Center of Gravity (Marauders Book 3)

by Lina Andersson

“That what ends up being our problem?” Tommy asked.

  “Not sure, yet, to be honest. Might just be that I’m on edge. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

  Mitch was fairly sure Brick had a plan for that bridge, and any other bridge they might bump into, but he had questions that were a bit more imminent problems.

  “What’s happening with the trucks?” Mitch asked.

  Once the cargo was over the border, it would be packed and hidden in containers, ready for shipping, and they needed trucks to transport it. In general, Mitch liked the layout, since it meant the stuff was packed by the cartel and was never repacked or changed anywhere along the road by the Marauders. One of the Marauders would be there for the packing of the containers, to oversee the work and to be able to see what was in the shipments. None of this was because they necessarily thought that anyone was trying to trick them, but simply a way to make sure everyone felt comfortable with the arrangements.

  “Our own trucks are still running clean, but the US Ghouls have found a few,” Brick said and looked at Mitch and Mech. “Now, those fuckers I don’t trust any further than I can throw them, and they’re a bunch of fat fuckers, so I want you two to check those trucks. See where they come from. Which leads us to the next thing I wanted to bring up—The US Ghouls.”

  There was a collective sigh around the table.

  “What about them?” Mace wondered with a crooked smile.

  “We need to start looking at what friends we have between any of our border crossings and Portland. I’ll talk to Russ. I know he’s got a lot of contacts out west, and I’m sure some of the other Nomads have, too. They ride that stretch pretty often.” Brick sighed. “I know some of you don’t like the idea of what we’re doing here,” he was looking at Bull when he said it, but Mitch knew that Mace didn’t like it either, “but I’m actually more worried about the state of the US Ghouls and what working with them would really mean.”

  “I might not like it, but I see what you’re seeing,” Bull said with a nod. “I’ll follow you lead, and I’ll do it without reservations.”

  Mitch hadn’t thought anything else. Bull was crazy as fuck, but completely loyal, especially to Brick.

  “Any input from Russ on this?” Bear asked.

  “I didn’t fill him in. He’ll be here before the shipment. I’ll talk to him then.”

  “Did he have anything on Hump?” Mitch asked.

  Brick shook his head. “Sorry, kid.”

  Mitch hadn’t expected it, but he still felt like shit. It also seemed like it was the only thing he could think about. Luckily, he wasn’t that important to the Dutch operation at the moment, and they all understood. No one blamed him.

  “I got a something I just want to bring up quickly,” Dawg said. He was usually a pretty quiet guy at meetings, simply since he didn’t have an area of expertise other than being a really fucking good soldier, and that he knew pretty much everyone in the club, since his dad had been an original member and the first Marauder president. “It’s just regarding Wrench. I don’t know about you guys, but I think he’s doing really well.”

  All of them, and Bull especially, nodded. Bull wasn’t an easy guy to impress, but Wrench was the kind of guy he liked—borderline psycho—and Mitch had a hunch Bull felt he’d missed an opportunity when he didn’t step up and took Wrench on as his prospect.

  “You think he’s ready for runs?” Brick smiled.

  “I think he is,” Dawg confirmed. “I also happen to know he’s licensed to drive trucks, so I think we should make use of him, because I don’t think there’s anyone of us who really questions that he’ll make his prospecting period. And you all know I don’t say that lightly.”

  “No you don’t,” Brick nodded. “You’re usually really fucking tough on them. Alright, anyone oppose Wrench working runs?”

  There was a unison ‘no’ around the table, and just like that, Wrench was in on the runs.

  When they left the chapel, Mitch was surprised to see Anna by the bar, and she didn’t look happy.

  “Hey, Gimp. What are you doing here?”

  “Your goon wouldn’t drop me off at your place since I’d be alone there,” she muttered and pointed at Wrench who just shrugged. He didn’t look apologetic at all. Not that Mitch had expected him to; Wrench did what he was told. “I told him that he better just take me here then. I honestly didn’t think he would.”

  Mitch laughed and looked at Wrench again and gave him a nod as thanks. Initially, the sweetbutts had thought Wrench was ‘the cutest ever,’ but these days they held a healthy fear of him. He wasn’t the kind of guy who hurt them or was into all that freaky stuff, there was just an unnerving air around him that they didn’t like. Mitch kind of understood what they meant. Wrench constantly looked like he at any moment might pull out a knife and slit your throat.

  “Thanks, man,” he said to Wrench who gave him another shrug and a nod. Mitch put an arm around Anna. “Wanna stay here for the night?”

  She turned around and looked at the party starting around them. “No. Definitely not.”

  He chuckled and leaned closer. “What have we learned today?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The prospects are always gonna be more scared of me than of you, so follow their lead.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” She gave him a kiss. “Take me home.”

  The prospect of getting her naked into his bed in less than twenty minutes made him hurry up. He might’ve thought sex with her was good, but fucking her bare was beyond anything, and she was still so fucking horny. The big belly meant some positions was out of the question, but there was still plenty to chose from—all of them awesome.

  -o0o-

  A few days later, they were at Mac’s place to celebrate his 29th birthday. Anna soon sneaked away to some corner with Vi, but Mitch quite liked it. It meant a lot to him that Anna was close to his brother’s wife, because he liked being close to Mac, and if Anna liked Vi that was so much easier.

  “Your girlfriend just offered Mel ballet tickets,” Brick muttered and pulled Mitch towards the backdoor. “I need a smoke.”

  “You think she’s gonna ask you to go with her?” Mitch laughed.

  “I think my wife knows me better than that.”

  “I’m only speculating here, but I know Mel is big on lace lingerie—“ he didn’t get to finish, though.

  “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “Come on, Dad. Everyone knows that. Also, she brings Eliza to the shops.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I think she’ll be capable of persuading you to go if she made an effort.” He smiled as he lit his smoke and gave his dad the lighter. “I could say something encouraging about how it’s not so bad and pretty good, but it would mean I’m lying to my dad, and I don’t lie to my dad.”

  “That bad?”

  “Yup.”

  They sat down and kept quiet for a while, but Brick soon started to giggle.

  “Imagine the hours of ballet you’re gonna have to watch when your girl is born.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “You know you’re gonna carry her tutu.”

  “Not gonna happen, and if it does, it won’t be in front of you or any of the other guys.”

  “I bet you a hundred bucks I’m gonna catch you carrying a pink tutu.”

  Mitch knew he sooner or later would be carrying Sprout’s tutu, regardless of its color, but he was gonna make damn sure no one from the club caught him doing it. It was a matter of principle, so he was willing to take that bet.

  “Deal,” he muttered, and they shook hands. “On the other hand. It’s you grandkid. You’re gonna have to watch her dance, too, so you might as well follow Mel to the ballet.”

  “I’m not going to the ballet. I have balls, so I’m not doing that. If my granddaughter’s in a ballet, that’s one thing, but watching a bunch of faggots in tights tossing skinny women into the air—not doing that.”

 
Brick was a stubborn bastard at times, so Mitch knew it would be tough for Mel to convince him, but she knew her husband and probably knew exactly were all his buttons were. She’d be able to convince him if she made an effort. He was pretty sure a part of the deal would be that no one found out, though, and there was no doubt in his mind that Brick would hate every second of it.

  “How are you holding up, kid?” Brick suddenly asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s getting to me.”

  “Just keep in mind that that’s what he wants. I get that it’s hard for you, but we’re gonna make sure nothing happens to Anna.”

  “I slightly less smart person would probably believe you, but I know that anything can happen.”

  “You can’t think like that. It’ll drive you nuts.”

  “That’s kind of what’s happening, Dad.” He shook his head. “I just don’t get why we can’t find any traces of him, and I know he has to be close. He can’t be that far away, because he’s keeping an eye on us somehow.”

  Mitch had gone through everything he could think of. He’d done searches on everyone even remotely connected to the club, and he’d done it more than once. There was nothing there, nothing to find, and he knew it, but he still couldn’t stop checking. He needed to keep making sure because it would kill him if he realized later on that it was something he should’ve noticed—that he’d missed something—and that Anna or someone else he cared about was hurt because of it.

  “Everyone in the entire club is on this. We’ll find him.”

  Mitch would feel slightly more confident if it hadn’t been for the fact that everyone in the club had been on it for over six months, but he didn’t mention that. He just nodded.

  -o0o-

  Later that night, he was in his bed holding the sleeping Anna close to him. He stroked her side and moved further down to rest his hand on Sprout. These days he could feel her all the time. Whenever Anna settled down and stayed still, Sprout woke up and started kicking, and she had hiccups all the time. It drove Anna insane, because apparently it felt just as if she was having them herself, and there was nothing she could do about it. He loved the hiccups, but he’d made sure to not say that to Anna. It was nice to lie next to his girl and feel his baby girl jump inside of her. There was just something so humane with hiccups, and if fascinated him that Anna had a person inside of her who had them.

  But for once, both Sprout and Anna were still, and he couldn’t sleep. Even if he’d never been much of a sleeper it had been worse than usual lately. Every time he closed his eyes, he got the most horrifying visions of Anna dead with the numbers of the golden ratio scribbled on Sprout in her own blood. He couldn’t get rid of those visions short of lying next to her and staring at her, watching her breathe.

  He turned to his back with a sigh and looked at the boxes that were stacked in the corner. He’d started packing, and it was a strange, but decidedly good, feeling. The apartment had been the one he moved to when he left home, and now he was moving to Anna’s family-home. He was surprised by how comfortable he was with the idea, but it was a great apartment, and he knew they could make it their own. Or at least that he could. Anna didn’t seem particularly interested in any of it, but she’d protested about the things she didn’t like at least. Apparently how she lived wasn’t much of an issue to her the way it was to him, but she was okay with him making big changes, so she wasn’t sentimental about it.

  “Are you sighing loudly so I’ll wake up?” Anna mumbled next to him, and the next second she turned around to look at him. “Wanna talk about it?”

  “Nah. I’m good. Go back to sleep.”

  “Having second thoughts?”

  “What?”

  “About us moving in together?”

  He shook his head and hugged her. “No. This isn’t about that at all. I was actually just thinking that I liked the idea of your place becoming our place.”

  “And liking it made you sigh?”

  “We both know you’re the one who’s worried,” he smiled and it turned into a laugh when she hid her face against him. “Gonna bail on me?”

  “No,” she groaned into his chest and then looked at him with a pretty impressive sigh of her own. “Think I’m still not convinced you won’t bail on me, though.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “You’re easily bored, and I’m pretty boring.”

  He laughed again and dipped his head for a kiss. He really wished there was some way to explain to her that she wasn’t boring, not even close to boring, and how fucking unlikely it was that he’d ever get enough of her. But there wasn’t a god way, so instead he turned it around on her.

  “Do you think I’m boring?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” He watched her freeze up, and he could see how she was struggling to answer. He interrupted her train of thoughts with a kiss on her nose. “It’s not that easy, is it? Some things you just know or feel, but I’ll try to explain anyway.”

  “Please do,” she smiled.

  “At the surface, we’re very different. Your life hasn’t been anything like mine, and we don’t have the same values on some subjects that people are very opinionated about.”

  “Are we on death penalty again?”

  “Maybe,” he chuckled.

  That had been one of the more heated breakfast discussions, and she’d managed to call him a hypocrite six times within a minute during it. She was for death penalty, and had choked on her coffee when he said he wasn’t. And when she managed to stop dancing around the subject about him being an outlaw, she’d asked him if he was against the club killing people the deemed necessary to die. He’d admitted that he didn’t have a problem with that at all, but he did have a major problem with governments killing their citizens—which was absolutely true.

  He’d tried to explain his view about how laws as weapons, and weapons in the hands of men who rarely knew how to use them, or for that matter paid much attention to how powerful they were. The flaw in laws and punishment were never the written texts, it was that those texts were interpreted and handled by humans, who disturbingly often had reached their position with the help of money from companies who had an interest in controlling the laws—who definitely understood the concept of laws as weapons. Considering the flaws built into lawmaking and the idea of how to use them, something as final as capital punishment shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Especially in combination with federal prosecutor and agents who seemed to quite often make cases as a matter of pride. The US had a brutal justice system, which had lead to the highest rate of incarceration in the world. It was basically running it’s machinery on fear and anger, which in turn meant incarceration was used to solve problems that historically wasn’t even seen as criminal problems. Add the use of capital punishment in a justice system that worked in that way—that was fucking scary.

  As for the club, they weren’t a government, and he didn’t see it as the same problems if they fucked up and killed the wrong person, because as opposed to the government, they’d pay for it.

  He’d thought he’d made a great case when he said those things, and she’d listened silently, so he thought he’d convincer her. Which he hadn’t, and that was the first time he’d realized how she discussed things. As opposed to most people he’d met, she actually listened instead of just waiting for her turn to speak. Then she told him what arguments she didn’t buy, and how she thought he was wrong. He’d fucking loved it!

  So it might be just one example of how they were fundamentally different when it came to their opinions and political views, which he knew was one of the things she sometimes worried he’d grow tired of, but instead he thought it was exciting.

  “It doesn’t bother me that we have different opinions,” he said to her and gave her a squeeze, “because the most important thing is that we have them. Even if we don’t agree, you have them, and you like discussing them. That’s really all I care about.” He could see her skepticism. “And I like it.
You might come off as careful and shy, but you can really bring it in an argument, and you pay attention.”

  “You like that?”

  “Totally turns me on. So it would be way more boring if we had the same opinion about everything.”

  “Okay. Then what do you mean by we’re just different on the surface?”

  “Our core things are the same. Like the importance of family and loyalty, and you definitely understand commitment. Amazingly enough, you’re one of the most committed people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some seriously committed people, but it’s just as natural as breathing in your family.”

  “Commitment to dance,” she pointed out.

  “It doesn’t really matter where you’ve directed it, you have it in you, and not every one does.” He put his hands on her belly. “And I have a hunch were you’ll direct it next. She’s a lucky kid.”

  Anna’s eyes were shiny, and she swallowed heavily. “You always do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Show me how who I was could be more.”

  “Because it wasn’t who you were, babe, it’s who you are. You think those amazing things about you disappeared just because you can’t dance, but that’s just one way of expressing yourself. You’re still just as vibrant and colorful, and I see that. So I won’t ever be bored.”

  She was crying, and with a sob she put her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Gimp, so don’t worry so much. I’m not gonna bail on you or Sprout.”

  “I never thought you’d bail on her,” Anna laughed through her tears. She took a few deep breaths and wiped her eyes. “Wanna talk about why you’re sighing now?”

  He actually didn’t, but figured it might be best. If for no other reason that it would assure her it wasn’t about her, at least not in the way she thought, but he also thought it might help.

  “It’s about that guy. I’m… I’m worried and I don’t know how to keep you safe, and it scares me.”

  “So I shouldn’t get upset when your friends push me around?”

  “It would really help me if you didn’t.” She looked worried. “See. A lot bigger risk that you decide you’ve had enough of this and leave me than the other way around.”