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She said, “I think I might be on to something.”
“Such as?”
“Pony and I went and checked out this underground street racing group. The kind that rides racing bikes illegally through the back roads around here.”
“Doesn’t sound particularly useful,” Harris said. “Traffic violations? You’re a federal agent.”
“There was a group of guys there, seemed sort of sketchy,” Piper said. “At first I thought we were going to have some real trouble with them, but Pony ended up talking to them after the race.”
“Again, how is this useful to the case?”
“It seemed a little off,” she said. “The way he went over and talked to them. I think he might know them, and that they mightbe up to something. I want to follow Pony and see if he goes to meet with them today.”
“So follow him.”
“I need to track his cell phone in order to do that,” Piper said.
“Ah,” Harris said. “I see. And you need my authorization to make that happen.”
“If he gets into something with these guys, and I can have eyes on, then that might be what you need,” Piper said. “What we need.”
She winced at the slip of the tongue. Whatyouneed, she had said at first, not whatweneed. Harris was already worried that she might be getting too close to Pony and the MC, that her feelings might cloud her professional judgement.
And was he right?
Before Piper could let her thoughts go too far down that road, Harris was talking again.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll get you access to his phone’s location.”
“I need it in real time,” Piper said. “In case I lose him and need to re-acquire him.”
“You will. You’ll be able to call in with your badge number and get an updated location as you need it.”
“Good. Good,” Piper said, saying it twice as if to convince herself that it was what she really thought.
Please don’t be doing anything stupid, Pony, is what she really found herself thinking. She couldn’t help it. Pony was exactly her kind of man; strong, capable, with a clear sense of duty.
Not to mention a killer set of pecs. Must be all those pushups.
Piper shook herself out of all of those thoughts. This was the job. This was her job. If Pony was involved in criminal activities,then, well, that was his choice, wasn’t it? She wasn’t forcing him to do anything. She was just watching what he did, and reacting to it.
It was strange, though. She already felt like she knew so much about him, and yet, here she was, taking extraordinary measures to follow him to find out just how well she did know him. Maybe it was impossible to ever really know someone completely.
“Marino?”
Piper stirred.“Sir?”
“I said, keep your eyes sharp,” Harris said. “We need something on this. We need to get this investigation moving to show that your time slinging beers in that clubhouse hasn’t been a colossal waste of the FBI’s time and money.”
“Right,” Piper said. “I hear you loud and clear.”
She hung up the phone. Harris was starting to really push her lately. Piper had been under the impression that federal undercover operations were much more slow and methodical than this, that the FBI made it a point to take their time and get their win through the process of a slow grind rather than a quick, risky grab at an arrest. Go slow, make no mistakes, and in that fashion, you catch everyone, not just an unlucky few.
Still, it was hard for her to tell. This was her first undercover operation, after all, so she really didn’t have any frame of reference that she could use as a comparison.
In any case, it was time to get moving. Piper took one more look at herself, at Carly’s car, making sure that nothing about either one would stand out and attract attention.
Once she was satisfied that she was as gray and invisible as possible, she called in to the number Harris had given her to track Pony’s phone. He was already on the move, outside of town and heading back in the direction of where they’d been racing the night before.
