Kiss Read online

  He had been shot? No. Something else. The fingers of his left hand brushed against a wire protruding from his pants leg. Tasered. The almond carpet scraped Miguel’s face, and he pressed his cheek against it, seeking some kind of counterbalance to the agony, which faded quickly but left him immobile.

  In the time it took him to reorient his mind, Leon had come around the desk and squatted next to him, elbows on knees, fingers linked.

  “You tried to kill her,” Miguel managed.

  Leon shrugged. “She isn’t dead yet.”

  The words dialed back the confusion in Miguel’s mind a few degrees. He tried to stay calm. Focused.

  “You’re going to kill her anyway.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Miguel cried out.

  “I’m very sorry about it, to tell the truth. The point is not to be in the killing business. I personally would like to see as many people as possible survive this fiasco you’ve created. Especially someone as sweet and smart as Shauna.”

  “She was an innocent bystander.”

  “If anyone is innocent here, it would be Rudy. Shauna, on the other hand, is as guilty as you. No. More guilty.”

  “Of what?”

  “You are only guilty of greed, bloodhound. But no more greedy than anyone. You just want a good story, and believe me, I’d love to be the one to give it to you. But Shauna McAllister is guilty of betrayal. Shauna McAllister is a traitor.”

  Miguel dared not move. Even breathing stabbed his nerves.

  “After all,” Leon said, rubbing his chin, “she’s in critical condition. And we’re not miracle workers.”

  “You can’t,” Miguel whispered. Blood pumped through his abdomen like acid.

  Leon stood, yanking the Taser prongs from Miguel’s legs and gathering the expended wires. He sniffed and muttered something Miguel couldn’t make out. The sound of scraping footsteps traveled along the surface of the carpet into the hollows of Miguel’s ear, pressed over it like a suction cup. The scent of expensive leather planted itself in front of Miguel’s nose, and a new voice said, “Oh, we can.”

  Miguel refocused and found it within him to smile. “But you won’t,” he said.

  His eyes took in the smooth leather, the creased slacks. He turned his head upward, traversing a tailored jacket, climbing the mountain ridges of hands that had seen a few decades. This man wore a blood red sweater and held a Taser, which he set on the desk behind him.

  “Tell me why not,” said Trent Wilde.

  Shauna disengaged involuntarily. Some disbelief, some inability to accept the possibility—let alone the reality—of this image, terminated the link. The scene blinked out though she still gripped Miguel’s hand, and though her brain disengaged, her body could not let go.

  He let go for her, snatched his hand away as if it had been shocked.

  “What are you doing?” He squinted, confused. “What was that?”

  Having no answer to disconnect her tongue from the image smack and square in front of her mind, she said, “Trent Wilde shot you with a Taser. Uncle Trent shot you.”

  Verbalizing what she had seen did not make it any more real to her. In fact, the sound of her words was even more ludicrous than the vision. Wayne with the Taser would have made more sense.

  Perhaps these visions were becoming like dreams, full of random and mixed-up details rooted in reality but horribly skewed. Perhaps they were less reliable than she had talked herself into believing.

  “Did Trent shoot you?” she asked.

  Surprise escaped him in a short burst of noise. “I’m not sure. Yes. I’m not—it’s not a hundred percent clear.” Miguel folded his arms over his chest. “Explain this to me.”

  “Why would he shoot you?”

  Miguel refused to answer.

  “This would be so much easier if you would—”

  “We’ve been over this.” He turned to go.

  “I can’t just keep guessing.”

  “Well you’re doing a good job of it so far.”

  “Miguel. Please. I need your help.”

  “Then tell me why you think he did it.”

  Confronted for the first time by a direct question about her strange new ability, Shauna stalled, then mimicked Khai. “I have a good sense of people.”

  “You have more than that.”

  “I can’t explain it.”

  Miguel uncrossed his arms and examined his hand, the one she had seized. He held it out to her and she looked away.

  “Look,” he said. She refused.

  “Look,” he said again, and this time he held his palm beneath her nose. “How can you not explain this?”

  Miguel’s beautiful brown skin blazed as if he had laid it on a stove. A small white depression marked the middle of his palm. Shauna was pretty sure that was where she had placed her thumb when she gripped his hand.

  “I hurt you,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Not my hand. It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How did you—”

  “I have no idea.”

  Really, she didn’t. How could she explain this to him when she didn’t even get it herself? Worse, how could she do this to someone like Miguel, who had wanted nothing more than to find a way to keep her alive?

  And here she was, living and breathing and stopping the gaps in her past by stealing the memories of others. What price had Miguel Lopez paid so she could do that?

  In that moment, this man standing in front of her became someone entirely different from Cale Bowden, or Wayne Spade, or Luang Khai, or Scott Norris, or Millie Harding. She would not steal his memories, no matter how hot her cause burned in her own mind. She’d apparently already stolen a great deal from him.

  His career, for example. Certainty smacked her across the face. Miguel Lopez’s departure from the Statesman had something to do with her.

  After all, the murder of his close friend Corbin had something to do with her.

  Shauna was convinced she was thinking unselfishly for the first time since she regained her broken awareness at the Hill Country Medical Center. Shauna processed all this in a matter of seconds, while Miguel studied her as if he had an eternity.

  She wished her decision back. She wished she had never come here, that she had never taken anything from him. She wished she could give it all back and hated that she didn’t know how.

  Couldn’t anything be undone?

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  Miguel shrugged at his palm. “It’s nothing.”

  “I mean for everything else.”

  He seemed to weigh what everything might mean. “You remember?”

  “No. But I see some things. And I’m so sorry.”

  He reached out to put his burned hand on her shoulder and she stepped away from it, unwilling to risk his touch.

  She searched her jacket pockets for something to write with, but came up empty. “Do you have your phone?”

  He fished it out and handed it to her, not asking what she wanted. She flipped it open and entered her cell number into his contacts list.

  “I won’t bother you anymore,” she said. “You have already . . . done so much. But if anything changes, call me. If your . . . thinking . . . leads you to some solution. If you uncover some way of figuring all this out.”

  Miguel let his hand fall to his side.

  “What happened to you?” he asked. She gazed at him, unable to answer.

  Trent Wilde would be the one to tell her. Or show her.

  25

  An hour and a half of driving sharpened Shauna’s mind to just how bad the situation really was.

  Trent and Miguel had forced each other’s hands, or rather, each other’s silence. Silence that was somehow related to Shauna’s life.

  She had told Trent she believed Wayne had tried to kill her.

  And according to Miguel’s recollection of things, Trent was a part of the attempt.

  Impossible.

  Entir
ely possible.

  But why?

  Shauna pulled to the shoulder of the highway, threw her door open, and vomited outside the car. The two men she had trusted more than any others—Wayne and Trent—her worst enemies. If only hoping for some alternate reality could have made it true.

  She wiped her mouth with a tissue from her console, a tissue that quivered in her shaking hands. Think. Think. Breathe.

  God is with me. Jesus is near. The Spirit is greater than my fear.

  The rhyme came to her unbidden, along with a strong, irrational sense that the words were true. What had triggered that?

  And how could she believe the words? She wanted to, as much as she wanted her mother’s arms around her, telling her that this terrifying moment would pass.

  She envisioned her mother leaning over her, protecting her with the strength and softness of her love. Nothing can separate you from the love of God, Shauna.

  Her mother had said that to her so often. When had she forgotten it?

  The terror passed.

  Her hands stopped quaking and her breathing evened out. Her mind refocused.

  What on earth did Wayne and Trent not want her to know? And how, not knowing it, was she of any real concern to anyone? Of course, her pursuit—reckless now, in retrospect—in unearthing what happened the night of September 1 must have unnerved them.

  She envisioned Wayne on his way to Corpus Christi, alerted to her where-abouts by her uncle.

  No matter how she arranged this half-pieced puzzle, she saw only one picture forming: she was merely running from one unknown to another, one form of danger to another. She needed a way to convince Wayne, or Trent—both of them—that she wasn’t worth an ounce of their worry.

  Could she do that and unearth the truth at the same time?

  She leaned her clammy forehead against the steering wheel. Not even the truth could be worth this agony. She considered what it would take to disappear.

  Then she considered Corbin Smith. She owed it to him not to run away.

  She considered Miguel Lopez. For a man unwilling to lift a finger to help her, she shouldn’t worry too much. And yet . . . The excuse rang flat within her when she remembered the sting of the Taser’s shot. He had helped her in some way she could never repay. How does one repay a lifesaver? Her mind took a lightning-flash detour to the grief his memory had encompassed. Grief for her. And pain. So much physical and emotional pain.

  He had loved her.

  Maybe he still did.

  In spite of the discrepancy between the possibility and his reticent behavior, the idea did not repulse her.

  She lingered on it for a moment.

  Just a moment.

  A degree of warmth returned to her skin.

  And then there was Rudy. To leave him now might mean never to see him again. Or worse, to put him in harm’s way. She still owed him a debt. Abandoning him now would be criminal. No, worse than criminal.

  Not to mention the other pestering factors of her looming trial, how she would explain herself to Trent—or, if she didn’t, the consequences to her father’s campaign and her own legal standing. Would she be a fugitive or a missing person? Probably both.

  Details.

  Still undecided, Shauna pulled back into traffic and gnawed on her unidentified options until the 181 met the 37 in the heart of Corpus Christi. She began to look for a gas station, where she planned to fill up Rudy’s little car, purchase breath mints if not a toothbrush and a few other necessities, and further postpone a decision about what to do. Where could she go now? She would need to call Trent soon. It was nearly three o’clock.

  She spotted a Stripes station and pulled in.

  Wayne’s wine-red Chevy truck sat beside a pump. Her palms turned slick on the wheel and her breath caught in her throat. Wayne himself was not any-where near it.

  Shauna swung the car around the back of the store like a lacrosse ball, then shot back out onto the street. In her rearview mirror, she saw him exit the convenience store.

  There it was, possibility made reality: Wayne could not have known she was here unless Trent told him.

  What now?

  Shauna had enough cash with her to buy a night at a motel without leaving an electronic trail. It would, at the very least, also pay for some time to think.

  Within the hour she had settled into a La Quinta, parked behind the Denny’s next door, and sat on the end of the bed to read the sheet she had stolen from Dr. Harding’s file.

  It was dated seven years earlier and appeared to be some kind of preemployment psych evaluation. Or maybe just the summary. Handwritten. Perhaps the notes that preceded the report.

  Dr. Harding, in cryptic psych lingo, identified Wayne Spade as a young business professional with experience in international markets, primarily in Asia. There was no mention of a family history, just a glowing statement of his mental and emotional health.

  Shauna read the document a second time, more carefully, and paused at this: “Detected some residual resentment re: indebtedness to TW, i.e., effacement of military record.”

  TW. Trent Wilde?

  Effacement of the records—the AWOL business? Trent had done Wayne some favor to cover that up, and now Wayne owed him?

  She’d have to ponder that one.

  At the bottom, Dr. Harding had written in red pen: Approved for clearance. Whatever that meant.

  Shauna fell back onto the bed, lost in her indecision. Every trustworthy option but one had been stripped away.

  And was Landon McAllister trustworthy? Or was he just another man who’d stooped below the most base moral standards to achieve high levels of power?

  There was a time in her life when he would have intervened to save her from predicaments she’d dropped herself into. There was the time a classmate in high school stole a paper Shauna had written on The Scarlet Letter, then accused Shauna of plagiarizing her. The injustice of the accusation tilted Shauna into an uncharacteristic fit of violence—though she was no demure Hester Prynne, either—and she punched the girl in the arm hard enough to leave a mark.

  She received an F on her paper and a week-long suspension. Landon had to pay a personal visit to the principal to prevent her from being expelled.

  But he had believed her side of the story.

  Shauna wondered what he would believe of this.

  When had he stopped intervening? When would he have stopped Patrice from making her outrageous, slashing accusations and defended his own daughter?

  Shauna couldn’t recall ever having felt so isolated.

  And afraid.

  She examined the disconnected puzzle pieces spread out on the table of her mind.

  A botched murder attempt.

  A dead photographer.

  An estranged journalist.

  A hovering killer.

  A collection of cryptic e-mails.

  An annual report.

  She took a mental walk around the table and looked at the pieces from all angles. She sat at the table. She stood and leaned over it. She turned the pieces around.

  Until there it was: the beginnings of plausible sense. Miguel Lopez had cracked a story that Wayne and Trent did not want the world to read. A story that could topple MMV? It had to be big. Corbin knew the story and had planned to tell her. Remind her. Against Miguel’s wishes? Miguel’s silence was making more and more sense.

  Miguel understood what was at stake. The options were truth and death, or life in the shadows. And yet he’d chosen to hide within two hours of his old life. Why would he stay so close to danger?

  And more questions, so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t asked them first: What was her involvement in all this? Why did Corbin need to tell her the story? Why did Wayne need to watch her so closely?

  Because she already knew the secret. Somewhere, lost in the labyrinth of her mind, she knew.

  The expanding light shone on several empty spaces in the puzzle. She knew which pieces fit here.

  An argument with her fath
er.

  A violated trust on the part of her uncle.

  An election year.

  A record-breaking profit margin.

  Shauna pinched the bridge of her nose and knew.

  McAllister MediVista was funding her father’s campaign.

  Perhaps not legally.

  Somewhere in the pages of the annual report—the problem is in the profit-sharing structure . . . the subsidiary on page 72 has no public record—

  The hotel phone rang, and Shauna gasped. Seven o’clock. She stared at the phone.

  Who would call?

  Wayne couldn’t have found her here.

  She checked her cell phone. It was still turned off.

  The phone rang a fourth time and Shauna moved to the blackout drapes, drawn across the window. She looked out, half expecting to see Wayne’s leering face on the other side of the glass.

  She saw only parked cars. No wine-red truck.

  The phone was still ringing. Nine? Ten? She’d lost count.

  It was possible the last occupant had requested a wakeup call that hadn’t been disconnected yet.

  It was . . . possible. At seven in the evening on a Tuesday.

  Ridiculous.

  Angered by her runaway fear, Shauna marched around the bed and snatched the phone off the base. She pressed the receiver to her ear but didn’t speak.

  “This is the last time I let you out of my sight, babe.”

  Wayne. Shauna dropped the handset and snatched up her purse. In two steps she’d reached the door. She couldn’t get it open. The dead bolt. She fumbled, threw it, and raced down the hall for the exit onto the rear lot. If Wayne had talked the concierge into ringing him through, he would be in the lobby.

  How had he found her? Her car? She would have to find another way out of Corpus Christi.

  Shauna hit the door running and burst through. From the corner of her eye she saw a form lunge, then a body hit hers. Arms seized her around the waist and lifted her off the ground. Her momentum caused them both to spin. She saw a black cell phone hit the sidewalk and skitter across the concrete.

  She smelled Wayne, breathing hard in her ear. He chuckled, holding her an inch off the earth while she kicked out.

  “Good to see you, Shauna.”