The Bride Wore A Forty-Four (8 page)

The rapid-fire beat of her heart grew
louder—and when the windows blew out of the cabin, she realized it
wasn't her heart at all, but gunfire. In the next heartbeat, she
was pressed to the floor with Michael's body covering hers. "Stay
down." He growled the words into her ear. "Dammit, how did they
find us?"

She couldn't speak, overwhelmed with the
surge of adrenalin pumping through her body, itching to get up, to
do
something. "Duke. It had to be goddamn Duke. I left him
alone in the car. He must have done something."

"Stuck a tracking device on it, more than
likely," Michael said. "Come on, but stay low." He rolled off
her.

On hands and knees, they made their way to
the little hidden room. Michael opened its door, urged her inside
ahead of him, then closed it again behind him. Only then did he get
to his feet

She heard him moving around as she crouched
in the darkness. He never turned on a light not even a flashlight
but she knew he was gathering weapons, ammunition. She jumped
upright when she heard the cabin's front door crashing open, the
sounds of heavy steps inside the house. Michael's hands closed on
one of her arms, and he drew her body flush to his. "It's okay," he
whispered, his lips touching her ear, moving with the words. "Just
stay quiet. It's okay."

She nodded against the side of his face, then
felt him moving, sliding a belt over her head, and around one
shoulder, then another on the other side, so the two crossed at her
chest. She felt a familiar, reassuring weight at her hips, moved
her hands to her sides to caress the smooth grips of handguns and
wondered at the flood of confidence that rushed through her.

Then Michael had her by the hand and led her
toward the back of the room, where he knelt. And moments later, he
was guiding her down a set of stairs in the floor. "Wait at the
bottom," he told her.

Easier said than done, she thought, when she
couldn't even see where the bottom was. Still, she made her way
down into inky blackness, and there she waited. Only seconds ticked
by, before he joined her there. She had drawn one of the weapons,
held it ready at her side, even though she didn't remember pulling
it. And her eyes were turned upward toward the ceiling, where she
could see nothing but could hear the sounds of men stomping through
the house, searching for them.

Michael slid an arm around her shoulders,
started leading her forward, and she was surprised when they didn't
run into a wall. "How are you doing?"

"Pissed," she muttered. "I didn't get my pot
pie."

He squeezed her closer. "That's my girl."

She wanted to be. The thought danced through
her mind without her permission. "Where does this lead?"

"Out," he said.

"Well, hell, I assumed that much."

"Comes out about a hundred yards from the
house, pretty deep into the woods. The exit's camouflaged. There's
no way they could have spotted it."

"Like there was no way they could find us at
the cabin?" She felt him tense, and quickly added, "I'm not blaming
you for it Michael. Hell, it was my fault for leaving Duke alone in
the car. I'm just saying...how do we know there's not a thug with
an AK standing outside that entrance, ready to pop us when we come
out?"

"Because," he said. "They want us alive."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"I know. Just stay behind me, and if anything
happens, I'll hold 'em off and you make a run for it."

The voice that answered wasn't hers—or at
least, not the one she'd been thinking of as hers for the past six
months. It said, "The hell I will."

She held her breath as Michael stood at the
top of another set of stairs. She saw a sliver of gray twilight as
he pushed the trapdoor upward and peered out, then sucked in a
sharp breath when the door opened wider. Michael moved through it,
and she started up behind him, only to have the trapdoor close all
at once.

Frowning, she scooted up the steps, put her
hands over her head, and shoved upward, only to meet
resistance.

Hell, was Michael
standing on
the
door?

"Well now, where the hell did you come from?"
a man's voice said.

Kira froze. It wasn't Michael's voice.

"Like I'd tell you."

There was a terrible sound, a grunt of pain.
Anger surged in Kira, and she shoved harder at the trapdoor.

"Don't!" Michael yelled. "I'll talk, just
take it easy. I was out gathering firewood when I heard you guys
shooting up the place. Decided it might be best to lay low till you
left."

"And where's the little woman?"

"Relocated, for her protection. I couldn't
tell you where if I wanted to, and that's the truth."

Kira closed her eyes. Damn him, he was
determined to protect her.

"Bullshit," one of the men said. "You brought
her here with you."

"No," he said. "I didn't You really think I'd
have stayed out here hiding if Kira were under fire at that
cabin?"

The men were quiet for a moment, seeming to
mull that over.

"He's right," one said at last "He'd have
charged into the cross fire to get her out. It wouldn't be the
first time."

"Doesn't matter," Michael said. "She's no
threat to you. She's got no memory, doesn't even know what this is
all about."

"Search the woods, just in case," one of the
men said. "I'll take this one back to the boss, figure out how he
wants to proceed."

"I'm telling you, she's not here. You're
wasting your time," Michael said.

"If she is, we'll find her."

"I wish she was lurking around here
someplace. You can bet she'd have sense enough to lay low till you
were long gone," he said. "She'd know she was my only chance. But
as it is, I guess I'm screwed."

Kira closed her eyes, heard the message he
had meant for her to hear. She had to stay quiet stay safe, and
rescue her husband from the grip of madmen.

For more than an hour she crouched in the
darkness, underground. Eventually, she couldn't bear it any longer.
She had no way of knowing if Peter's thugs still lurked outside,
but she had to move. It was too easy to imagine what they might be
doing to Michael.

She crept up the stairs and shoved at the
trapdoor. It gave easily this time, and she peered out saw nothing,
then reminded herself that Michael hadn't seen anything either
before stepping into the open and being spotted. So she crept out
on her belly, pushing the trapdoor up only as much as she had to.
When she was clear of it, she lay still on the ground, one gun in
her hand, and she listened with every part of her. Carefully, she
lifted her head, looked at her surroundings.

Darkness surrounded her. The only sounds were
the occasional call of a nightbird, the songs of crickets, the whir
of other insects buzzing past

She pushed herself up, got to her feet, and
glanced back at the trapdoor, then blinked because she couldn't see
it. After a moment she realized it was completely camouflaged. It
looked like a part of the forest floor, leaves, branches, grass
actually growing from it The thing was invisible.

She looked around, trying to get her
bearings, and started in what she hoped was the direction of the
cabin. Within a few yards, she saw soft yellow light gleaming in
the distance. She moved closer, instinctively moving without making
a sound, creeping from one tree to the next The light took form—it
was coming from the cabin windows. And there were cars parked in
front

"They didn't take him away," she whispered.
Then she wondered why they would bother. They had the perfect place
here. Michael had told her himself, no one else knew about it. Not
even the good guys.

Hell. She really was on her own. She worked
the action on the handgun, then stopped, realizing what she had
just done. No one had shown her how. She just knew. Just like she
knew she wasn't going to miss what she targeted.

Just who the fuck do those assholes think
they're dealing
with?

The voice in her head made her smile, just a
little. There was something familiar and comforting about it. About
knowing it was
her
voice.

She crept closer to the house, moving around
it watching carefully for guards who might be posted outside and
seeing none. Then she went still closer, skimming along the outer
walls and peering in through the windows. Quick, careful glimpses,
followed by slower, longer looks if she saw no one inside. By the
time she'd circled the cabin fully she knew exactly what she
faced.

Peter was nowhere in sight She didn't think
he was there. Michael was tied to a chair in the bedroom. One thug
in there with him. The other three were lounging in the living
room, eating.

My goddamn pot pies.

She returned to the bedroom, crouched below
the window, and started to shake. The woman she'd spent the last
six months believing herself to be was scared to death right now.
She didn't want to do this. She wanted to run out of these woods,
find a phone, call for help.

Kira closed her eyes, and immediately her
mind was flooded with images. She saw herself, cornered by three
men in a dark ally. She saw blood dripping from her nose, tasted it
on her lips. Her weapons were lying on the ground, out of reach.
She lifted her gaze to the men, knew with a grim certainty they
meant to kill her, and sent them a smile. "Guess this is it,
then."

"Maybe not quite," someone said from the far
end of the alley.

The three men spun around, so surprised by
the voice coming from behind them that they started firing without
even aiming first Kira dove for her guns, even as Michael strode
into the ally, into the rain of bullets, his own guns blazing.

He dropped two of them, and she blasted the
third, still lying on her belly on the ground, just as he drew down
on Michael.

The echoes of the gunfire died and with them
the ringing in her ears. She looked at Michael over the bodies
lying between them. He smiled, and it lit his eyes. And she said,
"You're late."

"I'm right on time," he told her. "Did you
think I wasn't going to show?"

"Not for a minute." She moved into his arms,
and he held her so tight she could feel him shaking just a little,
and knew it was at having come so close to losing her.

Outside the little cabin, Kira blinked slowly
until the memory cleared away. And then she realized that it was
still there. She could still find it there. She
remembered!

Not everything. Not yet, but... God, it was
real. A real solid memory, and if she had time to sit and think she
thought others would surely follow.

But there was no time for that. Not now.

"Well, well, what have we got here? Peeping
Tom?"

The man had come up behind her, stood looming
over her. "Peeping Kira," she said, then she jerked her head
backward, slamming her skull into his groin so hard he dropped to
his knees. She sprang up, spun around, delivering a kick to the
side of the man's head in the process. His gun flew from his hand
as he went over sideways, and even as he opened his mouth to cry
out, she delivered a fist to his windpipe to keep him quiet

He lay there, gasping, hands clutching his
neck as he fought to breathe. She used her own weapon to put him
down for the count, flicking the safety back on just before the
butt smashed into his skull. Then she flicked it off again, picked
up the man's weapon, tucked it into the back of her pants. All of
this before she knelt beside the man to make sure he wasn't going
to be coming around any time soon.

Her stomach convulsed when she realized he
wasn't going to be coming around at all. He was dead. She'd killed
a man without firing a shot. And she knew it wasn't the first
time.

For a moment, she wondered if she really
wanted to remember the woman she'd been. But then a sound from
inside the cabin drew her attention, and she peered through the
window. The man in the room with Michael was drawing the point of a
blade slowly down Michael's cheek. The knife point left a scarlet
trail in its wake. And it left a furious rage in Kira's belly.

She crept closer, ear to the wall, straining
to hear.

"The boss will be here soon. Since you're
refusing to talk, my bet is he's not gonna see much use in keeping
you around."

"Sooner the better," Michael said.

The man stopped studying his knife blade and
stood back. "If you're in that much of a hurry, I could do it right
now."

"What, without your master giving you the
okay? You haven't got the balls, pal."

"No?" The man brought the blade down hard,
driving it straight into the back of Michael's hand, where it was
bound to the chair's arm, and into the wood beyond. Michael
shouted, and his face contorted in pain. Kira's ability to control
her temper evaporated. She rose up onto her feet, leveled the gun
on the bastard, and pulled the trigger, taking him dead center of
his forehead. His head snapped back, and then he went down, dead
before he hit the floor.

She met Michael's eyes for an instant. He was
hurting, she could see it, but he mouthed the word "run."

The bedroom door slammed open, and men poured
in. One of them yelled, "Get outside, it came from outside!"

Kira turned and raced into the cover of the
forest, quickly skirting around to the front of the house, knowing
they'd be focused on the rear, where she'd been. She moved quickly,
as quietly as possible, back to the only place she could be certain
they wouldn't find her. That trapdoor in the forest floor. She
found it easily and realized that was because she remembered
it.

She ducked into the darkness, lowering the
door carefully over her and scooting to the bottom of the steps.
Then she raced back along the tunnel, all the way back until it
ended. The men would be outside by now. All of them, combing the
woods for her. They wouldn't be worried about Michael being alone
for a few moments. Not with a blade nailing his hand to the chair,
his face cut up, his body bound so tight he couldn't even wiggle.
One of them might be watching the front door, she supposed, but
then, she didn't intend to go in through the front door.