Until Death Do We Part (Sex and Vows 1)

“You ready to do this?”

Alex’s question broke the silence. I glanced up at him to find his worried gaze locked on my face. Using every inch of willpower in my body, I forced myself to relax and offered him a smile. “Of course I am, stud. I was born ready.”

He rewarded me for my effort with a chuckle and a quick but hard kiss. I felt it seep into my bones, warming me—but doing nothing to lessen the tension I was feeling.

“Then let’s get this over with, once and for all.”

Hefting my bag over my shoulder, I followed behind him. My head swiveled as I studied our surroundings, looking for any changes since we were last here. The warehouse district was quiet at this time of night, and nobody was around. I spotted one light out over the door of the building across from our destination, but the bulb was intact. It hadn’t been shot out, most likely just needing to be replaced by the owner. I scanned the windows and roof anyway, searching for signs that we had unwanted company. Reaching a hand out to touch Alex’s shoulder briefly, he paused and glanced back at me. He caught where my gaze was aimed and joined me in my perusal. After a couple minutes, he squeezed my hand.

“Spot anything?”

“No,” I answered. Nothing except the darkened light bulb was different, but it was enough to put me further on edge. I figured part of it was that I was hyper-sensitive to danger after the close call at the safe house, and because Alex was with me. If it had only been me, I probably would have set-up on the same roof I’d just stared at, but I couldn’t bring myself to be that far from him, in case we needed to make a quick retreat. If that wasn’t a sign I needed to seriously reevaluate my role with the agency, then I didn’t know what was. Letting emotion impact my decisions was a sure fire way to get myself killed, but I couldn’t shake my gut feeling that I needed to stick close to Alex. “I think we’re good.”

We moved on and rounded the building to approach the rear door of the warehouse. Alex kneeled down to pick the lock, his back to mine as I kept watch. I’d never worked a mission this closely with another operative, and I felt the weight of my responsibility for his safety heavy on my shoulders. He made quick work of the lock, and we entered the building swiftly and quietly, softly closing the door behind us so we didn’t alert anyone to our presence.

Heading to the east side of the building to the large stack of crates where we’d dropped our bug. Nearing them, I noticed the lid of one was slightly off center. I was certain we hadn’t left it that way, and we hadn’t heard anyone open them while we’d listened in. I stopped dead in my tracks, gripping Alex’s arm so he halted with me. It was then I heard it. Clapping. Motherfucking clapping.

“Well done, Scarlett.”

I swiveled around, pulling a Glock from each shoulder holster mid-turn, and found our target standing about ten feet away from us. He had four beefy bodyguard types with him, each with a gun aimed our way. I raised my arms and aimed mine right back at them.

“I have to admit I was hoping you were the one they’d send after me,” Heron announced, his eyes raking my body before he turned his attention to Alex. “But I’m a bit disappointed, since I’d heard you always worked alone.”

“Maybe you were too big a target to risk losing with only one agent,” Alex interjected, presumably in an attempt to play on Heron’s ego.

“Ah, but Scarlett isn’t really an agent, is she?” Heron replied. “You might be, but she’s a bit more than that. Or less, depending on how you look at it since your government would be content to let her die while denying her existence. All of which means she could be quite valuable to me.”

At that, the guards shifted their stances so all four guns opposite us were aimed Alex’s way. And my husband, the stubborn ass, took several steps away, drawing their aim farther away from me and more firmly on him.

“How interesting,” Heron murmured, his gaze darting between us with a calculating gleam. “Looks like I’m not the only one who thinks the infamous Scarlett is valuable.”

I tapped my left foot, hoping like hell Alex would catch the signal. Between the two of us, we could take four of them out fairly easily, but five would be pushing it—especially since Alex was hell bent on taking Heron in alive. This situation called for kill shots if we wanted to improve our odds of getting out of here alive. With the bodyguards, I didn’t have to worry about Alex hesitating. If Alex understood what I meant and started from the left, we had a good chance to take them all out, leaving Heron as the only one standing.

“I can think of at least four people who would agree with you.” I stressed the number as I spoke, and followed it up with three light taps of my foot. As soon as my sole hit the ground the third time, I fired in rapid sequence. Three shots from my two guns and one from Alex’s pistol. Four shots, straight between the eyes of each bodyguard. It would have been perfect, except Heron had used that time to reach behind his back to pull out a weapon. A gun he had aimed straight at my husband.

“You were just a name on a list to me up until a few days ago, Scarlett. One of many who I’d sell to the highest bidder without thinking twice. Then I heard rumblings about a dark ops assassin who was hunting me, with a male special agent at her side.”

“Fuck,” Alex hissed.

“An assassin so good at her job that a kill team had been sent for her but failed when she blew the safe house where she’d been staying,” Heron continued. “Someone on your side wants you dead, and they’re willing to pay a lot of money to make that happen. I’m curious to see how much you’d be worth to others, alive.”

“You’ll never find out because there’s no way in hell you’re gonna walk out of here with her,” Alex growled.

“Are you sure about that?” Heron chuckled. “It’s not like you can kill me since you’re supposed to bring me in alive for questioning.”

“The only way she leaves here with you is over my dead body.”

“If you insist,” Heron replied.

In those brief seconds as I watched Heron take aim at my husband, I better understood why he’d been so angry about what I’d done at the safe house in Rome. His fury merely masked his fear of losing me. A nightmare I shared, as images of our life together raced before my eyes. I couldn’t just stand here and watch it happen, not when Alex’s life was on the line. I leapt into action, diving in front of Alex just as Heron’s finger pressed down on the trigger of his gun.

Shit! I was hit. I’d never taken a bullet before, but I knew what the flare of heat and stinging pain in my upper arm meant. Luckily, I’d already gotten both of my shots off and it looked like my aim had been true, one to his hand to knock the gun out of it and another to his knee so he couldn’t run. Mid-leap, I twisted my body to avoid landing on my injured arm. I went down hard. Damn hard. I managed to miss my arm, but I took the brunt of the landing on my upper back. My head snapped backwards, smashing against the concrete once, before bouncing up and slamming down again.

Fuck! The pain in my head overshadowed my arm. Darkness crept around the edges of my vision. I wasn’t sure how much time, if any, had passed since I went down. I heard Alex yelling, but his voice was muffled as though he was in a tunnel far, far away from me. I tried to lift my hand and reach out to him, to reassure him that I was okay, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.

“I don’t care what the fuck it takes, get an ambulance to our location and make sure a medevac is on standby at the hospital for her, Martin!”

Was it bad enough that I needed a medevac?

“I know her personnel file is buried deep, but you’re going to have to figure out a way to unearth it because her medical records had damn well better be at Moron when we get there.”

Martin was good, but there was no way he could get me onto a military base for treatment.

“You’ve got plenty of time to find a way to make it happen between however long we’re at the hospital and the almost two hours we’ll be in the air.”

Even if he managed to get an operative who technically didn’t exi

st onto the base, he couldn’t get his hands on my info. Not that quickly anyway.

“Yeah, we need medical care for two.”

My breath froze in my lungs. No. Please don’t tell me it was all for nothing.

“Damn fool woman leapt in front of a bullet for me, and she still managed to fire two rounds at Heron with a precision most operatives don’t even have at the gun range. He took one in the hand and one in the knee.”

He meant Heron and me. Alex was unharmed. Comforted by the knowledge that he had escaped the confrontation unscathed, my eyes slid closed and I stopped fighting the darkness, letting it swallow me whole.