Dangerous Surrender(43)
Clearly exasperated, she threw up her hands. “What I did was only a little illegal. And if we see that he’s there, we can call the police—anonymously. He might not even be there, but it’s a lead and I don’t want to pass it up. And I don’t want to give the police bad intel and have them waste resources when we could just check.”
He half-smiled, shaking his head. “Only a little illegal.” Her eyes widened as she looked at him in semi-shock. “What?” he demanded.
“I’ve never seen you smile like that before. And that doesn’t even really count, but…it looks good on you.” She grinned, sidling closer and wrapping her arms around him. She wiggled slightly, playfully rubbing her breasts against him. It didn’t matter that they were clothed, she definitely wasn’t wearing a bra and he could feel her hard nipples protruding through her shirt. He bit back a groan.
Fuck. He was so screwed. He set his coffee cup down and grabbed her hips, holding her close. “Are you seriously trying to use your sex appeal to get me to do what you want?”
“Absolutely. And logic. Mainly logic. We need to check this out. It’s the middle of the day, we can go just the two of us and not tell a soul. I trust Escobar but I don’t want anyone to know about this. What if one of the security team members is involved and they tip off Neal? I can’t risk that. Hugh deserves justice. The less people that know, the better. If we tell the cops and we’re wrong, they waste a lot of resources and risk tipping him off anyway. A team of cops showing up? He’s going to see that. But two people—”
“One person,” he bit out. “If we do this, I’m the only one checking out the boat. You will at no time reveal yourself publicly anywhere. Anywhere. Got it?”
“So you’re saying yes?” She practically jumped up and down with glee.
“I’m saying you’ll leave the checking out to me,” he muttered. He hated the idea, but she was right on all counts. If they could call in an anonymous tip on Lynch and get him arrested, the slimy bastard would flip on the guy who’d shot at Roman. Which would eliminate all threats to Taylor.
That was the carrot she was dangling in front of Roman and she had to know it. To finally get her safe, to get the men responsible for coming after her and killing her friend, was too much to pass up.
Roman knew he could keep her safe too. That wasn’t an issue. And he agreed that the less people who knew what they were doing the better. Keeping the knowledge of this to just the two of them literally eliminated any potential leaks. He didn’t like it, but he also didn’t like sitting around doing nothing. He’d planned to get her out of here today and into a new place anyway. They could make a couple stops before hitting their new safe house. “You’re going to need to change into less noticeable clothes. At least your shirt. Something plain. And we’re going to have to make a couple stops before we head there.”
She rolled up once on the balls of her feet, but it seemed as if she was restraining herself from jumping up and down.
“And,” he stressed, “you do whatever I say, when I say it. If I say run, you start sprinting away. Nothing I say is up for debate.”
“Even if you ask me to strip naked in public?”
His lips twitched. “Yep.”
She nodded once. “Deal.”
* * *
“What are you doing? Did you see him?” Taylor demanded the second Roman slid back into the SUV.
He got into the middle seat instead of the front seat since she was sitting there and he wanted to be close to her. The windows were darkly tinted and it was almost impossible to see inside. They’d been parked along the exterior of the marina for the last hour, not in the actual parking lot, but on the curb against the public sidewalk that lined the southeast side of it.
Oversized, white benches and clusters of big palm trees lined the walk, making it a perfect place for people to jog and walk their dogs. The sidewalks were triple the width of normal ones and this section was made specifically for that reason; so locals could exercise and stay active in their community.
Unfortunately it meant there were a lot of damn people around and he needed to get onto Lynch’s boat unseen.
“No, but I don’t think anyone’s on the boat. All the blinds were open and I couldn’t see anyone moving around inside. There were too many people around though. Some kind of open house type thing on the boat next door.” He was pretty sure they were trying to sell the neighboring boat. Next time he was going to approach as a salesman of sorts. Just act confident and enter the boat. If Lynch was inside, he’d just disarm the fucker and call the cops. If he wasn’t, Roman would play stupid and get the hell out of there, hopefully without being shot by the owner.