“Seriously? You’re going to walk into your own funeral?”
She shrugged. “Sounds exactly like something I’d do.”
“Hang back, let me see what’s going on.”
“Fine,” she answered, pulling her hood up over her blonde hair. With the rest of her features covered by big sunglasses, she kept her head down as she followed behind him to the church’s doors.
He slipped inside, leaving her to pace the top step outside, slinking behind the pillars at any sound.
She drummed her fingers against her forearm as she sighed. Where was he? How long did it take for Sebastian to find her former fiancé?
As she reached the end of the step, she glanced up into thebell tower across the alley, her heart stopping. The point of a long-range rifle poked from it.
“Oh, great,” she murmured as she leapt off the step to the ground below, landing in a crouch.
As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she propelled herself forward, her fingers scraping the ground to push her faster until she regained her balance.
She reached the door to the bell tower, skidding to a stop as she flung it open and glanced inside.
Dozens of stairs stood between her and the assassin. “No elevator? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Ripping off her sunglasses, she tossed them aside as she grabbed hold of the railing and hauled herself up the spiraling staircase toward the top. By the mid-point, she panted for breath, using both hands to help pull herself up.
“I really need to exercise more,” she choked out as she forced herself to continue without a break.
She finally climbed the final step onto the wooden platform surrounding the bell. With her legs rubbery, she stumbled toward the massive bell and skirted it.
A man in black tactical gear sprawled on the opposite side of it, his weapon aimed at the church’s tall windows.
“Hey,” she called as his finger started to tighten on the rifle’s trigger.
He twisted, his eyes wide before he tried to swing his weapon around to shoot at her. She kicked it away. It skittered across the floorboards, landing feet away from either of them. He reached for a pistol, but she leapt on top of him.
The bell next to them began to chime the hour, the loud ringing assaulting her senses as she rolled across the floor with the man in a tangle of limbs.
They came to a stop with him on top of her. He pressed his gloved hands around her neck, but she vaulted upward with a hip and tossed him off. He fell a few feet away fromher, and she scrambled to her feet, crouching low in a defensive position.
The man hopped to his feet, matching her stance as they danced around each other, each of them looking for an opening to attack.
Finally, as the bell chimed one final time, he lunged forward and drove her toward it. She smacked hard into the metal, and it vibrated against her entire body, the noise from it still dying down.
She wedged a foot against it and used it to drive them both forward until she slammed him into the wall.
He growled at her as they danced backward again before she tripped him and climbed on top of him to press him into the floor. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Sorry, I didn’t feel like going just yet.”
“Well, I hope you feel like it now. Because I’m going to kill you.”
He whipped her to the side and grabbed for the gun, training it on her. With wide eyes, she scrambled backward, kicking her feet though she knew she couldn’t escape a bullet from a trained marksman at this range.
A gun fired, deafening in the space, and she instinctively squeezed her eyes closed as she waited for the searing pain to hit her. Instead, nothing hit her, and as far as she could tell, she was still alive.
She opened her eyes to see the man, a shocked expression stuck on his features, fall forward, dead from the bullet between his eyes.
Sebastian, his shirt bloody from opening his wound, stood behind him, his gun still raised. “You really need to stop picking fights, Ava.”
“If I hadn’t, Chris would be dead.”
