Kiss Read online

  “Shauna?”

  “I’m up.” Very slowly, she righted herself, then tried to find her shoes, which she’d yanked off and dumped before collapsing on the bed.

  “I never meant to doze off for so long,” Miguel said. “My fault.”

  “Guess we needed the rest.” Her groping hand bumped into her boots. She fumbled to pull the left one on first.

  “That was Beeson. We missed your meeting time.” Before crashing, she had finally agreed to have Miguel drop her off at the station at seven before he looked up Scott Norris.

  “Beeson think I took off again?”

  “I assured him you hadn’t.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly ten.”

  “Ugh—how is that possible?”

  She pulled on the other shoe, then ran her fingers through her hair. It looked mussed when she styled it and downright horrifying after a sleep. She could only imagine how it would scare small children now, having slept on it after a shower, and paired with her pretty black eye.

  Miguel extended a hand from above as she made her way to the stairs and onto the deck. Shauna lifted her arms into a cat stretch. Miguel was grinning at her shagginess.

  “You could use a shave or two yourself, Sabueso.” She tweaked his beard quickly.

  “Beeson said your friend Khai told him that Corbin was helping her human-rights-watch organization document some suspicious activities.”

  “Right. Human trafficking activities,” she said.

  “Those photos of Wayne are of him in Houston, making transactions with two other men.”

  “Beeson know who they are?”

  “Not yet. But they made a close match with one of them to someone in the Interpol database who was wanted on allegations of trafficking. Black-market babies.” Shauna’s stomach turned. “Beeson sent scans to the Department of Justice for verification.”

  “This just gets more and more awful.”

  “Come be my copilot. I’m going to need your help guiding this girl back in.”

  Shauna activated the navigation lights and stayed close to Miguel in the cockpit during the fifteen-minute ride back into the marina. Their easy silence joined hands with the restfulness of her sleep and created a calming effect. It was possible that she hadn’t felt so secure, so hopeful that she would reach the bottom of the truth, since she came around.

  She broke the silence. “I’m not sure how I feel about you going off to talk to Scott Norris without me.”

  “You think I don’t know how to chase a story?” He didn’t sound offended. Maybe he was even glad that she didn’t want him to be away from her.

  “You know that’s not what I mean.” But she couldn’t put what she really meant into words. Verbalizing what she felt would make her appear childish and vulnerable, insecure. Surely she could handle being on her own for a few hours after being on her own in every meaningful way for these past critical days.

  So she was grateful when Miguel did not demand she explain and that he seemed intuitively to understand. After all, he did know her better than she knew him.

  She thought she’d like to level that playing field when this was over.

  “After we’re done with this tonight, we should let Beeson and Norris and whoever the relevant authorities are handle the rest of this mess,” she said, lacking the imagination to envision where they could go that was out of Wayne’s reach, or how they would get there, or how they would stay safe once they arrived, or how—

  “I think you have great ideas,” Miguel said.

  “Too bad the world doesn’t make much room for them.” Shauna sighed. They would have to sit tight under Beeson’s watchful eye until her trial was decided. And what then, if Wayne proved too slippery an eel for the charges against her to stick to him?

  The lights of the marina’s docks began to take a recognizable shape.

  As Miguel directed the bow into the covered space that was her father’s, Shauna caught sight of the phone book they’d left out on the deck. She picked it up and returned to the cabin to stow it in its drawer as Miguel cut the engine and let the vessel glide. Below, she heard him jump out onto the dock to secure the moorings.

  Within seconds, she heard his feet hit the deck again. Tying off in that speed would have made him a veritable seafaring cowboy. He landed heavily, a lumbering jump that she would not have expected of him.

  “You all right?”

  His response did not come from the deck, however, but from the dock, and in the form of a warning shout.

  “Stay down!”

  Ignoring his command, Shauna took the cabin stairs in two long steps up. Her head broke the plane of the deck at the same moment that an arm came around her neck and pinched it in the nook of an elbow. She smelled days-old sweat on the muscled skin, and when she scratched at the arm with her nails, they scraped over hair.

  She cried out as the man dragged her off the steps. His arm was a vise.

  She saw his free fist swing in to meet her temple, and her dim vision lit up with summer sparklers. She sagged but did not go out. She called for Miguel, but the pressure on her voice box stifled the sound.

  Without being fully aware of her reasons for doing so, she collapsed face-first onto the deck, dead weight. Her captor’s elbow, still folded in front of her jaw, cracked on the surface of the flooring. Judging by the screaming in her ear, it might have even fractured.

  Shauna struggled. Behind her assailant’s cries was more distant shouting. Miguel’s voice, mixed with another. She twisted, saw Miguel jump back onto the boat and throw himself on top of the body tangle she was in, pummeling the guy above her. The vibrations of each hit reverberated through her kidneys.

  Then the body rolled off of hers, and Miguel’s hands were under her arm-pits, yanking her upward.

  “Go go go go go!” Her legs were tied in too many knots to get them up under her. Miguel heaved, lifted her.

  Another man dropped onto the Bayliner’s deck, which resounded like a timpani. Boom. The vessel rocked, and Shauna would have fallen if Miguel had not been balancing her with the absorbent shocks of his own two legs.

  Somehow, she found herself stable enough to follow Miguel’s lead. He rushed her toward the seating at the back of the open boat. The man who’d attacked her rolled on the deck, gripping his elbow and groaning. The other lunged for Shauna’s ankles, catching her by the boot as Miguel lifted her onto the vinyl cushions.

  She kicked out and Miguel balanced for both of them. Her thrashing foot caught the man in the nose before the boot slipped off her foot completely.

  Shauna heard her own loud breathing, and then Miguel’s voice in the moment it took for the two attacking shadows to find their feet.

  “Let go,” his lungs punched out.

  She had to do what made no sense, she had to trust what she didn’t under-stand. If she didn’t, the time it would take her to unravel the meaning of those two words would kill them both. Let go.

  She let go of Miguel, and he picked her up with the strength of a Samson about to die. One of his hands slipped under her armpit and the other gripped her opposing knee. She tucked her free leg close to her body.

  He launched her off the back of the boat. Just one swing. Back. Out. And she was airborne.

  Shauna held her breath, her awareness of what Miguel had done sharpened by anxiety. Why hadn’t he jumped with her? Didn’t he understand that these men would kill him? They would haul him off the senator’s boat and kill him far away from any political spotlight—in some Texas desert—and no one would even miss him, no one would ever know to look for him because no one even knew he was no longer in his own lonely universe of self-imposed hiding—

  The cold water that smacked her back might as well have been an ice rink. She hit hard, lost her breath, saw her own mind lock up, fixated on the last time she’d taken a plunge into icy black water.

  Black water and ice and automotive metal and the smothering mask of air bags, holding her down. She knew,
though she could not see, that she was alone and would die if she didn’t find her bearings. Her lungs would open up any second and take on water. She flailed, kicking and swimming, forcing her body up and out. She thought it was up and out. She hoped.

  Her hands hit something solid and she grabbed hold of it, a sharp and broken surface that drew blood off her palms. A barnacle-riddled pile. She fol-lowed it upward, keeping her body close, the blades shredding her blouse and scraping the skin on her stomach.

  An image of a shattered window cutting into her belly flashed through her mind. The first memory of her own.

  She needed air. Shauna could not understand how the blackness of her surroundings became blacker, only that they did. If she didn’t breathe now—Shauna’s survival reflexes took over against the will of her mind and opened her mouth, opened her lungs.

  And filled them with air.

  She breathed thick, sweet air, clinging to the support beam of a deck adjacent to her father’s slip. She breathed and breathed, trying not to gasp like a snagged fish, trying not to announce her location.

  A crash opened her eyes and turned them toward the source. A drama in silhouette, backlit by the yellow lights of the main dock: Miguel’s body was doubled over the deckside galley, punched into position by one of the men.

  The other was standing over the stern, staring into the water and holding his bloody nose, shouting, “I need a light.”

  The shadow with Miguel was too busy to get the man a light. He forced Miguel into an upright position with one arm and landed a heavy fist to his rib cage. Miguel collapsed, his chin meeting his opponent’s knee. His head snapped backward, and he spit. The one-armed bully swung his knuckles across Miguel’s face.

  The hulk who demanded a light jumped off the seating and, with an easy kick to Miguel’s shoulder, dropped him out of Shauna’s view. Together the pair had no trouble subduing him.

  Shauna’s whole body was shaking, but she was not aware of the cold.

  One of the men withdrew a cloth and snapped it open. A gag? In only moments she saw Miguel lifted off the deck, hands tied behind his back. It took them both to lift his limp form. A black sack hooded Miguel’s head. Shauna’s heart collapsed.

  “Now get your light,” said the one.

  Shauna held her breath and shifted behind the narrow pile as if it would prevent her shaking body from dispersing telltale ripples. She looked around for a way out from under the deck. Without light of her own, she might well strangle in the mess of support beams and cables down here. How to climb up, run away? The nearest service ladder was several slips down. Even if she could reach it, she wouldn’t be able to get past them unnoticed.

  Could she swim to the bank?

  She couldn’t even see the bank.

  Her toes and fingers were numb. Her cheekbone ached. Miguel.

  A high beam reached out across the water behind her father’s boat and moved toward her deck. She held her breath and slipped beneath the surface without a splash, though of course the water would not hold still for her.

  Above her head, the pile cut the beam of light in two. It hovered over the water for three seconds that felt like three minutes. Her lungs would burst.

  The light moved on. She came back up, no louder than a puff of wind.

  “No way to find her in this without creating a scene,” the light holder said, clicking it off.

  “The one’ll have to do, then.”

  “You be the one to tell Spade.”

  “Spade doesn’t like what we do, he can do it himself.”

  “This one’s as good as two anyway. We can use him to bring the girl in.”

  Their backs turned to her, and Shauna could not hear the rest of their conversation. They wrapped Miguel in a tarp, leaving his head protruding, then methodically returned the senator’s boat to its resting condition, canvas snapped down as if the boat hadn’t even gone out. She stayed in the water, limbs turning to immobile lead in the cold. She leaned her head against the pile and cried without a sound.

  A new silence aroused Shauna out of a frozen stupor. The lights above the deck were off, except for the dim safety lighting at the end. The men were gone.

  Miguel was gone.

  Shauna listened for hidden danger. Nothing. She moved her arm to push off the pile, and the water snapped around her like a firecracker.

  As best she could tell, no one had heard.

  The safety lights were made brighter by the fresh darkness of the boat slips, and Shauna followed them down to the access ladder that she hoped was not merely a false memory. One slip. Two slips. How far down was it?

  How far down would this story take her?

  How much would her search for truth cost her in the end?

  Landon was the only person who knew where she and Miguel were—who else could have ordered the hit? And what kind of father would want his children dead? Because if Landon McAllister had not betrayed her and Miguel to Wayne’s hired thugs, she would have to believe that Wayne was not human at all, but some kind of sinister, supersensory minion who could intuit her whereabouts.

  Shauna’s fingertips brushed the metal rung of an access ladder, and her short-term memory opened wide onto a new reality.

  Patrice knew Miguel and Shauna would be here. Patrice McAllister.

  Macbeth’s very wife, a mastermind of murder and power, standing in the door-way of her father’s home office with bloody daggers in her hands.

  33

  Please, God. Please keep Miguel alive. Prove that you love me and keep him alive.

  A cold wind picked up off the lake. Shauna lay prone on the dock, her toes still touching the top rungs of the ladder, as she tried to recover from the chill of the water. She pressed her body into the planks, shivering and fearful that someone had stayed behind in wait for her. What next? She needed to get to Beeson before Wayne got to her. She had to move.

  But was that the best thing? Would the detective be able to do anything for Miguel? Would he believe her story? Would he care?

  It must be ten thirty by now. She wondered where the keys to Miguel’s Jeep had gone. She wondered what had happened to his phone. Maybe they were still on the boat.

  She needed dry clothes. She needed to get warm. Shauna pushed herself up onto her knees and crouched down to return to the boat. Her feet squished and slapped on the dock, one soggy sock to one limping boot, back down to the slip.

  The air stung her sliced palms. Her fingers shook so badly from the cold that she nearly couldn’t pry the snaps off the canvas cover. Pain pierced her fingertips. If she wasn’t more careful she would tear them to bits before she was through. But she undid enough to roll into the boat, landing on a stiff object that poked her in the ribs. Her missing shoe. She gripped it and held it out in front of her to ward off the blackness.

  Move, move, move. If she moved, she didn’t have to think. She stumbled into the cabin and found the light in the bathroom. Her breathing leveled out in the verifiably empty space. In minutes she had stripped and towel dried and donned her stale but dry clothes. Only the one boot that had gone overboard with her remained waterlogged.

  Shauna was buttoning her blouse—she had needed to wait until her hands stopped quaking—when the phone rang.

  Miguel’s phone.

  They hadn’t thought to take it with them. Above. It was up on deck. She stumbled up, couldn’t see. The sound was coming from the cockpit, she thought. She crouched to get into it under the cover.

  Two rings.

  Her hands skimmed the surfaces and found everything but the cell.

  Three rings. The noise bounced around under the canvas.

  She cracked her shin on the swiveling helm seat. Blast!

  Four rings. No, no, no.

  The phone silenced.

  She leaned over, holding herself up with two hands braced on the arms of the chair. Where was the phone? If she were Miguel, where would she have put it? Where would he have it close? Where would he not worry about it getting wet?
<
br />   The dry box. She spread her fingers wide and reached out for the locker behind the seat. Fumbled the latch, flipped it open. “There!” She said the word aloud as her fingers closed around the beat-up black cell.

  Her hand knocked something next to the phone, and she heard it slide off the stack of chamois cloths they rested on. Clattering into the bottom of the box, she knew. Keys. Miguel had emptied his pockets to sit more comfortably. Then dozed off.

  She pressed a button on the side panel and used the LED as a flashlight to find the keys. They’d fallen down past a spare set of wetsuit booties, a laminated navigational map, and a braided line into the bottom of the box. Shifting the items around, she finally closed her fingers around the small ring and pulled it out.

  And there was his wallet, with his driver’s license smiling at her through a plastic view pocket in the side. Man, that was a bad picture of him. But in the moment it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  She studied his squinty smile, hoping again that he was still—

  The phone trilled in her hand, and she dropped it. Accidentally disconnected the call. Turned off the light.

  Find the phone. Find it find it find it.

  The phone rang again and lit up. She snatched it out. Private number. She pressed the talk button.

  “Yes?” She was breathless. How could she be winded?

  “I was starting to think you didn’t want to talk to me.”

  Wayne. Her head filled with hate and fear in equal amounts.

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Oh, he gave it up easily enough. We just weren’t sure whether you were still in the area.”

  Oh no. No no no. She had to get out.

  “Don’t worry, babe. I pulled my guys off your detail. I need their energies elsewhere right now.”

  She pushed her wet hair off her forehead and stumbled out of the cock-pit, gripping his keys and wallet in her other hand. She tried to pinpoint the place she had entered and breathed heavily into the phone. It was so dark in here.

  “Where’s Miguel?”

  “On his way to spend some time with me.” She found the opening in the unsnapped canvas. “I like your taste, thought I’d try to figure out what it is you see in him.”