The club had started in Englewood, Colorado in the Seventies, and had slowly spread over the east and middle parts of the US since then. The only more western charters that existed were along the Mexican border, which Kathleen assumed was for a reason. There had been some arrests, mostly drug charges, but always against individual members. None of the attempts at using RICO had stuck, and no one of the members had done more than ten years inside. More than four decades of what she assumed were illegal activities, and that was it. They were either unusually law-abiding for being outlaws or smart. Kathleen was betting on smart. The charges were either for pot or weapons charges. Any other types drugs were just minor possession for personal use.
She’d found some pictures, but not as many as she’d expected, and she decided to call the archive at her old paper. The few she’d found were from funerals, and one caught her interest. The original president had been Douglas ‘Hawk’ Barlow. He’d died about a decade earlier from a heart attack. The picture was from his funeral, and one of the attendants was his son, Scott ‘Dawg’ Barlow. What caught her interest was that his vest was marked ‘Arizona,’ and she couldn’t help smiling. If she was lucky as hell, Scott Barlow was a part of the Grenville Marauders. That could turn into an interesting new spin on the story—growing up in a MC club.
There was also an article in a Phoenix paper about an explosion at the Greenville’s Booty Bank, but when she checked the archives of the G.O. there was nothing other than the obituary of a man named Clyde Williams, but he was continuously called ‘Vasco’ in the, rather lengthy, obituary. Lengthy, but without any mention whatsoever of how the man had died, so obviously Harold wouldn’t sanction any digging on the Marauders from her side. She would have to keep it under wraps. Which was a problem, since she didn’t know anyone in Greenville. The first cause of action would be to get friends who could give her what she needed. The police department was on top of that list—someone there had to dislike these guys enough to talk.
When she thought she had the main facts clear, she picked up her phone and called Tony, the guy in charge of the picture archive, and her friend.
“Give it to me,” he answered, just as usual, and she laughed.
“I’d rather you give it to me.”
“If you’d been a bit closer, I fucking would. How are things in media Siberia?”
“Hotter than expected as far as the weather goes. I’m starting to think it’s more like media hell, since it’s just February.”
“Could be. Since this isn’t you begging for cock, I’m guessing you want some info. Not sure how. I don’t know shit about the last Greenville Bocce cup.”
“Bocce?”
“It’s a ball sport.”
“I know what it is. That’s not why I’m calling. I need pictures and info, if you have it.”
“On what?”
“The Marauders, what do you know about them?”
Tony chuckled at the other end of the line. “Was wondering how long it would take you to start kicking that hornet nest.”
“You didn’t tell me?”
“As I remember it, your last night here was spent naked in bed. Besides, I know you, you’d figure it out all on your own, and you like discovering these things by yourself.”
“Well, I’m asking you now.”
“I’ll put something together for you, and I’ll even deliver it personally next weekend. How about that?”
She smiled. Tony was one of the guys she’d called on occasion when she wanted sex. He was just a few years older than her, and he was very, very good. A visit from him would definitely brighten her mood.
“I’ll get you the Jameson.”
“I’ll bring you the toys. Looking forward to it.”
“Me, too.”
They hung up, and she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. If Tony was prepared to come to Arizona, she was going to make damn sure she got her fill for the next couple of months, because so far she hadn’t met a single man she’d be prepared to invite to her home, let alone her bed.
o0o
SIX WEEKS LATER
Kathleen closed her computer with a sigh. After stretching her back, she got up and walked into the kitchen.
She still hadn’t figured out exactly how to use the information she’d gathered so far, which wasn’t as much as she would’ve liked, simply since there wasn’t much for her to find. The Marauders were smart, and whatever they were doing, they’d been doing it for long enough to have their routines set in a way that kept them out of jail and out of notice from the authorities. Or, they had, until the year before when they suddenly had started meeting up with the Smiling Ghouls, another biker gang, and had gone to visit them in Amsterdam. So far, no one had noticed any actual business transactions or meetings that were anything but a party, but it had still caught the authorities’ interest. Which wasn’t strange; the Smiling Ghouls were one of the bigger clubs, and they were known to be involved in smuggling weapons, something the authorities tended to keep a close eye on. If they started dealing with someone, it was noticed.
Tony and his contacts had helped out the best they could, and she had an impressive private archive of the Marauders and their history in her home office.
Her other contact was a local detective named Evans. They’d bonded over being women in a predominantly male business, something that always worked with women, and they’d gone for a couple of coffees before Kathleen brought up the Marauders. It had been like turning on a faucet, and Evans had some of the inside scoops. Like a link to two female murders just a few years earlier that had never been solved. Kathleen had a feeling that Evans had more to confess, but it would take some time to get that trust. Either way, she had an inside source with the cops; the next needed to be a politician. The main problem there was that what was considered a politician in Greenville stunned Kathleen. Her current plan was to find someone who wanted to get to the top of the political chain and dazzle them, but she hadn’t found anyone yet.
She’d done all the background work she could, probably more than she needed, and she still had no fucking idea what to do with it.
Her D.C. boss had quickly figured out what she was up to, and he’d called her to let her know that he was extremely interested in an article about the Marauders. Which could’ve been encouraging, if she had any idea how to angle it. She could keep digging and try to find out what they were up to, but at the same time there were pieces on biker gangs in the paper all the fucking time. It felt like beating a dead horse to do another ‘look at these dirty boys who are fucking strippers and selling drugs’ thing. Besides, she had no proof, nothing even close to it, and the last time she’d published a big story with half-assed proof, she’d fucked up badly. She was also out of practice. The last few months, her most significant piece had been about a member of city council who’d called a woman a bitch during a meeting. She was off her game, and she needed to get this story right.
She still wasn’t sure what she was looking for, or what she would do with it. She wasn’t feeling it at all, and the wall of silence in Greenville regarding the Marauders was impressive. She’d found a couple of people willing to talk once they were convinced it was off the record and that it wouldn’t be printed in the Greenville Observer. The cherry on top was that Harold was on to her, and he was not happy. Even if she went over his head to make him back off, she had to live and work there. If push came to shove, she was sure she knew whose side he’d be on. The Marauders were a lot fucking closer to Harold than the big bosses in D.C.
Besides, she fought her own damn battles, thank you very much.
Kathleen grabbed her gym bag and went to the gym. Working out helped her think. It was also the gossip central to some of the girls from the club. She’d realized that there was only one decent gym in town, and the girls who frequented the Marauders clubhouse, the sweetbutts, worked out there. Apparently working out at the clubhouse wasn’t a good idea. She wasn’t sure why, but she was happy that was the case. They never s
aid anything worth noting, it was just gossip, but it gave Kathleen some idea of who the members were.
While running on the treadmill, she decided it was time to make contact to see if she could come up with something, anything, that could spark an interest or give her an idea.
CHAPTER TWO
Paranoid Can Be Good
o0o
MACE YAWNED AND THEN emptied the coffee cup. He was watching the employees they had at the garage working, but was planning on helping them out as soon as the painkillers kicked in. Officially all the members of the Marauders were hired either as grease monkeys at the garage or bouncers at the strip club. So, they all worked, but maybe not as many hours as a normal employee would, and after a night like the one he’d had the night before, they tended to start work a little later than the rest of them.
Mace had planned on taking a slow night but had ended up at The Booty Bank with Sisco, Tommy, and Bull. It had been good, but he was paying for it with a splitting headache and a sore back. Lately, the sweetbutts’ attempts to show off in bed had tended to fuck up his back. They were limber dancers, and he was fifty-one. Not that he didn’t like it when they made an effort, but sometimes a man just wanted to lie on his back and have a woman bounce on his cock until he came, without anything more spectacular than that. Especially the nights when a man in his early fifties felt each and every one of those five decades in his bones—and his back.
With a sigh, Mace braided his beard and put up his hair before picking up his work shirt from the changing room at the back of the garage. He realized he’d forgotten to brush his teeth and did that before he knocked on Mel’s door.
“Come in,” she yelled, and he opened it.
She was on the phone, and he leaned against the doorpost with a smile. As always, Mel’s appearance was immaculate.
“Looking good,” he said when she hung up.
“One of these days I’ll tell Brick how you and Sisco talk to me when he’s not around.”
Brick was Mace’s president and Mel’s husband, so if it had been an actual threat, Mace would’ve been worried.
“He knows. We say it in front of him, too. As long as you’re not both in front of us at the same time he doesn’t mind. He feels defensive when you are around, though.” He shrugged. “Besides, I’m just telling you that you look good. Given the time you’ve spent on doing that, it should be noticed and complimented.”
“Sure,” she smiled. “How can I help you today, Mace?”
“Anything big coming in, or can I keep working on that bike?”
“Nothing booked. Got some cabs coming in tomorrow, though.”
They’d gotten the contract to service the local cab company’s cars. It was a good contract, but Mace fucking hated service jobs. They were mind-numbingly boring. Right up there with servicing the soccer moms’ SUVs.
“Okay.”
He closed the door and sighed. He was definitely going to work on the custom bike job all fucking day if he had to work on cabs the day after.
“You’re late,” Tommy said with a big smile.
“I’m twenty years older than you, I have a fucking right to be more tired than you after an all-nighter.”
“I got up at six so I’d had time to hit the gym before work.”
Tommy had been in some super-special-force-crap-thing in the Marines, and even if he drank and smoked an occasional joint, he was definitely their most fit member. He worked out all the fucking time, and he even fucking jogged! He never talked about his time in the Marines, but Mace was fairly sure Tommy hadn’t been sitting on his ass. When he was still a hang-around, another hang-around had made the mistake of taking him up in the ring. They were all pretty good at hand-to-hand combat, but Tommy was definitely a step above the others. The year before, he’d saved Mitch’s old lady with his sniper skills in a way that had impressed them all. Brick had turned to Tommy for some advice a few times since, and it was obvious that the guy had advanced combat experience.
Looking at the barely thirty-year-old in perfect physical condition made Mace once again feel every single one of his fifty-one years, and he sighed.
“I hate you.”
“You work out.”
“I go to the gym and lift some shit while looking at the girls working out in there. Then I drag them off to fuck them.”
“They don’t work out,” Tommy laughed. “They go in there to show off, so you’ll drag them away to fuck them.”
“Still hate you,” he muttered.
The morning was slow, but it gave him a chance to take it easy until the headache had disappeared completely. After lunch, a Honda Fit pulled up outside the garage, and Mace hoped to god he wouldn’t be the one asked to work on it. He fucking hated those tiny bitch cars.
He changed his mind when the woman driving the car stepped out of it, though, because it was his kind of woman. A brunette in a leather jacket, white tank top, and tight cargo pants—and she was hot as hell. She looked at him with an arched eyebrow and a slightly crooked smile. When she started towards him, he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. It wasn’t the biggest pair of tits he’d seen, far from it, but still big enough to bounce nicely with each step.
Definitely his kind of woman, and he knew what that meant. Mace had a thing for rich bitches. He had no idea why, but each and every one of the women he instantly found hot as hell always turned out to been bored rich girls. It had become a joke among the Marauders, that if a girl instantly gave Mace a hard-on she was a rich, spoiled brat on a mission to piss off Daddy Moneybags. It always ended in the same way, they went slumming with him for a while, saw the wild side, as they said with a giggle, and then they ran right back home to Daddy Moneybags. Mace was fine with that. It was a fairly easy way to end things without crying, runny noses, and thrown accusations. It had gotten more rare when he got older, simply since the older he got, the less patience he had with giggling, slightly stupid girls. Then it was the thing with age. As he got older, the rich bitches who wanted to go slumming stayed the same age. Brick had jokingly asked if Mace was planning on fucking his way into the 21st century—as in girls born in the 2000s—as soon as they got legal. Since that seemed a bit sick, he’d decided to try to stick to women and not girls when he turned fifty.
This woman, because she was no girl, didn’t have the clothes to match his suspicions, but she gave him an instant hard-on. She was probably in her mid to late thirties. Possibly even early forties, he decided when she got closer and he noticed the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Her brown hair was cut in a seemingly simple shoulder-length haircut, but it looked a little too perfect for being anything but expensive styling with a carefully done dye. She’d spent a lot of money on her casual look, and she was also smiling a little too wide for someone who just wanted her car checked out. The smile was the second thing giving him a hard-on. It was lopsided—the left side went up, and the right slightly down—and Mace fucking loved lopsided smiles. They could make a dense girl seem sarcastic and smart. He didn’t think this woman was dense, though. There was a determination in her eyes and tenseness around her mouth that told him she was used to getting what she wanted. He just couldn’t figure out what she wanted.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” Mace asked while drying off his hands on a rag.
“There’s actually two things I need help with,” she answered in a controlled, almost too low, and slightly husky voice. He was starting to worry that his hard-on would be clearly visible soon, because holy fuck, every single thing about her so far was up his alley. If her eyes turned out to be green, he might just come in his pants.
“Okay,” he chuckled. “Does one of them include your car?”
“Yes.” She gave him another lopsided smile—he had a hard time deciding if the lopsided smile, tits, or voice was the best thing about her—and pointed at her car over her shoulders. “I just need it serviced, but I’m also a bit lost, and I need to get back to the G.O.”
“The Greenville Observer?”
> “Yes, I work there.”
Mace subscribed to the Greenville Observer. Not because he was particularly interested in anything they wrote, but he’d gotten the G.O. every Wednesday, four times a month like clockwork, his entire life. If you lived in Greenville, you subscribed to it. His mom loved it, and despite being sick, she still read the full thing. When he was a kid, she’d discussed what she’d read at great length during the Wednesday dinner—especially what she’d read in the family section.
It was a classic local weekly newspaper with extremely local news, which was probably why it had survived. To most people in Greenville it held a lot more news value than a newspaper that focused on the political situation in Asia, Europe, or even the US. Washington D.C. was far away, and most people couldn’t care less what the politicians were doing there, but if the School Board was discussing the high school’s library books—now that was news.
Glenn, the guy in charge of the family section, had been on Mace’s mom’s speed dial, and Mace had grown up down the street from Harold, the current editor. He knew who the other reporters were, too, and this chick standing in front of him did not fucking look like a reporter at The Greenville Observer. She looked like the kind of reporter who busted balls to get the news she wanted. She didn’t fit in.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Originally, I’m from Dayton.”
“Dayton, Ohio,” he smiled. He shook his head with a chuckle. “Okay, Dayton. I’ll give you a lift to the Observer. Get your things from the car.”
He didn’t wait for her reply and went into the office to get the keys for the van.
“What’s going on?” Mel asked when he leaned in to get the key from the hook next to the door. “Are you giving a customer a lift?”
“Yeah.”
“Big tits?” she asked without taking her eyes from the computer screen in front of her.
“No. Well… they’re nice, but it’s a reporter from the G.O. A new one.”
Speed of Light (Marauders #3.5) Page 3