Center of Gravity (Marauders Book 3)

by Lina Andersson

  Center

  of

  Gravity

  Marauders: Book Three

  -o0o-

  by Lina Andersson

  FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

  Center of Gravity © Lina Andersson 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  Lina Andersson has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  Cover art & Design by Kalle Andersson

  Dedication:

  For Mom, who made me love books

  -o0o-

  Acknowledgments:

  Writing isn’t as much of a solitary occupation as some think it is, and I find that I often need help and have questions. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those who have helped me with this book.

  Dr. Robert Råman and future doctor Elin Djuvfeldt, for their patient explaining about nerves, the nerve system, and rehabilitation after trauma.

  My at Dansbutiken in Gothenburg for answering all my questions about pointe shoes.

  Susan Fanetti, Jess Brook, C.D. Breadner, and Shannon Flagg for all your help and support. I wouldn’t be able to do this if it wasn’t for you guys.

  In fact, a big thank you to all the Freaks. You guys make this fun.

  In physics, Center of Gravity is, among other things, used in the uniform gravity field to describe an object’s response to external forces and torques.

  In the military, it’s a concept developed by Carl von Clausewits in his work ‘On War.’ United States Department of Defense defines it as ‘the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, or will to act.’

  -o0o-

  4.

  And both of them have feet and legs for nimble tripping,

  And waltzing and skipping

  Most gracefully in stockings and shoes;

  And both can dance about till it pleases and provokes one,

  And both have naughty little hands to fondle and to coax one,

  And nails which as claws they can use.

  “Marauders” - Gustaf Fröding

  PROLGUE

  Swim or Sink

  -o0o-

  In certain situations, Mitch’s brain started to throw facts at him. Sometimes just random, weird facts that didn’t seem to fit the current situation, but this time it wasn’t random at all. He was thinking about Bocca Della Veritá, the marble Mouth of Truth in Rome, and it made perfect sense.

  He looked around at the people gathered inside the warehouse belonging to the Marauder Riders in Emporia, Kansas. It was pretty much packed. The presidents and treasurers from all along their smuggling pipeline were there, and they were all looking at the same thing.

  A few months back, four of the guys in the charter Mitch belonged to, Greenville, Arizona, had been caught with pot and guns, and they were currently serving a fourteen months sentence inside. The members inside were Mitch’s brother Mac, their SAA Bull, Dawg, and finally their treasurer, Sisco. Initially, Mitch had thought that the fact that Mac ended up inside would have the biggest impact on him, but he’d been wrong.

  Brick—Mitch’s dad and the president in Greenville—had woken Mitch up one morning not long after the others had been arrested, and he told him it was time for Mitch to use the head on his shoulders instead of the one between his legs. It was, in short, time for him to be of some fucking use to the club and to use his famous smarts to take charge of the finances while Sisco did time. Mitch had actually been happy for the opportunity. He liked numbers; they made sense to him.

  Once the others went inside, Mitch had spent the following months filling in the gaps and learning what he needed to know to be able take care of the books. In the process, he’d realized someone within the club was skimming money in transfers between different charters.

  At first, he’d been terrified it was someone in his own club, and he’d spent a couple of weeks making sure it wasn’t anyone in Greenville, then he’d made sure it wasn’t anyone in Englewood, the mother charter, so he’d known where he could turn to get help. Finally, he told his dad and their VP, Bear, about it. They’d agreed that sending him to up Englewood was a good idea, and he’d spent some time with their treasurer, Dutch. It had taken them quite some time to find all the money trails, but they’d soon figured out who the guilty person was, and they’d made sure he was the only one involved.

  It was the Treasurer from the Emporia charter, Charlie ‘Hump’ Daniels.

  Mitch’s brother, Mac, had prospected in Emporia, so Mitch knew quite a lot about them. During the year Mac prospected, Emporia had run into problems with a local biker club. They weren’t big, but had some friends with muscles and it ended up in another turf war about pot.

  Mitch wasn’t surprised that more and more states in the US were looking into legalizing pot. It would most likely free up a big amount of the cops’ time and spare them shitloads of resources. It would, without a doubt, result in the Marauders losing money, and he hoped it wouldn’t get legalized in too many states, but he sure as shit could see why the authorities were giving up on weed in their war on drugs.

  Earlier that day, Mitch, Brick, Dutch, and the president of the mother charter, Chucky, had sat down with Rabbit, the local president, to tell him what they’d found.

  Rabbit had turned pale white when they told him. At first, he refused to believe them and it had taken Mitch and Dutch over an hour of explaining, showing papers, giving proof, before Rabbit finally sat up straight, sighed deeply, and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “He’s been complaining about you guys holding back on us, that we deserve a bigger cut and all along...” Rabbit had growled when the sense of betrayal kicked in and he started to get pissed instead of sad. “The fucker’s been stealing from us. Taking from our parts of the cut.”

  Mitch had only been a member for just over a year, but he grew up in the club, and he knew how things worked long before he got his prospect patch. There would be a vote among the Emporia members, Hump would be voted out in bad standing, and Mitch had thought there was a good chance they’d also vote on Hump being executed.

  He’d been wrong about that last part, but Hump was still paying in blood.

  -o0o-

  Mitch had always wanted to become a Marauder. He and Mac had started talking about it when they were just kids—the day when they’d both wear the patch and what it would be like.

  They’d both also been interested in computers, but while Mac went on about why Macs were so much better than PCs, hence his nickname Mac, Mitch didn’t give a shit about the things that were so important to Mac when it came to computers. While Mac just wanted a computer that worked, Mitch wanted to know how they worked, and how to make them work better. He wanted to understand them, and find out how he could use them for more than just gaming and surfing. He’d quickly discovered that everything with computers was logical, and it was numbers—something he understood.

  Numbers was something he’d always gotten. When he was in school he never understood why they spent so much time going through math problems or different ways of counting; he thought it was a complete waste of time. When he got older, he realized that he grasped things faster than most people did, and, since he got bored extremely easily, he started trying to make school more fun in his own way. ‘More fun’ was annoying teachers at first, and then, around fourteen, it turned into girls. Making out later graduated to blowjobs, and finally fucking. He’d thought it was a lot more interesting to
figure out how girls worked than going to classes where teachers tried to teach him things he already knew.

  One day Mech, the charter’s tech guy, had knocked on the door to his room. Brick had been standing behind him looking pissed as hell. Mech had discovered Mac’s extracurricular activities, which included hacking. Brick had bellowed that if he was going to do shit like that, he should fucking know what he was doing, and had set him up with Mech. At first, Mitch thought it was a drag because to him Mech was the boring guy who hardly ever partied and generally went home to his high school sweetheart and their two kids instead of hanging out at the club to get stupid drunk and laid.

  He’d quickly discovered that Mech might seem like a boring guy compared to the other members, but online, Mech was a fucking legend— a geek god. Unknowingly to Mitch, he’d idolized Mech for years. He just hadn’t known it was Mech, since he was known online under a completely different name—Blue Knight—and he’d been willing to teach Mitch everything he knew.

  Mitch’d been pretty bummed out when Mac did his usual overthinking thing and decided to prospect in another charter to make sure he made a name for himself, and he’d left for Kansas around the same time as Mitch finished high school.

  Even if Mitch’d never bothered with studying, he still did well in school. He took the tests and got his diploma, but then he refused to continue studying—to his mom and dad’s horror. At twenty-one he became a prospect.

  As opposed to Mac, Mitch didn’t give a fuck about making a name for himself, and Mech had taken him on as a prospect in Greenville. It felt better than having his dad doing it, but either way, they hadn’t let him off easy. He’d done the same grunt work as any other prospect. Sometimes even worse, because they wanted to make sure he knew that the fact that his dad was at the head of the table didn’t fucking matter if he was going to prove himself worthy of the top rocker.

  And here he was, just over a year as a member, and he was watching another member tied to a chair bleeding, all while his own brain was firing off random facts about Bocca Della Veritá.

  -o0o-

  Hump was tied to a chair, bleeding and crying. They’d taken off his ink with a sander, and he’d tried to not scream, but he had. He’d screamed himself to a sore throat, and now he was crying with hoarse sobs.

  Mitch was looking at the floor and the reason he kept thinking about that damn face carved into Pavonozzo marble: Hump’s right hand.

  Not two minutes earlier, Manchu, the SAA in Emporia, had grabbed Hump’s right hand and said, “I believe this is the customary way to deal with thieves.”

  Then he’d chopped it off.

  It wasn’t just the thieving, it was the symbolism of it being his gas hand. Hump wouldn’t ride again. Not that it mattered because he didn’t own any bikes anymore; the club had taken them all as payment for the money he stole and the betrayal.

  It was Hump’s hand on the floor that had led to Mitch thinking about the Mouth of Truth, which was a carving of a face with a hole for the mouth. It was believed to be a lie detector; if a person spoke a lie while having his or her hand inside the mouth, the hand would be bitten off.

  He looked towards the oil barrel where Hump’s cut was burning, and then turned his head towards his dad. Brick was studying him and raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. He wanted to know how he was doing. Mitch shrugged. He wouldn’t have known what to answer even with words.

  He knew about these things; he’d heard about them since he was a kid, but it was something quite different to see it—to be there when it happened. He’d been brought up to hate anyone who betrayed the club, to think they deserved whatever they got, and he hadn’t changed his mind about it, but it was still different to be there when the punishment was executed.

  In this case, it was his words that had set it off. He’d started it. It was a strange chain of events to him. The fear when he realized what was going on, the relief when he knew for sure the betrayal wasn’t from anyone in Greenville, the rush when he knew who it was, and now the realization that the hand on the floor was the end of a series of events that had happened because of him. It wasn’t that he thought it was wrong. It was more... surprising to see his actions having such direct consequences.

  -o0o-

  “You okay, son?” his dad asked and sat down next to him.

  It was a few hours later, they were in the Emporia clubhouse, and the warehouse had been cleaned up while someone dumped Hump outside the E.R.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “It’s not on you.”

  “I know that.”

  He did know that. It was on Hump. He’d made the choice to fuck with the club. Whatever happened as a result of that was on him and no one else.

  “You did good. Talked to Dutch, and he’s impressed. He said you came up with a different way to use the new accounting system. A way to avoid this happening again.”

  “We talked about it a bit when I was there.” Mitch looked at his dad. “Thought I’d stay with them in Englewood for a while and sort it out.”

  “Do that.” Brick patted his shoulder. “Remember what your mom always says: Swim or sink.”

  He must look really bad if his dad felt the need to bring up his mom. Not that there was a lot of bad blood between the two of them, but Brick didn’t mention her often. He knew Mitch was close to her, a lot closer than Mac was, and he was right—that was her favorite saying in any goddamn situation. Swim or sink, in that order, because his mom claimed that you should always have the good option first, and that sinking, giving up, wasn’t really an option at all.

  “I’ll keep swimming,” he smiled. “I’m going home with you guys before going up to Englewood. I wanna visit Mac.”

  Mac was the one he could always talk to, and Mitch needed to sort this out by talking out loud about it. Mac was the only one he could do that with, and he would never judge Mitch for how he felt about anything. He missed his blood brother, and it would’ve felt good to have him there today because Mac would’ve known his every feeling without him having to explain it.

  At the moment he had some problems understanding his own feelings. What had happened had somehow made him feel even more in the club, in some weird way. He’d grown up with these men, he’d prospected with them, and he’d been a member for a year, but what had gone down tonight was something new. Something he hadn’t experienced before, at least not like this. He’d been proud and eager when his dad had told him to step up and take his responsibility. This should somehow make him freak out and shy back, but it had had the direct opposite effect—he felt more like a part of the club than he ever had before.

  A while later one of the girls came up to him, but for once he didn’t feel like fucking. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to try to preserve the feeling of belonging a little longer, not fuck it away. So he grabbed a bottle of Jack and went to bed alone.

  CHAPTER ONE

  My Leg?

  -o0o-

  I opened my eyes, and it was so terribly hard. I didn’t know where I was, and for a second I panicked. Then I felt the pain surging through my entire body, and I forgot completely about the panic. I could hardly move without feeling as if I was being torn to pieces. Carefully looking down, I saw my left leg propped up in a cast. It seemed to cover my entire leg, from my ankle to my upper thigh. I lifted my hands and saw the drip needles.

  That’s when my hearing slowly came back, and I heard the machines’ rhythmic beeping. The next thing I noticed was a man’s voice.

  “Miss Dob... Dobror... Miss Anna, can you hear me?”

  No surprise there. People were never able to pronounce my last name—Dobronravov. I couldn’t answer him, though. I tried, but my mouth was too dry, and then I felt sleepy again. It was impossible for me to keep my eyes open. After a few attempts to stop it, I gave up and closed my eyes.

  -o0o-

  “Anna, love, can you hear me?”

  This time I
couldn’t open my eyes at all; it was impossible. I finally settled on nodding while trying to find some saliva in my mouth. I knew this voice, and I wanted to do what she asked, since it was my aunt, Irina.

  “Zvezda, you need to open your eyes, honey,” she continued. “Please open your eyes for me.”

  I managed, and even through the blur, I could see her smile. I knew her smile so well; I’d seen it at pretty much every important moment throughout my life. She leaned forward, holding a straw in front of me. Trusting it was water I opened my mouth to accept it.

  “Careful, Anna. Not too much.”

  “My leg?” I asked as soon as my tongue seemed to be able to form words again. It was more of a slur, but she understood.

  “Anna, I’m so sorry.” She shook her head, and I saw the tears in her eyes.

  I didn’t need to hear anymore. It was pretty obvious. I could clearly remember the cast covering it, so it was at least broken, probably more, but I had no memory of how I’d ended up here—what had happened. But my leg was broken, and in combination with Irina’s tears I knew what it meant. I would never dance again. I laid my head back down and fell asleep feeling the tears running down the sides of my face.

  -o0o-

  Both my parents and my aunt Irina started and ended their careers as dancers at the ballet in Phoenix. It had been the base for the American side of the family since the mid twentieth century. I grew up in a small town just outside Phoenix, in the very same apartment that both my aunt and my dad had grown up. My parents wanted me to have somewhat of a normal life, so I was in a regular school until I was fourteen.

  When I was twelve, my parents moved to Spain to work as choreographers. At first they wanted to take me with them, but having already been promised that I’d be allowed to apply to the School of American Ballet when I was fourteen, I refused and instead stayed behind and lived with Irina for the last two years. It didn’t matter much; the four of us had always lived together, and I was as close to her as I was to my parents. More importantly, she was my main trainer. I went to regular ballet schools of course, but my morning and evening training was with her. Then, at fourteen, I applied and was accepted at the School of American Ballet, and consequently moved to New York.