Wild Fire (Chaos #6.5)(67)

He knew it was going there, for both of them.

Hell, he knew it was already there for him….and her.

But neither of them had said it.

“Later, baby. Love you too,” he replied.

“Cute,” she said and hung up.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and turned his attention to his brother.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You got a second?”

He had all of them that day that didn’t involve time with Georgie.

He nodded.

“Right, well, I got a situation,” Rush declared.

Dutch tensed. “What kind of situation?”

“The thing, with your boy, Carlyle…”

Dutch tensed even more.

“…it’s made it clear the brothers are restless.”

That wasn’t what he expected.

“Sorry, Rush, don’t get what you’re sayin’,” he told him when the man said no more.

Rush put his hands on his hips and stated, “Brother, we had decades where we were men with a mission. Now we got a few years under our belts where things are copacetic. Situation is, the men are not men who are good with managing an auto supply store and building rides for customers, the majority of whom are assholes who got money with the occasional joe who knows cool.”

Dutch just stood there, staring at the president of his MC, knowing he had not once thought he might be the only brother in his Club who felt adrift.

But maybe he wasn’t the only brother who felt adrift.

“They jumped in for you, for Carlyle, and I know that,” Rush carried on. “But it was not lost on me they jumped in. Chompin’ at the fuckin’ bit to have something righteous to turn their minds to.”

“I still don’t get what you’re sayin’,” Dutch told him, though he thought he did.

He felt it in his gut.

A heat.

The good kind.

“Chaos needs a righteous cause and I have no idea what that is and how to give it to them, but I have a feeling you can help me,” Rush replied.

“Fortunately, there are not many Carlyles in this world,” Dutch pointed out.

“Yeah. So I suggest you and me go talk to Beck.”

Dutch blinked in shock. “Say what?”

Beck was the president of Resurrection, another Denver area MC.

And Resurrection was to Chaos what Nightingale Investigations was to the Denver Police Department.

For the most part, the causes they took on were just, but their route to resolving them was seriously direct, nebulously legal, and in Resurrection’s case, if need be, brutal.

“The brothers who want something to sink their teeth into, they’ll get it. The brothers who want to kick back and enjoy life without that shit can do that,” Rush told him.

“You know all the brothers will kick in,” Dutch said.

Rush shrugged.

Then grinned.

After that, he got down to business.

“It’s not once, but a number of times Beck has come to me to ask if we’d wade into shit they got goin’ on.”

“I know. You bring that to the table. And it’s always voted down.”

“We weren’t ready. I think now we’re ready.”

After their own dance on the dark side, Resurrection had leapt so far to the good, they were on the other edge of the dark.

It was understandable. They had all, but mostly Beck, lost hold on their decency.

A man with something to prove was a man to keep an eye on.

A biker with something to prove was a man you didn’t take your eyes from.

An entire fucking MC with that was a force of nature.

Chaos knew that all too well.

The last situation Rush had brought to the table from Resurrection had been about a woman whose husband had cleaned her out—every dime in their accounts, every stick of furniture—left her with a mortgage, a toddler, a baby in her belly, but not one thing else, and disappeared.

Dutch hadn’t paid much attention, because he knew in the end how the vote would eventually go, but discussion had been intense around the Chaos table before that was voted down.

Though he had been one of three—him, Jagger and Hound—who had voted “in.”

Word was, the guy was found.

And when Dutch heard, he’d thought distractedly, because it wasn’t in his sphere, that he wished he knew how it did, and he wouldn’t have minded being a part of that.

“We’d be assist,” Rush said. “Not up to our necks, but enough to give the men something to feed that need. And I think you’d be a good go-between. Know what we’d want, bring it to the table, even know if Resurrection passes on somethin’ we’d pick up.”

“Rush, you were totally against this vigilante shit the entire time we were doin’ this vigilante shit,” Dutch reminded him.

“That was then, this is now, and this is entirely different.”

“How do you reckon?”

“We’ll have control of what we get involved in and we won’t get involved in anything that will get our women kidnapped, for one.”

There was that.

“For another, this won’t be about attacks on the Club we gotta defend against. We won’t be on our back foot. Ever. We can go in knowing what we’re facing, discuss it and decide.”