Free The Bride Wore A Forty-Four by MAGGIE SHAYNE

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