Until Death Do We Part (Sex and Vows #1) (10 page)

Finding out she was doing the same, how could I judge her for having the same sense of duty and patriotism? No, her kills weren’t what bothered me. In fact, knowing my wife was such a badass was a pretty big fucking turn on. What got to me, was seeing her in danger, worrying about her. I knew she would want to kick my ass for it because she was the best at what she did, but it didn’t stop the torturous emotions.

I wanted her out of this life, to stop putting herself at risk, because what she was asking of me, it was killing me. And when this mission was over, we’d be having a very frank conversation. I was going to make sure she kept her sexy ass at home if it was the last thing I did.  Knowing my Evie ... it very well could be.

She walked out of the hotel lobby after checking us out, came over to where I was idling on the curb, and got into the car. We were trying to avoid being seen too much together in public, putting off the assumption we were a couple. Little things, like being at the front desk of a hotel, could make all the difference.

She buckled in and I drove out onto the road, ready to make the hour drive to Civitavecchia Port. We were going to spend the night at a local safe house while Martin tried to pinpoint Heron’s location, or at least get us a lot closer so we weren’t stumbling around in the dark. I was only giving him a day, then we would catch the ferry to Barcelona at five o’clock pm. On our way to the house, my phone pinged with a text and I asked Evie to check it.

“It’s from... Archmage?” she ended the statement with a question mark.

I laughed, explaining, “It’s Martin, my tech guy. He was pissed because they wouldn’t give him a code name. So, he hacked his record and gave himself one. Then he locked the file so no one but him could edit it.”

Evie was silent for a moment, then asked, “This is Martin Banks?”

“One and the same,” I replied. “You know him?” It wouldn’t have surprised me.

“More like, know of him. My boss has been trying to recruit him to black ops for years. Damn, I’m a little envious.”

I stole a glance at her and winked before looking back at the road.

“He sent an address.”

“Must be the safe house,” I mused. She punched the address into the GPS and we followed it to an old farmhouse about ten minutes away from the port.

It sat a ways back from the road, and from the rest of Martin’s message, it appeared to be empty at the moment. Turning onto the gravel drive, I glanced out Evie’s window and saw an older woman sitting in a rocker knitting, by all accounts not paying the rest of the world any attention. It was very quaint, like a picture on a postcard.

I pulled the car around back and parked a good distance from the house, by an old shed and out of sight of the road. Our go bags only had one extra set of clothes, so this stop would give us somewhere to lay low until we needed to be at the port and the chance to change and re-stock our bags.

Evie stepped out of the car and looked up at the house, raising her brows. “Damn. Your safe houses are a lot bigger than ours. At least, the ones I’ve been to.”

“You don’t drag your targets back with you,” I reminded her. “Live people can make a lot of noise.” My tone was matter-of-fact.

She stared at me for a moment, and I wondered if my candidness had given her a glimpse of a side of me she didn’t think existed. Seeing the ruthless spy in action is a lot different than hearing about the things I’d done.

I grabbed our bags and headed up the porch, set them down, and dug around for my key impression kit. When I found it, I picked up my phone, scrolling through until I found the file sent from Martin a few minutes before. I attached my phone to the kit and hit the transfer button. After a moment, I opened it and saw the new key impression and poured the mixture from the bottle inside into the mold. Shutting the case once more, I pressed the start button and waited for it to beep thirty seconds later. After extracting the key from the mold, I stood and inserted it into the deadbolt on the door.

The lock clicked and the door swung open. I held it so Evie could pass by me, then retrieved our bags from the porch and followed her. I put everything down on a scarred, wooden table in the large, old fashioned kitchen. Evie started rummaging through our things, figuring out what we needed. I meandered over to the refrigerator to see how long it had been since someone stocked the house. Not surprisingly, it was pretty bare, but the pantry was bursting. I sighed, well aware this was par for the course on a mission when you’re forced to stay out of sight, a lot of dried or canned food.

Evie laughed, and I turned to see her staring at me. “You’re adorable when you pout.” I glared at her and she only laughed harder. “Go find us clothes and ammunition, stud. I’ll make you something to eat. I promise, it won’t taste like MREs.”

I grinned and walked swiftly over to her, pulling her into my arms and giving her a hard kiss. “Thanks, baby.” Then, I did as I was told and left the room in search of supplies. Turned out, the house had a washer and drier, so rather than make do with whatever we could find to wear, and since we would be there overnight, we decided to wash our clothes. I brought us each a set of unisex sweats usually found in these places. We changed and Evie worked her magic (damn my wife was amazing) and fed me a lunch I could’ve sworn I’d ordered from a restaurant.

We took advantage of the time in seclusion and spent most of it in the bedroom. I felt a quiet desperation inside me, a mixture of fear and need. It poured out of me as I made love to Evie, and when the panic reached the surface, I fucked her hard. I wanted to leave no doubt as to who she belonged to and to leave my mark on her soul.

The next day, a couple of hours before our scheduled departure on the ferry, we were all packed up and ready to go. Evie was finishing up a call with a contact while I ran our things out to the car. As I jogged back to the house, my phone beeped. Digging it out of my pocket, I froze as I read the message. Forecast: rain. Wind: four mph. Time: twenty minutes. Roads blocked east to west.

Fuck!
“Evie!” I yelled as I sprinted back toward the house. She appeared in the door as I was about to throw it open and I almost bowled her over.

“What?”

I tossed my phone to her and ran into the kitchen. I stood for half a second, thinking, then moved to the kitchen sink and dropped to my knees. Opening the cupboard under the sink, I located what I was looking for and put it on the sink.

“Alex, we don’t use the same terms, I don’t—“

“Wet work team,” I interrupted her, “Four on the team, coming from both directions on the road, twenty minutes out.”

“Shit!”

“Pretty much.” I was in the pantry looking for an empty jar. “Scarlett, run to the shed out back and see if you can find me some paint thinner, or rust remover.” I didn’t wait to see if she would follow my direction, I knew when I referred to her by her code name it would kick in her training.

I finally found a glass mason jar and set it on the table before sprinting to the bathroom and locating hydrogen peroxide. When I returned, I opened the two containers and put the right amounts into the jar. As I worked, Evie came back and handed me a tin of paint thinner. She was holding a length of pipe and I threw her a curious look, but she shook her head. It wasn’t the time for questions.

Carefully adding the third component, I mixed it until the liquids became a crystalized form of acetone peroxide. I placed the lid back on the jar and screwed it on tight. For good measure, I poked holes in the top. Jerking my head, toward the door, I indicated for her to lead the way out. Once we stepped outside, I left the door wide open and set the concoction down to the side of it, directly in the path of the hot, afternoon sun.

Evie grabbed my hand, tugging me after her and we ran to the back shed, taking cover inside on either side of the doorframe. Then, we waited. Eventually, the sun should heat the jar enough for the mixture to explode.

Whenever I’d jerry-rigged something at home, Evie used to ask me if all I watched growing up was MacGyver. I laughed it off at the time, but the truth was, in order to improvise something, you just had to understand the basic principle behind whatever it was you’re making. The same thing applied to weapons and explosives. And...maybe an episode or two of MacGyver.

I was fervently hoping the makeshift bomb would go off when the kill squad was in the house searching. If it took too long, they’d be headed for our little hideout. Our weapons were already packed up in the car, since we knew we’d have to have them carefully concealed to get them on the ferry. I felt fucking naked without my Sig.

We heard the cars screech to a halt before we saw them. The loud crash of the front door was followed by a swarm of movement we could barely make out through the windows and open back door. I stared hard at the jar, willing it to ignite. A bullet whizzed by my head and I jerked back. “Fuck! If the acetone doesn’t ignite in a minute, they’ll be on the shed in seconds.”

“What if Heron is in there with them?” Evie asked, her face thoughtful.

I narrowed my eyes at her, wary of the calculating look in her eyes. “It’s a definite possibility,” I reluctantly agreed. Another hail of bullets sprayed above our heads where we were crouched.

“Friction or shock will set it off too, right?” she whispered furiously.

“Yes, but—” Before I could finish speaking or had any kind of clue as to what was on her mind, Evie shot to her feet and positioned the pipe, her stance meant to absorb kick-back. I realized she’d concocted a fucking zip gun from pipe, a bottle cap, and a nail or screw of some sort. If I wasn’t so fucking terrified, I might have teased her about her own MacGyver skills. However, at that moment, Scarlett stepped into the doorway and I felt my world stop. When it started moving again, it was in slow motion. I watched in horror as it played out in front of me, and I could only move as fast as the world around me. Which meant there was nothing I could do to prevent what was happening.

Scarlett took aim, and in a surprisingly accurate shot for such an unstable weapon, the single bullet went flying. As bullets began to fly, so did I. Barreling into Evie, I knocked her to the ground, barely aware of the stinging pain on my arm or sound of the blast as it blew the house and engulfed any remaining pieces in flames. Including its occupants.

The stark terror inside me suddenly morphed into blinding rage like I’d never felt before. I lifted myself up and shifted to look out the door. I spied two unmoving bodies a few feet from the burning structure. There was no way anything inside had survived, so I stood, pulling Evie up with me and throwing her over my shoulder, ignoring her protests and hauled ass to the car.

I threw open the car door and set Evie inside, then sprinted around to get into the driver’s side. I started the ignition and screeched to the far side of the property to get to the road, avoiding the flames.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Evie?” I thundered.

“I was thinking about accomplishing my mission and saving our asses. If Heron was in there, it solved both our problems!” she snapped.

I should have cared that she’d chosen to use our situation to complete her mission without any protest from me, but I was too focused on what could have happened.

She said something, but I didn’t know what. I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my ears, fury and fear as explosive a mixture inside me as the acetone peroxide when it met her bullet. I glanced at her and her eyes became as wide as saucers as she took in my expression. She abruptly twisted in her seat and faced forward, remaining silent.

It was clear the storm inside me was showing on my face, but I didn’t give a fuck. Let her see it. Maybe it would scare some fucking sense into her. She could have been killed, I could have lost her. It took everything in me not to lose control at those thoughts. I held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

A gasp from Evie brought me out of the red haze long enough to see her staring at my arm. I took my eyes off the road long enough to look down and see what she was looking at.

The long sleeve of my black Henley looked wet and there was a small tear in the fabric.

“Alex! What the fuck?” she shrilled. “You were shot?”

Of course, after she pointed it out, the wound started to sting like a bitch. However, another quick inspection of it showed the blood was already clotting and the fabric was only torn the tiniest bit.

“I’m fine, Evie. Calm down and look at it again. I was only grazed.” My expression turned thunderous once again and my voice was dangerously low as I continued. “Which is a fuck of a lot better than what you’d be suffering from if I hadn’t gotten to you in time!” By the time I was finished, I was shouting. But, our conversation came to a halt as I pulled into the Park and Wait. I searched for my phone but couldn’t find it, then remembered I’d given it to Evie. She must have sensed what I needed because she handed me the small, black burner.

I punched in a number and it was picked up before it even had a chance to ring. “What the fuck, Colin?” I bellowed. “How the fuck did they know where I was?”

“Justice! Dude, it’s Martin. Calm the fuck down!”

“You get that motherfucker on the phone, right now!” I was going to kill him. Slowly. With as much pain as humanly possible.

“He’s in a meeting with Donovan and the other suits trying to figure out what happened,” Martin grunted in frustration. “Colin and I were tracing a lead when it led us to an encrypted com. I broke it and we realized Heron had hired a mercenary team. Colin flipped his shit, certain they were heading for you, then he and Donovan tried to head it off. But they weren’t able to catch the wire transfer before the group was paid. Don’t know how they found out about the house, but we think they were tipped off by someone who let them know when you’d arrived.”

“How, Martin? How did they find the damn house?!” A thought hit me. “Check into the people who lived across the street.”

“Will do, man.” Martin got quiet, then asked in a low voice, “Justice, are you stepping out on your wife?”

Now was not the time to resurrect that line of thinking, it only added fuel to my fire.