And he was damned sick of her disappearing acts.
Stepping outside and catching sight of her taillights as the little Jeep sped from the parkway, he turned to Dane questioningly as the other man stepped behind him.
“Loki tagged the Jeep at her last location, but there was a complication,” Dane informed him somberly before he could ask.
“What kind of complication?” He strode quickly to the Dragoon, aware of Dane following quickly behind.
Dane was sliding into the passenger side as Rule closed the driver’s-side door and activated the motor with a quick flick of a finger against the ignition pad.
“No sooner than he’d tagged it and finished programming the signal, the device malfunctioned. Returning to where she parked, he found the Jeep gone and the device dropped carelessly to the gravel.”
Rule accelerated quickly as he pulled from the parking lot.
“Dropped? As in someone dropped it, or as in the mechanism that holds it to the vehicle failed?” he asked.
“The mechanism was still working, and at no time did Loki see her exit the bar by the front exit. Mutt was watching the back exit, and she didn’t leave from there either. Though there were several windows on the other side where she parked, and one was open enough to have allowed her to slip away.”
Gypsy was escaping rather than leaving?
Damn her, the evidence was racking up that she was possibly the contact Jonas was searching for, and it was starting to piss him off. Mostly because he couldn’t deflect attention from her and cover her movements.
“Jonas wants that Jeep tagged, Dane,” Rule reminded him, his voice short, wondering how the hell he was going to keep Jonas from tagging it. Pretty soon, one of Jonas’s men would figure out someone was warning her of those devices.
Dane chuckled. “Perhaps it’s time little brother learns he can’t always have what he wants. Because it seems other interested parties are just as determined that it not be tagged.”
Rule wisely refrained from commenting.
As the Dragoon pulled from the parking area, the comm link to the vehicle’s communications beeped in summons. Flicking the control on the steering wheel, Rule answered it with a brief “Go.”
“Commander, I have the vehicle in sight,” Mongrel, one of Dog’s Coyotes, reported with icy efficiency. “She picked up a tail just after pulling onto the main road. It’s riding black on a parallel course and staying close.”
Riding black. Moving with all lights extinguished to avoid detection and most likely using one of the side roads that ran along the highway to keep sight of her.
“Can you identify?” Rule questioned.
“Not without being seen.”
Rule grimaced, wishing he’d driven one of the faster, more maneuverable desert vehicles rather than the Dragoon.
“Keep the shadow in sight if possible, but remain eyes on target until I arrive.”
If Gypsy had picked up a tail, then he sure as hell didn’t want to give whoever was following her a chance to get to her before he could. Just in case it wasn’t friendly.
...
Pulling the Jeep into the parking spot beside the stairs, Gypsy breathed out wearily before slapping the steering wheel in frustration when she saw her sister’s truck wasn’t back yet.
Damn Kandy.
She’d promised she was on her way home when Gypsy had spoken to her on the phone. That was the reason she had left so quickly rather than waiting to see just how terrified she would become if Rule actually tried to kiss her.
Not that she would have let him kiss her in the bar, she assured herself. She couldn’t do that. Her reputation of refusing any man she met in a bar was golden. All it would take was one moment of weakness to undo years of work.
And Rule was quickly becoming her weakness.
He and Dane were steadily becoming known as “regulars” in the unofficial nightlife that existed around the reservation’s Arizona–New Mexico border with the Navajo Nation. It wasn’t as though they were strangers now.
If they weren’t at whatever bar she pulled into when she pulled in, then they arrived within minutes of her taking the first sip of her drink. They had a few drinks, watching the younger Breeds and enforcers that Rule obviously seemed to feel so responsible for, and then they would leave and check out the next rowdy gathering.