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“How do you know him?” Piper asked. “Are you with Homeland Security, too?” That would be just her luck.
“Not hardly.” Gypsy’s lips tilted into a crooked smile. “I was with the Marines myself. Many of Natches’s missions in Afghanistan and Iran are used as training points now.”
Piper had heard Tim mention that several times, while Natches seemed rather proud of it.
“What are you going to do when they find out you’re gone, then?” Gypsy asked as Piper stared into the darkness and wondered what the trip would have been like with Jed.
“Hopefully, they won’t find out,” she stated irritably. “Because, trust me, New York City would never be the same if those three showed up there.”
She shuddered to even imagine the chaos the Mackay cousins could still manage to create.
“Best-laid plans and all that,” Gypsy pointed out. “Surely you have a plan, just in case?”
“I’m a Mackay; what do you think?” She grinned back at her friend’s sister.
“I think you have one,” Gypsy reflected. “But I think you’re not so sure of it, and I think you’re really afraid it won’t work.”
“And what makes you think that?” Unfortunately, she was right.
“Six years in the military. The last two in the investigative side of the military police. I can hear it in your voice, and I can see it in your face. You’re a piss-poor liar, aren’t you, Piper Mackay?”
“Unfortunately, that’s far too close to the truth,” Piper agreed.
It didn’t surprise her to learn Gypsy Seavers was some sort of investigator. She had that air of secretiveness and quiet watchfulness. “I left Mom a note. She’ll find it in the morning, and I begged her not to say anything. And for the first time in my life I lied to my mother. I told her I needed to get away from the male portion of the family and I was staying with friends.” She grimaced at the lie. “What she’ll actually end up doing is anyone’s guess.”
“And how long do you think it will take for your brother and cousins to find you?” Rueful amusement reflected in Gypsy’s voice.
They would find her far too soon if she didn’t get very lucky.
“Let’s hope it takes a while,” Piper suggested, terribly afraid that if she wasn’t very, very lucky, then her brother and cousins would find her far too quickly.
* * *
“What the hell do you mean, she’s not here?” Dawg rubbed his hand along the back of his neck in irritation as he faced Mercedes the next morning, barely holding back a glare. He needed to talk to Piper about what had happened the night before. Catching her with Jed Booker had reminded him all over again of what had happened with Eve the summer before. He didn’t want another sister in danger because of her association with one of Timothy’s agents. He also didn’t want her endangered because she was trying to hide it from him. And he definitely didn’t want to piss Mercedes off as he tried to find out where the hell she had gone.
Timothy, the quarrelsome little bastard, got all kinds of out of sorts if he managed to upset Mercedes over her “babies.” But he’d be damned if those sisters of his weren’t going to drive him to drink.
Their antics were making him seriously consider a nunnery for his daughter.
“Dawg, give her a break,” Mercedes ordered, though her voice was calm as she moved around the kitchen and cleaned up from that morning’s breakfast preparations. “You’ve hounded her, Lyrica, and Zoey for almost a year now. Everywhere they go, everything they do, and everyone they talk to is reported back to you so you can fuss at them over their friends, potential dates, and acquaintances. I warned you last year they were going to get sick of it. Piper just got fed up with it first.”
Her arms crossed over her breasts as she stared up at him, her expression tight with defensiveness as her determination to stand in his way became more than apparent.
“And you know why I’ve done it,” he reminded her. “Hell, I remember a time when you were all for it.”
Now that those stubborn, independent young women were crying on “mommy’s” shoulder, she was backtracking from the protective atmosphere just as quickly as she had agreed to it.
“A year ago.” One hand propped on her rounded hip as she faced him with fiery dark eyes. “When there was a chance she was actually in danger. Even you admit there’s nothing going on now, no one is watching you or the girls, nor is there any apparent backlash from what happened last summer. I believe, Dawg, you can’t let yourself accustom to life without that danger. It’s not fair to make the girls live such a life as well.”
He was not going to allow her to draw him into this argument, not after having this exact confrontation with Christa after returning home the night before, furious at finding Jed in Piper’s room, and Piper in Jed’s arms. His own wife had been quick to rip a strip of his hide, first for not knocking, and second for daring to butt his nose into his sisters’ sex lives again.
He did not want to know his sisters had sex.
He especially didn’t want to know who they were having sex with.
“Where’s she at, Mercedes?” He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of this argument. They’d already been down that road far too many times.
“I’m not telling you.” Pure stubbornness pulled at her expression.
