Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(3)

Trendy, like there was a fucking tiki bar, for fuck’s sake.

As the years had gone by and the new edged out some of the old, Fortnum’s had become the bastion of old-school cool on South Broadway in Denver.

And Dutch hoped like hell the millennials—of which he was one, but he wasn’t a fan of his membership—got bored with Broadway and returned it to the freaks and geeks and antiquers and gays and hip cats and hipper pussycats who knew true cool came from a vintage clothing shop, not a Free People catalog.

He climbed into his truck as his phone rang again.

He checked it.

It was Jagger.

He ignored the call, started up his truck, and embarked on the only other item on his agenda that day.

He headed to King’s Shelter, a safe place for runaway kids.

King’s provided food. A bed. TV. Some counseling if you took it. Some tutoring, if you took that too.

Mostly, it was a no-pressure place for kids who couldn’t hack home so they wouldn’t be on the streets. They could get a decent meal, sleep in a clean bed, take a shower and catch up on their reality programs.

Right, that wasn’t entirely accurate.

There was food, clean beds, and a huge TV.

But also, there was pressure.

That said, Juliet Crowe, the woman who ran the place, made an art of making pressure seem like no pressure.

If there was a way to reconcile shit at home, she’d find it, and reconcile that shit.

If there was no way, she’d figure out an alternate avenue for a kid that didn’t include hanging downtown, falling into dealing, using, or whoring.

It was just she was a dab hand at finessing that shit.

He parked at the shelter, got out, grabbed one of the books, and headed in.

Chances were probably seventy-thirty the kid wouldn’t be there.

Dutch’s day looked up when he saw him there.

He didn’t hesitate moving right to the guy who was not at one of the couches around the big sixty-incher, watching some show where three bitches were wearing skintight mini-dresses and four-inch heels, shouting at each other and pulling each other’s hair.

He was sitting at a table on the outskirts.

That was Carlyle.

The outsider.

Even at a shelter for runaway kids.

“The wig’s gonna go, wait and see,” he declared as Dutch made the table.

Dutch turned his head and looked at the TV.

Carlyle was right. One of the women was shrieking because another one had pulled off her wig.

Dutch sighed and looked back to a boy who was really no longer a boy.

The kid was six nine if he was an inch. Three hundred pounds if he was an ounce. Dark skin. Brown eyes hard as marbles.

He was also seventeen, and if something wasn’t done, soon, he’d be free to do whatever he wanted.

And Dutch did not see this going in the right direction.

He knew why Carlyle was there.

And Dutch could be the only guy in Denver who could get him out of there.

And he needed to get this kid out of there.

Outside the obvious, Dutch had no idea what was at stake for the future.

The cure for cancer.

A Nobel Prize.

Or just this kid becoming a billionaire.

All he knew was that whatever was at stake was big.

He tossed the book on the table.

Carlyle didn’t look at it, kept his eyes glued to the TV.

“Your mind’s gonna turn to mush, you stare at that shit too long,” Dutch warned.

That brought Carlyle’s eyes.

“Yeah?” he asked, the word short and belligerent.

“Yeah,” Dutch confirmed.

Carlyle said nothing.

“I’m adding to the shelter’s library,” Dutch told him, dipping his head toward the book.

“And why would I give a shit?” Carlyle queried.

“Because you’d do better reading a decent book than watching zombie television.”

Carlyle’s heavy brows went up. “Zombie television?”

“There’s nothing worthwhile to TV like that. It rots your mind. Turns you into a zombie.”

Carlyle straightened in his chair, and to a man who had not spent his formative years under the wing of the entirety of the Chaos MC, particularly a brother called Hound, Carlyle straightening might make his sphincter tighten.

But Dutch knew how to handle himself with fists, with a blade, with a piece, in most any situation. Chaos had seen to that.

More precisely, Hound had seen to that.

So when Carlyle’s attention focused more fully on him, Dutch didn’t twitch.

“Man, who gives a fuck?” he asked.

“I think me standing here is pretty good indication that I do,” Dutch replied.

Carlyle looked back to the TV, muttering, “Fuck off.”

“Carlyle—”

That was when he got the treatment he’d given Duke at Fortnum’s.

But Carlyle style.

“Do you think I’m invisible? Do you fuckin’ think I’m invisible?” Carlyle spat.

Somehow, even without looking at it, the kid had seen the cover of the book.

“What I think—” Dutch started.

“I’ve already read this book, motherfucker, and even if I hadn’t, hear me, I don’t need some white guy to show me the way of my people.”