Kiss (42 page)

“P-p-pless,” he sputtered. “Plsss.”

She had another two inches of liquid. Five, four, three, two—Shauna threw away the bottle and removed the shirt from his head. Pinching his nose, she covered his mouth with hers. She pressed hard, felt his teeth against her lips, jerking with the spasms of his body.

No more barriers stood between them. No more walls, no more pretending. He needed her now. Oh, did he need her.

She started looking for Miguel.

Though Shauna had accessed Wayne’s memories on three other occasions, she had never seen them from this wide-angle view. Her theft of the first two memories had been almost accidental opportunities, like finding a twenty-dollar bill dropped along the street.

She had advanced her skill since then, though, and had much more control now, which might account for this new sight.

Shauna saw water again, but this time the liquid was an ocean, and Wayne’s memories were grains of wet sand, sticking together, a sand castle half-finished.

She saw an image of herself in the uppermost turret, next to Wayne’s most recent memories. Her on the ground, him slapping that patch onto her chest. And there: the warehouse where they now battled for control. And Dr. Carver? And a medical office, a bed, racks of medicine vials and syringes. Cell phone calls.

Shauna saw each grain as if the images they contained were life-sized, though she could scoop up a handful of them in her palm. She examined the memories, pinched them and spread them out with her thumbs across the pads of her fingertips, looking: a ride in Wayne’s truck through the middle of the night. A stop for gas and CornNuts.

There: the man with the nose she had broken. And Miguel! At the man’s feet. At Wayne’s feet. Unconscious. Where had he gone? She looked closer, listened.

You’re alive as long as it takes Shauna to get here. After that, we’ll see what
you’re worth. Take him to Carver. Then get him out of here. Stay mobile until you
hear from me.

Stay mobile.

A sob escaped Shauna’s lungs and broke her contact with Wayne. Wayne sucked air. He’d intentionally prevented himself from knowing where Miguel had gone.

“You monster!” She smacked him full across the face. He seemed barely conscious. “What’s their number? Where’s your phone?” Somewhere at the bot-tom of her brain she felt herself slipping out of full awareness, making room for whatever drugs her skin had absorbed. No, not drugs this time. This was despair in its purest form.

She thought his ragged exhale sounded like a laugh, a mockery. His breath on her face fanned her inner fire.

Shauna stopped thinking about what she was doing. She could not accept that she had gotten all the way here and was still so far away from her goal, that Miguel was so far out of her reach, maybe even dead. She could not believe that one man had knocked down every brick of her life, every soul that had shared it with her—and for what? Why? Because she loved the truth?

Because Miguel loved the truth?

She gripped the hair behind his ears with both hands and cried aloud into Wayne’s mouth. She saw his mind in her own, saw the stupid, childish sand castle, the foolish and fragile life he had built for himself, and she started kicking it down, started crying and screaming and wading across moats and kicking down turrets. Her eyes filled with grit, and the grains packed themselves under her fingernails, tangled in her hair. She pounded down bridges and courtyards and walls and the keep. The sand caked her lips and chafed her skin under her clothes and stuck to the pads of her feet.

Grief collapsed her while she was only half-finished with her vandalism. Grief and the burden of these sticky, heavy memories. She doubled over, breathless, and felt strong hands on her shoulders.

Someone yanking her, tugging her up. Off.

Off of Wayne.

She breathed.

Frank had her from behind, and she heard herself gasping for air. She staggered under her own weight and pressed her fists against her temples. What had she done?

What had she taken on? What would she have to live with? The magnitude of her theft had exceeded her intentions and accomplished nothing. Not anywhere in all those stolen images—those dark, nefarious, smug images—was anything that told her where Miguel was. And there was no going back.

Her pulse throbbed in her ears, a drumbeat that coursed under the misery of this other life, this dirge of unfortunate choices and lost opportunities. Shauna had taken ten, maybe fifteen years. She dropped onto her hands and knees and started to wail. Frank dragged her to the wall and set her up against it.

“Get a grip, Shauna.”

She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

Wayne lay at the foot of the stairs, blinking inside the circle of light. He lifted a limp arm a couple inches off the ground, then dropped it. He was hyperventilating.

Shauna’s stomach cramped and she sagged to one side. She sensed Frank next to her and reached for him. For support. He withdrew clear of her touch.

“Don’t you lay a hand on me,” he warned. He raked a hand through his hair and glanced around as though he was looking for someone. “I don’t under-stand a thing I’ve seen here.”

39

The pain of gravel under the heels of her hands sharpened Shauna’s awareness. She was on all fours at the base of the warehouse’s exterior staircase, staring at the ground through swollen eyelids. Salt from tears had dried on her cheeks.

The area was quiet. The single light over the warehouse door that had illuminated the area earlier was out, the dirt alley lit now only by the low moon. An even coat of blackness spanned the sky.

She strained her eyes to see into the alley. She made out the form of Wayne, laid out ten yards from her, unconscious or sleeping or dead—she couldn’t tell.

Frank had vanished.

She didn’t care.

Shauna unfolded her body one joint at a time, managing to stand then walk to Wayne. She saw his chest rise and fall.

She timed her breathing to match his, a calmer pace.

Wayne had bested her tonight. In some ways.

She, on the other hand, had destroyed him. The rest of Wayne’s life would be a punishment for years of choices he couldn’t remember making, for being a person he couldn’t remember becoming. He would have no chance for redemption, no ability to pull meaning out of his past for the sake of forging his future. He would be forever young, forever stunted, forever confused. Because of her.

What had she become?

She vowed then, looking at Wayne’s expressionless, passive face, never to forget what she had done here. She would allow herself to be haunted by the shock of it. The memory would warn her away from the dangerous cliff of her ability. Tonight, she had stood at the edge.

She felt deep, agonizing pain. For what she had stolen from Wayne would topple the entire McAllister empire. She thought she had already lost every-thing. But not compared to what was about to happen.

And all those feelings paled next to her sorrow over having failed Miguel.

The grinding sound of a vehicle moving slowly over dirt turned her eyes to the road. Frank?

A police cruiser moved past the building, a high-powered flashlight beam sweeping into the alley. Shauna didn’t even care if they spotted her. And yet she and Wayne were beyond the light’s reach.

The car moved out of sight past the end of the warehouse, but she heard it turning around. They’d come back for a closer look if Beeson had sent them.

A phone rang.

Wayne’s phone.

Behind her. It lay in the dirt at the opposite end of the building, where Frank had ambushed him, its flashing LED light a tiny square of blue in the darkness. She rushed to get it. She had to shut off the noise.

A car door slammed as Shauna reached the phone. She squeezed the button on the side to silence the ringer. No name was attached to the number. Did she dare answer it?

Stay mobile until you hear from me.

What if the caller had Miguel? Someone awaiting orders from Wayne? She couldn’t answer, couldn’t risk that her voice, spoken in lieu of Wayne’s, would tip her hand.

She would communicate by text as soon as she was clear of this place.

She ran on light feet back to the end of the building, intending to slip into the safety of Miguel’s Jeep and pull out.

She rounded the corner. It was gone.

Frank! Gone with Wayne’s knife, with her meds, with his address on the accident report. Miguel’s phone and wallet were in there too, and Beeson’s phone number. She could only hope Frank didn’t know the total of what he had.

She stewed over Frank, simultaneously aware that the officers were headed around the other side of the building. The phone in her hands rang again. Same number. She ended the call before it sounded a full ring, then sent a text.

> NO AUDIO. TEXT ONLY.

New hope that Miguel might not be out of her reach pushed her anxiety to the background. She wondered where Wayne had stashed his truck. He wouldn’t have come here without his own transportation.

> Wher th hck ARE u?

Someone was waiting for Wayne. Where? Wayne was handling so many snakes that Shauna couldn’t be sure which one this was. She had to think like him.

Think like Wayne. That wouldn’t be hard now, would it? Her cluttered mind snapped into sharp, organized focus. The intensity of events had distracted her from the solution so easily within her grasp:

Wayne’s memories told her exactly which of his snakes she had to charm. These men were waiting for Wayne to tell them where to take Miguel. Wayne intended to tell them after he had secured Shauna. She replied.

> The ? is, where are U?

Shauna closed her eyes and tapped more of Wayne’s recall: she saw his truck parked two blocks south, away from the channel.

> Duz it mattr? Tell us where 2 go.

Where to go with Miguel.

Where should she send them?

> Is he alive?

Footsteps were moving in her direction. Shauna had not been paying attention. She dropped behind a barrel, understanding in a second that she did not have enough cover to stay hidden.

Two men in uniforms came around the end of the building, their flash-lights sweeping over the top of her hiding place. Only the barrel separated her from them. Shauna closed her eyes as if that would help hide her, the display of the phone pressed into her clammy hands. If Wayne’s guys texted before—

They stepped past the barrel, so close that Shauna could smell cologne. All they had to do was look to the right.

“Body,” one of the officers said. Their eyes locked onto Wayne, and they jogged toward him.

She watched them, moved when the sounds of their footfalls gave her enough noise cover. And then she ran in time with them but in the opposite direction, toward the shipyard building on the other side of the alley.

> Technically alive

She would take that as good news for now. When she was sure she was out of the officers’ range of hearing, she stopped to punch in an address in River Oaks, on the other side of Houston. It was the only address in Houston that she knew. She thought she might be twenty, twenty-five minutes away.

> Reply with your ETA

They would have to map it, make an estimate.

She picked up her pace again in the direction of Wayne’s truck, careful to keep an eye out for the officers on scene.

She found the Chevy without any trouble, as if she had parked it herself. Shauna climbed into the cab and went immediately to the ashtray. There were the keys, as usual. The phone vibrated in her palm.

> Thirty minutes

She could beat them there.

> Go

There was only one way to get Miguel out of this disaster, and that was to give herself over to Trent Wilde. She would ensure Miguel’s safety by surrendering her head and body to science.

At least one of them would live. Because if she couldn’t save Miguel, she would die anyway.

40

To Landon’s great annoyance, it took more than ten minutes to explain to his security detail that he had added a leg to his travel plans, then wait for them to approve his route and destination.

Ridiculous, he said.

Imperative, they said, this close to Election Day.

After some wrangling they agreed to take him to the west side of Houston—one car, two agents, period. It wasn’t like he was driving to Argentina.

He spent the three-hour trip contemplating how he had failed his second wife and how Trent Wilde had not. It was never only about one event, he sup-posed. In his case, living fifteen years in a plot not of his making must have played a role.

And it all began when Wilde had introduced him to Patrice. How fateful that little detail seemed now.

The car passed through the 610 Loop and turned onto River Oaks Boulevard at four twenty-five, then wove itself into the affluent neighborhood. Landon instructed the driver to pull over a block away from Wilde’s home, a monstrosity for the wealthy divorcé, who lived alone.

“Wait here,” Landon said.

“Sir—”

“Enough. I’m dropping in to visit a friend.”

He exited the black Lincoln and slammed the door, unwilling to enter any more arguments.

One car pulling out of a neighbor’s gated drive was the only stirring at this sleepy hour. A chill kept even the birds quiet.

Trent didn’t bother with gates, but an impressive circular driveway surrounded a garden, and a broad flight of brick steps rose to the double-wide entrance. In a matter of seconds Landon found himself, surprisingly composed, eye to eye with an engraved brass knocker.

He opted for the doorbell and rang it three times before Trent appeared, cinching the belt of a housecoat around his waist. His left cheek bore an imprint from bedsheets.

Trent’s eyes registered Landon, then darted to the stairs to the left of the entry. “Well, this is an unexpected surprise. What brings you here? Where’s your detail?”

Landon pushed past him into the foyer, then stood at the base of the stairs, looking up. Trent closed the door slowly, lingering in shadow.

“Where’s my wife?”

Trent shoved a hand into one pocket of his jacket and raised an eyebrow. “Apparently you think she’s here.”