Speed of Light (Marauders #3.5) Read online

  “Doubt it. Got whiskey.”

  “Think that’ll do.”

  Mace motioned to one of the sweetbutts to get behind the bar and serve them. He had no idea what Vic was up to, but he was sure that being drunk was the best option, no matter what would happen next.

  o0o

  Vic had stayed for about an hour, and they’d talked. Not much about Joyce, but about other things. When Vic left, Mace suspected that it would be quite some time before he saw him again.

  “That was interesting,” Bull said when he sat down next to him. “You fucked your brother’s wife?”

  “Yup,” he answered and filled another glass of whiskey.

  “I take it the need to fuck a married woman was a one-time urge?”

  “I’d say that’s the case.”

  It wasn’t that they had rules against it, unless the woman was married to another member, but this was a family member’s wife. No one would really care, though, and Bull had obviously put two and two together. He patted Mace’s shoulder and left him.

  When Sisco sat down, not five minutes later, he didn’t even open his mouth. He just refilled Mace’s glass.

  “Well, here’s hoping for a cheerful holiday next year,” Mace said before he downed it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  No

  o0o

  KATHLEEN DROPPED THE NEWSPAPER among the others on the kitchen island and looked over to the coffeemaker to check if the coffee, by some miracle, was done. It wasn’t.

  “Fuck it,” she muttered to herself and grabbed a cup. If she was quick, it might work even if the coffee wasn’t done. It didn’t.

  “Fuck!” she muttered again when she shoved the pot back to avoid more coffee drops on the hot plate.

  She walked back to the kitchen island and opened up the paper on top of the pile. By the time she’d read it, she’d had her first cup of coffee of the day and was already looking forward to the next two she had lined up for the morning. So, as usual, she poured herself the next one and left it on the counter to cool down while she had a shower. The morning ritual was the only thing that had stayed the same as it had always been. If she ignored her surroundings and focused on the paper while feeling the caffeine kicking in and doing its job, it was almost possible to pretend she was still in Washington D.C.

  Kathleen had always been the kind of person who didn’t look back. What was lost was lost, and there was no use in crying over spilled milk. She moved on, and she had kept moving on and forward her entire life without being particularly upset over missed chances or fuckups. It went hand in hand with her belief that there was no such thing as faith or luck. What she had, or used to have, was something she’d worked her ass off to get. It had been clear to her early on that despite being from a wealthy family she wouldn’t get things for free—at least not the things she wanted. And the option, following the path her parents had chosen, wasn’t an option at all to her. Living in a big house, attending parties in expensive dresses, and marrying well didn’t ensure freedom or happiness—one look at her mom passed out in her own puke had taught her that.

  She avoided thinking too much about her mother, but the woman had kept calling her at least once a day the last three weeks. So far, she had managed to keep the few calls she actually answered short, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be possible for much longer.

  At the age of nine, Kathleen had seen the movie ‘All the President’s Men,’ and that was when she decided she wanted to become a journalist. When she’d announced her plans to her parents, they’d patted her cheeks and nodded before pushing her in the direction of whatever nanny she’d had at the time. Kathleen couldn’t remember the name of any of her nannies, since they never lasted long. Either her dad got fed up with them and hired a new one, or her mom fired them if he didn’t get fed up fast enough.

  Her dad had helped her get a job at a local paper when she was seventeen, and no one had questioned her decision to major in journalism. They kept thinking her ‘little interest,’ as they called it, was ‘cute’ until she was in her mid-twenties and her mom asked her when she was planning on coming home and getting married. When she’d informed them it wasn’t ever going to happen, her dad had called her up and yelled about cutting her off. Kathleen had informed him that, with the exception of her tuition, he hadn’t given her any money in over ten years, and then she’d hung up on him.

  Since about then, she visited her parents as seldom as possible. Her mom called her on occasion and asked her why she couldn’t be more like her brother and sister, usually in a slurred voice. Her dad used to check in once in a while, too, to ask her if she was done with her nonsense and ready to come home do her duty, but he’d stopped when she in her early thirties. He probably couldn’t fathom that anyone would want a women once she’d passed thirty.

  The fact that Kathleen had been considered the best political reporter at one of Washington D.C.’s biggest newspapers wasn’t something they were proud of. Her choice of subjects was a downright embarrassment. When she visited her family, her father made it his business to, as often as possible, loudly recite the quote, ‘If you’re young and not liberal, you have no heart. If you’re old and not conservative, you have no brain.’

  On more than one occasion, she had contemplated killing her father by telling him she was a feminist.

  She assumed that the recent increase in calls from her mother meant her parents thought she was done with her ‘little interest’ and would agree to come home and marry whatever rich widower they had in mind for her. Her mother’s suggested husbands had initially been guys around Kathleen’s own age, but over the years their age had increased exponentially compared to hers, while their wealth stayed about the same. Apparently the wealth was more important than keeping down the age difference between her and the possible husband.

  By the time Kathleen had showered, blow-dried her hair, and dressed, she drank the cup of coffee on the counter in one sweep. After having deleted the five text messages her mom had sent during the night without reading them, she put the phone in her bag, poured coffee in a to-go cup, and left her house.

  House.

  Kathleen Keegan was renting a house.

  In Greenville.

  In general, there was not much she didn’t hate when it came to redneck Greenville. It hadn’t been her choice to move, but it had been Greenville or getting fired while at the same time being the pariah of the US news world. There was no fucking way in hell she’d be able to get a job before she’d proven herself, and she had no idea how she would be able to prove herself while working at the local weekly paper in Greenville, Arizona. Or as she called it on her good days: Hickville, Arizona.

  On her bad days it was hell-hole-butt-crack-of-a-shit-town-at-end-of-the-world.

  Okay, that wasn’t really fair, but it was so frustrating. If it had been any other type of paper in just a slightly bigger town, she might’ve had a shot at finding something to write about, but she’d been transferred to one of the papers she was fairly sure the media conglomerate she worked for owned just to have somewhere to send people like her. There couldn’t possibly be any other reason for them to keep weekly papers like The Greenville Observer.

  Just like the cliché name suggested, the format was just like every other weekly paper, including family news, public record and notice, and something called a news section. Kathleen wouldn’t exactly call it ‘news.’ It covered exciting things like saved cats, the young heroes who saved the fucking cats, and some old idiot who deserved attention for being old enough to remember when they paved the streets in Greenville. The ‘features’ were usually about a bunch of old ladies who devoted their free time to knitting, or the state of people’s gardens. So far she’d been writing some of the most brain-dead pieces of her entire career.

  Kathleen was the first one to arrive at the office, as usual. Most often it took the others another two hours to arrive, and by the time they did, she had outlined three articles and finished two. She was thirty-nine, and
she was now writing the same kind of articles as she’d done when working summers at the local weekly paper at the age of seventeen. Talk about taking a giant step back as far as her career went. If it was even possible to call it a career anymore; she wasn’t so sure of that.

  The Greenville Observer’s editor was a man named Harold, and he walked through the doors at nine with a big smile on his lips. He always smiled, and he was the only editor Kathleen had ever met that smiled. She hadn’t fully gotten over the fact that there weren’t more than seven people, including her, who were working at the G.O. She had taken over from an old woman whose forte had been writing about the local handicraft communities. She’d apparently been a huge fan of knitting, and for some reason, Harold had thought Kathleen could step in and continue the reports on Ye Old Housemaids’ Knitting Competition. Not bloody likely.

  “Morning, Kathleen.”

  “Morning, Harold. I just emailed you the articles you wanted.”

  “Already? Print them out for me.”

  He wanted them on paper, and she had no idea why he couldn’t use the printer on his desk to print them out, but she did as he’d asked and walked the ten steps over to his table to hand them over.

  Half an hour later, the other members of the staff started to drop in.

  Jonathan was the sports editor and photographer of the paper. Kathleen wasn’t sure which one he’d been first; he wasn’t very good at either of those things.

  They had a web page, which was run by Ricardo. In the two weeks she’d been there, he hadn’t said much to her. At first she’d though he was a bit of an ass, but it had turned out that he was just shy and not very good with people. She was pretty impressed with the web page, though. For a small local newspaper, it looked good and was surprisingly user friendly. Harold hadn’t believed her when she informed them that she was fully capable of posting her own articles to it, and Ricardo had initially been very skeptical, but after the first week he was okay with it.

  There were three reporters besides Kathleen.

  Dan, who was in his early to mid-thirties, and who mostly handled the Greenville sports events. He was a huge fan of the mildly successful high school basketball team and kept track of it in extreme detail.

  Then there was Glenn, who had proudly announced on Kathleen’s first day that he’d worked at the Observer for over forty years. That was apparently an achievement in his tiny universe. He knew everyone in Greenville and wrote the family news and editorials, and the public records and notice. She had honestly thought the ‘Neighborhood News’ was something that had disappeared even from the most local weekly papers, but that was in no way the case at the Greenville Observer. There was a page called ‘G.O! Observes’ with a long list of nothing but gossip about everyone who resided in Greenville. Usually in the line of ‘Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so’s daughter visited from Michigan University this weekend. They are proud to report that she is doing very well at the university, and that she will be back for Easter, for those of you who didn’t have the chance to see her.’ Kathleen had thought it was a joke, but sadly it was true and in no way uncommon.

  The youngest reporter was Blair, a twenty-four-year-old woman and the only one who had shown signs of good journalism. She’d written a few features that Kathleen was truly impressed with. Sadly, her self-esteem was pretty crap, and if Harold didn’t like the idea, Blair didn’t do it, and he’d shut down some great ideas during the two weeks Kathleen had been working with them. She showed promise, and Kathleen hoped Blair would be able to get out of Greenville before her enthusiasm was thoroughly crushed by the male chauvinism that was as prevalent at the G.O. as the stench of stale sweat and cheap aftershave.

  Despite the tiny staff, there were still people enough to ensure some drama. Most of it coming from Dan’s lame attempts to hit on Blair, who had no interest in him whatsoever. Blair in return seemed to have a thing for Jonathan, who Kathleen suspected was gay, but she assumed there were some problems with being openly gay in Greenville. Glenn kept talking about people who no one, except maybe Harold, knew who they were. The man never shut his mouth, and Blair and Dan were working around that by using earphones at all times. Kathleen just shut him out. She’d worked at busier desks and knew how to ignore her surroundings. The only problem was that Glenn often did his best to include other people in the conversations he had with himself.

  Everything they wrote was emailed to Harold, who was sitting at the back of the room, but he also always wanted a paper copy. He used those to do a visual of the paper by pinning them to the wall behind him. Every Tuesday, when the paper left for print, he emptied the wall and started over with any leftover articles that had been cut and could be reused.

  This was Kathleen’s new reality, and her fall from being one of the top political investigative reporters in Washington to a reporter at a small local weekly had been quick and brutal. She had never been a White House reporter, but instead she’d written more about the seedy underside of politics. She’d started out as a crime reporter, but combining crime with politics wasn’t farfetched in Washington D.C. Her boss had liked her angles on stories—her way of seeing things—and he’d given her the time and resources she needed for her pieces. Her stuff was selling copies, thus selling add space.

  Then she’d put her trust in the wrong person, and three chaotic weeks later, she’d been transferred. Kathleen suspected that every corrupt person in Washington—and there were a lot of those—had pressured her boss into getting rid of her. He’d flat out told her that her only shot was to take whatever job he offered with a substantial pay cut, but that she might get a chance to get back in a few years. Basically when people no longer could remember her, and she’d lost every fucking contact she’d worked over a decade to get. It was that or getting sacked and sued. In layman’s terms, they dropped her like a hot potato.

  She missed everything, the speed, the rushes, but also things like her apartment, and just… people. Greenville seemed empty compared to most towns she’d ever been to. And traffic! She’d never in a million years thought she’d miss traffic jams, but she did.

  From what she could tell, she had a very limited number of ways to get out of Greenville. All of them included finding the story of a lifetime. Once she had, she could choose between offering it to her bosses in exchange for a transfer, offer it to other papers in exchange for a new job, or to quite and go freelance. But to freelance she needed a helluva lot better reputation than she had at the moment. The main problem was, obviously, that she was in Greenville, in an area of the country where she had no contacts or ins any-fucking-where.

  Around lunch, she packed her things and got ready for that afternoon’s big piece about the school board meeting.

  o0o

  The next morning Kathleen was in an even worse mood, and when Dan opened his mouth to spit out another one of his sexist comments, she snapped back.

  “Oh!” Dan chuckled. “I think someone here needs some.”

  How unexpected. Just like every other man Dan obviously thought a woman needed a man to get off.

  “Need what?” she asked.

  “You know…”

  “No. What exactly is it you think I need?”

  “With that attitude you’re gonna have to settle for a vibrator,” he mumbled and turned back to his screen.

  “They have them at The Booty Bank sex shop,” Blair said, and the next second she blushed. “At least that’s what I’ve heard. I mean… I assume they have them there, since it’s a sex shop… and all.”

  Kathleen was sure Dan had a boner when he stared at Blair, obviously picturing her pleasuring herself with a plastic cock.

  “The Booty Bank?” she asked, and after a too-deep swallow, Dan turned to her.

  “The strip club owned by the Marauders.”

  Kathleen would’ve been embarrassed to have to admit that it took her a few seconds to understand what he meant by ‘the Marauders,’ but then it clicked. The Booty Bank was a chain of strip clubs, and they were ow
ned by an outlaw MC—Marauder Riders MC. Somehow she’d completely missed that she had moved to a town where they had a charter. At least she assumed that was the case, and she wanted to make sure.

  “Marauders? They have a club here?”

  “Yeah,” Dan shrugged. “They’ve been here for years. Like… since I was a kid, or even before I was born.”

  Kathleen turned towards Glenn. “How long?”

  “Early Eighties.”

  That could be the opening to a story. They weren’t one of the biggest clubs, and they hadn’t been in the media much. There hadn’t been enough scandals around them for newspapers to take any real interest, but on occasion there had been rumors of their strippers being prostitutes, and sometimes about drugs, but they were one of the calmer clubs. Despite having worked crime, she’d never paid much attention to outlaw biker gangs. Her knowledge was basic, at best, but she was pretty fucking sure that ATF and FBI had shown some interest in the Marauders. They’d never been able to prove anything, though.

  She figured it could be worth doing some research on them—just in case. If there was even the tiniest possibility that it could become something that took her out of Greenville, she’d put a substantial number of hours into it before writing the idea off.

  “So they have a sex shop and a strip club. Anything else?” she asked.

  “A garage,” Blair answered with a side-glance towards Harold.

  Kathleen got the distinct feeling that the Marauders was a sore subject. She’d been at the paper for two weeks, and she’d read most of the past year’s editions; there hadn’t been any mention of the Marauders. It wasn’t exactly strange, since hardcore crime news coverage wasn’t the Observer’s cup of tea. They were more into chicken dinner stories. If she was going to do it, it would have to be on her own time, and she wouldn’t mention it to Harold. So, she gave Blair a relaxed smile and shrugged.

  Five hours later, the others had left, and she’d read up on the Marauders as well as she could online and with the paper’s archive.