Until Death Do We Part (Sex and Vows #1) (4 page)

Colin snorted, trying to contain his laughter and Donovan rolled his eyes. “Let’s get on with this, the sooner we finish briefing you, the sooner you can complete the mission and get back to practicing your talents as a Raven.”

It was my turn to scoff. “My seduction skills don’t need any fine tuning, just ask my wife. She’s the only one who will ever be the recipient anyway. But that’s beside the point. Just so you know, when this mission is over, I’m taking a month off.”

“Done.” Donovan nodded then slid a file my way. The manila folder was stamped with CODE-WORD CLASSIFIED, which explained why it was only the three of us in the room. Only a handful of agents in my office had a code-word clearance. Inside was a dossier on the target, Mark Sai, code name: Heron, with a picture and as much information as we could gather on the man.

“You think he’s hiding out in Rome?” I shot an irritated glance at my boss. Evie and I vacationed there frequently, which means I spend a great deal of time there as myself, as the real me, Alex Shaw, contract attorney and devoted husband.

Donovan sighed. “The higher-ups are putting their foot down. They want you for this assignment and they don’t care about anything else.”

“I’m going to have to be twice as vigilant, and it’s going to slow me down.”

Donovan shrugged, and I knew it was the most I was going to get out of him on the subject. At least Evie wasn’t going to be there with me. Every once in a while, the jackasses I answered to would send me on a mission while I was in the middle of traveling with my wife. Never in Rome, though.

There wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I went back to skimming the file. One line in particular stood out, “What the fuck?” I growled. “He was an agent-in-place?” The background stated he had tried to defect half a decade before but had been convinced to continue working for the foreign government, similar to being a double agent, but he was a civilian. Losing an asset like him meant we were running blind, not knowing who he was informing on or what they were being told.

“I was his case agent,” Colin informed me. “I don’t know if he exposed me or someone in his chain of command got enough information to piece together the clues and blew my cover. Either way, Mark got spooked and took off.”

“We need to know what he’s shared and how much of it is fact versus fiction,” Donovan added.

A mess of this caliber wouldn’t be contained to our department, and I needed to know what else I was up against. “Is there a kill order?”

Donovan nodded. “I heard they gave the job to Scarlett.”
Fuck.
It wasn’t just a retrieval, it as a damn fucking race to the finish line. Scarlett was practically a myth around here. Rumored to be an agent for dark ops, the operative was a fucking ghost, going in for the kill, accomplishing it, and disappearing without a trace. We’d gathered enough intel to recognize Scarlett’s work back in London, four years ago. The agent had slit the target’s throat before we could get him in a room to interrogate him. “Why can’t you guys work the fuck together? I shouldn’t be hampered by my own damn agency, Donovan.”

He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest, his face impassive. “That’s above my pay grade.”

I shook my head solemnly, “You’ve just killed my hero-worship of you, dude. I can’t believe you’re a slave to the man like the rest of us schmucks.”

“Get the fuck out of here and do your job, Justice,” he said gruffly, but there was a layer of amusement in his tone and laughter in his eyes.

I gathered up the information folder and strode to the door. “A month, Donovan. And I’m leaving my fucking phone in my safe.” I yelled over my shoulder before exiting the room.

***

I
slipped silently down the hallway of the Rafaello Hotel in Rome. My destination was room 501, the top floor, with windows facing another building.

It took me three fucking days after arriving in Rome, but I’d finally tracked Heron to this hotel. I waited another two days, watching his routine and plotting the best time to do a snatch and grab. At one point, I sent a weasel agent from another department scurrying back home. I wasn’t fool enough to think there weren’t more, though I’d yet to encounter another.

I was getting more and more impatient with this assignment. When I’d left the agency after my meeting with Donovan and Colin, I went home to face my wife. To my surprise, Evie was up and packing a suitcase.

“I got a call about a Rembrandt I’ve been trying to acquire. It’s in Port Elizabeth,” she informed me, her expression wary and her tone thick with apology.

I walked up to her and pulled her into my arms, kissing her soundly. “One of my clients breached a fucking contract and I’ve got to go to Brazil and straighten it out.”

She wrapped her arms around my middle and hugged me tight, her cheek resting on my chest. “Aren’t we the jet-set couple,” she murmured sadly.

Lifting her chin with finger, I placed a soft kiss on her nose, then another on her sweet lips. “I’m taking a month off after this trip. How about we go back to Fiji?”

Evie’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Really?” she asked excitedly.

“Really, baby. No phones, no internet, only you and me—“I rubbed a hand over her stomach—“and the kid I put inside you.” I winked and she laughed, hugging me close once again.

Reaching the correct room, I pushed away the emotions invoked by the memory. I needed to focus. Unlatching my hidden shoulder holster, I pulled out my M9 and put my ear to the door. It was silent, which wasn’t surprising because it was the middle of the afternoon and I’d learned it was when Heron slept, keeping a vigil at night. I’m not sure why the idiot thought the light of day would make a damn bit of difference.

I tried the knob, because, well, you never knew with these dipshits. It was locked, but the movement of the door indicated he hadn’t dead bolted it. Rather than kick the door in and make a raucous, I shoved my gun into the back of my waist band and knelt in front of the door to pick the lock. The click of the tumblers was inordinately loud in the surrounding silence.

Retrieving my weapon, I slowly pushed the door open, grateful for well-oiled hinges. Gun aimed in front of me, I stepped over the threshold, sweeping the room with my gaze only to discover an empty bed. I heard a rustle in the bathroom and stepped back against the wall, blending into the shadows as much as possible.

Heron exited the bathroom in nothing but a towel, and I rolled my eyes heavenward. I really didn’t want to grab this guy without clothes. Situations like this never ended well for me, considering I usually have to wrestle the target to the floor in order to subdue them. Apparently, Lady Luck was with me because Heron didn’t seem inclined to walk around in the buff, or to notice my presence, as he went about getting dressed. If all I had to deal with was a glimpse of his saggy, white ass, I could deal.

Once he had on jeans and a shirt, but before he could put on shoes, I stepped from my hiding spot and quickly stalked up behind him. He was staring out the window, squinting at something, and didn’t even notice my approach until he felt the cold steel of my Beretta, pressing against his neck.

“What do you say we skip the tussle and go right to the part where you give up and I drag your ass out of here?”

“Y
ou’re a go.” I barely blinked at the confirmation of the kill order when it came through my ear piece. It wasn’t a surprise, even though my target was technically a civilian. Leaving Heron alive was a risk my boss wasn’t willing to take, which I understood, since he was privy to sensitive information after having worked with the agency for five years. The man had come to my country for protection and found himself between a rock and a hard place because he had been in the unlucky position of being of strategic use to our government—but that didn’t excuse his decision for turning traitor. He’d agreed to be pulled into this kill or be killed world, the same as I had.

Eight years ago, I’d never expected to find myself where I was today, flat on my belly on the roof of an office building, fifteen hundred yards away from the Rafaello hotel in Rome, with my 338 Lapua Magnum aimed at the window of my target’s room. I’d resisted the CIA’s attempts to recruit me out of college. With my hard-earned bachelor’s degree in Art History in hand, I’d planned to head straight into graduate school.

My goal had been to become a curator at one of the top museums in the world. The Louvre, the Guggenheim, the Tate, the Met—my sights had been aimed high, but I was convinced I could accomplish anything if I worked hard enough. It was a mindset my father had instilled in me, and in the blink of an eye, the veil was torn away from my innocent eyes when he never arrived at my graduation. For as long as I could remember, it had been him and me versus the world
—
right up until an old enemy from his days serving as a Navy SEAL rose up from the ashes of his past to murder him in cold blood.

When the agency recruiter came knocking on my door the next day, with a confidential dossier on the asshole who’d taken my dad away from me, I’d signed on the dotted line. No questions asked. To avenge his death, I sold my soul to the devil and I’d never looked back. I used the skills my dad and his SEAL buddies had taught me to hunt down the man responsible for his death. All those years of shooting lessons, hunting trips and obstacle courses were put to good use. I’d earned numerous marksmanship awards over the years, but I’d never aimed a gun at a human being until that day. It was my first kill, but nowhere close to my last. I’d exceeded my recruiter’s abilities and was quickly moved to a division running missions so dark, we didn’t even have a name. But they put my years of martial arts and weapons training to good use, honing me until I became the ultimate weapon. Scarlett, the assassin with more kills to her name than anyone else in the agency, although there was no official record of my body count.

Tonight, I was going to add another to my tally. It hadn’t taken me long to run my target to ground. I’d spent the last three days observing him, studying all of his behaviors and looking for any sign he’d made contact with anyone else who could pose a threat in the future. I’d caught signs that other agents were hiding in the shadows, the same as me, but nobody had approached him yet. The involvement of others this early in the game meant the clock was ticking faster than I’d originally anticipated. I’d always been good at reading people, a skill my dad had cultivated with pop quizzes about the people surrounding us at the oddest times growing up. With the added behavioral training the agency had given me, I was an expert at determining motives and weaknesses. Heron was a man running scared, and he hadn’t yet had the chance to head for the safety of another country’s agency. The degree of his anxiety indicated it was a possibility in the future, though. Hence, the kill order.

Glancing down at the watch strapped around my wrist, I noted the time. If he followed the same pattern as the last three nights, Sai would be out of the shower and dressed for his nighttime vigil any minute now. A quick look at my Kestrel 1000 wind meter confirmed the conditions hadn’t changed since I last checked. No additional adjustments needed to be made to the sight on my Vanquish .308 sniper rifle, so I lowered my head and peered through the scope. As expected, it didn’t take long for me to catch sight of my target in the window. But a split-second later, I was in for the shock of my life as I watched a man, dressed in black from head to toe, approach him from behind and press a handgun into his neck. I was determined to follow through with my mission, refusing to allow this shadowy figure to swoop in and steal my target. My finger started to press down on the trigger, but I stopped the motion when I recognized the man’s eyes. There was no mistaking who they belonged to, not when I’d seen them gaze down at me with love, heat, and humor many times over the last four years.

I lifted my finger completely away from the trigger as the implications of what I was seeing registered in my brain. Alex. The man in black, with the gun in his hand, was Alex. My husband, who was supposed to be in Brazil taking care of boring lawyer stuff. I didn’t have the chance to wrap my brain around the situation. As I watched Alex move the man away from the window, I noticed a flash of red light moving in a sweep from the left side of the window towards the two men.

Laser light.

“Shooter,” I hissed, taking aim and firing over Alex’s head, knowing he’d get the hint and take cover. My shot was followed by a volley of fire from the other shooter.

“Fucking amateur,” I muttered as I shifted my gun and took aim at him. No self-respecting sniper would use a tactical light. The laser was pointless because it draws a straight line and doesn’t account for bullet drop. Not only did it not add any accuracy to the shot, it increased the odds of tipping off your target, like he’d just tipped me off. Spotting his hidey-hole through my non-reflective scope, protecting my position from him as he scanned the area, I added to my body count by taking him out.

Swinging my rifle back towards the hotel, I swallowed the lump in my throat at the sight of shattered glass and bullet-ridden walls. There was no sign of Alex or Sai, and I could only hope my husband had made it out of the room alive and uninjured. Not only because I loved him, but so he could explain to me what the hell he’d been doing there in the first place!

With swift motions, I broke my rifle down and packed it up. As I headed for the door, I yanked the ear piece out, dropped it on the ground, and smashed it with my heel. Pulling a secured satellite phone out of my pocket, I dialed the only number stored in it and waited for my boss to answer as I raced down the stairwell. The elevator would be faster, but I’d only disabled the cameras on the stairs since it was my planned route. The last thing I needed was to run into security when I needed to get my ass out of this building and down the street.

“Status?”

“Mission incomplete,” I answered.

Stunned silence filled the line for a moment. In all my years with the agency, I’d never answered this question in the negative before. “Explain.”