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But at the very last moment, Mustang cut the boat to the right, this time causing Roman to lose all balance and fall on top of a startled Wyatt.
Her words hadn’t been directed at Roman. She wasn’t apologizing to him.
Roman got off Wyatt’s lap and sat down next to him, no more words needing to be said. They raced into the narrowing canal, twisting with its curves and flying through an overhanging curtain of leaves from some thriving mangrove trees. Roman looked behind them and let out a relieved sigh when he realized the coast guard was nowhere in sight. They may have still been on their tail, but the lead they had helped them disappear inside the canal.
Soon, the waterway opened up and spilled the racing boat out into the ocean, where about twenty or so other boats all drifted around. Vacationers cheered on Jet Skis, and others shouted from the sky as they parasailed. It was easy getting lost in the crowd, and it made Roman feel confident that they’d made the right decision, as painful as it was.
“I’m going to keep my promise, Mustang.”
She shook her head, the fire crackling underneath the heat of her gaze. “We don’t even know where he’s taking her. The last time Leonidas had someone I loved, I was sent one of her fingers a day. How the fuck are we going to make sure that doesn’t happen to her? Huh?”
Roman stumbled for words, the flames from Mustang’s anger singing at his confidence.
“Actually,” Wyatt said, raising a finger, “I think I know where he’s taking her.”
Chapter 20
Wyatt Hernandez
All eyes turned to Wyatt. He sat up on the seat, back straight. Mustang was pulling their boat up onto the shore, way down from where the canal had left them. There weren’t any coast guard boats in sight, only some sunbathers and a couple of ab-sporting volleyball players.
“Back in the Pride hideout, right before everything went tits up, I was able to get into a laptop inside one of the bedrooms. At first, I didn’t find anything, but there was one email that jumped out at me. They were blueprints attached with a location.”
“Please tell me you forwarded those blueprints to yourself.”
Wyatt pursed his lips and shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
“Damn,” Roman said, shoulders slumping.
“But I did take a picture of everything on the screen. Babe, do you really think I’m going to forward everything to a trackable email address? No, we’ve got cameras now. And television that plays both sound and color.”
Roman narrowed his eyes before leaning in to steal a kiss from Wyatt. “I need to find me one of those fancy TVs, then,” he joked. “So what was on the email?”
Mustang, who’d been focused on safely bringing us onto shore, turned to look at Wyatt, her big brown eyes practically boring a hole directly down to the center of his soul. The intensity in her stare made Wyatt shrink backward before he realized the anger wasn’t directed at him.
“Check it out,” Wyatt said, taking out his phone and pulling up the photos. Bang Bang, Mustang, and Roman crowded around the phone, swiping through the images.
“These are blueprints for an underwater building,” Roman said after looking through each of them five times over. He went to the last photo, which depicted a short but important-sounding email.
“Yes, it was transported to the Key West location,” Roman read out loud. “I’m thinking that ‘it’ refers to the tome. And that the Keys seems to be where these blueprints are pointing to.”
“What makes you think Mimic is being held there? Or is this just about the tome?” Mustang’s bottom lip quivered for a brief moment before she bit down on it.
“We won’t know for sure, but it’s the best lead we’ve got to work with right now. If they think it’s somewhere safe enough to hide the tome, then I’ve got to believe that’s where they’re going. Especially with their previous hideout blown.”
Wyatt could see tension rising between Roman and Mustang. It made him feel a slash of guilt cut across his chest. Was Roman wrong in saving him? Should he have taken out Leonidas and saved Mimic? Wyatt had watched it all go down, understanding the moment his captor fell dead into the water that Mimic’s chance at escape had vanished.
“Jesus, Roman. How are we going to save her?” Mustang asked.
“By working together, by putting all our focus and effort on getting her out of there. He isn’t going to hurt her. He knows that Mimic is the strongest leverage he’s ever had over us. If he wants the two pages—the ones we have and he needs—then he won’t touch a hair on her head until he has them.”
That seemed to cool down some of Mustang’s flames, but not all. She ran a hand through her curls, eyes up at the darkening sky. The sunbathers were packing up, and the volleyball players were tugging their shirts and tank tops back on, elbows and knees covered in sand. “I don’t know what I’d do if we lose her.”
