The day was lazy and long and Marcus was glad for it. He figured that Iris deserved some relaxation out of doors before they returned to Ocean City and she got all cooped up in his apartment again. He dreaded returning to Maryland, where it seemed that all he could do was wait for something bad to happen.

And honestly, he couldn’t un-see this version of Iris. All laid out on a lounge chair, tan and snoozing and laughing with the girls. He loved watching her having a good time. As he watched her stretch, pointing her toes one way and her hands another, a different vision flashed through his head, for just a second. Iris handcuffed to a chair, a black eye and a look on her face like she barely cared what happened to her.

The thought of it made Marcus’s hand curl tight over the bottle of water he was drinking.

All he had to do was make it through five more months of his six-month suspension. And then he’d have all of the FBI resources at his fingertips again. He’d be able to know, without a doubt, whether or not his girl was safe.

His eyes dropped to his hands. And he’d know for certain, because he wouldn’t be out working cases anymore. He’d be riding a desk at the headquarters in Maryland. The thought was both heavy and uplifting at the same moment.

It was a decision that he’d come to at some point in the middle of the night last night. He’d woken up, bleary and exhausted, sated from their lovemaking and all wrapped up in Iris. And he’d known. Just full on known in his heart that he couldn’t handle being away from her for weeks at a time. Couldn’t handle throwing himself headlong into danger knowing that she’d be worrying herself sick, home and alone. It had been hard enough to put Eli and Jay through all that. But his woman? No way. He couldn’t do it.

It was his work. His life’s work, and Marcus loved it deeply. But it had also taken a chunk out of him. Worn him down. Put him through the paces and rubbed him raw. He was convinced that the intensity of his job was in large part due to why it had been so hard for him to connect with people aside from Eli and Jay. And he wasn’t going to risk his job making it harder to connect with Iris.

He’d done his part. Been an active agent for ten years. He thought that he’d be able to find happiness as an investigator. Or even as a handler. He’d be able to live in Ocean City full time. And he’d probably stop getting put on suspension every other year. He chuckled to himself. That’d be a bonus.

Marcus looked up and his heart came to grinding halt when he realized that Iris wasn’t in the deck chair she’d been spread across. He rose to his feet instantly, striding over to where her drink still had beads of condensation racing down the side. His eyes scanned the pool deck but she was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Iris?” Marcus asked Mari and Tia who were laid out on the chairs beside hers.

“Bathroom,” Mari answered absently as she flipped over, laid a hat over her face.

Bathroom. Bathroom. Marcus scanned the pool area and his eyes landed on two little cabana-style bathroom stalls. Okay. Cool. She was just in there. Nothing to worry about.

But even so, the hairs on the back of his neck were rising. Something was setting off his spidey senses and he had absolutely no idea what it was. The pool area butted up between the hotel and the ocean. The resort was lined on one side by another resort and on the other side by a tall, picket-like fence that kept out the steamy, curling jungle. Marcus’s eyes automatically went up to all the hotel windows winking down at them in the bright sunlight, but there was nothing to see there.

He scanned the pool deck again and saw nothing out of place. Eli and Jay were climbing up the craggy rock waterfall in the pool, preparing to cannonball off. Ryan and Kat were sitting in the shade under an umbrella, splitting a sandwich. The rest of the pool was sparsely populated, but Marcus, with his agent’s eye, recognized all of the people that he did see. He knew some of them to be fellow resort patrons and a few of them to be part of the staff. No one out of place and no one he didn’t recognize.

Except. One man with unkempt blonde hair and smudges of blue under his eyes. He was standing across the pool and gazing in the direction of the cabana bathrooms. The hairs on Marcus’s arms rose up. The man looked oddly familiar but Marcus couldn’t place him. He had taken two steps toward the man when the door of the bathroom swung open and Iris stepped out. Holding one hand with the other and frowning down.

Was that? Yes. There was red on her hand. Marcus hopped a deck chair, skirted a group of older women and was at Iris’s side before she could even look up.

“What’s wrong?”

She glanced up at his voice. “I got a hell of a splinter on this damn cabana thingy.” She presented her hand to him and Marcus winced at the sheer size of the thing. He led her to the bar area of the pool deck and asked for a first aid kit.

By the time he’d gotten her all patched up, the man he’d seen was gone from the pool area. His senses were still tingling and Marcus had the insane urge to pack her up and go wait at the airport. But that was ridiculous. The sun was out and shining, the pool was a tempting cobalt blue and they had ten hours until they had to be at the airport. He refused to make her life any more mundane than it had to be. He was all hopped up because he had things to tell her about the way he felt and he hadn’t done it yet. That’s what this all was about.

Jay’s words echoed in Marcus’s head. Tell her everything.

“Baby,” he murmured a few minutes later as they swirled their feet in the pool.

“Yeah?”

“Stay close to me today, okay?”

“Sure.” She squinted at him. A question in her eyes.

He shrugged. “I’ve got a funny feeling is all. I just want to make sure we get home safe.”

She nodded and her eyes landed on something behind him. She squinted for a second and then her eyes widened. Iris pulled herself up from the edge of the pool and started walking away from him.

“Oh my god,” she muttered. “Marcus, come here.”

“What is it?” He jogged along behind her, shouldering in front of her as he scanned for whatever she was looking at. “Iris, wait.”

“It’s—it’s my brother.” She took a step around him and dodged out of the pool area, straight to the fence along the edge of the resort. And sure enough, there was the unkempt blonde man, looking a lot worse for the wear.

Marcus put the pieces together, although he wasn’t sure if he’d thought the man was familiar because he was famous or because he looked so much like Iris. Either way, Marcus gritted his teeth as Iris launched herself into her twin brother’s arms.

“O!” She pulled back and squeezed his shoulders. “What the hell are you doing here? Oh god, O. You look terrible. Are you al—?”

“Iris, you have to leave. I’m in the Bahamas with the Kutros family and they know you’re here.” His voice was deep and trembling with fear and emotion. He didn’t look like the fuck up that Marcus had started to think of him as. He looked like a man completely out of options. He looked like a man about to lose everything. But more than anything, he looked like a man who loved his sister. “They called me here yesterday morning. I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were safe in the states somewhere. I didn’t know that’s why they wanted to meet up here.”

He took Iris by the shoulders and stared into her eyes, imploring her to hear him. To take him seriously. He looked desperate and terrified.

“Owen, calm down. They don’t want me. I don’t know anything. The FBI declared me out of harm’s way. They don’t want me.”

“Of course they want you, Iris!” His smudgy exhausted eyes bored into hers. “Over the last year, they’ve all but made their organization untraceable. They don’t work with outside people on anything. Except they made one mistake. Me. They pulled me in as a way of connecting with some unattainable contacts that they really wanted. And then once they had those contacts, decided that they didn’t need me anymore. I- I made some shit up to keep myself alive. Told them I hadn’t been working alone and that if I wound up dead or disappeared, then my partner would go to the feds with everything that I knew. They hacked into my call logs, my email, and the person they kept finding was—”

“Me,” Iris whispered hollowly. “Owen, you dumbass. You complete and utter dumbass!”

“I know,” he said vehemently. “There’s no excuse, Iris. I’ve been getting you into trouble since we were kids, but this time, I really didn’t think it would blow back on you. But here we are, and you and I are their last two loose ends and they’re coming for both of us at the same time. I just barely got away.”

“How long until they’re here?” Marcus barked, instinctively shoving Iris behind him, and scanning the resort. He’d had enough of this family reunion and his senses were going haywire. They were close and he could feel it.

Owen jumped and frowned at Marcus as if he’d just realized that he was even there. “Who are you?”

“My boyfriend.”

“A federal agent.”

Marcus and Iris spoke at the same time.

“A federal agent.”

“Her boyfriend.”

Again, they spoke at the same time.

“Both!” Marcus finally insisted. “Listen to me. I’ve been protecting Iris for damn near two months now and I need more information. You need to tell me everything you know and then we need to get her the fuck off this island.”

He cuffed Owen around the shoulder and grabbed Iris by the hand. He needed them out of the open and fast. So he started to drag both of them right off the lawn. He also needed his gun and his phone. Both of which were in his backpack. He could see it poolside, not fifty feet away.

“I don’t know much,” Owen insisted, gasping against Marcus’s damn near sleeper hold. “All I know is that they knew she was staying here.  I just got away maybe half an hour ago. But listen. If you get her out of here, I’ll stay. I’ll be the diversion. They might not chase her if—”

“No way!” Iris piped up from where she stumbled along behind Marcus. “I’m not leaving you here to be bait, O.”

“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Marcus said, tugging her even faster along behind him. He scanned again and this time he saw, to his chagrin, Eli and Jay walking toward him, concerned looks on their faces. Great. More people he loved in the line of fire.

“No!” Iris said again, planting her feet and scowling at Marcus. He was forced to pause and look back at her. They were halfway to the pool area now. “I’m serious. I’m not leaving my twin brother to get murdered by the mob and if you make me, I swear to god I’ll never forgive you.”

“I’d rather you hate me than be dead, Iris,” Marcus hissed.

“Marcus?” Jay called as he and Eli trotted up. The two men surveyed the look on Marcus’s face. And the strung out blonde man he basically had in a choke hold.

“What the hell is going on?” Eli asked.

Marcus tore his gaze from Iris’s stubborn expression and turned to his two best friends. As he gazed at their familiar faces, he realized everything he stood to lose if he didn’t act fast. They were competent men, he reminded himself. And he couldn’t protect everyone. He needed to delegate. They all jogged together to Marcus’s backpack. Four sets of eyes widened as Marcus reached into his bag and tucked his gun into the back waistband of his shorts. Next he flipped out his phone.

“Fuck,” he growled when he saw that he had eight missed calls from his handler. What the hell was wrong with him? Why the hell hadn’t he been more vigilant? He knew why. He’d been wrapped up in Iris.

“We don’t have time,” Marcus said as much to himself as he did to his friends. He dialed his phone and held it to his ear while he organized his thoughts. “Look, Jay and Eli. I need you to get our people the fuck out of this resort. Fast. Like, grab your passports and go. Get to the airport and get on the first flight you can out of here. Anywhere but here. Do you understand?”

Eli and Jay stared at him like he wasn’t speaking English.

“Do you?” he barked and they both jumped. The phone in Marcus’s ear rang and rang.

“What are you going to do?” Eli asked, an expression as stubborn as Iris’s lining his usually smiling face.

“I’m going to do my fucking job,” Marcus barked. So damn angry with himself and with the bureau for letting all of this get so out of hand. “Jones?” he spoke into the phone when his handler answered.

“Marinos! I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all morning!”

“I know, I know. Listen. I’ve got Iris and Owen Stanton here on Grand Bahama and Kutros moving in, apparently. I need back up and I need it now.”

“I already know all of that.”

“You’ve got eyes on me?”

“What kind of handler would I be if I didn’t know where my rogue agent was at all times?”

“Jones, I love you. Now tell me you’ve got men en route.”

“I’ve got men en route. Fifteen minutes tops. And I’m calling in a bomb threat to get the resort evacuated and on lockdown in about t minus 30 seconds. If you want to get your friends out of there, now’s the time.”

“What’s the resort’s safe room like?”

“Non-existent.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. Send ‘em to the airport.”

“Done.”

“And Marinos?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

He flicked off the phone call and turned to the group. “Eli and Jay. Do as I said. Don’t look back. And get them out of here.”

His two best friends nodded, finally realizing that this situation was way out of their hands. And that their parents and women were in mortal danger. Jay slapped Marcus once on the back, their eyes holding for a second, saying more than words ever could. He sprinted off in the direction of Mari and his mother. Eli grabbed Marcus into a hard hug. Too hard.

“Be smart,” he growled before he unhanded Marcus and jogged backwards for a few seconds. Marcus nodded to his best friend, watching him turn and sprint toward all the people he loved most in the world.

“Take care of them,” Marcus muttered to himself. And then he turned away. He couldn’t watch them go. There was no time. He had to trust Eli and Jay to get the job done. And considering they were the two people he trusted the most in the world, it only took one stubborn second to have him turning back toward Iris and Owen.

Again he grabbed them both and started sprinting toward the hotel. At that moment, an alarm started ringing out. A voice over the loudspeakers instructed patrons to evacuate the hotel. People, alarmed and muttering, started racing past them toward the exits.

“Listen to me. I need you both hidden. Separately.”

“No!” Iris insisted again. Marcus noted that her hands were shaking but her voice was not. “I’m not leaving Owen. Or you.”

“He’s right, Iris. We don’t want any two birds one stone shit, okay? We need to separate.”

Marcus scanned the hotel blueprints through his brain. He thanked the holy lord that he’d done his research in the days leading up to this vacation.

“Owen, you go to the restaurant on the second floor. There’s plenty of places to hide and only one entrance, though there’s a small employee exit out back if you need it. Iris, you take the stairwell to the fifth floor. There’s two different ballrooms. One of them has a stage. Find somewhere to hide backstage. Be as small as you can be. I’ll come find you when it’s safe. With any luck, they’ll think we evacuated with the rest of the patrons by the time backup gets here.”

The pool area was empty now as the last of the patrons poured through the building to get to the street side. Thoughts of Eli and Jay, Mari and Tia, Ryan and Kat, tore through Marcus’s mind and he forced them down without a second thought. This wasn’t the time. Focus.

“I won’t leave you,” Iris whispered. And Marcus realized there were tears in her eyes. “Don’t make me leave you.”

“Iris,” Marcus took a deep breath. “This is the only way I can take care of you right now. If you stay with me you’re going to be in the direct line of—”

His breath cut short when something caught his eye through the tall picket fence that lined the resort. A flash of something shiny and black through the jungle right on the other side of the fence. And then, sure enough, the sound of an engine grinding.

“Fuck!” Owen screamed as forty feet away from them, two headlights emerged from the foliage and a huge black Range Rover mowed down a ten-foot section of the fence. “Iris, run!”

Owen flung himself in the direction of the car, which had come to a screeching halt. He waved his hands in the air as if he were trying to distract or confuse the drivers. He was desperately trying to give himself up to let Iris get away, but Iris knew it was too late. It was way too late. They were all caught. She and Owen and Marcus too, she was sure. Because she knew in her heart that he would never leave her behind.

She knew, with blinding certainty, that he would die for her. Well. Then. It all became clear. She didn’t want to be alone. The thought of leaving Marcus was like trying to separate her soul from her heart. But she also knew that he couldn’t be the only one fighting for her life. She needed to fight too. For both of them. She was turning, halfway through her first running step when she felt Marcus grab her around the middle. He tossed her over his shoulder like she weighed nothing and Iris got a flashback to their first day in his apartment. He’d carried her the exact same way before.

“Hide in the waterfall,” he demanded before he strode toward the pool, planted the quickest kiss in the universe on her ass and tossed her in.

Iris desperately wanted to surface. She desperately wanted to see the source of all the loud shouts she could hear even from under the water. She needed, bone deep, to watch and make sure that her brother and her boyfriend were alright. Were surviving.

But she also needed to make sure that she wasn’t splitting Marcus’s attention right now. So she did the hardest thing she’d ever done and stayed underwater. She streaked like a fish along the bottom of the pool, her lungs screaming. She didn’t resurface until she’d gone underneath the waterfall. She came above water in the gloomy, manmade cave that separated the pool from the hot tub area. The waterfall pounded next to her and Iris could hear nothing. See nothing.

Ducking out toward the hot tub, Iris peeked out, saw no disturbances back that way and ducked back in. Looking around, she saw two possible hiding spots. It was small and dark this way and she didn’t think that anyone looking in would see her. Anyone swimming in would definitely see her. But she hoped that if that did happen she could slip into the water and swim away without them noticing.

Marcus wanted nothing more than to look back at the waterfall, to make sure Iris was safe. But he knew how much of a dead giveaway that would be. He trained his eyes on the idling Range Rover and ducked further behind the cabana-style bar area. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think that they’d gotten a direct line of sight on him or Iris.

“This fucking guy,” Marcus muttered to himself as he watched Owen yell and wave his arms around in front of the car. He was on the fast track toward getting himself shot. Marcus tried to make his peace with that, but he knew how much it would destroy Iris if her dumbass brother got himself killed while trying to protect her. If only the dumbass brother hadn’t dragged her into this to begin with.

Regardless, Marcus had two people to protect right now. Three if he counted himself. Which he pretty much only did because he knew how much pain it would cause Iris if anything happened to him.

So here he was, being a Careful Caroline as he crept around one side of the bar, ducking behind all the perfectly lined up bottles and keeping one eye on the Range Rover.

Seconds later, the doors swung open and five men slid out of the car. Marcus instantly recognized two of them as having been in the warehouse where Iris had been kept. Her black eye flashed through his mind and Marcus’s blood boiled. His hand tightened on his gun and he held it, perfectly poised on the man in front who was brandishing his gun around like a toy. Marcus was ready, the second he pointed that gun at Owen, Marcus would fire. His heart was even and solid in his chest. He’d had to kill on the job before. To save his own life. Today he would kill on the job to save Iris’s life. He wasn’t sure if that would make a difference to his soul, but he suspected it would.

Marcus could tell that words were being said to Owen, who stood completely still, his hands in the air. Marcus was too far away to hear the words. But he wasn’t too far to see the sudden glint of a firearm of a man in the back. Marcus quickly shifted his hands to aim at the man in the back but his stomach dropped out and away when a bang sliced the afternoon in two and Owen’s head kicked back, and he fell like a sack of bricks to the ground.

Goddamn it. Marcus’s grip tightened on his gun.

The man in the front of the group turned and, without hesitating, shot the man who’d shot Owen. He screamed, writhing and cursing, to the ground.

“What the fuck!”

“You idiot!” the man in the front screamed. “You fucking idiot, we needed him!”

“We’ve got the girl!” the shot man hollered back, his voice sliced through with pain. He pointed toward the waterfall. “We didn’t need him anymore, we’ve got the girl.”

Marcus’s focus narrowed and became very, very clear. There wasn’t time for any more distractions.

The four mobile men jogged across the pool, toward the waterfall. Marcus ducked out from behind the bar and sprinted, silently, after them. The first two were easy. Just hired muscle. The butt of Marcus’s gun brought the first and then the second to the ground in less than five seconds. But they fell hard, and loud, to the ground.

The two men in front stopped and turned. They were the two Marines he hadn’t wanted to fight in the warehouse. One was stocky and blonde and the other was taller and dark. Well, Marcus thought as he rose up from the two men he’d just incapacitated. They might be Marines.  But he was a trained FBI agent who was attempting to protect the woman he loved. He thought that might even the odds a little bit.

They charged him. The stocky one got to him first and Marcus was able to get in one good jab with the butt of his gun. The man stumbled back for just a moment before he landed a solid kick to Marcus’s hip. Marcus tripped on the lounger behind him, but he allowed his weight to roll him and he was jumping back over it a second later.

The darker man was there though, and his vice-like grip on Marcus’s arm had the gun slipping through his fingers. Not wanting the darker Marine to get to it first, Marcus kicked the gun behind him and heard it plop into the pool. Well, he couldn’t use it. But neither could they. There were at least two more guns to get rid of, though.

And Marcus went for the first one as the darker man took Marcus by the throat and slammed him on the ground. He saw stars but shook them away as he used one leg to kick the legs out from under the man and his other foot to stomp the shit out of the man’s wrist. His hand opened and Marcus co-opted the darker man’s gun.              

The stocky man drew his own weapon and the two of them breathed heavily as they eyed one another, Marcus on the ground and the other leaning over him.

It was hard to say who moved first. But both dodged bullets and Marcus found himself rolling across the pool deck. He sprang to his feet like a cat. The stocky man charged him and Marcus feinted to one side, threw his weight to the other and brought his knee up straight into the stocky man’s gut. The darker man, sensing his opportunity, abandoned the hand-to-hand fight and sprinted around the side of the pool, right toward the waterfall.

Marcus picked his moment, knew it was costing him precious time with the stocky man, but he didn’t care. He aimed the weapon in his hand and fired. The darker Marine went down, but almost gracefully. The man caught himself on his hands and was back up in seconds, limping toward the waterfall. It wouldn’t hit Marcus until later that the man didn’t make a sound as he was shot in the leg.

Meanwhile, the stocky man took his opportunity. Marcus barely caught the glint of the blade in the sun before it was slicing through the air toward him. He nearly bent himself in two to avoid the blade that came, and came again, for his jugular. On the second swipe, Marcus wasn’t quite fast enough and he felt the knife slice across his chest. Marcus felt his flesh open, perhaps too deep for the pain to even register yet. Clinically, he noted the cracking thump of the blade, which meant that his ribs had stopped it from hitting anything vital.

For just a moment, Marcus’s vision swam. The darker one was getting closer to the waterfall. But Marcus knew there was very little he could do about that with stocky still in his way.

So he tore his heart in half and shoved Iris from his mind. He had to concentrate on one problem and then the next. Something in Stocky’s chest stuttered as Marcus straightened and assessed him. There was something horrifying burning in Marcus’s gaze. A full-body focus. Determination. The exact same thing that Iris loved most about Marcus was making the Marine in front of him re-evaluate his plan of attack.

The Marine barely had time to draw swing his gun around before Marcus had turned the man’s own knife back on him. Marcus grunted as the knife sunk solidly into the soft flesh at the man’s midsection. The man gasped, his eyes going wide, as Marcus cuffed him over the head with his gun and kicked the man sideways into the deep end of the pool. Red water swirled around the stocky man as he lamely struggled and Marcus thought for one second of Jaws.

And then it was just Iris in his mind as he leapt over two loungers and made his way for the darker man. The man who was just feet away from where Iris hid right that moment. Marcus didn’t think about the wound on his chest. He didn’t think about what other weapons the man might have on his body. He didn’t think of anything but Iris as he slammed his entire weight into the darker man.

They rolled and there was something maniacal in the Marine’s eyes as he spotted Marcus’s wound and slammed a fist into it, and then again, and again.

Marcus screamed through gritted teeth and then employed the exact same tactic on his opponent. The heel of Marcus’s foot was slammed into the upper thigh of the Marine and finally, finally the man showed some humanity as he howled and curled around the impact point.

The two men scuttled away from one another and Marcus was able to put himself between the man and the waterfall.

Marcus couldn’t help but glance behind him, make sure that Iris was out of harm’s way. And it was that split second that the Marine needed. All he needed to pull another gun from his waistband, point it at Marcus, and fire.