Hollow

by Maggie Shayne

  She closed her eyes. “You... you were watching my most private moments.”

  “Yeah, I was. I'm your husband. I was protecting you from that slime bag.”

  She heard his sigh and opened her eyes

  “I know, I know," he said. “There's nothing you hate more than being dependent on a man for anything, but dammit, Kira, I didn't see that I had any other choice.” He looked truly torn.

  She sat there, staring at him for a long moment. What if she’d had sex with Peter? What if he had let her go that far to protect their cover, knowing she had no memory and thought it was real?

  She’d never have forgiven him, that’s what.

  She reached out a hand to cover his. “I don't see that you had a choice either.”

  He blinked, maybe shocked by that.

  “What made me so determined never to be dependent on anyone? Any man? My own husband? My partner?”

  He looked away, shrugged.

  “Was I always that way?”

  "No. Not always."

  She gripped the oars, returning them to the water, giving a few strokes to get them moving faster again. “I think it's something to do with my father. But the only glimpses of memory I've had of him feel as if we were— close. Really, really close.”

  He nodded. “You were. You and your dad were almost inseparable.”

  “There's something else,” she said. “Something changed that, came between us, didn't it?”

  Facing her squarely, Michael nodded.

  “What was it, Michael?” She thought she knew, but it seemed like there must be something more.

  He hesitated. Kira dropped the oars, gripped his shoulders. “Come on, the memories are returning. This is important, and it's not going to be too much for me to take. What came between my father and me?”

  Without blinking or flinching away, he replied, “I did.”

  Kira frowned. “He... didn't approve of us?”

  "He forbade you to marry me. Told me to stay away. He didn't want you working for the DEA in the first place, much less married to it.” He shook his head. “It was only out of concern for you, Kira.”

  “But I married you anyway.”

  “In secret. We planned to tell your family after we wrapped up this last case. We couldn’t tell them sooner. Your father insisted we had to let your mother think the engagement was real.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “He also told you he'd disown you if you married me. You considered it a betrayal. After that, you just... you changed.”

  She nodded slowly. “He wasn’t against me working for the DEA or marrying an agent for my own safety. It was never about keeping me safe. It was about keeping his secrets.”

  “Secrets?” He frowned, leaning back in the boat, searching her face.

  Kira nodded. “He wasn’t my real father.”

  “What?”

  “He confessed it just before he died in my arms. But I already knew. I’d found out months earlier, and I was just seething, waiting for him to admit the truth. Which was stupid, when you think about it. If he’d kept it from me all those years….” She sighed heavily. “When I first remembered, I confronted my mother about it, and she came clean. She had an affair during one of Dad’s ‘business trips.’ She gave me a file that she said had all the information he never wanted me to know about my birth father.”

  “I had no idea about any of this,” Michael said.

  “I didn’t tell you. I kept it from you. That was wrong. And I think the longer my father kept on deceiving me, the more my trust in him died. And I projected that onto you.”

  He sighed heavily. “I get it now.”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded. “He was your hero, Kira. To find out he was keeping something that vital from you must’ve been just about unbearable.”

  Even as he said it, the pain came back like a knife through her heart. “It was.”

  “He hurt you badly. That’s why everything changed. You expected me to do the same."

  She nodded slowly. "If my father, the man I trusted most in the world, would lie to me, it must have shaken my faith to the core. If I couldn’t trust him, who could I trust? So I put up shields. I told myself not to love you too much, not to become too dependent, not to let myself need you."

  "Is that a memory or a guess?" he asked.

  She lowered her head, pressed her fingers to her forehead. "I'm not sure. Maybe a little of both." She drew a deep breath. "He was in Africa with us. He was killed. In the same explosion that nearly killed me."

  "Yeah. Do you remember that?"

  "I remember pain, confusion. I remember trying to walk through the smoke and dust, calling for you, calling for Dad." She frowned. “And I remember finding him, kneeling beside him, talking to him.”

  “And that’s when he confessed the truth?”

  She nodded, straining hard to fit more of the scattered pieces of memory into shapes that made sense. Then she narrowed her eyes. "Dad worked for the DEA, too, on the same case against Peter. That's why we were all in Africa together. We were gathering evidence.”

  Michael nodded. "We were expecting to get a shot at the notorious Mr. White.”

  “You’d worked with my father before, hadn’t you.”

  It wasn’t really a question. “Your father trained me. For a long time, he and I were almost as close as you and he were. He fought so hard against you signing on. But you went behind his back and told him after the fact. We all agreed never to tell your mother. But I think she knew a lot more than he gave her credit for."

  “Maybe that’s why she tried to remake me in her image, instead of his. She hoped it would take, and I would never go back to risking my life for a living.” She looked at his face. Her head was pounding. Too much, all at once. “Poor Mother. She doesn’t even know she has a son-in-law.”

  He pointed past her. “We're almost to shore.”

  She picked up the oars and used them to push the boat to the shoreline, then she climbed out and dragged it up onto the beach. When she reached for Michael, he let her help him and didn’t even wince when he moved. The cut on his hand had stopped bleeding, and he'd managed to wash the blood away as they'd crossed the lake, with strips of the T-shirt and lake water.

  He stepped onto the shore.

  She couldn't help but slide her arms around his waist, and his came around her as if the action was a reflex. Resting her head on his chest, she said, “God, this has been a nightmare for you. All of it.”

  His good hand in her hair, he whispered, “The nightmare would have been if I'd lost you. Have I, Kira?”

  She lifted her head slowly and met his eyes, let them probe hers. “Even if I had never remembered anything else, I remembered you. Since the first day I set eyes on you, after the accident, I mean, I’ve been out of my mind wondering why you feel so familiar, so dear to me. I thought I must be the world’s most horrible bride for the impure thoughts I was having about my wedding planner. Maybe memories can be erased, Michael. But I don’t think love can. Not the kind of love we had. The kind of love we have.”

  His eyes roamed her face for another moment, and then he lowered his head and kissed her. His mouth covered hers, and then his tongue nudged her lips apart, and she opened to him, eager to explore the memories that had tormented her for so long. She held him harder as her heart pounded and her breaths stuttered.

  She opened her eyes, drawing her mouth away from his, and whispered, "I want to make love to you, Michael. But not yet. Not until your hand is patched up, and—"

  "Hand, hell." He scooped her into his arms and carried her further across the shore and into a meadow of tall grasses and wildflowers. Dropping to his knees, he laid her down in the grass, stretched out beside her. He kissed her jaw, her neck. His wounded hand lay on the ground above her head, but the good one ran over her cheeks, and then her breasts, and then her belly. She wanted to touch him, too, and quickly unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it down from his shoulders. She ran her p
alms across his magnificent chest, and the fire inside her burned hotter.

  Michael managed to lift the top she wore one-handed, then he pushed it higher, exposing her breasts to the night. As he touched them he whispered, "I've missed you, Kira. The feel of you. The taste of you." He kissed a path down her neck, across her chest and breasts. She lay there, naked, and he rose up a little, so he could look at her. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, Michael. It’s been so long.”

  They undressed each other in clumsy haste, and then she clutched his hips and pulled him to her, wrapping her thighs around him, closing her eyes and whispering his name.

  They made love urgently, and it felt like the very first time, and yet old and familiar and precious. And after, he held her tight in his arms while her body relaxed against his.

  Eventually, he rolled onto his side, pulling her into his arms and holding her as if he’d never let go.

  His fingers framed her chin and jaw, and he tipped her head to his, kissed her. "You're the best thing that’s ever happened to me," he told her. "Thank you for coming back to me, baby. I couldn't have survived if you hadn't."

  "Things got tense between us, before all this."

  He nodded. "I thought you blamed me for the rift with your father. I blamed myself for marrying you in secret, for not waiting to get his blessing first."

  "I was holding back from you, protecting myself from being lied to and let down again. If I couldn’t trust him, I just couldn’t trust anyone. I remember so much more now. I'm sorry, Michael. I'm so sorry I hurt you."

  "It doesn't matter now."

  "It does. But I want you to know that even though I remember that feeling, that fear, I don't feel it anymore. I left it behind. I know you'll never hurt me. I do trust you. I knew that even before my memories returned."

  "I'd die before I’d hurt you."

  "I know. I really do."

  He kissed her again, and she thought she tasted a tear on his lips, and she was overwhelmed with the intensity of her feelings for this man. Her husband.

  But as much as she would have liked to lie there in his arms until sunrise, she knew they had to move on. He needed medical treatment. And they both needed to put more space between themselves and Peter's thugs. She sat up, reluctantly. "We should get dressed, get moving."

  "Yeah. Our backup should be arriving to meet us about two miles from here."

  She nodded, reached for her clothes and put them on. By the time she finished, he'd pulled on his pants and shirt, but was still struggling to fasten them one-handed.

  "Let me get that," she said, smiling a little. She moved close to him and fastened the jeans, then stroked his chest, teasing him as she buttoned up his shirt.

  When she finished, he covered her hands with his good one. "I never stopped loving you, Kira. I want to be sure you know that. Not for a minute."

  Her throat went tight. "I—"

  "Don't even twitch," Peter shouted from the darkness. "You're completely surrounded."

  Chapter 13

  Michael's hand tightened and his eyes held hers for an instant before shifting past her to scan the darkness around them.

  "Step away from him, Kira, or I'll be forced to kill you both where you stand."

  She glanced downward, seeing her gun belts on the ground, near their feet but concealed by the grass. "He's hurt, Peter. He can barely stand on his own."

  "Back away from him."

  So they can kill him, she thought. Peter will want to take me alive, avenge his wounded pride before he finishes me off. But he’ll kill Michael here and now.

  She met Michael's eyes, then shifted hers downward, toward the guns in the grass nearby. She saw him follow her gaze.

  "He'll drop like a rock if I let go of him."

  "He's going to drop like a rock either way. Back away."

  She met Michael’s eyes again, prayed he would do what she wanted him to do. Then she held her hands up, palms out, about shoulder level, and backed up two steps, deliberately staying between Michael and Peter. Michael slumped to the ground.

  "Kill him," she heard Peter say.

  Michael said one word. "Down." And as she dropped to her knees, he rose up onto his, tossing one gun to her with his wounded hand, while firing the other one in the direction of Peter's voice.

  Kira caught her weapon, turned and dropped belly-down in the grass, firing at the muzzle flashes behind them as Michael shot at the ones in front of them. Gun smoke rose, because they were all so close and firing so rapidly. It stung her eyes, choked her.

  And slowly she realized the only gun still firing was her own.

  She lay still a moment, trying to see through the smoke. It lingered thick in the heavy air, not rising or dissipating as fast as she wished it would. "Michael?" She called his name softly, half expecting the sound of her voice to draw more gunfire.

  When it didn't, she pushed herself upright. “Michael?”

  No reply. She walked through the mists, trying to find her way and realized slowly that the sun was rising. Its rays pierced the smoke to fall upon bodies and blood among the wildflowers. Peter's body, those of his men. Bloody, still, lifeless. Dead, all of them.

  "Michael?"

  She searched for him through the smoke, which was blending with the mist rising from the lake, and suddenly she was back in Africa.

  Blood was trickling down her face from the wound to her head, and she staggered as she walked through the rubble and smoke, searching for her father.

  And then she found him. He lay beneath a pile of debris, and she fell to her knees, pushing it aside, gathering him to her. They'd been enemies for months by then, but suddenly it didn't matter. "Dad. God, Dad, are you all right?"

  His face was ashen, but his eyes blinked open, met hers. "Kira."

  "I'll get help," she promised. "Lie still, I'll get help."

  He clutched her hand in a surprisingly fierce grip. "No. Listen. Listen to me, daughter." She blinked, staring down at him. "I was wrong," he told her. "I was wrong, Kira. Michael's a good man. Maybe... the best man I've ever known."

  "What are you saying?" she asked, stroking his head.

  "Your mother—she hasn't been happy in our marriage. Too many secrets. Too much I have to hide from her. And from you. But you... you're not your mother. You're strong.”

  "Mom loves you," she assured him.

  "And suffers for it. I didn't want that for you. But... Michael loves you, Kira.”

  “I know he does. I love him back. But you need to be quiet now.”

  “No. There’s more you need to know before I go.”

  “Dad, be quiet. You’re weak.” And so was she. Weak and getting weaker. Her vision kept going black, her eyes falling closed. She kept forcing them wide again, trying to see where he was hurt, what she could do.

  “No, I have to be the one to tell you. Kira, I’m not your birth father,” he whispered. “But I love you more than any other man ever could.”

  And then he closed his eyes, and they didn’t open anymore.

  Even though she searched for a pulse, she knew he was gone, and somehow, knew there was no chance to revive him. She held him in her arms, and cried, until, swamped with dizziness and weakness, she let him go and fell across his silent chest.

  Moments later, Michael was leaning over her, pulling her gently onto her back, whispering her name, and she was staring up at him, trying to speak, to tell him she was sorry for the distance between them. To tell him why… And then there was only darkness.

  The memory faded, and she found herself kneeling beside Michael, lifting his head, searching his body for bullet holes. Blood pulsed from a chest wound, and it was so similar to the memory of her father that she felt gutted. She pressed her hand to it to slow down the bleeding as her worst nightmare unfolded all over again. The man she loved more than any other lay there with a hole in his chest, bleeding out.

  "Michael," she whispered. "Open your eyes. Listen to me. You are not dying, do
you hear me? You are not leaving me, not now."

  His eyes opened. He seemed short of breath, but focused, conscious, aware.

  "I love you, Michael," she told him. "I don't just remember loving you, I feel it, more now than ever before. I love you so much it's overwhelming. It's all-consuming. Don't you dare leave me."

  He smiled weakly.

  "I remember the day of the bombing. I remember what happened before I lost consciousness. I found Dad. He lay there, dying, but with his final breaths, he told me the secret he’s been keeping all this time. That he’s not my father. I didn’t tell him I already knew. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. It was meaningless that he’d kept it from me. I was losing him. It put everything into perspective. But there was more, Michael. He gave us his blessing. He said you were the best man he'd ever known and that he loved you, too."

  Closing his eyes slowly, Michael whispered, “Thank you for that. It means... so much.”

  "It isn't gonna mean a damn thing if you don't hang on for me. God, Michael, I've been so empty. Walking around like a hollow shell. A body without a soul. And I know what was missing, now, because I've found it again. It was us. It was you.”

  She waited for his reply, but there wasn't one. He'd passed out. Or died.

  She heard something then—a cell phone, ringing. She dug it from Michael's pocket and hit the button. "Where the hell are you guys?"

  "Kira? Holy shit, Kira, you almost sound like your old self."

  She recognized Kelly's voice, not as her mother's housekeeper, but as a colleague. "I'm back," Kira told her. "The bad guys are dead, and Michael is down. We need a chopper. And hurry."

  "We're on the way," Kelly replied. Then, more softly, "Welcome back, Kira. You’ve been missed."

  #

  Kira had just put in the longest night of her life, and she was still holding Michael’s hand when he woke in the hospital bed. He looked at her, smiled a little, and it even reached his eyes. "Hey, beautiful."