

Dutch glanced at Georgie.

Georgie gave him big eyes.

The Stephenses had not heard a break-in and there was no evidence of one.

How the intruder got in was a mystery.

Unless he was let in.

“She wiped herself down before going for the rape kit,” Hank shared. “So there was no point in doing a rape kit, and as such, none was done.”

Dutch’s eyes leapt to Hank.

“Say what?” he asked.

“She contends she was not thinking clearly,” Hank told him. “Even though the rape was interrupted, material can still be gathered. A rape kit is performed in a hospital and not only did she wipe herself down, wash her hands and brush her hair before she showed, she changed clothes and the nightgown she was wearing mysteriously disappeared. To this day, it has not turned up.”