by Gini Koch
“Why doesn’t she remember? Why didn’t Uncle Peter notice?” Max asked.
“I didn’t ask Uncle Peter about Mommy’s clothes,” Chuckie said. “And Mommy’s head is hurt—she’s not remembering us, so her not remembering changing clothes isn’t hard to believe. So, Charlie’s explanation makes sense. We’re going to take that as being gospel for right now, until proven otherwise, okay?”
“Okay,” Charlie and Jamie said. Max didn’t say anything.
“Maxwell Solomon . . .” Chuckie said in a warning tone.
“Okay,” Max said with a sigh.
“Don’t be too hard on him. I can’t blame him for thinking I’m not his mother. I don’t think I’m his mother, after all.”
Chuckie took my hand again. “You are, but it’s okay. We’ll get you treated and your memory fixed up, Kitty. I promise.”
I wanted to say something else, but the motion of the car was relaxing and I started to slip off into sleep.
“Don’t fall asleep, baby,” Chuckie said. “Stay with me, Kitty. Stay with me.”
CHAPTER 12
“STAY WITH ME, KITTY. Stay with me, baby.”
I woke up in a man’s arms. “I need my wife admitted, immediately.” The voice was nice—deep, masculine, and commanding—but it wasn’t familiar.
“We need to put her in a wheelchair—” whoever he was talking to said. Sounded like a woman, but I wasn’t sure.
“No,” the man holding me said flatly. “I’m not letting her out of my arms, or my sight, until we’re in a hospital room. Now, take us to one immediately.” His voice radiated angry authority.
“This way, sir,” someone who was definitely a woman said. “We’ll get you into a room right away. Your staff can do the paperwork once they arrive.”
“Thank you.” The man holding me sounded relieved and far less angry. The authority was still there, though.
I opened my eyes as we hurried along. My head hurt, but I could say he was absolutely the handsomest man I’d ever seen in my life. He had broad features, light brown eyes, and dark wavy hair. Based on the arms holding me and what little I could take in, he was big and brawny, too. He also wasn’t my husband.
“Who are you? Where is my husband? Where are my children?”
The man looked at me with concern. “Hang in there, baby. You hit your head. It’ll be okay.” Now, talking to me, he sounded just this side of freaked out.
Medical personnel were racing about alongside us and they ushered us into a very nice, large hospital room. It looked familiar—I was fairly sure we were in Walter Reed.
“We’ll get her taken care of immediately, Mister Martini,” a nurse said, very respectfully. “Doctor Hernandez is on his way.”
“Seriously, my children were in the same car as me. Where are they? Two boys and a girl.” Tried not to panic, but I didn’t hear any of the kids’ voices.
“Jamie’s at home,” the man holding me, who I assumed was named Martini, said. “What car? And what boys are you talking about?”
“Charlie and Max!” I struggled to get out of his arms. Martini seemed to understand what I wanted and put me down on the bed in the room. He was as big and brawny as I’d thought. Maybe bigger and brawnier. So perhaps he’d pulled us out of the car when it had crashed. “And how did Jamie get home? Did her father take her? And if so, where is he? Where are my boys?”
“What are you talking about, baby? I’m Jamie’s father.”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life and stop calling me baby. You might be a little more muscular than my husband, but I’m sure he can take you in a fight.” Charles had studied martial arts for years and was a black or high belt in multiple styles and systems. The kids and I did martial arts, too, though we weren’t nearly as competent as Charles was. Even though he was less overly muscled than Martini, I was sure Charles could hold his own against Martini in a fight.
Martini gaped at me. I chose to ignore him and find my children.
I tried to get out of bed, but Martini wouldn’t let me. He was very strong, and while I considered trying to force my way past him, the nurses in the room were clearly on his side. As I looked around for someone I could appeal to, his phone rang and he took the call. “Got it. Great.” He hung up and looked at the nurses. “We’ll take it from here. Secure the room, please.” The nurses looked unwilling, but they all left.
The moment the door closed behind them, people appeared out of nowhere. Literally. One moment, no one was in a space, the next a bunch of men in black Armani suits and ties with white shirts showed up. All of them were incredibly handsome. Most of them fanned out, some staying in the room and some going out into the corridor, all looking like Male Models of the Secret Service, but only one of them came over to us.
He was giving Martini a run for the Most Handsome Man in the World award. Though Charles was still the best looking man in the world to me because of who and what he was, James was the only person I could think of who could compete with these two men in a national survey.
This new man was about James’ size, so shorter and smaller than Martini, though he, like Charles, was lean and wiry and didn’t look like he was a weakling in any way. He had light, straight brown hair, and green eyes flecked with blue. Said eyes narrowed to glare at me. Charming.
“She looks okay to me, Jeff,” he said. “Raj is going to stay and handle the mess at the stadium. The others are going to take a floater and should be here in a couple of minutes.” He shook his head at me. “Another fine mess, Kitty. I know, I know—it wasn’t your fault, right?”
“What in God’s name are you talking about? Some lunatic rams my car off the road and you want to say that it is my fault?”
He stared at me. “What?”
“She hit her head,” Martini said. “Hard. There was blood, Christopher.”
Christopher cocked his head at me. “Where?”
Martini moved me gently. “Ah . . . there was blood. A lot of it. On the back of her head.”
“She’s got a bruise on her forehead, but that’s all I see,” Christopher said.
“Fantastic. Look, I want to know what happened to my children, and I want to know now. Or I’m going to start screaming.”
“I want to know how she changed clothes,” Christopher said. “Because that’s not the outfit Kitty left the Embassy in this morning.”
“I have no idea what you’re blathering about, but if someone doesn’t tell me what’s happened to my children, heads are going to roll.”
Martini winced. “Calm down, baby. You’re so upset it’s smashing through my blocks.”
“What the hell are you talking about? And really, stop calling me ‘baby’ or my husband is going to kill you, financially, figuratively, and probably literally, too.”
Christopher stared at me. “Jeff . . . seriously, something’s wrong.”
Before Martini could reply or I could start screaming my head off, I saw a shimmering in the air, and then a group of men appeared again out of thin air. They all looked stressed and rather grim. Only this time, I knew two of them.
I shoved Martini away from me, leaped off the bed, ran to them, and flung my arms around my husband. “Oh Charles, thank God you’re here! Someone tried to kill us and no one will tell me where the kids are and that man has been pawing me.” I pointed to Martini. “I think he might have gotten us out of the car, but I don’t remember anything since I hit my head and blacked out.”
Charles stared at me. “Excuse me?” He looked at Martini. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Martini and Christopher were gaping. “I have no idea what’s going on anymore,” Martini said.
Looked to James, who had arrived with Charles. “James, make everyone stop fooling around. The kids are missing. Are they . . . hurt or . . . worse?”
“What kids?” James asked. “Jamie’s at home wh
ere she’s supposed to be.”
“How? She was with me in the car. And even if she’s somehow home safe, where are Charlie and Max?”
“Who are Charlie and Max?” Charles asked me. Sounding as if he truly didn’t know.
I backed away from him. “Our sons. Jamie’s older brothers. Our children.” Looked at his hand. “Where the hell is your wedding ring?”
“Ah . . . I took it off.” Charles looked freaked out. “You and Jeff and everyone else insisted I had to, to move on.”
“Move on from what?”
“My wife’s death.”
“I’m alive, in case you haven’t noticed.”
The men all looked shocked, Charles most of all.
“Jeff,” Christopher hissed. “Read her. Read her now.”
“It won’t prove she’s not an android,” Charles said. “But I agree with White.”
Martini seemed to focus on me. I had no idea what he was doing, but I didn’t feel anything. “It’s Kitty,” he said slowly. “But . . . she . . . doesn’t know me.” He sounded like this was breaking his heart.
Christopher put his hand onto Martini’s shoulder. “She hit her head, Jeff,” he said gently, and for the first time he seemed like he might actually be a nice person. “She may have a concussion, and you know that means potential memory loss.”
“The loss of the last five years?” Martini asked, sounding almost frightened.
“We have enemies,” Charles said, voice strained. “I have no idea how anyone could have gotten to her in the short time all of this has gone down, but for all we know, someone slipped something into the coffees I got us at the stadium. Or somewhere else. By now I put nothing past Titan, Gaultier, or YatesCorp.”
Before I could ask, again, what in the world they were talking about, a normally cute Hispanic man who was about my height appeared, medical bag in hand. “Tito,” Martini said, sounding relieved. “You need to run the OVS over Kitty immediately if not sooner.”
Tito didn’t argue or question, just pulled out something that looked a lot like the wands TSA used to do non-intrusive body searches, only it had a lot more blinking lights. “This won’t hurt,” he said to me with a nice smile. “Just relax, Kitty. I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“I’m not,” I snapped as he waved the wand around me. “I have no idea who any of you other than Charles and James are, and, much more importantly, I have no idea where my children are. My sons are seven and five and my daughter is three. We were in a car crash, at least I’m pretty sure we were. And no one will tell me where my children are, if they’re hurt, or . . . worse.”
“You have one child,” Charles said. “Her name is Jamie.”
“No, Charles. We have three children, and our daughter’s name is indeed Jamie. Are you seriously going to stand there and pretend you don’t know me, or our children?” I was too angry and scared to cry, but I wanted to.
“She thinks you’re her husband,” Martini said to Charles. “Seriously, Chuck, she believes it.”
“I don’t understand.” Charles looked completely confused.
“Neither do I,” Martini said. “But her feelings aren’t masked, so she’s certainly not wearing a blocker. And as long as she’s not an android, I don’t think she’s wearing an emotional overlay, either—mostly because her emotions are going off the charts but I don’t think they’d be the emotions our enemies would use to fool me.”
Tito finished. “She’s ninety percent organic, meaning this is Kitty. Only . . .”
“Only what?” Christopher asked.
“Only Kitty’s ninety-five percent organic. Meaning either she got a couple fillings or a pin in her leg in the last week that I don’t know about or . . .”
“Or,” James said, “this isn’t our Kitty.”
CHAPTER 13
“WELL, FRANKLY, I’m not most of ‘your’ Kitty. I know exactly two of you in the room, and why those two are acting insane is beyond me. Is anyone going to tell me one damn thing about what’s going on? And, keep in mind, the most important thing I want to know is where my children are.”
More people appeared. The room was quite large—we were clearly in some sort of VIP room—but it was now packed to capacity. This time there were three women along, surrounded by another group of men, five of whom looked like they were in the military. There was a big, black, bald man built like Martini, an older man who truly exemplified the term Silver Fox, and a regularly cute guy who winked at me.
Cute and gorgeous or not, the men paled against the women. These were the most gorgeous women I’d ever seen in my life. One was about my height, blonde and buxom. Another was a willowy brunette. And the last was kind of a cross between the two, a slender blonde who looked a little like Christopher.
I steeled myself for the Cheerleader Experience, but the women ran over and hugged me. “Kitty, are you okay?” the buxom one asked. She was holding a big, black purse made out of cheap leather. I’d had a purse just like it in high school and college.
“The stadium’s in an uproar,” the willowy one shared.
“Raj will handle it,” the third Beauty Queen said comfortingly.
“Awesome. Who is Raj? What stadium? And who the hell are you guys? And, I swear to God, someone had better tell me where my children are or I’m going to tear this place apart while I sue you all for everything you’re worth.”
The three Beauty Queens gaped at me. “Ah,” the buxom one said finally, “huh?”
“She hit her head and has no idea who anyone other than Reynolds and James are,” Christopher said. “Jeff says she’s not wearing an emotional blocker or overlay. And Tito says she’s organic but not the same organic as our Kitty.”
The three Beauty Queens all blinked. The buxom one handed me the purse. “I figured you’d want this.”
“Why?” This question earned me a room full of WTF looks.
She cleared her throat. “It’s your purse. And, ah, I’m Lorraine.”
“I’m Claudia,” the willowy one said.
“I’m Serene,” the third Beauty Queen said. “We were all in your wedding. To Jeff. Your wedding to Jeff. All three of us. And others. But all three of us. We’re, ah, among your best friends.”
“Really.” Didn’t know what else to say.
“Everyone in the room is your friend,” Lorraine said, sounding almost as stricken as Martini had.
Tito, out of everyone, seemed the least confused. He took the purse from me, put it onto the bed, and rummaged through it. He found what he wanted quickly, pulled out a wallet, and handed it to me. “Let’s take a look at this, okay, Kitty?”
I took the wallet—there really were too many of them for me to bash my way out, and with Charles acting basically insane, I had no good idea of what to do. Plus my head hurt, and so did my back and neck. Meaning I had whiplash, but I wasn’t about to ask for a chiropractor recommendation from these people.
I opened the wallet because that certainly seemed to be expected. The driver’s license picture was of me. However, it said I lived at the American Centaurion Embassy in Washington, D.C. I’d never heard of American Centaurion.
Of course, it also said I was Katherine Sarah Katt-Martini. Meaning that, at least if this was to be believed, Martini wasn’t lying and I was his wife.
I continued to stare at the license. I had no idea what I was supposed to say or think. “Is this a really elaborate practical joke?” was the best I could come up with.
Tito cleared his throat. “No. You’re the wife of the current Vice President of the United States, Kitty. Do you remember any of that?”
I shook my head. “The Vice President isn’t named Martini,” was all I could manage.
“Jeff,” Charles said, “did anything odd happen while you were running Kitty over here? Anything you can think of that was off, anything at all, even it was a small thing
, could give us a clue to what’s going on.”
“No,” Martini said. “Well . . . there was one thing, near the old Walter Reed hospital, where it felt like Kitty was weightless, just for a moment.”
Considered what he’d said while I stared at this proof that I wasn’t who I thought I was. “I remember feeling like something or . . . someone went . . . through me. Just before I blacked out.”
One of the men came over. “Look at me a moment, would you, Megalomaniac Girl?” he asked in a gentle tone. Decided I should play along and maybe someone would tell me what was going on.
I looked up. It was the guy who’d winked at me. “That’s a hell of a superhero name. Or are you saying I’m a supervillain?”
He shook his head. “My name is Tim Crawford. You call me Megalomaniac Lad. Because we figure out what the bad guys are doing.”
“If you say so.”
He looked at my left hand. “Wedding set looks like the one you normally wear, in other words, the set Jeff gave you.” He took my hand and looked at it closely. “But it’s not actually exactly the same.” He looked at Charles. “But I know this isn’t the ring he would have given you when he proposed.”
Had no idea how he knew, but he was right. “Charles bought this set for me for our fifth anniversary.” My throat felt tight. We’d gone back to Vegas to celebrate and Charles had proposed all over again and given me a second wedding set. He’d promised to do the same thing every five years.
“Right. You like baseball?”
“Sure, I love sports. I used to run track in high school and college, so I’m a jock. It kind of keeps hold of you.”
“Favorite band is Aerosmith?”
“Well, yes. But I like a ton of different kinds of music.”
He nodded. “You read comics?”
“Oh, yeah, of course.” I looked at Charles. “It was the first thing we ever bonded over.” Charles smiled at me weakly.