Gypsy King (Tin Gypsy, #1)(17)

And her loyalty to Dad and me, to Emmett and Leo ran bone deep. She was the little sister I’d never had.

Marcus’s visit to the garage last week hadn’t been the first. Presley had never once hinted she’d tell the cops anything, not that we’d given her much to report. She had our backs, covering for us when we’d done stupid shit at The Betsy now and then. Leo had her on speed dial for the nights when he was too drunk to drive.

She was part of our family. We didn’t tell her details of what had happened years ago. It was best she didn’t know. All of those secrets had been buried in unmarked graves.

Pres was smart. She knew what evil men we’d been.

Maybe the evil men we still were.

“What’s the plan, Dash?” Emmett asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t want any more surprises. I underestimated the reporter. That stops now. She’s digging—deep—and we need to stop it.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Work. Is Leo in the garage?”

He nodded. “He’s finishing the pinstripes on the Corvette. Isaiah is doing the routine jobs on the board.”

“What about you?”

“We got a new Harley rebuild to bid.”

Normally, we did those together so we could bounce ideas off one another. “Can you do it alone?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Following Bryce to the motel hadn’t ended the way I’d hoped. Guess it was time to try a different approach.





I walked into the Clifton Forge Tribune, taking a quick look around. I’d lived my entire life in this town yet hadn’t been in this building before. Up until now, I hadn’t had to bother with the press.

“Hi there. Can I help you?” The guy at the front was a dead ringer for Santa Claus. In fact, I think this guy was Santa during the annual Christmas stroll on Central.

“Just looking for Bryce.” I pointed to the door that I assumed led deeper into the building. “Is she through here? Never mind. I’ll find her.”

The wheels of his chair rolled across the floor, but he was too slow to stop me. I pushed through the door. Bryce was sitting at a desk near the back, alone in the room.

Her eyes lifted from her laptop, her gaze narrowing as I strode down the aisle. She leaned deep into her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. Then she quirked an eyebrow, all but daring me to unleash hell.

“Sorry, Bryce.” The man from the front caught up to me, his heavy steps thudding on the floor.

“It’s okay, Art.” She waved him off. “I’ll deal with our guest.”

The moment he was gone, she recrossed her arms, the movement pushing her breasts higher.

My eyes involuntarily dropped to her cleavage. The woman had a great rack. When I met her eyes again, that smirk was even stronger. Busted.

“Mind if I sit?” I slid a chair away from the empty desk in front of hers, straddling it backward.

“What can I do for you today, King?”

King. I’d hated that fucking nickname ever since kindergarten, when little Vanessa Tom had called me King every time she snuck up on me at recess and pinched me. But there was no way I’d let my annoyance show in front of this woman. She already had the upper hand.

She knew it too.

Goddamn it, she was a piece of work. Bryce sat there, looking bored as she waited for me to answer her question. I chose silence, studying her face for a few long moments.

Her full lips were irritating, mostly because I couldn’t stop wondering how they’d feel when I licked them. Her beautiful eyes drove me mad because they saw too much. I hated that her dark hair was my favorite length, not too long to get in the way and blow in my face when she was behind me on my bike.

Everything about her pissed me off because of my body’s reaction.

“Read your story.” I plucked a copy of today’s paper off the desk. “Looks like Cody was more forthcoming with you than he was with me.”

“I never reveal my sources.”

I tossed the paper aside and met her gaze. The silence settled and I counted to ten. Then twenty. Then thirty. Most people cracked by fifteen, but not her. Bryce kept that arrogant smirk on her face like she’d been born with it. Her eyes were bright and they held my stare without so much as a hint of fear.

Damn this woman. I liked her. That was my real problem. I liked her. Which was going to make threatening her a hell of a lot harder. That, and she didn’t seem to be intimidated by me one bit.

“You don’t scare easily, do you?”

“Nope.”

“What’s your game here?”

“My game?” she repeated. “I’m not playing a game. I’m doing my job.”

“But it’s more than that, isn’t it? You’re after more than just the details of this murder.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe.”

“Why? What did we do to piss you off?”

“This isn’t personal.”

Yeah, right. No one worked this hard when it wasn’t personal. This entire thing went deeper than her need to do her job. She wasn’t reporting a murder investigation for the good of the populace. Everything about this was personal.

Why? What was driving her to push so hard? From what I’d found out about her, she’d been successful on TV in Seattle. Had they fired her? Was she trying to prove herself to an old employer? Or her father?