Hollow

by Maggie Shayne

  There were trees and brush and more trees. The only sounds were the occasional call of a night bird, the songs of crickets and the whisper of pine boughs brushing one another in the breeze.

  She pushed herself up onto all fours, paused in silence, and hearing nothing, got all the way to her feet. She looked back at the trapdoor to be sure it was closed, 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. There were leaves and branches attached, and grass that seemed to be 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 walking without making a sound, creeping from one tree to the next, her steps soft and soundless, her stance crouched and low. 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 so himself, no one else knew about it. Not even the good guys.

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

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

  The voice in her head made her smile a little. There was something familiar and comforting about it. About knowing it was her voice. She might feel like a terrified, lone woman without a chance in hell of besting a gang of armed thugs. But she was actually a kick-ass, gun-wielding DEA agent who didn’t know what fear was. And they were going to be sorry they’d underestimated her.

  Men underestimating me is my best weapon.

  She nodded at that inner voice. “I’ll bet it is, at that. Yay, misogyny.”

  She crept closer to the cabin, keeping just inside the tree line, moved slowly around it, watching carefully for guards who might be posted outside, but seeing none. Then she tiptoed even closer, coming out of the trees and counting on the darkness for cover. Her heart hammered so hard as she dashed across the open space between the woods and the cabin that she almost thought they could hear it. And then she reached the log wall, and leaned against it, panting, listening, waiting.

  Nothing happened. Perfect, she was still undetected.

  She skimmed along the outer walls and peered 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 entire cabin, 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 was in there with him. The other three were lounging in the living room, eating.

  My freakin’ pot pies. Bastards.

  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 those woods, find a phone, and call for help.

  Kira closed her eyes and desperately tried to invoke the presence of that alter ego. The tough one, the fearless one.

  Immediately her mind was flooded with images. Puzzle pieces rearranged themselves, snapping together and forming real memories. She saw herself, cornered by three men in a dark ally. She felt blood dripping from her nose, tasted it on her lips. Her weapons were lying on the ground, out of reach. She lifted her head and looked those men right in the eyes, knowing with a grim certainty that they intended to kill her. She 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, right into the rain of bullets, his own guns blazing.

  He dropped two of them, and she blasted the third while 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 stormy gray eyes. And she said, "You're late."

  "I'm right on time," he told her. "Did you think I wouldn’t show?"

  "Not for a minute." She got up and 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.

  And yet she felt alive. Every cell in her body awake and vibrating, her heart pumping, her mind working on all cylinders.

  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. It didn’t dissipate or become a clip from a film she’d seen once and forgotten.

  She remembered!

  A real solid memory, and if she had an hour to sit and think, she thought others would surely follow, piecing themselves together from the disjointed bits in her brain.

  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 as she crouched just below the window.

  "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, delivered a kick to the side of his head in a choreography she knew by heart and executed without a flaw. His gun flew from his hand as he went over sideways, and when he opened his mouth to shout, 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 on just before she smashed the butt into his skull. Then she flicked it off again, picked up the man's weapon, tucked it into the back of her pants.

  Lastly, she knelt beside the man to make sure he wasn't going to be coming around any time soon, like she should’ve done with Duke.

  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.

  She wondered once again if she really wanted to remember the woman she'd been. But then a sound from inside the cabin drew her attention, and she rose up just enough to peer through the window. One of Peter’s goons was drawing the point of a blade slowly down Michael's cheek. The knife’s tip left a scarlet trail in its wake, like a pen leaking a trail of red ink. It ignited a furious rage in Kira's belly.

  She leaned closer, pressing her 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.

  "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 his 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 beneath. Michael shouted and his face contorted in pain.

  Kira reacted on autopilot. She straightened, set her feet, leveled the gun on the bastard in a two-handed grip and pulled the trigger, almost as a single move. Her bullet shattered the window and then drilled through the center of his forehead. His head snapped back, and then he went down like his legs had evaporated under him. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  She met Michael's eyes through the window frame 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!"

&
nbsp; 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 through the woods like she was part of them, leaping roots, ducking limbs, making barely a sound. She made a beeline 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.

  And then she skidded into it like sliding into home base, kicking it up as soon as her toe touched the edge, and skipping the ladder on the way down. As she landed in a crouch, the trapdoor fell closed above her.

  With no time to make a better plan, her only goal was to get to Michael. So she raced back along the tunnel, running full tilt in the darkness with her hands out in front of her, all the way back until she hit the far wall. The men would be outside by now. All of them, combing the woods, looking for her. They wouldn't be worried about Michael being alone for a few minutes. 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.

  She crept up the ladder, lifted the hidden panel in the floor, and quietly climbed upward, into the darkness of the secret room.

  Chapter 12

  Kira stood near the closed door, and listened, but not a sound came through. She reached into her boot in the pitch darkness, unerringly closing her hand around the small knife Michael had bought her in Cairo. And she remembered him handing it to her, and telling her the hieroglyphics spelled her new name. Kira Waters. She remembered his smile and the light in his eyes when he’d said that. He was proud she’d chosen to take his name.

  Her thumb caressed the button, and the blade sprang open. Then she held it in her teeth to keep her gun hands free while she pushed the door open, very slowly, and crept into the living room. The scent of pot pies filled the place. No one was around. The front door stood partway open, probably left swinging as the idiots all went racing out into the woods to hunt her down. The bedroom door was closed.

  She moved fast across the open living room, avoiding the broken glass that littered the floor. There was no cover, nothing to duck behind, and she would be visible to anyone outside who happened to be looking in, so speed and staying low were the only options.

  Through the open front door, she could hear the men shouting to each other as they searched the woods for her, though she couldn't make out their words. She hurried to the bedroom door then paused outside it, again listening, before slowly turning the knob and pushing it open.

  She sighed in relief when she saw no one besides Michael in the room, then tensed as he yanked the blade from his hand and made quick work of cutting himself free while his hand bled profusely..

  He's been hurt a lot worse than that, she thought involuntarily, and another rush of memories came, one after the other. Michael with a knife wound to his neck. Michael with a bullet hole in his chest. Michael with his entire body bruised and broken from a hellish beating. Hell, he'd even been hit by a car once.

  There was no time to marvel at the rapid return of her life, no time to mull on the memories. She had to shake the past she’d been longing for away and focus on what she needed to do now, in the present. She closed the bedroom door behind her and holstered her guns, then lunged to a nearby dresser, yanked open a drawer and took out the first piece of fabric she felt inside, which turned out to be a small T-shirt. She hurried back to him, beginning to tear it into strips with her teeth.

  "Baby, we gotta get out of here. You can play Nurse Nancy later." He took the shirt from her, twisting it quickly around his hand as he got to his feet. Taking her arm, he started toward the window.

  "They'll be watching that way,” she said.

  But then they heard the men returning through the front door. "Not now, they won't. Come on." He tugged her toward the window, yanking a blanket from the bed and throwing it over the sill so they wouldn't get cut on the shattered glass.

  He helped her through first, then followed, and then they were on the ground and running. She imagined the men were already in the bedroom before they got five yards from the window, but there was no time to look back, no way to judge whether the trees they were quickly putting between them were dense enough to hide them. No way to know for sure whether the men were in pursuit.

  Beside her, Michael ran as if nothing was wrong, his gait storng and even, but his breathing was labored. He clutched the wounded hand to his side, and she knew he was hurting.

  "This way," he said.

  "This way's the lake."

  "I know. They’ll expect us to head for the road. They won't be looking there. Come on."

  She trusted him, had no idea what he had in mind, but she trusted him. She always had. He would never let her down the way her father had.

  Michael tugged her hand and she realized the thought of her dad had brought her to a halt. "Come on, almost there."

  "Yeah." She shook off the urge to explore her feelings about her father for now. She could think about that later, when they were safe.

  They emerged from the trees near the dark, glistening lake's gently sloping shore. A boat rested there, far from the cabin, and she wondered if this was yet another of Michael's ingenious escape plans.

  He grabbed the bow and shoved the boat into the water. "Get in," he told her.

  "You get in. And don't waste time arguing, I'm not the one with a hole in my hand."

  He got in. She shoved the boat farther into the water, then she climbed in with him, gripping the oars, dipping them into the lake and pushing the little boat farther from the shore and from the house, as well. Michael placed a cell phone call to someone, naming a meeting spot and a time.

  Rescue, Kira thought, was at hand.

  "Easy," he said when he finished the call. "Don't row too fast. We’re less noticeable moving slowly. And try to stay low. Get us around that bend in the shoreline where we can't be seen from the cabin, and then we'll make for the far side."

  She nodded, and followed his instructions, while delivering a few of her own. "Rip that shirt into strips and bandage your hand. Your face is a mess, too. You need stitches, Michael."

  "Yeah, and probably a tetanus shot."

  She shook her head. "You had one of those summer before last, when that lowlife Farentino jabbed you in the ass with his filthy meat hook."

  She looked up slowly. He did, too. "You remember that?"

  She nodded. "I remember...more and more. Not just little bits now, but entire incidents. Entire segments of my life. Our life.”

  "What kinds of things?"

  She shrugged.

  "Tell me. I really want to know." He looked around them. "Besides, they haven't seen us. We’ve got nothing but time now." He began tearing the shirt into strips and bandaging his wounded hand.

  Drawing a breath, she nodded. "Okay."

  The rowboat drifted on its own, slowly but steadily toward the far shore. She pulled the oars out of the water, let them rest in the bottom of the boat, upper ends held in the oarlocks. "Mostly, I remember things about us. Our wedding, that came back to me clearly. And then... well, just us. Together. Fighting, dodging bullets, laughing...” She averted her eyes before she went on. "Making love."

  He was staring at her. She felt his eyes on her face, and chanced a look up. His gaze was warm and caring. The way he looked at her was almost… adoring. And she knew he’d looked at her that way for years now. She’d marveled a time or two, that it never changed. His love for her never changed.

  "It's okay," he said. "Don't be embarrassed. If you knew how hard it's been for me not to just tell you... " He reached out, cupping her cheek in his palm. "That you remember us, God, Kira, that means a lot."

  She covered his hand with hers. "To me, too. And for you to keep quiet, for my sake, even though it meant watching me make plans to marry another man—” She frowned then. "But tha
t engagement to Peter—it was never real, was it? I was playing him. It was a cover.”

  He nodded. “The marriage wouldn't have been legitimate. The license wasn't real to begin with, and the minister was a plant.”

  Light dawned, and she smiled slowly. “I thought he was a little too comfortable holding a thug for me back at the wedding.”

  He smiled with her. “Our plan was for a tactical team to move in at the reception, when all Peter's contacts would have been in one place. Including his the most wanted criminal in the world, a fellow known only as Mr. White. Getting him will save a lot of lives, but I never would have let it go too far, Kira."

  “I get that. The greater good and all. But… how could you know if it was going too far? I mean... I could have slept with him, and you—”

  His jaw went tight and his hand fell from her face. “There was never any chance of that happening.”

  She blinked and shook her head quickly. “I'm not saying it did. It didn't, but—”

  “I know it didn't.” He pushed his good hand through his hair. “Look, that was too much to ask, even for your health's sake. I couldn't risk you letting that guy touch you. Do you know how furious you would have been later on, when you remembered that he was just a suspect? That it was all a cover? No, Kira, I wasn't willing to risk that.”

  “Then what did you do to prevent it? Because I haven’t seen anything that would’ve—”

  “I've had you...under surveillance this whole time.”

  A prickling anger sizzled through her veins. A fury that made no sense to the new Kira, but fit perfectly with the old one. “You had someone watching me?”

  “Not someone. Me,” he said.

  “You.” God help her, she was going to hit him.

  “Yeah, me. You might as well know it all at once. Your phones are bugged, your bedroom's miked, your car is wired. There are cameras all over the freaking place. You've barely been out of my sight since you left the hospital, Kira. And yeah, I knew that would piss you off. But not as much as my letting you sleep with a criminal would have.”