The Amnesiac Bride

by Marie Ferrarella

  “It’s all beginning to make sense now, isn’t it?” Quinton’s voice was almost kind. “You know I’m telling you the truth.” He urged the drink she was holding up to her lips. “You’re not the first woman to find out that her husband’s lied to her. And I can show you a perfect way to get revenge.”

  Something snapped to life within her. This was what he was trying to do, this was why he was lying. To turn her against Zane. And get her to go to bed with him.

  His hand was over hers as he coaxed her to drink. Whitney twisted the glass and flung its contents into his face.

  Like an explosion, rage instantly transformed his features. Whitney saw the fury in his eyes at the same moment that she felt the sting of his hand across her face. Stumbling backwards from the force of the blow, she tasted a trickle of blood seeping into her mouth. He’d cut her with his ring.

  And he was coming after her. “You miserable, stupid wretch!”

  The door opened just then. His hand raised to strike her again, Quinton turned. “Knock!” he roared at the intruders.

  Taken by surprise, Taylor looked from his boss to the woman. “I brought him back.”

  The rage she’d seen on Quinton’s face was nothing compared with what she saw on Zane’s as he hurried to her side.

  “What the hell are you doing to her?” Zane demanded. He was going to kill the bastard with his bare hands, to hell with the consequences.

  Quinton composed himself. Women weren’t worth getting angry about. “Repaying her for my impromptu shower.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

  Holding her chin in his hand, Zane examined the cut on Whitney’s cheek. There were no words to describe the guilt he felt.

  “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t know whether to melt into Zane’s arms or to run from both of them. Whitney knew what she wanted to do, but that was just her heart talking, not her head. Maybe if she’d been thinking instead of feeling, she wouldn’t be here like this.

  “I don’t know.” She looked at Zane, silently pleading for him to tell her that everything Quinton had said was a lie. “Am I?”

  She knew, Zane realized. Or thought she did. He should have told her what was going on. But it was too late now.

  “This is all very touching,” Quinton commented, “but boring.” He was beginning to lose his patience. He stared at the small, black valise Zane was holding. His question was addressed to his bodyguard. “Does he have it?”

  The barrel-chested man came forward and nodded. Russell hadn’t let him see the contents of the case, but why else would a man keep a valise in a hotel safe unless there was something worth stealing in it?

  “Yeah,” Taylor answered.

  “Good.” Quinton turned his attention to Zane. No, he wasn’t going to groom him, after all, he decided. To have a successor meant that there was always someone waiting for you to die or abdicate. He intended to do neither for a long time.

  “Then I’ll take it.” Eyes fixed expectantly on the valise, Quinton put out his hand.

  Zane didn’t relinquish the case to him. Instead, he slipped his arm tightly around Whitney. They were only ten feet away from the front door, but that meant going through Quinton and two bodyguards. The den, with its bay window, was twice as far away. Right now, it represented their only chance.

  “Where’s the cocaine?” Zane heard Whitney’s sharp intake of breath, felt her disappointment as she stiffened beside him. It went through him like a sword thrust to the hilt.

  Quinton’s patience was at its breaking point. He smiled, but his expression was malevolent.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t I tell you? There’s been a slight change of plans. Due to my losses at the table tonight, I’ve decided to keep it all. My drugs and your money. You’ve let me down and displeased me.” He spread his hands wide. “Fortunes of war, I’m afraid. If you don’t give me any trouble, I might consider letting you both go.”

  Zane knew they had only a few minutes to live. Taylor was already reaching for the weapon beneath his jacket. He only hoped Whitney was up to this.

  “All right,” he agreed. “No trouble. It’s not worth it.” Stepping forward, he began to give Quinton the valise, then suddenly rammed it against the man’s midsection.

  Caught off guard, Quinton fell backward against Taylor. The latter’s half-drawn weapon discharged against his own chest. With a gasp of sheer terror and surprise, Taylor fell to his knees. Dead. A red splotch on his jacket was growing wider even as he fell.

  Zane never looked back. Grabbing Whitney’s hand, he yanked her toward the den.

  “Move! Move! Move!” Like the burst of a discharging automatic weapon, he shouted the command at her.

  Running on disembodied legs, Whitney found herself being propelled into another room. The den, from the looks of it. Zane slammed the door shut and flipped the lock.

  That wasn’t going to hold, he thought.

  Trembling with the realization that everything she’d put together over the past few days was falling apart, Whitney could only stare at Zane. “He wasn’t lying. You are dealing in drugs.”

  This was no time for true confessions. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?” Grabbing a chair, Zane threw it against the window, shattering it. “C’mon, we have to get out of here.”

  Not waiting for her to comply, he pushed her through the broken window just as the sound of gunfire erupted behind him. The next moment, the door was flying open. Zane ducked as he dove out behind Whitney.

  A bullet whizzed by his head, narrowly missing him. He hit the ground running and grabbed for her purse, yanking it away from her.

  Whitney spun around in time to see Zane pulling a small revolver out of the purse he had insisted she take with her.

  She hadn’t opened her purse the entire evening. During all that time, the gun had been just sitting there and she didn’t know.

  But Zane had known.

  He’d known this was going to happen and he hadn’t told her. A man didn’t put a woman he loved in jeopardy. Whitney felt as if her very heart was being ripped out.

  She looked as if she was in a trance. “Run, damn it,” Zane ordered, turning to fire at Reese, Quinton’s bodyguard. “He’s going to kill us.”

  The explosion echoed around her. The next moment, she saw Zane drop to the ground, clutching his arm. There was blood everywhere. Zane’s blood, Whitney thought she cried his name, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything. It was as if she’d been dropped headfirst into a chute, a time tunnel where everything went whizzing by her.

  Images formed and reformed in her mind. Her lungs felt as if they were bursting, as if she’d run a great distance.

  But rather than run, she snatched the revolver from Zane’s hand. Holding her breath, she fired, point-blank, at the man charging at her. The man who had shot Zane.

  A look of pure amazement creased his wide face as Reese looked down at the hole that had formed in the center of his chest. He was still staring it as he crumpled to the ground.

  Before. She’d done this before. Held a gun aimed at a man. And fired.

  She bit back a cry of anguish as everything turned dark. Whitney fought hard against letting it overwhelm her and swallow her up.

  When her vision cleared, Quinton was standing in front of her, his gun aimed at her head.

  He had just moments before others would come, crawling around the scene. Just moments to reap satisfaction. He meant to have it. And then he would buy his way out, with money and blackmail, as he had done on several other occasions in the past. He wasn’t worried, only angry.

  “You surprise me, Mrs. Russell. You have more courage than I thought. And more brains.” His eyes shifted to take in the gun in her hand. “I should have thought to have your purse searched.”

  Taylor had searched Russell before the game as a precaution. But it hadn’t occurred to him that the woman might pose a problem.

  Quinton shrugged. “My error. Now I’ll take that, plea
se.” One hand out to her, he smiled confidently. He saw how her hand was shaking.

  Physically ill, Whitney thought she was going to dissolve right where she stood. Her hand was shaking not from fear but from sheer anger. And her head ached so that it was almost blinding her. Beside her, Zane lay on the ground. And one man was dead.

  Her stomach knotted as she raised her hand and wrapped it around the other. The small barrel still wavered.

  “No,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “Oh, the hell with it.”

  She saw it in his eyes a split second before it happened. Saw what he meant to do. Firing straight at Quinton, Whitney fell to the ground, her body partially covering Zane’s. The impact made her drop the gun. It went sliding along the concrete, out of reach.

  Quinton’s bullet went sailing over her head, hitting the air where she had stood only a moment ago. Missing its target.

  Her bullet didn’t.

  She heard the sirens in the background as she raised her head to look at Quinton. He was struggling to get up, blood pouring through his fingers from his shoulder where her bullet had struck. Whitney immediately scrambled to her feet, but there wasn’t anything she could do. The gun was out of reach.

  Quinton raised his gun. “I should have killed you immediately instead of waiting.”

  The weapon was aimed at her at point-blank range. She was going to die.

  Whitney closed her eyes to shut the sight out. The click of the hammer screamed in her head, melding into the sound of the gun being discharged.

  She didn’t feel anything.

  The sound of a body hitting the concrete had her eyes flying open. As if in slow motion, she saw Quinton crumpling at her feet.

  “I guess this is a day for surprises.” They were his last words.

  Stunned, Whitney looked around. Zane was on his knees behind her. Reese’s gun was in his hand.

  She ran to him. There was so much blood everywhere. How much of it was his? Using her shoulder as support, she helped Zane to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He wanted to pull her into his arms. To assure himself that she was safe, after all. That he had managed to save her.

  “I’ve been better.” It was an effort to talk. “You?”

  Whitney could only nod numbly. “I’m okay.” And then she raised her eyes to his. “Zane, I remember. Everything.”

  Chapter 15

  Within moments, they were surrounded by noise and people. Whitney started, braced, then relaxed when she saw that it wasn’t Quinton’s people but her own arriving on the scene.

  A dark-haired man she recognized as the waiter who had told Zane that he had a telephone call at poolside was the first to appear.

  Adams, she thought his name was. He was a rookie at the Justice Department. She had five years on him. No, five and a half.

  Behind Adams arrived others. Within minutes, the area was filled with squad cars and an ambulance. In the background, she thought she saw the hotel manager being held back by a policeman. He didn’t look very happy.

  Small wonder, Whitney thought. Goodman had just irrevocably lost one of his high rollers. That left him with almost a million-dollar debt that would remain unpaid, and a suite of rooms he would have to redecorate before anyone would want to stay in them.

  She made out other faces in the crowd.

  The policemen on the scene were unknown to her, but the men in suits weren’t. They were all part of the same operation. Her operation. Hers and Zane’s. An operation that had been two years in the planning and six months being set up. It was a sting intended to bring down one of the most devious suppliers of drugs on the West Coast. A man whose position in society and influential friends, coupled with an effective method of covering his trail, had aided him in eluding detection. Up until two years ago.

  But his luck had finally run out. Done in by his good-luck charms. It seemed poetic somehow, she thought.

  Everything was coming into focus again. So quickly that her head was beginning to ache.

  Bill Sheridan, the man she and Zane worked for, bent over Quinton. He laid two fingers against the man’s neck and grimly shook his head. He would rather it had gone down a different way, but there was an up side to Quinton’s meeting his demise like this.

  “Well, you two just saved the taxpayers some money. He’s not going to be standing trial.” Rising and carefully wiping his fingers to remove the taint of touching Quinton, he focused on the pair. Zane was still leaning against Whitney.

  Sheridan signaled for a paramedic. “Over here!” He had to shout to be heard above the din. “Lucky for you Adams saw you being hustled from the hotel by Quinton’s bodyguard. He followed you in his car and called me. I radioed for backup.”

  Zane nodded, only partially hearing the information.

  Sheridan turned around, impatient. “I said, over here. I’ve got a man down.”

  “Not down,” Zane corrected, trying to smile. “Just a little bent.”

  His shoulder felt as if it were on fire and it hurt like hell, but there was something more urgent on his mind than his arm. Whitney’s memory had returned. It seemed as if everything about this whole operation had been just beyond his control once it got rolling. He hadn’t wanted her to find out on her own that he had purposely kept her in the dark, not without warning. Above all, he didn’t want her to think he had manipulated her.

  He looked at her. She was pale. “You remember everything?” he asked, hoping against hope that somehow the situation wasn’t as black as he knew in his heart it was.

  She could feel the wounds opening within her. Big, gaping wounds. And they all had Zane’s mark on them. She’d trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone. How could he have betrayed her like that?

  How could he have allowed her to make love to him under false pretenses, when she didn’t know what she was doing? When she wasn’t even in her right mind?

  She raised her chin. “Everything.”

  Relief washed over Sheridan’s patrician face. “Does this mean your memory’s back? I don’t mind telling that you really had me worried.”

  It was obvious that Sheridan, at least, was delighted. That made one of them, Zane thought, mentally kicking himself for waiting too long. She was going to hate him for this now, he thought. He’d never seen such hurt in her eyes.

  “Yes, it’s back.” Whitney changed the subject. She didn’t want to talk about her amnesia. Or the stupid things she’d done while walking around in a daze. They’d haunt her enough as it was. She nodded toward Quinton. “We didn’t get the cocaine.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, terse. “We never had the opportunity to make the exchange. Quinton got greedy after his loss at the tables and wanted it all.” She frowned, remembering the look in the man’s eyes. That, too, was going to haunt her for a long, long time. “And me.”

  Sheridan nodded, listening. “Can’t say as I’d blame him for that,” he interjected.

  Bantering came easily to her. It was one of the things that had made her so acceptable to the rest of the group, a group that was composed predominantly of men. But this time, Whitney ignored her superior’s comment. The less she thought about this venture, the better. She couldn’t wait to start putting the whole episode behind her.

  She went on talking as if Sheridan hadn’t said anything. “So I guess all we managed to do was cut off one head on the monster, but not its heart.” They’d hoped for names in exchange for leniency. Names and locations. Now all that was lost.

  Sometimes it felt as if all they were doing was running frantically in an ever-turning wheel, just trying to keep their balance. She watched as two paramedics zipped the body bag closed and strapped Quinton onto a gurney. This part, at least, was over.

  She raised her eyes to Sheridan. “Another head will pop up to take its place by the time we all get back to L.A.”

  Cutting off the various heads, as she put it, was the name of the game. For the time being, it was the only way they could k
eep from being completely overrun. But Sheridan did have a piece of good news to give her that might help ease things.

  “Maybe not that quick.” She looked at him quizzically. “We’ve got more than you think.”

  The hotel had remained under constant surveillance, thanks to the bugs Zane and Whitney had managed to plant, and it had paid off.

  “We have Quinton’s mistress. Picked her up just as she was getting ready to board the plane for New York.” Sheridan was very pleased with himself. “Seems after we had a nice, long chat, she was very eager to talk in exchange for immunity.” He laughed, rubbing his hands together. “She’s also a hell of a lot smarter than Quinton obviously ever gave her credit for. I don’t think he would have kept her around if he’d known just how sharp she was and how much she really knew about his covert operation.”

  “No,” Zane agreed. “He liked them dumb and willing.” He glanced at Whitney. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  Zane had made love to her, taken advantage of her. The thought was still twisting like a knife driven straight into her gut. “Oh, I don’t know, present company can be pretty dumb at times.”

  She wasn’t just poking fun at herself. There was something in her tone, a distance that had never been there before. The old Whitney wasn’t back, after all, Zane realized. She’d sent a completely different emissary in her place.

  He wanted to talk to her, to straighten things out. To pick up the threads of what they’d had before the fabric was completely unraveled because of his mistake. “Whitney—”

  Finally free, one of the paramedics came over to Zane. Whitney stepped out of the way as the man moved between them. She didn’t want to hear anything that Zane had to say. There wasn’t anything he could say.

  “Get yourself taken care of. You’re bleeding all over the place. You know how hard it is to get blood out of silk?” Whitney turned toward Sheridan. “Want a full report tonight?”

  He shook his head.-She looked beat. Judging by what had gone down, it must have been a hell of a night for her. “It can wait until morning. Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up?”