The Bride Wore A Forty-Four (4 page)

"We've got to do something, Marshall. We
can't make the arrest until the reception. Everything's set up
there, not here. We have to stick with the plan. She calls off the
wedding, it's going to ruin everything."

Marshall sucked in a calming breath and
nodded. It wasn't as if the license she'd been issued was a real
one, after all. The vows wouldn't be valid. But goddamn, it had
been killing him to watch her moving forward with all this, and
believing it was real.

Killing him.

Still, he had to stick with the plan. Peter
would be taken into custody after the ceremony, when the rest of
his cronies arrived. Some could only attend the reception. Marshall
was to gather them up for a group photo, take them off a little way
from the rest of the crowd, then give the signal for the troops to
move in.

They wanted them all together.

Things had to move forward. Just as
planned.

"Wait a minute," the voice on the radio said.
"Wait, I think we're okay. She's coming out."

Marshall frowned. "She's going through with
it?"

"Well, she's wearing the gown."

He looked back toward the house, and then he
saw her. She stepped out the back door and waited there, shifting
her feet Swallowing the rush of disappointment Marshall turned to
face the crowd, signaled the string quartet

They began to play, and the guests took their
seats and grew quiet. As soon as they did, the quartet changed to
the wedding march.

Marshall turned back toward the house.

Kira stood there, looking as if she were
paralyzed. Hell. He was going to have to go back there. Talk her
through it. Help her gather enough courage to walk down the
aisle...to marry another man.

He took three steps toward her—and then all
hell broke loose.

Kira didn't know what was happening. She'd
run out of time for contemplation and had decided to go out there,
as she was, send someone to fetch Peter for her, and then tell him
as gently as she could that she didn't want to marry him. That she
couldn't marry anyone, not until her memory was fully restored.

But the second she stepped out of the house,
the band struck up, and the next thing she knew everyone was
looking at her, and the wedding march was playing. Hell! She just
stood there, not sure what to do. If she walked down the aisle to
her beaming groom, would she get caught up in the riptide and end
up married? If she turned and ran back into the house, would
everyone think she'd lost what little remained of her mind?

She stood there like a doe in headlights. And
then she saw Marshall. He stepped into the aisle and started toward
her. And she couldn't
wait
for him to get to her. She
couldn't wait. She had to be near him, to touch him—to talk to
him—now.

She gathered her skirts up and started toward
him, but then gunshots rang out. Automatic weapons, her mind told
her. And she launched herself at Marshall and knocked him flat on
his back, landing on top of him. Her momentum kept them going as
she wrapped around him and rolled to the side, out of the open,
into the cover of the rose of Sharon hedges.

"Kira?" he asked.

"Stay down!" She pushed his chest, reaching
to her side for a weapon and only belatedly realizing she had none.
And why would she expect to find one there?

Marshall was easing her off him, setting her
on the ground, beside him. She could see between the branches,
everyone was on the ground. Men in black suits with blacker rifles
fanned through the crowd. One of them gripped Peter by the
shoulder.

"I gotta go, babe," Marshall said harshly.
"Stay low. Stay under cover. You're not ready for this."

"Ready for what?"

He hesitated, then he yanked her hard against
him and took her mouth in a kiss that was like a hurried mating.
When he jerked his head back again, he said, "Just stay here."

She sat back on her heels, as Marshall crept
out the opposite side of the bushes and, using them for cover, made
his way back toward the wedding party.

Someone was doing the same on the other
side.

The men were herding Peter away now. But then
Marshall sprang from the cover with a gun pointed at them. And from
the other side, Anita did the same.

Anita! Standing there in a crouch with her
black uniform and white apron and a big silver gun in her hands.
"Freeze!"

They
didn't
freeze. Shots rang out
again. Anita went down, and the gunmen turned their attention to
Marshall. But by that point, Kira was already charging down the
aisle, screaming words she couldn't believe were coming from her
lips.

"Drop the fucking guns! Now!"

Faces turned her way, as she drop-kicked the
first guy, then sprang upright again to deliver an elbow to the
throat of the second, and then she had his gun in her hands.

Someone hit her from behind—a big crack to
the back of her head, not the least bit cushioned by the veils, no
matter how many layers thick they were. Her tiara tilted over her
eyes, her head swam, and she went down hard.

Blinking and sitting up, she saw the men
running toward cars that had pulled onto the back lawn. Peter was
shoved into the back of one. Marshall into another, a gun to his
head. And then they took off, as she struggled to her feet

The guy lying facedown on the ground beside
her started to get up. She put the barrel of her rifle on his
forehead. "Stay down for a sec."

He frowned at her, so she put her foot
between his shoulder blades and slammed him down.

"It's all right everyone, you can get up."
She nodded at the minister. "Hold him a minute?"

The minister nodded, came forward, and put
his foot in the middle of the offender's back. Kira bent low.
"Wiggle, and I'll pop you. Got it?"

"Yeah."

She kept one eye on the man as she hurried to
where Anita lay still on the ground. Kneeling, Kira pressed a palm
to her cheek. "You alive?"

"Yeah." It was a pained and breathless
whisper. "You back?"

"I don't know what the fuck I am. Much less
who. Hell, I'm not even sure what my mother's cook is doing with a
9-millimeter Ruger." She closed her eyes. "Or how I know a Ruger
from a Glock. Hell."

"Go after him," Anita said, and Kira knew
without asking that she was talking about Marshall. "They'll kill
him. We can't wait."

"I'm going." She put an arm around Anita,
helped her sit up, put the rifle in her arms. "You got him?"

"Yep," Anita said.

"Great." Kira looked around the lawn. Her
mother had fainted, but a dozen relatives surrounded her. She would
be fine. "I'll get my gear, Anita. Be two minutes."

"Make it one."

Her head was spinning, and she was damned if
she knew what was going on. But she raced to her room, stripping
off the veils and tiara as she went kicking free of the shoes,
unzipping the dress. She flung it aside and pulled on the other
clothes, the ones she'd laid out because they were the easiest ones
to get to.

The leather pants, tank top. Then the straps
and holsters. She didn't think first she didn't need to. They went
on automatically, shoulder strap, thigh strap, hip straps, slip
into the boots with the hidden sheath, dagger in place. She checked
the guns to be sure they were loaded and slammed them into their
holsters. Put on the jacket and shoved spare ammo into her pockets.
Then she was racing back down the stairs.

Her car was at the back door, a sacrilege
parked across her mother's perfect lawn. Anita must have had
someone bring it out for her. The cook was already shoving the thug
into the passenger side. His hands were cuffed behind him. She
slammed the door and looked up at Kira.

Kira eyed the bloody spot on her white apron.
"You gonna be all right, Anita?"

"Cavalry is on the way. Medics, too. I'll be
fine. And it's Kelly."

Kira lifted her brows and wondered what other
revelations were awaiting her. But she didn't take time to ask, she
just jumped behind the wheel and took off.

As she spun the tires and shifted the gears,
she looked at the man beside her and told herself not to focus on
the insane feeling that she didn't know who the hell she was, who
this person was who seemed to have taken control of her body. It
didn't matter, not now. All that mattered was finding Marshall in
time. And Peter, too, she supposed.

"Now, you're going to tell me where they are,
understand?"

He said something vile, so she cracked him
upside the head with the gun. Then managed to shift gears without
setting the weapon down. She headed out the driveway and left, the
direction she'd seen the others take.

'Talk. Where are they?"

There was blood trickling from a small cut on
his cheekbone. He thinned his lips. "If you think I won't kill you,
you can think again," she said. "I've got nothing to lose."

He narrowed his eyes on her. "I was told you
were harmless. That you'd been as good as lobotomized."

"Yeah? Well, don't believe everything you
hear." She slanted him a look as they came to a crossroads. "Come
on, Duke. Which way?"

She didn't know why she called him by name,
she only knew his eyes widened when she said it.

"You do remember," he whispered.

"Which way, Duke?"

He swallowed hard. "Left."

She didn't move the car. "To where?"

His eyes shifted downward. "There's a house
out in Kentport."

"Is there?"

He nodded.

She didn't move the car. Just revved the
engine, letting the clutch up just enough to make the vehicle push
itself forward, like a horse tugging at the bit."

"Cause you know when we get to this house in
Kentport, you're coming in with me. And if they're not there, I'll
put this gun barrel in your ear and squeeze the trigger."

She saw him shiver and thought he actually
believed her. Apparently, he'd known her in the past. Apparently,
he had reason to think she could make good on the threat. Damn,
what kind of a woman had she been?

What kind of a woman was she now?

"You know I'll do it don't you, Duke?"

"Yeah."

"So you still want me to turn left?"

His Adam's apple swelled briefly. "Go
straight There's an apartment. Vacant. In the city."

She nodded, satisfied. "You get me to where
they are, Duke, and you can walk. I never saw you. That's a
promise."

He thinned his lips and nodded.

"You believe me?"

He met her eyes. "You never break your word.
Everybody knows that. I'll get you there."

The apartment building was in a dead
neighborhood. It sat below the base of a bridge across the river.
Before they put the bridge up, this had been a ferry stop. Houses
and shops cropped up around it. But once the bridge went in, the
thriving community died. Shops closed. Owners moved and either sold
their houses dirt cheap or rented them the same way. Things were
let go. Repairs were seldom made. Some of the places ended up
vacant, boarded up, and became way stations for the aging homeless,
until they were pushed out by the street kids, who were pushed out
in turn by the gangs. Now the decrepit buildings that hadn't fallen
down, been torn down, or gone to arson, were crack houses,
whorehouses, and gang hangouts.

Kira didn't know how she knew all this, but
the knowledge was there, and had been there all along, lying silent
and invisible with so many other things, like layers of sediment at
the bottom of the sea. Only now, the formerly calm waters were
rough and choppy, and the junk at the bottom was getting stirred
up.

The bums holed up on the hill, underneath the
bridge for shelter. At night they came down and set fires in the
barrels along the waterfront. Mostly the gangs left them alone,
unless they were feeling particularly mean. There were other
homeless they could roll, farther away. These were sort of their
own.

She pulled the car to a stop behind the brick
remnants of a one-time gas station, its upper half long gone, and
killed the engine. "Which building?"

Duke nodded, because he couldn't point.
"Farthest one down, right by the water. Red brick, see it?"

She nodded. And she believed him. So she
reached behind his back and pressed the handcuff key into his palm.
"Leave the cuffs and the key on the seat and get out of here."

He nodded.

She got out of the car and pulled the .44,
leaving him to fumble with the key. It would take him a few minutes
to maneuver it into the cuff's lock and get himself free with his
hands behind him that way. She figured that gave her time—she
doubted he'd try to screw her over, but even if he did, it would be
ten minutes. Okay, maybe five.

She kept her back to the sides of buildings,
inching along each one, then darting across the alley to the next
When she reached the redbrick building at the end of the row, she
skirted it in search of a less obvious entry than the front
door.

Broken fire escape in the back. Twenty feet
gaped between it and the ground. No good there. But she found a
basement window busted out and crawled in there, standing still and
facing the darkness to give her eyes time to adjust

And her mind time to try to puzzle this
out.

She'd been in Africa. So had her father, and
Marshall, and so had Peter. She'd been engaged to Peter, but
screwing Marshall. She didn't think she'd slept with Peter, or if
she had, it must not have been too impressive, because she didn't
have any memories of being twisted up naked with him. The memories
of her and Marshall though—well, hell, they got her hot even
thinking about them. And this was no time to be distracted, so
she'd better stop.

Sighing, her eyes seeing things better now,
she moved through the basement, avoiding the shapes of boxes and
giant metal contraptions that might be normal basement things. Big,
square, boxy.