Page 5 of Snake
“No idea, but I guess it’s important. C’mon, assface, let’s go.”
Cox gritted his teeth and put the socket wrench in its slot. He folded his shop cloth and set it on the wrench case, so he could pick up where he’d left off.
When he finally turned around, Mel was still waiting, arms crossed, stupid smirk on his face.
“Assface?” Cox sniped as they headed to the Keep together. “Are you thirteen?”
“I’m young at heart, my brother. You should try it.”
“Eat my ass.”
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~oOo~
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“Looks like Kennerman’s decided to be a pain in our dick from the jump,” Badger said as soon as he gaveled the meeting open.
Mark Kennerman was Signal Bend’s new mayor. Ellis Hopkins, who’d held the position for several terms, had died suddenly a couple weeks earlier—a ‘thunderclap coronary,’ or something like that. He’d complained of a bad headache, stood up to get something for it, and dropped dead. As Cox understood it, the man’s heart had practically exploded.
The Signal Bend governmental structure was a bit bare-bones and loose, but Kennerman had been the town treasurer, the only other full-time employee at the town hall who wasn’t a secretary or a janitor, so he’d stepped into the role of mayor and would hold it at least until November elections.
Government was bare-bones and loose in Signal Bend because what went on in the town hall was mostly set dressing. The real decision maker in town was the Night Horde MC. They handled town security and protection, and for decades, almost since the founding of the club, the mayor had answered to the club president. The arrangement worked well for just about everyone involved, but there had always been a few sniping voices. Since Signal Bend had grown in the past decade or so, those voices had increased from ‘few’ to ‘some.’
Mark Kennerman was not a friend to the Horde. As treasurer, he’d gummed up works where he could, holding up funds for as long as possible, arguing with the mayor at every opportunity, trying to foment unrest in the town. He’d been unsuccessful, largely because the Horde were heroes to lifelong residents, and they had stories like folklore to tell at every opportunity.
But now Kennerman had the big desk. At least until November, there was a lot he could do—or, at least, try to do—whether the people of Signal Bend wanted him to or not.
“What’s that mean?” Isaac grumbled. He’d been making Cox a solid challenge for the title of ‘club grump’ for nearly a month now. Ever since his daughter, Gia, and Zaxx Bello, her boyfriend and the newest Horde patch, had struck out on a research road trip for her dissertation. She was studying outlaws and visiting friendly clubs.
They were somewhere in California, Cox thought. At their very first stop, in Tulsa with the Brazen Bulls, they’d almost gotten caught up in some Bulls trouble. It had all turned out okay, more drama than danger, but Isaac had tried to demand Gia come home—that Zaxx bring her home, by force if necessary—and they’d blown him off. He’d been a rabid grizzly since.
“It means,” Badger answered, “the motherfucker signed the contract with that Rooney bitch. He sold the fucking property out from under us.”
The men around the table erupted at the news. Tommy, their SAA, raised his voice over the rest. “Then he needs a fucking correction.”
Everybody seemed to agree—except Badger. He shook his head.
“I agree, but not right now, and we gotta be careful. Yeah, Kennerman is not good for us, and we either need to find a way to get him on board or get him out of office. But with Springfield PD starting to make noises like they’ll investigate Danvers and Donahue, we need to be careful what kind of light shines our way. We’ve been riding pretty straight longer than I’ve had the gavel, but we are fucked a dozen ways if they find those guys.”
Last summer, Bill Danvers, a Springfield cop, and Bennett Donahue, an ex-cop and Danvers’ former partner, raped and beat Zaxx’s younger sister, then broke into Zaxx’s house and lay in wait for him. The whole scene was a complicated mess, but the end result was those assholes were extremely dead, and their bodies were rotting at the bottom of a quarry lake. Because the Horde had put them there.
The club had given up the outlaw life long ago, but they still handled their shit in the way it needed to be handled.
“That was almost a year ago,” Cox said aloud.
Dom, their intel officer, answered. “Donahue had some relative—aunt, I think, and when she didn’t hear from him at Christmas, she started making calls. I can’t tell yet whether they’re just trying to appease her, or if they’ve decided the story doesn’t fly that they ran off to get clear of their mess.”
Danvers and Donahue had been troublesome cops, with lots of hits on their files for violent encounters with the public, especially women. Dom had seeded a story that they’d run off before shit in Springfield got too hot for them. It had taken root, unless this aunt or whoever started pulling weeds.
“What if they find the bodies?” Thumper asked.
“First, short of somebody at this table telling them where the bodies are, it’ll take a mountain of detective work before anybody’ll even think to look there. That lake is deep, and we sank ‘em to the bottom. Nobody’s gonna come across that scene accidentally. Second, even if somehow they do find ‘em, it’s not a sure thing they’ll connect the dots to us,” Dom said. “We covered the tracks well. But it’ll be tense as fuck for a while.”
“We are all fucked if they do connect the dots,” Showdown mused.
“It was fucking self-defense,” Isaac growled. It had been Gia who’d actually killed those men, when she came upon them waiting at Zaxx’s, and it had absolutely been self-defense. But when it was cops, self-defense didn’t get to count.
