Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(49)

Keely slid her arm through Georgie’s and moved her toward the door, saying…

“Gorgeous.”





Chapter Ten



This



Dutch



They went through his side door, Georgie carrying her backpack and laptop bag, Dutch juggling a pizza and a six pack.

She dumped her stuff first, on the counter by the washer and dryer, took off her coat, hung it on a hook, then nabbed the stuff from Dutch.

He locked the door, shrugged off his cut and hung it on a hook.

By the time he’d turned, she was in the living room, cooing to Murtagh.

Dutch followed her.

She was heading to the kitchen.

He moved around turning on lamps.

When he got to the kitchen, she had two beers popped and her head bent to her phone.

She sensed him there, though, because she said, “I’m so wiped, I just want to eat the pizza over the box, down a beer and pass out.”

Not even close to the plans he had for them that night.

He didn’t get into that, or share another good part of living in the biker world: the fact it was almost a moral imperative not to put your pizza on a plate, but instead, eat it over the box at the same time sucking back a beer.

He also didn’t remind her of what he’d already told her. That he’d called, and the restaurant was booked for the next night, but they had a reservation for Sunday, so they had something to look forward to.

On the way from the pizza joint, she’d been giving her phone a lot of attention and not sharing why.

So he got into that.

“Something up?” he asked, leaning a hip against the counter and flipping the pizza box open.

Her gaze came to him.

“Well, my mom has been texting all day, which is no surprise, considering Carolyn has probably been buzzing in her ear.”

“Yeah?” he said. “And?” he asked because he knew that wasn’t it.

“Now my dad has called twice, and that’s unusual, because he kinda figured things out a while ago, at least with the designer stuff Carolyn’s always sporting, and since she often went to him for a handout, he cut her off. This caused a big blowup, as I’m sure you can imagine. She hasn’t spoken to him in a couple of years.”

“So you need to call your dad,” he surmised.

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I need to call Rush to get briefed on Gary Bronson. You make your call, I’ll make mine. And we’ll eat over the box. Nab some paper towels, babe.”

“You need cloth napkins,” she said, even as she moved to the paper towel holder.

“What?” he asked.

She tore some off. “Cloth napkins.”

“Bikers don’t do cloth napkins,” he teased, though he did it telling her the God’s honest truth.

She smiled at him as she came over and handed him his paper towel. “Do bikers like riding roads on this planet we call earth?”

“So your bid to save the planet is to use cloth napkins and not paper towels?”

She shrugged. “Every little bit helps.”

He shook his head, and since she’d stopped close, he dipped down to give her a lip touch, then he pulled out his phone.

“Call,” he ordered. “Soon’s we’re done with this shit, it can be just us for maybe ten minutes.”

She lifted a hand, pressed it into his chest, then made her call.

He made his.

Rush answered straight away.

“The guy giving anything up?” Dutch asked before taking a huge bite of a slice while Georgie murmured and munched close to him.

“Jessica Browbridge launders counterfeit cash the black market operation produces. She does it through that restaurant she manages,” Rush told him.

Well then.

He gave something up.

“Though, that shit has stopped since other shit got hot for her after her neighbor was shot dead in her bedroom,” Rush went on.

Dutch swallowed his pizza and asked, “Anything on that?”

“That was a harder pull, but yeah. She likes to get laid. Though the guy couldn’t pinpoint who was there, since she spread her love around, which Bronson figures might have been the problem. One of them got jealous, came over and got up in her shit, things escalated to a fight. She was fishing too much in a stinking pond, messing with men who don’t like to be messed with and have no problem sharing that in ugly ways, even with a woman. Khalon Stephens didn’t like the sound of it. And we are where we’re at.”

“He give you names?”

“He had trouble narrowing it down.”

“Jesus,” Dutch muttered, taking another bite.

“But it doesn’t matter. This racket is highly organized,” Rush said. “You’re in, you deal with what you deal with. This situation was big, and she’s flashy, so she was known, and when that went down, word got around. But Bronson isn’t part of the counterfeit cash gig. He’s on distribution of Cialis and Viagra that comes in from Canada and Mexico. So for the most part, he doesn’t know names, just faces. Until I told him her name, he didn’t know it. Just knew what happened with her, and that she was out, and all were told not to associate with her.”

“You believe him?”