Kiss (8 page)

“I’m sorry we can’t be of more help to you,” Wayne said. “Now if you don’t mind, Ms. McAllister has had an extremely difficult day.”

The man stepped aside and bowed with an arm extended Shakespearean-style.

He pulled a fresh cigarette out and held her eyes as she let Wayne lead her away. With Wayne’s back to him, Smith dropped the reporter persona and gave Shauna the slow wave of a sad friend saying good-bye.

6

Shauna was so haunted by the man’s wave that she only half paid attention when Wayne took her back to the hospital to meet with Dr. Carver before heading home. He left his keys in the Chevy’s ashtray before they went inside.

The brief appointment passed beneath her hazy disinterest and distraction. He gave her five bottles, labeled only with numbers, and explained to her what each pill was, and indicated that she should take them twice a day.

Was there a third person in her car? What if Rudy had a friend, maybe, and the drugs were his? The possibility of a third person could change everything.

No it couldn’t—there were still drugs in her loft, not to mention in her blood. And why would so many people not see this unnamed passenger?

“Siders is willing to let you stay at home now, Shauna.” Wayne touched her shoulder, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“Good.”

“So long as we come back once a week. Dr. Harding wants you in here tomorrow. Check in otherwise as necessary. Sound okay?”

“Fine.”

Then they were back in his truck driving toward Landon’s and she was back in her thoughts, preoccupied by the events of the past several days. She didn’t speak much.

Wayne put the car in park and she lifted her head.

They were in front of the bungalow that was the guesthouse on the McAllister property. With six bedrooms in the main house, few guests ever occupied these more remote lodgings, and the red tiles and stucco that matched the bigger house had fallen into some disrepair. Beautiful towering pecan trees spread their limbs wide and on summer days turned shadows into lace. But this gray October after-noon, the branches merely hovered like tangled clouds.

“Why are we here?”

Wayne looked confused. “You knew we were coming to the estate.”

“I mean the bungalow.”

“Oh. Your father’s idea.”

“I see.”

“He thought you would have more privacy this way.”

“Right. My old room is too close to home.”

“Pam’s in your room now.”

Of course she was.

“There are three bedrooms here, so I’ll be close. If you don’t mind. The senator has set up a housekeeper for you in the third room. Full-time, at your service. If it’s necessary, it will be easier for people to visit you here—doctors, therapists.”

“All I see is a place where Landon can keep me under his thumb.”

“It’ll be good for you here. All that security? No media, no pressure.”

Wayne exited the truck, then helped Shauna out, ducking in the rain. She stomped, heavy with the weight of her new life, up the steps to the shelter of the porch.

That dull but precise pain that had irritated her at the courthouse flared in her side again. Appendicitis would be timely and maybe poetic. Ironic even. She could survive being catapulted into an icy river and avoid brain damage and pass through a drug trial with flying colors, then be taken down by an inflamed and useless organ.

But the pain passed.

The screen door squeaked.

A pretty but expressionless woman held it open—the Asian woman Shauna saw in the dining room of the main house last night.

The slight-built woman let the door slap back into its frame. She held a hand out to Shauna. “I’m Luang Khai, your housekeeper.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Call me Khai
.
”

“Rhymes with
sky
?”

“Close enough.”

“Shauna McAllister. I guess you know Wayne.”

Khai nodded, curt. “Mr. McAllister said you might come. The third room is ready for you.”

Getting a better look at Khai now, Shauna decided the housekeeper was in her mid- to late thirties. Shauna studied the mismatched eyes for one moment longer than was polite.

“I’ve lost my contacts,” she said, and then she opened the door to invite them in.

Shauna stepped into the main sitting room, which was set up something like an elaborate hotel suite—two bedrooms and a shared bath off one side of the living area, a stand-alone bedroom off the other. A kitchenette and break-fast nook behind a two-way fireplace overlooked the river.

Other than the furniture that had been here for years—the suede camel sofa, a tattered Morris chair that needed refinishing—the room was full of brown boxes stacked three high.

Shauna tried to take it all in. Were these her things?

“These just arrived,” Khai said. “When you are rested I’ll help you unpack them.”

Shauna opened the closest box. Books: accounting law, textbooks, reference books. Stacks of newspapers. A few magazines.

Clothes in the next, thrown in, not folded. Everything would have to be washed and pressed.

More clothes.

Shoes. Linens and towels.

“Maybe you will come eat something first?”

Shauna tipped back the flap of a fourth box.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Do you like
tom yam
? Soup?”

“I
love
that soup,” Wayne said. “Thai food.” He headed into the kitchen.

Shauna lifted trinkets out of this box. Her iPod, a sequined jewelry case, a hand-blown glass vase, a sleek wooden elephant.

This wasn’t hers. Or was it something she couldn’t remember acquiring? The animal posed with one foot forward and his trunk high, tusks up, as if he was trumpeting. The wood was dark, cedar maybe, and lightly lacquered. A decorative line cut into the wood ran from the elephant’s mouth all the way around the shape of his ear, then down his back. She traced it with her forefinger before returning it to the box.

“You eat,” Shauna said. “I have something I need to do first.”

She snatched up her iPod from the box and dropped it into her coat pocket. Her fingers brushed a piece of paper. She withdrew a small red note folded in fourths. How had she not noticed this earlier? Unfolding it, she saw an address printed in neat letters diagonally across the square. An address in Victoria, Texas.

Did she know someone in Victoria?

Shauna wasn’t even sure she knew where Victoria was.

Wayne popped back out of the kitchen, holding a steaming bowl.

“What is it you need to do?” he asked her.

“Rudy.” She refolded the paper and dropped it back into her coat pocket.

“I need to see Rudy.”

Corbin Smith shuffled to the phone on the kitchen counter, lifted the receiver, and hit the speed dial. Number three, after voice mail and the office. He took a chug from a Gatorade bottle and turned to take in the panoramic view of downtown Austin while the phone rang. He’d never get tired of this place. When the time came to give it back to its rightful owner—and he had faith that day would come—he’d have to think twice about handing it off.

Nah, not really. As it was, he was convinced that he’d made the right decision to jump on the place when it went up for rent and keep it ready for her. Even if it did put a dent in his bank account.

His best friend answered the phone. “If you call me again, I’m going to change my number.”

“Good to hear your voice, man.”

“Have I not explained to you what will happen if—”

“A thousand times. Old story. Got a new one for you today.”

“I’ll read it in the paper.”

“Not this one.”

“Just tell me then, so I can get off the line.”

“She’s up. Walking on her own two feet. Out of the hospital.”

That shut him up. Smith heard breathing over the line. He pounced on the silence.

“Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say? You
know
she’s a fighter.”

“I never said she wasn’t.”

“I saw her today. Talked to her.”

“You stay out of her way! Am I going to have to come up there myself, strangle you with my own two hands? You don’t have any idea what you’re doing, Corbin.”

“Oh, I’ve got a very clear idea. You, now
you
walked away from this, and I don’t understand it, but
you
are the one who doesn’t have the clear idea anymore. I’m the bloodhound now, don’t you know. I know way more about what’s in this stew than you ever did.”

That at least earned Corbin a chuckle. “Whatever you say.”

“You’ve gotta come back. Today. Let me bring you up to speed.”

“No.”

“You’ve gotta see her. She needs you.”

This time his refusal hesitated.

“No.”

“If you don’t do it, she might come looking for you. I gave her your address.”

“Corbin, this is no game.”

“I’m not playing with you. You think this situation is forever, and I’m telling you we can turn it around.”

“How?”

“I’m working on it. Have a little faith.”

“I have faith that seeing me will get her killed, which is a disaster I could not survive. And that about sums everything up.”

Corbin reached into his arsenal of persuasion for his biggest gun, the shot that would hurt the most but might set the man in motion. The bloodhound was actually a mule! “She doesn’t remember. She didn’t know me. She doesn’t know a thing.”

Corbin took another swig of the cherry-flavored sports drink, hoping for a fight instead of a dead line.

“That’s for the best, then.”

He inhaled the juice and took ten seconds to cough it up. “Idiot! She needs you now more than she ever did.”

“Don’t call me again.”

Then he got the dead line.

Corbin threw the cordless handset across the kitchen and swore as it skittered into the back of the sofa.

7

It was time to end these games.

Shauna stood, fuming, on a shaded footpath behind her father’s house. She had been denied entry to her family’s home by three different people on Landon’s security detail.

“Mrs. McAllister’s orders, ma’am.”

Patrice. This was the most insulting, unimaginable position Shauna had ever found herself in.

They had a lot of issues, she and her father’s wife, issues that went way back. On Landon’s wedding day, Shauna told a reporter who managed to crash the reception that Landon and Patrice were marrying for political ends rather than for love. When the journalist pressed for details, Shauna made up a story about overhearing a conversation between the couple. The gist was how important marriage would be for Landon to advance his career and that Patrice had her own political goals in mind.

Shauna was eleven years old. And she didn’t know the guy was a reporter. Mostly she was upset with Patrice for not letting her wear Mama’s ruby earrings. Patrice had called them gaudy and said they clashed with Shauna’s dress—a frilly Southern belle thing that Shauna hated, hated, hated. They were in Texas, after all, approaching the twenty-
first
century.

She needed someone to understand how unhappy she was, and this man, unlike anyone else at the party, seemed genuinely interested.

The next morning, so was the rest of Texas.

Patrice sold her mother’s earrings on eBay years later.

It was the first of many escalations between the women, though Shauna had never caused another so intentionally. She could not say the same for her stepmother.

Shauna faced the east corner of the property and stormed across the scrubby open space. It was time to make her father participate in this mess.

She reached the fitness center in five minutes, winded and weak-kneed. But outrage propelled her through the main double doors and into the sky-lighted weight room at the heart of the building.

A tall man dressed in an unimaginative suit glanced her way. The senator sat on the lat machine.

Landon McAllister’s weathered skin endeared him to his constituency, even though he knew next to nothing about ranching. The truth was he hated sunscreen, and the Irish in him wrinkled under the Texas sun. The lined-hide look was convincing, though. His bushy eyebrows and wide mouth suggested competence; his mostly gray hair, wisdom; and the scruffy hairstyle, down-to-earth likability.

She shouted at him while she was still yards away. “What do you think you’re doing, locking me out of the house? You invited me here, didn’t you?”

Landon did two more reps before bringing the weight stack to rest.

“You locked me out.”

Landon sighed from the very bottom of his lungs. “Patrice locked you out. You can’t go meddling in her business, Shauna.”

“It’s
our
business, not hers.”

Landon stood and wiped the sweat from his face. “Maybe later, I’ll talk to her about it. When Rudy improves. But not now. Not yet.”

“What in the world does this have to do with Rudy?”

“You upset him.”

“
Patrice
upsets him! Us fighting upsets him!”

“Then why is it that there isn’t any fighting except when you’re around?”

“I don’t want to fight, Landon. I just want to spend time with my brother. Is that a crime?”

“If you break and enter, yes.”