the risk of burns but needed the darkness.
He quickly typed out a message to Lopez telling him to get men to the beach and turned to Astrid. “Are you armed?”
“Yes of course,”
“Good because I see three men coming out of the sea and five more moving up the beach from the left.”
“Help me take this dress off.”
“What?”
“I can’t fight properly in this skirt, help me.”
Jack helped her remove the skirt which detached from the top, leaving her in some kind of short petticoat.
“Kiss me, Jack.”
He didn’t ask questions just did as she asked and kissed her as the men spotted them.
“Hey.”
Jack and Astrid pulled apart like lovers caught in a tryst and held their hands up as they moved to their feet and faced three of the men as the rest carried up the cliff face steps behind them.
“Here take my wallet.” Jack put his hand in his pocket as if reaching for his wallet and grabbed his knife. The next second Astrid kicked sand up, and he threw the knife, embedding it in the closest man’s eye.
Astrid went for the second man, and he had no choice but to take on the third as he brought his gun up. Jack kicked his leg in a high arc, knocking the weapon from the man’s hands and sending it to the ground. His opponent came at him again, throwing a punch that caught Jack in the chin, but he blocked the follow-up and countered with a hip throw. The man landed on the rocks, his bones crunching. Jack followed up with a strike to the face which knocked the other man out cold.
Suppressed gunfire erupted from above, and Jack knew his team had arrived. He turned to help Astrid and saw her with her legs around the other attacker’s body as she choked him out. She looked like a Goddess, and he knew from watching her fight, and after seeing her vulnerable and funny side, that he was in deep trouble. It took everything in him not to run from the realisation that this woman could be the one who changed his life forever. Instead of laying his heart on the line at this meaningful insight, he moved towards where she was rolling the unconscious man on to his front.
“Need some help?”
“Do you have zip ties?”
“The team will.”
Astrid nodded, and he saw the fire in her eyes. She loved this part as much as the rest; it was why she was so good at it.
“Will you let me help you?” He didn’t have to explain what he was asking and wanted to punch the air like he’d won the Premier League when she nodded.
Alex came across the sand towards him with Reid, while Gunner stood over the other men, who were either dead or unconscious at his feet.
“Is the Queen safe?”
“Locked down in the safe room.”
Jack nodded, noticing Alex’s eyes move to the extinguished fire and the picnic before moving over him and Astrid. His second missed nothing, and Jack had no doubt he’d be hearing about it later, but he needed to deal with the current situation first.
“Lock this beach down and have the buildings secured. Nobody sleeps until I know exactly how this happened and make sure that fire is out, so nobody gets burned.”
He had dropped the ball tonight and would have to explain himself to the Queen and tell her why he’d failed. Yet as Astrid walked beside him up the cliff steps like a conquering Queen, he couldn’t regret anything that had happened tonight.
Chapter Eight
Astrid went to step around one of the men at the top of the cliff as Alex hauled him to his feet and her breath lodged in her throat. The air around her seemed to still as he glared at her and smiled, his bleached white teeth hideous in the beauty of the dark night.
“Puta.” He lunged, trying to get to her as she stepped back, the memories of the weeks of abuse she’d suffered at his hands almost suffocating her. A solid presence at her back stopped her moving any further, and she felt a firm, yet gentle grip on her arm.
“Hello, Iago. I’d say it’s nice to see you, but that would be a lie.”
“Whore.” He lunged again, and Alex shook him, pressing the barrel of his gun to Iago’s head, tightly.
“Why are you here?”
“You know why. We want the asset, and you’re going to help us find it.”
“Never! I’ll never help you. I would rather die.”
“We can arrange that,