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She drove off in pursuit. Her contact at the FBI kept her updated with Pony’s location as she drove, until finally, Piper could see him up ahead of her. He was on his Harley, headed toward a small town that was maybe a forty-five minute drive from the MC clubhouse.
“What’s he doing out here?” Piper wondered aloud.
She settled in a good distance behind him. If she got too close, even with her Gray Girl outfit and vehicle, he might spot her, and she didn’t exactly have a good reason to be out here.
Pony seemed unhurried in his travels. As he reached the outskirts of the small town ahead… New Warrington, Piper saw by a road sign… he stopped his Harley from time to time and checked his phone. Text messages, perhaps, Piper thought, because he never put the phone to his ear or looked to be talking into the speakerphone.
On one of these occasions, Piper ended up driving right past him. She had to fight the urge to look at him the entire time, to make sure that he hadn’t spotted her.
That would’ve had the opposite effect. Looking at people as you drove past them actually made it more likely that they would look at you; people tended to notice that behavior out of the corner of their eye and look reflexively in your direction. So staring at the target to make sure the target wasn’t looking at you, ironically made the target look at you.
A self-fulfilling prophecy, they called it back at the Bureau. Making your own worst nightmares come true.
Is that what she was doing now? The last thing she wanted to see was evidence of Pony doing something illegal, something she’d end up having to arrest him for. And yet, here she was, tracking his cell phone, following him around, virtually guaranteeing that she was going to see exactly that.
She shook her head to get out of those thoughts and pulled into a strip mall a few blocks down from Pony. There, she sat,waiting for him to drive past. If worst came to worst, she could call back in to re-acquire him from the cell phone trace.
That wasn’t necessary. Whatever Pony had been looking at on his phone, it hadn’t held his interest for long. He rumbled past on his Harley, and she pulled out of the strip mall’s parking lot in pursuit.
It was another three blocks down that she saw them. A little further ahead of Pony, three street motorcycles, travelling together in a tight group.
It was them. The idiot tweakers from last night who had given her and Pony all that static. The ones he’d gone and talked to after the race.
She had a lot of mixed feelings once she saw them. Part of her was patting herself on the back for her instincts being so on point; she had thought that something was off, and sure enough, something was. Pony’s little side conversation with the tweakers at the race last night had been more than it seemed, just as she suspected.
The other part of her was a little disappointed that she’d been right after all. She didn’t want Pony to be involved in any way with these guys. Truth be told, she was holding out hope that Pony would end up being so squeaky clean that she wouldn’t have anything to go on with him.
As far a case goes, that was. She could think of all kinds of other reasons why she’d like to spend more time with him, but the idea of having to pull her badge on Pony and leverage him against the club felt like ashes in her mouth.
“How do you betray them?” she’d asked Harris once, before she took this assignment. “The people you get to know as an undercover, that you become friends with… how do you betray them?”
“You don’t,” he’d told her. “They do the betraying.”
“What do you mean?”
“They betray themselves,” he’d said. “You don’t force them to break the law. You don’t force them to do anything. You just watch what they do. And hold them accountable.”
Now, as she continued to follow Pony and his three friends as they entered a small town, she had to admit, she didn’t want to see Pony do anything.
“Just stay out of it, Pony,” she said to herself. “Whatever this is, stay out of it.”
Up ahead, she saw Pony signal and then pull his Harley over. As she got closer, she held a hand to the side of her face to shield it from his seeing her by chance. Further past Pony, she saw the three tweakers from the race last night also parking, further away, more than a block from where Pony sat on his bike.
Why spread out like this?she thought. If they were coming out here to meet up for something, why was Pony sitting back here, watching them from a distance, rather than parking right next to them? There were plenty of spaces on the street.
Piper drove slowly once around the block, to give herself time to think as she came back to where she started. There, not far away, was a perfect parking spot that she could use to watch both Pony and the tweakers from last night, across the street from the both of them and half a block away.
She pulled in carefully, trying her best to look like just another civilian out running errands in town. Traffic on the street was light, so she was able to watch as the three tweakers got off their motorcycles and walked onto the sidewalk.
Strange. They were still wearing their helmets.
Piper scratched her head at the unusual behavior, watching as the trio made their way down the sidewalk. Why keep their helmets on?
The three of them walked past a fast food restaurant, a shoe store, and then, stopped in front of First Fidelity National Bank.
“What are you guys doing?” Piper said to herself. “Making a day trip out of going to the bank?”
She looked over at Pony, who now had his helmet off and was making a call on his cell phone. He, too, was watching the three tweakers who were now punching each other on the shoulder and bouncing up and down on their feet, as if firing themselves up for a race or a fight.
