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One of the two had a large gauze bandage taped to his cheek, very close to a distinctive star-shaped tattoo that was common amongst cartel members.
The bus engine sputtered to life, the vehicle jostled forward, and Special Agent Harris rode toward his destiny with his head held low.
33
Piper kept smoothing her hands down her jacket, the gray pantsuit jacket that had been hanging in her closet all this time while she had been undercover with the MC. She couldn’t help herself; her thoughts and emotions kept swirling and swirling as she paced outside of the headquarters of the FBI’s Philadelphia branch.
Pony was with her, standing still and steadfast as she paced. He didn’t say a word, which was exactly what Piper needed right now. More words would only add on to everything that was bouncing around in her head, all of the possibilities of what might occur in that FBI building at her ten o’clock meeting.
She had no idea now what lay on the road ahead. They could still find something to charge her with and arrest her. They could fire her and end the only career she knew. Or they could keep her on, which would also mean that there was no realistic way she and Pony would be able to stay together.
All of the possibilities seemed awful. As the minutes ticked slowly toward ten, she felt like she was a condemned criminal waiting to find out what the method of her execution was going to be.
“I can’t stop pacing,” she finally said.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that outfit,” Pony said.
Piper stopped pacing, momentarily distracted from her nerves. “It’s my Tuesday outfit. Was my Tuesday outfit.”
“It’s not Tuesday.”
“I know. Mixing it up.”
“Youarea wild child.”
She tried to smile, but the swirling thoughts about what was about to come kept her from it.
“Pony…”
“It’s going to work out.”
That simple. A handful of words, spoken with Pony’s straightforward confidence, seemed to make all the difference.
Now she was able to smile, a little. “Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.”
“Ready?” he said.
Piper let her hands down by her sides, no longer smoothing them down the sides of her jacket.
“Let’s go,” she said.
She led him into the office, showing her badge to the guard at the front door. Then, up the elevator and through the maze of cubicles filled with similarly-dressed FBI agents clattering away at keyboards.
As the two of them passed, each and every one of those agents stopped what they were doing and stared. Piper couldn’t tell if it was curiosity, hostility, mistrust, or mix of all three, that she saw on all of their faces as she and Pony walked that gauntlet through them.
There was Jane, still at her old desk. A friendly face in that sea of onlookers. She gave Piper a little wink and a thumbs up, and that was enough to get Piper through that maze of cubicles and out the other side to where the conference room was waiting.
A pair of agents were waiting by the door, and as she and Pony approached, one of them held up a hand to bring them to a stop.
“Just you, Agent Marino,” he said.
Pony snorted out a laugh. “That’ll be the fucking day.”
“It’s all right,” Piper said, touching his arm. “I’ll be all right. It’s going to work out, right?”
Pony looked in her eyes. “Right.”
With that, she opened the door of the conference room and stepped inside to find out what her future would be.
