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THE ENTIRE DAY WAS like some high-class porno flick. We ate a hearty meal and made love downstairs on the living room couch. Then we went at it in the shower before finally moving back to the bed.
I tired myself out, although it was a good tired. I slept like a rock all the way through to two in the morning. When I opened my eyes, I found Clark asleep beside me. Her arm was draped across my chest, a beautiful reminder of our time spent together.
It seemed like we both had extemporaneous energy to spare and that we had found a way to burn it off effectively. Neither she nor I had much experience with normal relationships. She’d had a boyfriend in the past, but all I’d had was a series of meaningless encounters.
Was I crazy, or did we actually have a shot at something lasting? I knew that we were in danger, yet it was easy to forget the threat of intruders when all I could see was her. Lying there at that early hour, I thought I might be in heaven if it wasn’t for that nagging feeling that something was wrong.
I had the cabin hardwired with a security system that was top of the line. If there was anyone within a hundred feet of the place, alarms should have sounded. Clark had expressed worry about leaving tracks in the snow the day before. I had promised her that I would go back and cover them, but then forgot once things got hot and heavy between us.
I tried to tell myself that I was imagining it. There was nothing going out there but deer and bears, nothing that could possibly threaten us. I closed my eyes, willing myself to go back to sleep.
I couldn’t tell if it was my heightened awareness, but there was a quality to the air that didn’t sit right. I thought I heard a noise, but it was so quiet, it could have been my imagination. Rolling my eyes, I forced myself to leave the cocoon of the bedsheets. There was no getting around it; I had to go investigate the security system and prove to myself that I had nothing to worry about. Maybe then I would be able to go back to sleep.
I headed downstairs, only bothering to put a pair of sweatpants on. I didn’t have a weapon or even a shirt, so confident was I that I was jumping at shadows. The security system was housed in a downstairs closet. There were remote controlled sensors and three view screens that displayed different angles on the house and the wilderness.
The massive glass wall that faced the mountains showed no disturbance. I couldn’t see outside very well, but what I could see looked okay. There was no broken glass and nothing to indicate that anyone had breached our living quarters. All the furniture was where it should be, and nothing had been disturbed in the kitchen.
I decided to pour myself a glass of water. It was obvious that I was making things up. Maybe I just wasn’t comfortable with the intimate path Clark and I were walking. I needed to fall back on familiar obstacles like rogue agents and death threats.
I tried to psyche myself out of the feeling of unease that hovered uncomfortably in my mind. I should have paid attention. I had developed those feelings over years of field work, and they had never served me wrong before. Maybe if I had gone for my gun early on, or if I had shared my misgivings with Clark instead of letting her sleep, things might have been different.
But I ignored the warning signs and drew myself a glass of water from the tap. It was right then that I heard a tap on the floorboards and knew that I wasn’t alone. I whirled, throwing the water into the face of a masked man sneaking up behind me.
He wasn’t fazed by the liquid but knew that he wasn’t going to be able to complete his job without a fight. I dropped the glass, and it shattered, turning the kitchen floor into a minefield. I lashed out with my bare foot, connecting with the assailant’s gut.
He produced a knife, swiping through the air just inches from my chest. I stomped down on his instep, grabbing his wrist and twisting his arm behind his back. I pinned him to the island with my elbow, squeezing his hand until he dropped the weapon.
My adrenaline was pumping, and I didn’t feel the sting of the glass as it pierced my foot. All that mattered was disarming the bad guy. I pulled his head up by the back of his ski mask and rammed it down again, feeling the satisfying thud of bone hitting marble.
The killer struggled until I beat him for a third time. Then his muscles relaxed and his body went limp, sliding to the floor when I released him. Clark appeared on the stairs, alerted to the problem. She wore only a shirt, sexy as hell and still deadly even without full attire.
The alarm still hadn’t gone off. Someone had disconnected it, but I couldn’t fathom how. You would have to be inside the building to shut the power off, a feat that should have been impossible. No one knew about my place in the mountains, not MI6, not the CIA, and certainly not Dark Sparrow.
Yet someone had done just that, rendering all my security protocols useless. I was about to search the rest of the house for more intruders when I came around the side of the kitchen island and found myself face to face with my former friend.
Regg stood in my living room, a gun trained at my head. There was a second assailant right beside him, dressed all in black. I couldn’t tell who it was or even if I knew him. Possibly it was another MI6 agent or maybe a hired hit. It didn’t really matter, but I wanted to know what I was getting into. If I killed someone on the company payroll, that would come back to bite me in the ass.
“Regg,” I said, pulling up short.
The other guy went for Clark, but she was quicker. Before he had a chance to reach the stairs, she was kicking him in the face, her beautiful form deadly in its accuracy. Regg fired a shot, narrowly missing my head. Heat blasted through my ear, and the sickly smell of blood tinged the air. I didn’t have to touch the wound to know that I’d been shot. And I didn’t have to ask to know that Regg had missed killing me on purpose.
“Hands up,” my handler growled.
I couldn’t see any way around it. I was too far from him to mount an assault without being slaughtered. And as vicious as Clark could be, she was otherwise occupied for the time being.
I put my hands up, determined to comply only as much as necessary to save my life.
“On your knees,” Regg insisted.
I lowered myself to my knees, my mind working a mile a minute to try to think of a way to escape.
“You too, sweetheart,” Regg growled through his teeth. “Unless you want to bury another boyfriend.”
Clark released a feral shout, something halfway between anger and pain. I wanted to go to her, to hold her in my arms and tell her it would be all right. This was exactly the situation I had feared. Regg was using our relationship against us, turning our love into vulnerability instead of power.
I closed my eyes, preparing to launch myself at him. I wasn’t going to let her go down on my account. Whether I lived or died, I wanted to make sure she was safe. But Regg was quicker than I gave him credit for.
He charged across the space between us and hit me with the butt of his gun. I saw a flash of light and the silhouette of Clark’s body as she started toward me. Then everything went dim, and the world came crashing down around me.
THE END
