Page 95 of A Very Un-Shakespeare Romance
Because he was so done with this fake vacation.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Lily’s wish came true,and damn if that didn’t have her dancing on clouds.
The Kellys’ hit men came in hot the next day like the unimaginative gangsters they were. Parking a few houses down just after dawn, they broke into the beach house, guns locked and loaded. Since the agents across the street had already alerted everyone to their presence, they were waiting for them the moment they crossed the threshold.
Fortunately, the pair didn’t have a death wish. They didn’t open fire when Tyler shouted, “Freeze! FBI. Lay down your weapons.” Their mouths tightened as they exchanged glances before putting their weapons on the floor.
While Sheila and Tyler trained on the hit men, Lily and Robbie approached them and cuffed them together. “I’m going to cherish this moment,” she told him as the lock clicked.
He gave her a playful wink as he tightened the cuffs. “Me too. I’m going to play it back on a bad day.”
“Glad we could make you so happy,” the one guy said in a harsh Southie accent. “Dammit, the boss should have listened to Mo. He knew you were laying a trap.”
“You talking to me?” Robbie asked, leaning closer.
“Yeah,” the broad-shouldered bull of a man said, craning his neck to look at him. “You’re Robbie O’Connor, and from everything we know, you’re a squeaky-clean cop. Being with the Feds proves it. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.”
Lily fought a smile.
“It’s a challenge every day.” His voice was filled with irony. “But I agree with you. It’s too bad for Branigan that he didn’t listen to Mo this time.”
Lily knew Mo referred to Maury Kelly, Branigan’s first cousin and his second-in-command.
“Branigan thought your family being involved might make you think more flexibly,” he said with a drawn-out sigh. “Clearly he was wrong.”
She and Robbie shared a look as Agents Johnson and Mather arrived and joined them in the kitchen. “No, he wasn’t. Family made this entire mess feel very personal.”
A shadow passed over Robbie’s face, as if he were suddenly remembering the harm the Kellys had put Tara and the girls in. These men had been sent here to kill. Maybe it wasn’t personal to them, but she knew Robbie was working hard on keeping his objectivity after Scotty and company had blown it to hell yesterday. Someone in his own family had planned to hurt or possibly kill him and his family, a betrayal that cut to the bone.
Since she was in possession of one of the bad guys, she couldn’t touch Robbie’s arm in assurance, so she cleared her throat. He found her gaze slowly and shook himself, nodding to communicate he was all right.
She signaled to Tyler and Sheila, who were talking on their cell phones, updating their superiors about the arrests. They had made a lot of them in the past twenty-four hours and enlisted the local office for more help. “Let’s get these guys up to FBI headquarters in Charlotte with the others we nabbed last night and wrap this case up.”
They had a lot of interviewing to do.
Four days and a whole bunch of confessions later, Lily discovered the other benefit of dating a fellow law enforcement officer. He understood the tension a body took on from interrogation and knew exactly where to massage after she’d fallen face down on their bed in the Charlotte hotel room where their team was staying.
She lifted her shoulder as he hit a knot. “Oh, yes, right there.”
His thumb dug in deeper, making her take deep breaths to glide through the release of tension. “I think you might be more knotted up than I am,” he said, straddling her on the bed.
She thought about making a joke, but she went with honesty. “It might not be completely professional to mention this, but it was personal for me too. And not just because I want that promotion.”
Robbie gently caressed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head before resuming his massage. “I know that. Sheila said she’d never seen you so locked and loaded in interrogation.”
“We needed ironclad confessions,” she said, purring when he loosened another painful knot.
“Which we got, thanks to you.” His magical hands moved down along the outside of her spine. “You’re right. Peopledotell you things. I’m not surprised Scotty, Janice, and their ride-along accomplice caved, but I couldn’t believe you convinced the Kellys’ guys to become federal prosecution witnesses against Branigan and go into Witness Protection after taking an immunity deal. The new life you painted for them in Witness Protection was almost…God, I don’t want to use this word.”
She leaned her head back against his hard abs. “What word?”
“Poetic.” He snorted. “Timmy would have a field day if he heard it.”
Laughing was not an option. The previous night he’d had a bad dream about William Shakespeare’s head rolling around on the kitchen floor, spouting phrases from his works about death and betrayal and courage in the face of it all. Lily thought he was releasing internalized violence from the case in his own way.
“It was pretty poetic, I guess.” She’d chosen to paint a picture of them sitting in lawn chairs by the pool, playing bridge, and each of them meeting a good woman as neither of them were married. “Sometimes people need to see a new vision for their lives. Those hit men were only in their midforties. They have a lot of life left.”
