Kiss Read online

  “I asked where he is.”

  “Somewhere between you and Houston.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “You’re asking dumb questions, Shauna. Hasn’t the journalist taught you better?”

  “What are you going to do to him?”

  “We’re a little short on lab rats these days, so we thought we’d put him to work in that capacity. See if we can duplicate what we’ve created in you. On any level. The rest depends on you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Really, am I going to have to spell this out for you? The next question should be, What do you want me to do? You’re going to have to be a quicker study than that if you want Miguel to stay alive.”

  “What do you want me to do, you sick—?”

  “I want you to come to Houston with us. Without any police.” Wayne’s voice smiled. As if he were inviting her on vacation. “It’ll be fun.”

  Shauna rolled back out onto the deck and took a splinter in her thigh. She would deal with it later. She had to get out. Up on her knees, then her feet. She started to jog.

  “Good idea. You hurry on down here now, fast as you can get here.”

  She really should be less obvious. She turned her breathlessness into a moan. “I’m hurt, Wayne. You dog. I can’t even walk.”

  Wayne sucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  “I should send someone over to help you then.”

  “You have the most demented concept of the word help.”

  Shauna reached the security gate and pinched the phone between her ear and shoulder to open it up.

  “Look, I’m not going to eat up minutes on our dear friend’s plan,” Wayne said. “I’ll cut to the chase. You be in Houston in four hours, all by your tall beautiful self, or Lopez won’t live through the night.”

  Shauna’s stomach morphed into a brick. “Not possible,” she said. “I’m injured. I don’t have a car. And it’s three hours there without any of that going on.”

  “Then I’ll arrange a ride for you in an ambulance.”

  “I’d call for my father’s motorcade before I’d get in any ambulance you sent.”

  “Bright girl! If anyone could find a way out of your predicament, I knew it would be you.”

  “Five hours.”

  “You’re not in a position to negotiate, Shauna, though I’m a good-natured fellow. Four hours is all I can offer.”

  “I need a guarantee you won’t kill him when I get there.”

  “The only guarantee you’ll get from me is that we’ll kill him if you don’t.”

  Shauna stumbled into the parking lot.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and she started shouting.

  “Where? Where should I go, you animal?”

  But Wayne had disconnected the call. She punched through the call log to find his number and call him back. Private number. She dialed *69 and got a recording. Shauna groaned at the sky.

  She checked the phone’s digital clock. Ten fifty-six.

  Shauna slid into Miguel’s Jeep, locked the doors, slipped the key into the ignition, and cranked the heat. Wayne’s phone call had undone her plans to go to Beeson. Wayne would kill Miguel if she went to the police. Even if he didn’t find out about her ratting him out, if she didn’t show up in Houston in four hours . . .

  She would go after Miguel herself. Most likely, Wayne would wait until the last possible moment to let her know where to go. She had to outthink him. She had to unravel how he worked, stay a step ahead.

  She needed help, the help of someone who knew Wayne better than she did. Knew his methods. Maybe even knew where he operated outside of MMV.

  Someone who hadn’t been so easily duped as she. She was so angry at herself.

  Trent Wilde. Leon Chalise. Not options.

  Millie Harding. No idea where to find the good doctor at this time of night.

  Wayne’s hired hand. The man she’d seen on so many occasions—the SUV, the park, the hotel. No idea where to find him either. Didn’t even have a name. Didn’t know if she could trust him.

  Unless . . .

  The man who drove the SUV was a witness listed in the accident report. It was still here on the floor of the car with the medications she had meant to take to Beeson. She held the report up to the dashboard under the lot light and flipped through the pages until she found his name.

  Frank Danson.

  And Frank Danson’s address.

  Shauna rushed to open Miguel’s glove box, hoping he kept a street map in it. In fact, she found several, lined up like a stack of pillows under the pearl-handled knife Frank Danson had thrown into the hotel’s door frame.

  She withdrew the Austin map, found the street, twenty minutes away. She looked at the dash clock. Eleven oh one.

  What was the greater risk here? Going to Houston at Wayne’s mercy, blind, or going to Danson’s home with no guarantee that he would be there, or, if he was, that he wouldn’t kill her and haul her body off to Wayne to get this money that Wayne owed him? It wouldn’t be hard for him to do.

  Miguel would have told her she was crazy. He would have told her to go directly to Beeson, and in lieu of that, to stay clear of anyone associated with Wayne.

  She fingered his ring. Miguel would be of no help in this decision.

  How had Wayne reacted to Frank’s failure to kill her that night in September? Add to that his failure to prevent her escape from the hotel . . .

  They couldn’t possibly be on good terms. How much of a risk would she be taking to assume that Frank and Wayne were unhappy enough with each other that she could turn Frank against him?

  A few moments later, Shauna decided to take the risk. Frank could possibly tell her how and where Wayne operated in Houston. He might even know what had happened to Miguel.

  She could only hope that Frank Danson was still alive, and that he would talk to her.

  Strike that last part. Shauna didn’t really need him to talk to her, not if his memory of working for Wayne Spade was still fully intact. She could use him if he never said a word. If she was careful.

  Eleven oh four. She pulled Miguel’s truck out of the lot and sped toward the south side of town, one of the last places on earth she wanted to be.

  34

  Frank Danson kept a middle-class town house in a neighborhood that was slip-ping into lower-class disrepair. His was number 503, at the end of a row. Shauna pounded the door without letting up until she heard footsteps.

  The door flew open. “What?” he complained. Then he saw Shauna and slammed the door on a stream of expletives.

  Shauna pounded again. “Frank! You don’t want me to make a scene!”

  Shauna shouted as loudly as she could. “You want to talk with me, Frank! You want to talk with me about why I shouldn’t call the police—” Stupid girl! If he was with Wayne on the abduction of Miguel, he would call her bluff. She winced, unable to turn back. “Why shouldn’t I tell them how you’re hooked up with Wayne, how you engineered the wreck—you and Wayne and Bond—what you did to me in Corpus Christi! You involved in the trafficking too?”

  He yanked the door open again, then dragged her inside. “What the—trafficking? Drugs are not my area, so don’t you start.”

  Frank shut the door behind her, gripping her upper arm.

  “And I didn’t do anything to you in Corpus. How did you find this place?”

  “Accident report. You didn’t use an alias?”

  He turned the locks and then moved around the lower level of the town-home to close the window coverings, hauling her behind him. “I shouldn’t have had any reason to use one,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t have, if the job had been done right in the first place. That was Bond’s fault.”

  He dragged her back into the living room. She had been crazy, coming here by herself. Crazy. The man was twice her size and would crush her. She pictured Miguel on the floor of Leon’s office, writhing. For her sake. She could do at least that much for him.

  Frank wa
s wearing a flannel shirt, unbuttoned, and on his chest was the largest, most ghastly bruise she had ever seen, a purple and green explosion across his ribs.

  “What happened?”

  Frank released her so roughly that she staggered. He buttoned his shirt to cover the bruise.

  “Your sweetheart shot me.”

  “Wayne?” This news encouraged her efforts.

  “Who else?”

  “You wore a vest?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you two have issues.”

  “No, we understand each other. I understand I should always wear a vest in his company. Might get shot in the back.”

  “Or the heart, I see. It’s a wonder he didn’t go for your head.”

  “Looks like he went for yours.” Frank gestured to the bruise on Shauna’s cheekbone.

  “That’s right.”

  She raised her eyes to the side of his neck. Twin burn marks scored his skin like a snakebite.

  “Wayne do that too?” She lifted her fingers to touch it. He slapped her hand away.

  “Your boyfriend gets credit for that one.”

  So that was how Miguel got into her hotel room.

  “Bad day, all around,” she said gently.

  “You here to make it worse?”

  She shook her head and lowered the pitch of her voice, hoping it would lower both his defenses and her worries about what this encounter might hold. “You think Wayne would break up my face and then send me here after you all by myself?”

  “I don’t bother trying to second-guess that man anymore.”

  “I need you to try to second-guess him for me just one more time. As a favor.”

  “Why would I do that? What kind of favor could I possibly owe you?”

  “This could work for both of us, Frank, if you’re open to a deal.”

  Frank moved to the old brown sofa and lowered himself onto it. He reached for the sweating glass of scotch on the end table.

  “This oughtta be good.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. She sat on the cushion next to him, crowding his personal space a little. “You’re thinking, ‘Frank, this girl is your worst nightmare. This girl keeps showing up on your watch, and you did not sign up for so much trouble.’ Am I close?”

  “You’re a mind reader then.”

  She put her hand on his knee. She couldn’t get it to stop shaking. “You could say that.”

  He picked up her quivering hand and moved it to her own knee. “Then go read Wayne’s mind.”

  “I’m on my way. But first, like I said, I need a favor.”

  “You’re the one who hasn’t named it yet.”

  “I need to know where Wayne works in Houston. Where he would go if things got hot.”

  “And if I knew that, why would I tell you?”

  “Let’s try an easier question then. Why does Wayne want to kill me?”

  Frank chuckled. “Is it so hard to guess how you could drive a man to kill you?”

  Shauna painted her face with an expression of taxed patience. “You need to know that I am not the problem here, Frank. Wayne is about to present you with a much bigger problem than me.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Yes you do. That’s your instinct talking, but you can speak freely with me. Because you and I both know Wayne for the wolf that he is. Now am I right or am I wrong that you are just plain tired of getting yanked around?”

  “No one yanks me around.”

  Shauna hoped to be an exception to his rule. But this would not work if she could not keep her nerves under control. She focused her mind and began to spin a fiction, a story she had concocted on the drive to Frank’s home, hoping it would lead her to truth. “Wayne has tipped the police off to you, Frank.”

  Frank guffawed. “Wayne thinks I’m dead.”

  Yes, well, that bit of news would force her to think on her feet.

  “Austin PD thinks you’re very much alive. Wayne set this in motion before he got fed up with you. Cops found your prints in Corbin Smith’s apartment.”

  Shauna still believed that Wayne was responsible for Corbin’s death. But if she could get Frank to believe Wayne had framed him, she was sure she could swing Frank to her side.

  The claim wiped the smirk off Frank’s face. His cheek twitched, but he said, “Who’s Corbin Smith?”

  “A very dead photographer. But aren’t you more concerned about why Wayne would have planted your prints at his home?”

  “Actually, I’m wondering how you would know this.”

  “Friends with the lead detective.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her to prove it. “It’s only a matter of time before they bring you in, Frank.”

  “Cock-and-bull story.”

  “About me, or about you?”

  “Get to the point quickly now.”

  “That knife you left in the hotel’s pretty door frame? I took it with me. They’re looking at it as the murder weapon.”

  Frank’s laugh was strained. But he swiped his palms across the legs of his jeans, darkening the fabric with sweat.

  “That’s Wayne’s knife,” he said.

  “I know. Wayne used it to try to kill me.”

  “You’re babbling now. I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Where’d you get the knife, Frank?”

  Frank swore again.

  She took a deep breath and hoped she wasn’t transparent. “I know this is upsetting, but if you don’t get yourself jackhammered into the ceiling, I think we can help each other.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “Oh you don’t now? Why do you think you haven’t been arrested yet? Why do you believe no murder or kidnapping charges have been filed against you?”

  Frank took a swig from the glass, then leaned toward her to breathe scotch on her face. She managed to keep her eyes open.

  “You tell me.”

  His stench nauseated her, but she lifted her finger to the bottom of his chin, a test of her ability, and a request that he look at her. Her touch did not generate a thing.

  She didn’t have time to finesse this plan. She stood and leaned over him, pressing his shoulders against the back of the couch. She put her face much closer to his. The shaking in her hands had moved down to her knees. She silently berated herself.

  “I don’t have to tell you what you already know, Frank. Because I am not police. I am not here because I care about what happens to you, or because I’m looking to start a new career. I am here because I think Wayne Spade needs to come back down to earth with the rest of us humans, and because I think you feel the same way. And if you do not, you should. Because after that escapade at the hotel—and I’m so sorry to have ditched you like that—I’m sure you are among the least of his favorite people.” Her fingers alit on his chest where the bruise was. The slightest pressure of her fingertips would keep him from moving. “Two botched jobs in as many months. That can’t be good for you, Frank.”

  She thought she could hold his stare longer than he could hers, but in the end she dropped her gaze to his lips. Two seconds more and he would have surely called her bluff.

  He finally said, “What do you propose?”

  She squatted in front of him, resting her hands on his knees. “Help me, Frank. Help me bring him in and there’s a reward for you in it. Chief among them, I won’t press charges for your part in trying to kill me.”

  “I never tried to kill you.” He moved to stand, but she pressed her palm into his bruise and he gave up the effort. She took his hands in hers, halfway surprised when he didn’t snatch them away.

  “No, you set me up. But unfortunately, to the police it’s pretty much the same thing. It was that rat Rick Bond who actually rammed me with the truck, wasn’t it? You made me swerve, sure, but he was the one who pushed me over.”

  Shauna placed Frank’s left hand against the side of her cheek and held it there. His palm and fingers nearly covered the side of her head. He
didn’t move.

  Her heart was about to thrash its way out of her ribs.

  She whispered, “So tell me, Frank, how is it that Rick got paid so hand-somely? Did you ever see any of that settlement money? Did Wayne ever keep any of his promises to you when I didn’t roll over and die?”

  Frank did not move, and Shauna hoped her knife had gone in deep enough. Slowly, cautiously, she kissed his hand. “We can help each other, Frank.”

  His fingers stiffened and slipped over the back of her head. He squeezed the back of her neck, tipping her head back.

  “Or I could kill you now.”

  Dear God, don’t let me die.

  She made eye contact with him, keeping her voice even and low. “You could, but you won’t. You wouldn’t give Wayne the satisfaction.”

  That, and he wouldn’t risk getting his own hands dirty.

  He believed her, and she knew it. She knew it because in that moment he decided that he hated Wayne more than he feared Shauna, because in that moment she was in, with his grip still firm on the top of her spine. His mind opened, memories sprawled beneath her this time like candy from an upended trick-or-treater’s sack, and she had her pick.

  Her pick, and only a matter of seconds to decide before he disconnected from her. She rolled her mental hand over the top of those candy memories, trying to reduce the mountainous heap to a single layer, spreading them out for a bird’s-eye view.

  There were just so many.

  She needed to find Wayne. She needed to find Miguel. She needed to know anything that would help her get inside Wayne’s mind, tell her why he wanted her dead—anything at all that she could use to save Miguel’s life.

  If she was lucky, she would pick a memory that Frank wouldn’t miss. A memory that, when brought to light like a confession, could be re-created for the rest of the world by evidence.

  If she was lucky.

  35

  Landon McAllister had grown accustomed to sleepless nights in the two decades since his first run for political office. Since he’d announced his candidacy for president, though, he rarely slept more than five hours a night and had come to thrive on this way of life. Uninterrupted hours of reflecting and strategizing while the rest of the world slept gave him his edge.