Deklan stares at me with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth.

“Kera,” he finally whispers, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do,” I reply through gritted teeth.  “I want him dead, Dek.  I want him gone!”

Deklan glances quickly over his shoulder, staring at the open door and the nurses’ station beyond.

“Don’t say anything else about it,” he says quietly.  “I talked to the doctor, and he said you can be released shortly.  We’ll talk at home.”

I’m left alone while Deklan goes to find my doctor so I can get out of here.  As I sit on the bed, I see the face of Kathy’s killer in my mind.  His eyes are cold and calculating.  He’s a monster.

Deklan returns with the doctor and shows me where to sign the discharge papers.  A nurse walks in behind them with a plastic bag full of my clothing.  I pull out the sequined shirt I had been wearing, and tears well up in my eyes.  When I see the tiara at the bottom of the bag, I lose it completely.

I cradle the headpiece in my arms as Deklan picks me up like a child, tells the nurse with the wheelchair to fuck off, and carries me out to a black sedan.  He slides me into the passenger seat and then walks around the front of the car to get in.

“Whose car is this?”

“Rental,” Deklan says.  “At some point, you’ll have to tell me where my Viper is.”

“The Hyatt downtown.”

“I’ll have Brian pick it up.”  He reaches over and takes my hand.  With his thumb, he slowly massages the top of my wrist as I stare out the window at the traffic.

Once we get home, Deklan takes me straight to bed.  He brings me water and a sandwich, which I don’t touch, and then lies down beside me.  I move closer, wrap my arm around his chest, and place my head on his shoulder.

Deklan cradles my head and runs his hand down my arm until he reaches my wrist.

“You have to kill him, Dek,” I whisper.

“Oh, baby.”  He takes in a deep breath and exhales audibly.  “It’s not that simple.”

“It is.  It’s what you do for a living, isn’t it?”

His body tenses, and for a moment, he stops rubbing my wrist.

“The night we were married,” he says, “I made a promise to you.  I told you that if there was ever anything you wanted that I could get for you, I would.”

He stops for a long moment, breathing slowly.

“And you never ask me for anything.  You were expecting a life of extravagance with Sean, and I figured you’d demand a big house, a lot of clothing and jewelry—that kind of stuff.  But you never asked for anything.  You seemed perfectly happy, living the way I do.  The only thing you’ve ever really asked for was to get a job.”

I glance at his face.  His eyes are closed and his jaw is tight.

“And now…now you’re asking me for something, and I can’t give it to you.”

“Why not?” I glare up at him.  “Because you’re in business with the guy?  Whatever he does for Sean is more important than me?  More important than…than Kathy’s life?”

Tears flow.

“No, Kera.”  Deklan shakes his head and hugs me against him.  “If that were it, I wouldn’t hesitate to give you what you want.  I’m not saying that I won’t do this for you.  Kera…I can’t.”

“I don’t understand.  Did they arrest him?”

“No.  He was long gone before anyone got there.”

“Then why did they let you go if they didn’t have him?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he says softly.  “Witnesses said as much, and my gun hadn’t been fired.  They had to release me.”

Deklan stops talking for a few minutes as he looks down at my hand and rubs his thumb across my wrist.

“Kera, did I hurt you?  I mean, when I held you against the wall?  I was only trying to keep you from falling over.”

“No, you didn’t hurt me.  I knocked my head on the wall, but that was me, not you.”

“They kept accusing me of beating you.  They said you were hurt while we were fighting, and that you were all bruised up.”

“Oh.”  I stare at the buttons on Dek’s shirt.

“Kera?  Where did the bruises come from?”

“The other night.”

“What other night?”

“The night before you left, um, when we were in bed.  I didn’t even notice them until morning, but the ones on my arm kinda look like fingerprints.”

Deklan turns my arm over for a better look.

“Did you get these when we were having sex?  Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, Kera,” Deklan mumbles.  “I didn’t know I grabbed you that tight.”

“Neither did I.”  I press my cheek against his shirt.  “They don’t hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I say as I look back up at him.  “Now, will you please go back to the subject at hand?  I don’t understand why you can’t do anything about that man.”

“I know you don’t.”  Deklan sighs.  “You don’t know who he is.”

“Then tell me.”

“He’s the king of hitmen, and probably one of the deadliest men in the world.  There’s always a bounty on his head, and he’s probably had a hundred attempts on his life.  Do you know what happened to every one of them?  They’re dead, Kera.  Every fucking one of them is dead.  This guy—he’s the real deal, Kera.  I…I brought him here because Sean wants something done that’s out of my league, and Arden is a vicious killer with no qualms about what he does.”

“And you have qualms?”

“Yeah, Kera, a lot of them,” Deklan says.  I can feel the tension in his muscles, everywhere we touch.  “I’m successful in my job because of how I look.  I have size and what is a somewhat undeserved reputation.  More times than not, a simple threat is all that’s needed.  I rarely have to resort to actual violence.”

“But you have.”  I remember the bloody shirt in the bathroom.  “You can if you need to.  You could go after him.”

“Arden works with one of the most powerful organizations in Chicago.  Crossing them is suicide, and he practically runs the damn place.  They are far larger than the Foley operation.  They have informants everywhere, and if he got wind that I was looking for him, I’d have a bullet in my head without ever knowing where it came from.”

“You’d just have to shoot first,” I say, but my stomach is knotting up.  I have no idea what I’m talking about, and we both know it.

“It’s not that easy, Kera,” Deklan says.  “I would never get close enough to him.  I’d never get a shot off.  I’d be dead, and where would that leave you?  He might very well decide to take you out as well, just for good measure.  How am I supposed to protect you if I’m gone?”

“We witnessed what he did,” I say.  “What if he’s already planning to get rid of us?”

“He’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because”—Deklan huffs through his nose—“because I’ve talked to him.”

This is news to me, and I’m not happy about it.  Kathy is gone, and Deklan is conversing with the man who killed her. I grit my teeth.

“When?”  The word leaves my mouth sounding like snarl.

“As soon as I was released.  I wanted to know what the hell he was thinking, and when he explained…”  As Deklan’s voice trails off, he hugs me and kisses the top of my head before he continues.  “He thought she was going to shoot me.  He didn’t know who either of you were and reacted only to what he saw.  He thought…well, he thought he had my back.  His intent was to protect me, showing me that he could do the job we need him to do.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No, I know it doesn’t.”  Deklan shifts his position and takes my face in his hands.  “I’d do anything for you, Kera—really, I would—but I have to balance that with your safety.  Going after Arden is beyond risky, and I can’t risk you.”

I pull my face from his hands and lay back down on his chest.  I want to yell and scream at him—tell him I’ll leave him if he doesn’t do what I want—but it’s futile.  My position hasn’t changed.  Though I don’t believe that Deklan would hurt me, I still have nowhere to go.  Besides, nothing he does will bring Kathy back.

My head is still pounding, so I focus on the pain.  I just want to be numb.  I want my mind to go blank, but it’s not cooperating.

Deklan leans back against the pillow and holds me as he starts stroking my wrist again.  I get an odd sense of déjà vu, but it only lasts a second.  As he rubs, and I relax against him, I’m reminded of the other times he’s done this, starting with our wedding.

“Why do you do that?”  I ask.

“What?”

“Rub my wrist.  You always rub my wrist.”

“Do you want me to stop?”  His voice is so quiet, I can barely hear him.

“No, but why do you do it?”

I close my eyes and wait for his response, but he’s gone quiet.  My head feels heavy, and the warmth of near-sleep starts to fill my limbs.  By the time he answers my question, I barely remember what it was I had asked.

“Because”—Deklan pauses for several seconds before continuing—“because it’s what I did the first night I met you.”

“You mean at the wedding?”

“No, before then.”

I glance at Deklan for a moment, trying to remember a previous time when he had touched me.  It wasn’t the day before the wedding—I remember that clearly.  When had I been in Deklan’s presence before that?  When would he have been close enough to touch me at all, let alone so intimately?

I feel strong arms as they wrap around my shoulders and under my knees, lifting me from the deck of the boat.  I can smell leather and gunpowder as my head is cradled against his shoulder.  The stale odors from the boat are replaced with fresh rain as I’m carried outside.  He tears the blindfold from my eyes, and as I look up into the face of my rescuer, I am in awe of him.

“Deklan?”  I sit up and pull my hand away from him.  He stares at me for a moment before he looks away.  I blink several times as I hear a now familiar voice in my head.

“It’s all right,” he says.  “You’re all right now.  They can’t hurt you.”

The voice in my head belongs to Deklan.  I blink again, trying to make sense of it.  How could I be hearing the voice of my husband in a memory of my kidnapping?

I remember the feeling of the arms around me and how my rescuer picked me up and mentally compare it with the feeling of Deklan carrying me out of the hospital.  The sensation is the same.

“It was you,” I whisper.

Deklan nods but says nothing.

“You rescued me.”

Deklan closes his eyes and grits his teeth before pushing himself off the bed and walking out of the room.  I jump up to follow him into the kitchen, fully awake now.  I stand off to the side as Deklan pours himself a drink, confused at the vague memory that keeps replaying itself in my head.

“Sit down.”  Deklan points to the couch in the living room, and I comply.  I watch him get another glass from the cabinet and fill it with water.

“I didn’t know who you were.”  Deklan hands me the water and sits beside me on the couch.  “I was just doing a job.  Mr. Foley told me to go to the marina and get the girl who was being held on a boat there, so I did.”

“You killed the men who took me.”

Deklan doesn’t respond.

“You saved me from them.”

He nods again, remaining silent.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought…I thought you remembered.  That day before the wedding, I thought that’s why you said you were okay with it when Sean told you to marry me instead.  It wasn’t until you told me later that you didn’t remember any of it—that you didn’t want to remember any of it—that I realized you didn’t know who I was.  I was afraid if I said anything, it would bring back memories you didn’t want to recall.”

“Did…did the Foleys have me kidnapped?  Is that how you knew where I was?”

“No,” Deklan says with a shake of his head.

“Who did?”

“I have no idea.  I was just sent to get you.  I’d never seen the men who were holding you before that night.”

“So, my dad asked for help from the Foleys; Fergus Foley found out where I was and sent you to get me?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Deklan says quietly.  “A lot more.”

“Tell me.”

“You sure you want the whole story?  It might make you remember.”

“Yes,” I say.  “All of it.”