Free Dead Men Motorcycle Club by Angelica Siren Page A

in the know to get the real story, which she might otherwise have kept quiet. I'd learned in my short time here in San Viero that Karen almost always had the real story. How she came across the bits of information she gathered, I was never sure. Some of it was that the Dead Men often confided in her. I was sure she had other townsfolk gossiping to her as well. I strongly suspected that many of the things she claimed to know were just deductions that always proved to be right.
    "It's about the mayor," she said, idly spinning the chewed pencil on her desk. "Or rather, it's about San Viero. I think Donnovan wants it."
    "What? He wants the whole town?" I asked, still not quite used to the concept of people who were able to purchase entire towns and towns that were small enough to be purchased in such a way.
    "It's hardly a secret that the Dead Men are the real muscle in San Viero. You can figure that out with an internet search," she said, "The only reason a guy like Donnovan would make Cash his first stop in town is if he wanted to hire that muscle en masse."
    It all started to make sense. San Viero was far enough from the next big city that it wasn't part of any major metropolitan area, but that wouldn't last forever. The way things were going, every small town on the coast of Southern California would be caught in the gravitational pull of one metropolis or another soon enough. When a town got swallowed up by a larger city, there was an explosion of business. Reginald Donnovan was heading off the efforts, and he probably stood to make a small fortune off of our little community when the developers became interested - assuming that he controlled the town when they got here.
    I nodded at Karen, and she went back to her calculations. She and I had developed a strange sort of friendship. There was trust between us, certainly, but it was tempered by the knowledge that I'd ignored the first piece of advice she'd given me. Still, I was a capable mechanic and my relationship with Cash was enough to ensure that I was always part of the big picture here at Peasant Motors. Karen clearly had a protective impulse towards Cash, though he hardly required her protection. I knew that no matter how close the two of us got, Karen would always worry over her nephew's well being.
    I walked out into the lot and admired the sky for a moment. It was late afternoon, and there wasn't a cloud in sight. Back home it was probably snowing, but here in San Viero, it was a beautiful day nine times out of ten. I heard the door to the clubhouse opening and turned my attention towards it.
    Cash and Reginald Donnovan stepped through, talking in low tones. Donnovan had a small smile on his face that suggested he'd gotten what he came for. Cash looked, as he often did when talking with people outside the family , calm and emotionless. He never gave these people an inch when it came to emotion. Somewhere along the way he'd learned that the best way to deal with strangers was to stay calm at all times. That was just part of his mystery, I suppose. Once you got close, he was exuberant, loud and passionate. From a distance he might have been a sphinx - always mysterious and carved out of stone.
    "Everything where it ought to be?" Donnovan said to me as they walked towards me.
    "Absolutely. That's a beautiful car you've got there," I told him. I could see Cash smiling at me over Donnovan's shoulder. I was sure it was the first smile he'd cracked in the man's presence, and that if he'd turned around, Cash would've hidden it away immediately. Still, he couldn't help but feel proud of me. It meant a lot that I would be the one to look at Donnovan's car, even if there was no real work to do. Though Zach and Vickers would be the last to admit it, everyone had come to recognize that I was the most talented mechanic on the lot. The first time I'd brought a car back from the brink - the kind of engine Zach called "dead on arrival" - and made it sing again, that was when they