Kiss Read online

  26

  Trent greeted Shauna by opening the door wide for her at a hotel suite several miles away. “I’m glad you could make it, sweetheart.”

  Wayne shoved her into the room. A seating arrangement of sofa, love seat, coffee table, and chair filled the center of the room. A poker table took up one corner, and a wet bar, one wall. In a second she registered overstated décor: three chandeliers, South Pacific blue carpet, filigreed picture frames, and heavy draperies.

  Wayne crossed his arms and said, “It would help us to know exactly how much you’ve learned, Shauna.”

  “I don’t understand,” she pleaded with Trent. They wouldn’t know yet that she knew about him.

  “Considering that you’re not shocked to see me here, I’d say you do.”

  She was an idiot! “You two haven’t exactly been telling me the truth yourselves.”

  Wayne said, “Very little of anything I said to you was a lie. I tried to protect you—”

  “You tried to kill me!”

  Wayne’s eyebrows shot up. “Spoken like a woman whose mind has been playing tricks on her. I tried to save you. But you wouldn’t let me. You should have let me. You should have done what I said. Things would be so much more painless if you would take our advice.”

  “And I told you she wouldn’t,” Trent said. “So now that you both have done things your way and made this situation far worse than it ever needed to be, we’re going to do it my way.”

  “Uncle Trent—”

  “Shauna.” He held up a hand in front of her face. “You know I love you like a daughter. But some values in this world stand higher than family.”

  “Values like political power? Money? Greed?”

  “Values like putting health within reach of the world.”

  “At what expense? How dirty is the money that’s making this possible?”

  “Shauna, sweetheart, calling it dirty is looking at the ethics from an upside-down perspective. Your world is so much more black-and-white than the one the rest of us live in. Maybe I can help you see things from a fresh point of view. Now, you know I would give my life for you. But I expect you to be willing to do the same when duty calls.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that Wayne and I expected more cooperation from you, after all our efforts, but we have been disappointed.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Accept what is, sweetheart. Don’t try to change it. Don’t try to reconstruct it or remember it.” He lifted his hand and stroked her hair. “We’ve gone to so much trouble for you.”

  His touch chilled her.

  “All I wanted was to believe I wasn’t the one who hurt Rudy.”

  “What does it matter who did it?” Trent asked. “That’s what I mean, Shauna. Things are what they are. Knowing how it happened doesn’t change anything.”

  “It would change what Landon thinks of me.”

  Trent chuckled. “I doubt anything would change what your father thinks of you, my dear.”

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” she whispered. “I honestly don’t remember anything, and what I’ve learned doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’ve made plenty of sense to both of us over the last few days,” Trent said. “But maybe we’ve misunderstood. Why don’t you explain?”

  She could not think of anything to say but the truth, and yet the truth was utterly unconvincing. She might say, A journalist I knew dug up a story about MMV, and you wanted it buried. But then they would want to know how she learned about the journalist, if she didn’t remember him; how she figured out that there was a story. Anything she could explain would bring harm to Miguel. Even to Khai.

  “First tell me why I don’t remember.”

  Trent smiled. “MMV is a pharmaceutical research company come of age in an era where people are begging to forget their lives. They want to leave their pain behind them, Shauna, and they have been self-medicating with addictions that don’t really help. Now we have the real technology to make it possible. Considering what is available to you, I myself am stunned to see you running headlong into a past you could abandon.”

  “I noticed you left your meds back at the house,” Wayne said.

  “I didn’t have time to pack,” she spat. Would they force her to continue taking the pills? Would they continue to wipe out her recall?

  “We gave you a clean slate,” Wayne said. “We gave you the opportunity to re-create the truth of your life. To believe whatever you wanted to. Do you know how many people want this and can’t have it yet? You could be a little more grateful.”

  “You stole from me,” she said. But the accusation was weak and impotent.

  “There you go again,” Trent said. He turned to Wayne. “We give and give and give, and she stands there and accuses us of stealing.”

  “You stole from me, and from Rudy,” she said. “From Corbin, and from Miguel. And from who knows how many other people.”

  “What I’m curious to know—for the sake of the drug trial reports, of course—is how you know about Miguel Lopez, seeing as you claim not to remember him.”

  Heat flared in Shauna, not for having been cornered now, but for all she’d lost, and for all everyone else had lost at the hands of this god-sized ego that she’d once trusted.

  “I can steal too,” she said.

  “As can anyone,” said Trent.

  “But I steal memories. Wayne’s memories told me about Miguel Lopez.”

  The men exchanged glances. She leaned toward Trent’s face. “But Wayne won’t remember what they told me. Put that in your report.”

  Using plastic ties, Wayne cuffed her to the pipe under the vanity sink.

  “Is this really necessary?” she asked.

  “Being nice to you didn’t work.”

  “You didn’t mind getting a few kisses out of it though, did you?”

  Wayne cinched the ties tighter than necessary to prevent her hands from slipping out. If she moved the wrong way, they might cut her skin.

  He left, and she heard the low tones of Trent’s voice in the living area.

  She imagined they pondered their most current dilemma. Certainly their lives would be simpler if she were dead, and yet neither man had spoken of killing her, and deep within her, she believed it was because they couldn’t—that something worse would befall them than the possible exposure of what she had pieced together so far.

  Something that Miguel had engineered.

  After all, her stolen memories weren’t exactly eyewitness testimony, and she couldn’t imagine how they would hold up in a court of law.

  Also working in her favor was her claim about stealing memories. Wayne seemed easy enough to persuade, as if her explanation, wild though it was, struck right at the heart of his own questions about what was going on. Trent was the skeptic, and her suggestion was outrageous. Even so, she was pretty sure Trent saw her, at the very least, as a valuable test rat.

  More frightening than the possibility of her death, however, was the likeli-hood of a fresh drug regimen. A stronger dose. How did this stuff work? Could she believe anything the bushy Dr. Carver had told her? After all, he was on Trent Wilde’s payroll. Was it possible for them to administer the drugs at any time, or only after a trauma? Did she have to be in a coma for it to work?

  Or—and her mind darkened at this possibility—was it possible that her coma was drug induced in the first place?

  Could they create a new trauma? A new coma? Was the memory wipeout contingent on dosage? On mental distress? Could they determine to wipe out six months, eight months, a year? How far could they go without actually killing her?

  This, not murder, was what terrified Shauna.

  Her wrists and tailbone had gone numb, so she adjusted her position, cracking her head against the bottom of the vanity counter.

  The blow stung and brought tears to her eyes. She leaned her cheek against the cool pipe until the pain faded.

  A half hour passed
before Wayne came back in. He cut off her plastic cuffs and let her stretch out. He went to the sliding door that led out onto a third-floor balcony, raised the curtain, and looked outside.

  “I could use something to eat,” she said, sitting on the queen-sized bed.

  “You’ll stay here tonight, then tomorrow you’ll go with Trent up to Houston.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “Because he’s having a few things brought down for you.”

  “Like?”

  He dropped the curtain.

  “As I said before, it would help us to know exactly how much you remember. Or don’t.”

  “You wouldn’t believe anything I told you.”

  “That depends.”

  “Help me out here.”

  “Trent is both unwilling to travel with you in your current headstrong state and unwilling to administer another round of narcotics—”

  “Narcotics? ”

  “There are several different ways to get us all back to square one. That’s the easiest option.”

  Shauna couldn’t speak.

  “But that’s also risky. If it’s true you can take memories from people—”

  “I have plenty of yours.”

  “And I wouldn’t know it, would I?”

  “I think you do know it. You know without a doubt that I know things I couldn’t otherwise, and that I’ve asked questions about you that no one else would think to ask.”

  Wayne dropped onto the bed next to hers and faced her. “This is what I hate about the human brain. It’s so hard to quantify. But as I was saying, if it’s true, Trent doesn’t want to lose any data about this . . . bizarre side effect.”

  “Then all he has to do is keep me drug free.”

  “You understand why that’s not reasonable for us.”

  “Why don’t you kill me then?” she whispered.

  “Many reasons. One being that you are valuable research now.”

  “Most lab rats die sooner than later.”

  “And if I can prevent that from happening, I will.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “I only kill when it’s absolutely necessary. I never wanted to kill you.”

  “Oh? So then why did you try?”

  Wayne stood, looked around as if he would find the appropriate words somewhere, then managed to say, “I am considerably in debt to your uncle.”

  “He’s not my uncle! And yes you are in his debt. He paid your way out of a court-martial and now you’ve got less control over your own life than you ever did in the military.”

  The light in his eyes went flat, and Shauna realized that her words had struck their mark.

  Wayne sighed, loud, dramatic, and leaned over to open the drawer of the nightstand between the two beds. He withdrew a syringe and a vial. Shauna recoiled.

  “Please don’t.”

  “Nothing in here but a sleep aid,” he said, pricking the vial with the needle and vacuuming the suspension into the plastic tube. “Just something to keep you from getting all upset over nothing.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “You’ll have it anyway.”

  She jumped up for the door, but he was more agile and lithe than she. He secured her before she even left the bed. Her reflexive scream was cut off by his arm, which he threw down across her throat at the same time that he pinned both her legs down with his shin.

  “Believe me”—his words slapped her face—“if it were strategically wise to kill you, I would have done it awhile ago.”

  He plunged the needle into her thigh and she groaned at the burn.

  “Correction,” he said. “I do really want to kill you. So don’t give me any more excuses.” He released her, and she rolled over to face the wall.

  After a half minute of silence, Wayne left the room.

  At the click of the door, Shauna tumbled off the bed and onto her feet. How much time did she have before the stuff kicked in? She reached the closed door and opened it wide, ready to face Wayne and Trent with nothing but her wits and luck and dare them to try to keep her here.

  The door screeched on its hinges.

  They were not there. The door to the bedroom on the opposite side of the suite was closing. Wayne? Maybe.

  She felt her muscles begin to sag.

  A man rose from the love seat, a pistol holstered under his left armpit.

  She recognized this man but could not come up with a name for his face, nor a context in which she might have known him. She didn’t spend much time on that, however, recognizing in his body language a clear message: I am your babysitter. This man was the reason Wayne was free to leave her uncuffed in the bedroom.

  He crossed his arms and looked down at her. He was easily over six feet. She was tall herself but less than half his weight, she estimated. His white shirt and tie, black slacks, and glistening shoes suggested FBI, but the scotch glass on the coffee table, more than half-full, contradicted this image of on-duty, law-abiding, law-enforcement officer.

  Shauna looked at the door that exited onto the hall and mentally calculated whether she could reach it before he did, if she chose that option.

  The man bent over, picked up his drink, and took a swig of the alcohol, withdrew a knife from his belt with his other hand, and threw it at the door. It embedded itself in the frame at what would have been the height of her ears, were she standing there.

  The knife had a pearl handle.

  Where had she seen that pearl—?

  “You were stalking me at the park,” she blurted.

  The man snickered. “Not you, my boss.”

  His boss?

  “Wayne owes me some money.”

  “Wayne? Why?”

  He looked at her as if she didn’t really expect him to answer.

  “You’re working for him now anyway?” she asked. What kind of business relationship did these two men have? Her head felt thick. She put her fingers to her temple.

  “You ask too many questions.” He sat back down and put his feet up on the table.

  “What? He promise to pay you later? Wayne’s a liar, y’know.” She sensed the room begin to tilt.

  “Yeah. We’re surrounded by liars, aren’t we? Get back in your room now, before I have to take you in.”

  Shauna closed the door before she fell back into the bedroom, not even able to reach the bed.

  We’re surrounded by liars. Where had she heard that before?

  27

  Someone kicked her out of her stupor, tripped over her body, and grunted his surprise. She had been dreaming of football, of all things, of backyard scrimmages and scuffles, of bodies hitting each other without the protection of bulky gear.

  At the physical sensation of being tackled, new images swept the athletics aside. Drugs and needles and scowling men in lab coats accelerated her pulse and warmed her bloodstream. She rolled onto her back and stared the black room in the heart, so dark in her own mind that she couldn’t make out shadows.

  She heard herself breathing hard, scared.

  “Wayne?” she said.

  A male voice whispered something but she could not distinguish the words. She was so frightened, but not clearheaded enough to think her fear through. She noticed tears on her face, running into her ears.

  Firm hands gripped her arms and hauled her up into a sitting position. Her equilibrium lost its footing, and had she not been held up, she would have fallen right over. She felt her neck tilt backward and snap back up, barely hinged.

  The voice spoke again. More whispering.

  She heard herself mumbling. “IdunnoIdunnoIdunno . . .”

  He laid her down gently and left her, then reappeared in the form of chilling water, splashed all over her face and neck. She gasped and opened her eyes wide, still seeing nothing in the black room.

  “You need to wake up.” Low, barely audible.

  Shauna couldn’t will her body to move. Her tears started flowing, but she didn’t know why.

  A hand clamped down over
her mouth.

  “Sh. You’ll wake him up.”

  Who? Who would wake up?

  “Get up.”

  The demands twisted her fear into fury. She was aggravated, disoriented. She was wet and cold.

  “No,” she managed. She thought she sounded drunk.

  He left her alone again—seconds or minutes, she wasn’t sure—and found it within her brain to wonder if she would be doused again. She didn’t care.

  He returned and gripped the front of her blouse, pulling her upright by the collar. When she was vertical, he emptied a bucket of ice down the front of her shirt.

  Her breath left her, and she went rigid. The ice pooled in her lap and seeped into her slacks. She shouted her protest. The hand clamped down on her lips again until she quieted.

  The dropped bucket bounced silently off her leg and onto the carpet. She sensed smooth palms grasp her wrists. The man tugged on her arms until they threatened to leave the sockets, and her body raised off the ground.

  “Stand up or I’ll have to drag you out of here by one arm, lovely.” The words reached into Shauna’s consciousness clearly this time, and she allowed herself to believe that he did not mean to harm her. Lovely? She tried to remember what the word meant. She focused on her knees. Bend. Lift. Straighten.

  Sway.

  She leaned in to a sturdy body and sagged.

  “Wayne?” she said again. She knew it wasn’t him, but she couldn’t think of any other names.

  “Not on your life,” he said.

  “I need more water,” she muttered.

  Together they wobbled a few steps, to the vanity, she thought, and she heard water running. This time when he threw it in her face, she was sure he got himself wet as well.

  She found this unreasonably funny.

  And also, underneath her giggles, which she tried so hard to stifle, illuminating.

  Shauna took a deep breath and tried to focus her eyes. Still too dark for her to make out his face.

  “What next?” she said.

  “We leave.”

  “Race you.”

  “I’d like to see that.”

  “I’m fast.”

  “I need you to shut up now.”

  She nodded, but then thought he couldn’t see her. So she said, “Okay,” and kept an arm around his waist as he half guided, half dragged her toward the door.