Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
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.
This was not news.
Though, apparently, like she’d been that day when she got off the plane and saw her sister had blown her off…again, Murtagh was at an end with his substitute momma taking off.
Georgiana made note of that, and since she traveled a lot, and when she didn’t, she was out of the house a lot, she finished waiting for Little India by putting the clothes in the dryer and then sipping wine while mentally compiling a list of friends she could ask to hang out with Murtagh while she was gone so Murtagh would have someone to love.
Because Scottish folds were very affectionate.
And anyway, Murtagh had already experienced the trauma of losing his first momma and now he was saddled with Georgie.
Reason one (but the list was much longer), why Cela wasn’t reclaiming her cat.
When the food came, she ate on the sofa with the bottle of wine close, Murtagh not close, and John Oliver cracking her up, pissing her off, and giving her the needed reminder of why she decided to do what she did even though what she did didn’t make people laugh.
But hopefully it made them think.
Then Murtagh forgave her and cuddled up as Georgiana settled in with her real plans for the night.
It was stupid and she knew it.
She just couldn’t stop herself.
So she rented it to stream.
She remembered him from when she’d seen it before. She remembered him being like his brother, good-looking (in a biker guy way).
But she hadn’t met him the first time she saw Blood, Guts and Brotherhood.
And now she’d met him.
She also didn’t remember him being in it that much. The film was mostly about the history of the Club, juxtaposed with footage of them now. At their business. Working on their builds in their garage. In their hangout lair. Their homes. With their wives. Kids. Bikes.
Each other.
The brothers Chaos.
But the majority of it was Ken Burns Civil War style.
Narrative, and some spoken-word interviews, over pictures of days of yore.
Though there was a small amount of old VHS and phone video footage.
And the first time she watched it, her heart stopped, knowing Carolyn’s boyfriend had lost his father in the way explained by the film.
This time, she made everything stop the first time a picture of Graham Black came on her TV screen.
He was crouched down, elbows to knees, and you could see the muscles through his jeans tightened over them in his position. Head turned to almost, but not quite full profile. Dark hair longish, a mop of messy curls and waves. Skin tanned. Lines fanning out from his deep-set, hooded eyes. Huge, white smile.