S-Duality: A Marauders Novella (15 page)

The second was that the driver who'd killed Trudy had asked to meet him. It was some fucking program to help survivors, and Sisco didn't want to. No fucking way. He wanted to hate that fucking dude, because some days that hate and rage was the only thing that kept him going. It didn't matter to him if it was a freak accident. That actually made it even worse, because he didn't want to meet him and fell sorry for him even for a second. If that made him an ass, he could live with that, but he couldn't
fucking live with having spent a second of his life feeling sorry for the fuck that killed his wife and daughter.

He left it all behind and told Jane to stay at the house for as long as she wanted to and then just sell everything. She didn't stay long, since she had the same problem with the place as he did—it was just too full of Trudy.

He talked to her on the phone when she was about to move and once again repeated that she could just sell everything and put the money in his bank account. There wasn't anything he wanted to keep. When she kept nagging about Trudy's paintings, he kept repeating the word
sell
. He didn't want anything, and especially not her paintings. He remembered what he needed to remember of Trudy and seeing those paintings would break his heart. Jane told him she'd kept all the photos and private things, and if he wanted anything, all he had to do was let her know. After much hesitation, he asked her to send him two pictures. One was their wedding picture. It was just a cheesy picture taken by one of the security guys at the courthouse, but Trudy had loved it. He kept it in the envelope and didn't open it until years later. The other was a picture he'd taken of Lorna. That, too, was kept in the envelope with the wedding picture, but he liked knowing that he had them even if he couldn't bring himself to look at them.

He rode around the country for almost two years. He had
a lot
of money, both their savings and what he'd got when Jane'd sold everything in the house. Just Trudy's paintings were worth a fortune, and they were all sold immediately. He dryly noted, once again, that all artistic creations became more valuable once the creator died. Some journalists had called just after her death; he didn't waste a single breath on them. He was done with journalists, too.

Along the road, he hooked up with other random bikers. Some he stayed with for a long time, others just a few weeks. They stopped at some clubs and hung out with the local bikers.

Soon, he started having sex again, and it actually never felt like cheating. Trudy better than anyone knew the difference between fucking and what the two of them'd had. He'd actually been worried about it, but after the first time it didn't feel strange anymore. Even if Trudy was somehow watching over him, which he doubted for a long time, she'd understand.

Some of the clubs he was at felt like a family, even if he was just a guest. He liked that feeling, but none of them felt like enough of a family to stick around. One of the clubs he considered trying to join
was located in Signal Bend, Missouri, and was called the Night Horde. He was there for a few months, and they asked him to stay. It was a pretty small club, mostly locals, but what finally made him say no was the size of the town. The thought of living in a small town like that freaked him out. He was a city boy, and he needed plenty of concrete and plenty of buildings more three stories high to be able to breathe.

Then he got fed up with it all, and figured that even if he didn't actually commit suicide, there were other ways of making sure life didn't last long. Mexico seemed like a good place to drink yourself to death in a fairly cheap way. He just had to make sure someone shipped him back to Seattle to be buried next to Trudy and Lorna once he died. So he headed towards Mexico, and that was how he ended up in Greenville.

He walked into the bar and immediately noticed a group of men in cuts sitting around a table. It wasn't a huge surprise because he'd seen the bikes with their mark outside. During the two years on the road and with different MC clubs, he'd learned how to behave around them. So he gave them a respectful nod to acknowledge their presence before sitting down to order a beer and a burger.

Once he'd finished his second beer, one of the guys sat down in front of him. When Sisco once again gave him a nod, he extended his hand, and Sisco took it.

“I'm Brick,” the guy said. “Is that your Ironhead out there?”

“Yeah,” Sisco nodded.

“Nice bike.”

“Thanks,” he said and tried to smile, but those muscles hadn't been used much lately, and he suspected he mostly looked uncomfortable. “I saw your rides, too. There were some really nice ones there, especially the Ironhead Bobber.”

“That's mine,” Brick smiled. “Where are you heading?”

“Mexico.”

“Got someone waiting for you there?”

He hadn't known it at the time, but once he got to know Brick, he realized Brick had been onto him within five minutes. He'd known Sisco was a mess. It could've just been some brotherly bon
d between Ironhead-owners, but Brick had thought he could fit in if he cleaned up his act. But at the time, Sisco had tried to keep up his act.

“No. Just thought I'd see the sights.”

“So, Ironhead, got a name?”

“Sisco.”

“As in Cisco the Kid?”

It happened every time, and every time he heard it in Trudy's voice and a chill went down his spine. Yet it never occurred to Sisco to say his real name. He liked that feeling, and he liked hearing Trudy's voice, even if it was just inside his own head. His reply was a reflex.

“No, as in a small commune on Corsica. Sisco with an S.”

“Fuck!” Brick stared at him and started to laugh. “I bet there's a really good story behind that.”

Sisco almost threw up. There was only one person who'd said that before, and now it was like he could fucking hear her giggling next to him. Until that moment, he hadn't truly thought she was watching over him. He'd hoped, but right then it felt as real as it ever had, or ever would. That Trudy, in some way, was still with him and watching over him. He couldn't reply, but that didn't stop Brick for a second.

“We're on our way to the clubhouse. If you tag along we'll get you some beer, pot, and maybe some tail to go with that.”

He nodded, still slightly dumbstruck, and got up from behind the table. As if on cue, the rest of the patches got up and followed them outside. It wasn't that fucking odd. He'd been picked up for  clubhouse parties in similar ways a few times. If you showed them you knew the code by acting in the right way, it happened. At least if they sat down with you and got a good feeling about you. They took you to the clubhouse, got you drunk as fuck and stoned as hell to get to know you properly. Sisco knew the drill and drunk as fuck sounded pretty nice to him.

His heart almost stopped when he walked into the clubhouse and
heard that the song 'Trudy' was playing.

“You okay, kid?” Brick asked as he clapped his hand on Sisco's shoulder. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“I kind of did, and she was a bit too fucking obvious.”

“Maybe you'll tell me about her along with how you got named after a small commune on Corsica.”

“I'll tell you about Corsica, but she's a bit harder to talk about,” he admitted.

Brick just nodded. “Okay. I get that.”

It hadn't taken Brick long to get the full story from him. About as long as it took Sisco to decide that the Marauder Riders MC was the kind of club he could imagine staying with.

What really made him decide was when Brick said he was welcome to stay, but that they weren't looking for suicide bombers. They wanted loyal members who worked for the club, and not members who were working towards their own death.

He liked the atmosphere; it truly felt like a family, and Sisco knew better than most that family wasn't just about blood. He made sure to keep in touch with his other family, and Jane came to visit him pretty often. Whene
ver Riot Act had a gig close by, he went to see them and hung out with them a little. There were others he kept in touch with for a while, even Laurie and Casey. They'd quickly had two more boys, then he sort of lost contact with them, but Jane kept him updated.

Once they'd gotten his full story, Brick, Bear, and Bull never held it against him that he avoided the kids around the clubhouse, and there were a lot of kids there. Not at the parties, but pretty much any other time of the day. When kids were born, he stayed the fuck away from the hospital, and if anyone questioned it or made any comments about it, he said it was between him and Brick. If they had a problem with it, he was available to talk
it over with them in the ring. No one ever had a problem after that.

When Brick hung the patch over Sisco's shoulders, eighteen months after they'd met at that bar, it had felt like coming home again.
A different home, and a different kind of family, but a family nonetheless.

EPILOGUE:

-
o0o-

Present day, Greenville, Arizona

Sisco saw Jane the second he walked through the doors of the bar he'd stopped at for a beer and burger on his way to Mexico years earlier. A lot had happened since then, to her, him, and to the music scene that once had been his entire life.

He'd noticed that the bands that made
it, which were still going strong, were the bands that had quickly turned away from the labels' demands. The ones who kept their friends around instead of the label reps—bands like Riot Act. Or the smaller bands who stuck to their own way through it all, who saw early on what happened to other bands when they got their big break. A lot of those were still recording albums and touring.

He still
talked to Pete regularly, and they met up for a beer or he went to see Riot Act when they had gigs close by—and he still thought they were amazing. So some things didn't change.

A few years earlier, Jonah had told him he was the one who
had bought all of Trudy's paintings from their house. He hadn’t liked the idea of Trudy’s private paintings with some stranger in a suit, and he could afford it, but he’d told Sisco that if he wanted them, all he had to do was say the word. As far as Jonah was concerned those paintings belonged to Sisco. Sisco'd been touched by the gesture and knew that the painting of Trudy's blue ass was among them. For a second, he'd thought about taking it but had changed his mind. Instead he'd asked Jonah to hang on to at least that until Sisco was ready for it.

He'd called Jonah a few months earlier to let him know he wanted it, and that was one of the reasons Jane had come to see him.

When she stood up from her chair to meet up with him in the middle of the seedy pub, he laughed. She was wearing a gray striped skirt and a matching suit jacked with a crisp white shirt underneath it.

“Is that what you wear to a date with an outlaw biker?” he asked as he gave her a tight hug. Then he kissed her cheek. “It's good to see you, hottie.”

“Good to see you, too, stud,” she mumbled against his chest.

Jane had done well for herself. She had started an art gallery in Seattle the year after he'd left. She was now one of the big art connoisseurs of the northwest, making tons of money that she pumped into whatever charity she felt deserved it. Most of them good ones, from what he could tell. A lot of them worked
to support young women from bad circumstances who wanted to make it in the art business—girls like Trudy. He had to love that.

“I brought the painting from Jonah,” she said and stepped back to hand him a wrapped package. “He said this was
the one you'd asked for. A blue ass-print? Hardly one of her best.”

“It's Trudy's ass,” he said with a smile and leaned the painting against the table as he sat down.

“Hang on, is this is the painting you guys fucked on?”

“That's the one.”

“All good?” she asked and studied him closely. He’d never lied to her, and he wasn’t about to fucking start now. And he wanted to talk to her about it.

“I don't know. You know that girl—Violet?”

He'd told Jane about everyone in the club, and she'd met most of them, too. She was the only one who knew why Vi was special to him.

“Your friend's daughter, the tattoo artist?”

“Yeah, her. She had a baby today.”

“Oh.
Now I feel old.” Jane took a sip of her beer. “Well, maybe that's a sign it's time. A lot of water under the bridge, and shit like that.”

And shit like that. A lot of the things from back then had been resolved. Not everything, but some of them.

The Green River Killer had been caught, and more importantly, so had Letty's killer. Almost a decade after the murder, a guy down south on the west coast had been taken in by the cops for some weird, random reason, and they had taken his DNA—it had matched the DNA found on Letty's body. Like they'd hoped, it had been a random killing by a complete psycho who'd just been passing through Seattle. It didn't really help them that much later, but it was still a relief to know for sure it wasn't one of their own who'd done it.