Kiss

by Ted Dekker

  Rudy, in fact, was everywhere.

  He had enough of Rudy to spare.

  But that was as close as she would get.

  The cityscape vanished. Landon had withdrawn from Shauna’s touch. She caught her breath.

  “It’s not possible,” her father was saying, moving away from her into the dim office space. “Trent Wilde would never put us at risk. I trust him with my life.”

  She found her bearings again. “But I don’t. If you knew what I have been through . . .”

  Landon scowled. Wrong approach.

  “Look,” Shauna said. “I haven’t asked you for anything in years. I need your help now. I know you’re mad at me. I know you don’t believe me. But will you help me?”

  “If it will keep you clear of me until November 13, sure.”

  “I need a place to stay. I need time to sort out the truth in my own mind.”

  “And isn’t that a laudable pursuit.” Patrice leaned in the door frame. Shauna did not know how much of the conversation she had heard. “What’s all the drama about?”

  Shauna stayed silent.

  “It seems my daughter has fixated on a particular problem that doesn’t exist. She’s planning some vacation time to clear her head.” He opened a safe in the wall and withdrew a set of boat keys. “You can stay on the Bayliner. I took it out last time I was here. Nothing for you to do to get it ready.”

  She hesitated to take this gift horse. The senator’s cabin cruiser wasn’t exactly a safe house. But maybe it would buy Miguel and her an hour or two to sort things out. She made one more attempt to keep the encounter with her father from unraveling further.

  “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know you’re not . . . that you weren’t . . .” Shauna tried to explain.

  Landon’s expression softened from granite to sandstone. He dropped the keys into her palm but didn’t speak.

  “Thank you. You won’t . . . if Wayne or Trent ask you . . .”

  He guffawed. “I’d have to be drunk to tell them what you’ve just told me.

  I can’t afford to look like a half-wit this close to election day.”

  31

  Shauna stayed only long enough to dash to the guesthouse for a fresh set of clothes. And the medication—maybe she could have someone analyze the pills. And Deputy Bowden’s accident report—she wanted Miguel to read it. And a little bit of cash tucked away in a roll of clean socks.

  She left before she decided she needed a suitcase.

  Miguel looked relieved enough to hug Shauna when she dropped into the passenger seat of his Jeep carrying her load. In fact, he did hug her, leaning across the gearshift sideways and surrounding her with his strong arms.

  Shauna felt her back stiffen before she pulled away.

  “I shouldn’t have done that.” He held up two hands. “I’m just really glad to see you.”

  “I can’t have been gone more than twenty minutes.”

  “The twenty longest minutes of my life. With one exception.”

  “Well, I was fine. But it was good you weren’t there. Your name came up.”

  “He thinks I’ve filled your empty head with ideas.”

  “Something like that.”

  “That was pretty clear the night we argued with him.”

  “Before my head was even empty.”

  He laughed. “So, was he more receptive in the privacy of his own home?”

  “Receptive, no. Not at all. He thinks I’m crazy. Still, I’m pretty sure that what’s going on is happening behind Landon’s back.”

  Miguel did not say anything to that.

  “You still think he’s involved,” Shauna said.

  “I don’t see how he couldn’t be. In his position, with money coming out of his own pocket? It’s too much of a stretch to think he’s blind.”

  Shauna understood that this latest confrontation didn’t prove anything, not even to her. For now, however, there was no way to explain this to Miguel. She held up the keys to the cabin cruiser.

  “I know where we can go until we decide what to do next.”

  “What we need to do next is take out Wayne Spade and company before they take us out.”

  “Can’t do it without a nap. When did you last sleep?”

  Miguel had to stop and think. “An hour here and there, since you showed up Monday.”

  “You and I both are going on nearly three days then. Landon has a boat at Yacht Harbor Marina.”

  Miguel shook his head. “That’s like taking a nap on a bull’s-eye.”

  “If we sat in the slip, maybe. But out on the water . . .”

  “I’d rather find a hotel for you.”

  “And pay to stay for two hours? What will people think!”

  Miguel was in no humor to joke about that. “Can you put a price on safety?”

  “Really, Miguel, what can happen in two hours on a lake when no one out-side my own home knows where we are?”

  Miguel turned the key over in the ignition, willing neither to go along with her nor to fight. He surrendered by changing the subject.

  “Give me the thumb drive,” he said.

  She fished it out of her pocket and handed it to him. “What are you going to do?”

  “If you won’t go see Beeson in person, we’ll overnight it to him. I’m not going to walk around with this thing.”

  “I had some time to think while you were in talking with your father,” he said as he drove away from the FedEx office and toward the marina where Landon kept his boat.

  “And what did you think about?”

  “I was thinking about how you recognized the driver of the SUV as being the same man who was in the hotel suite. Or more to the point, how you remembered the driver at all.”

  When she didn’t answer right away, he said, “We haven’t really talked about what this memory loss has been like for you. Is it something you can explain to me?”

  “I’m not sure I have explained it to myself yet,” Shauna said.

  He waited.

  “The experimental drugs I mentioned—I was told they were designed to counteract the effects of trauma on the brain. But I’m pretty sure now, based on what Trent told me yesterday, that that was all . . . a fabrication. I think maybe even the coma was medically induced.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t have any brain damage.” She laughed wryly. “Although—that might remain to be seen.”

  Miguel looked at her sideways. “I mean, why would they put you in a medically induced coma if your injuries weren’t to your head?”

  “To give Trent time to devise a story my father would believe? To give the medications time to work the way they were supposed to? I’m not sure.”

  “So you’re pretty sure medications wiped out your memories.”

  Shauna nodded. “It’s not so far-fetched. They’ve known how to wipe out certain memories in lab rats for quite some time. It’s an ideal plan: You vanish. I forget. Trent Wilde and company rake in millions and put their man in the White House. Trent takes a cushy job in the cabinet.”

  “I wonder if it can be reversed.”

  “The money scheme?”

  “Your memory loss.”

  “Probably not. But our minds are pretty sci-fi, you know? There’s so much we don’t know about how they work. Did you know Pam said there’s a small chance that Rudy can recover?”

  “Really? That’s something.”

  “It has to do with the kind of injury he’s got. I don’t pretend to understand it. As for my own mind—it’s like it’s trying to rebuild what got lost.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  She laughed, nervous for the first time in Miguel’s company. She turned his ring around on her finger. “It’s crazy.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  “I can take memories from other people,” she said before she could think herself out of it. She wouldn’t look at him. “I can pick which memory I want to have. I can use them to re-create the context of my own story. Su
ch as it is.”

  Miguel’s silence was loud in the car.

  “I got the image of our SUV driver from a sheriff ’s deputy who was on the scene. It was one of my first. I didn’t even know what I was doing then. It just happened, dropped me to the floor. But it’s my memory now.”

  She heard the feathery sound of Miguel’s hand drawing down over his smooth cheeks, his pointed beard.

  “I’m a thief,” she said. “I steal from people. I don’t have my own memories, so I take what belongs to others. It’s the only way I can figure out this mess I’m in right now. It’s like I don’t have—”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Tell me how it works.”

  As if it were a computer program. She stole a hesitant look at him. His expression was unreadable. “I need . . . I have to be able to touch a person.”

  “You take memories from anyone you touch?”

  “No. It’s not so haphazard. A person has to be willing to let me into his mind.”

  “So how does that work? You just ask them?”

  “Hardly! They have to trust me. Let their guard down somehow.” She shivered. “I try to make them want to connect with me. Maybe make them hope I have something to give them. Or maybe even want something I can give them.”

  “So you need an emotional connection as well as a physical one.”

  She nodded. “In that sense it’s mutual. I can’t take anything from anyone who shuts me out.”

  “This is a new . . . ability? Something that’s happened since the accident.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  He still hadn’t looked at her. She wasn’t sure how to interpret the underlying stiffness of his voice. Was it caution? Repulsion?

  “How did you learn to do it?”

  “Learn? Hardly. It just happened. I can’t explain it. My best guess—this is some freak side-effect of that drug experiment. Those were designer pharmaceuticals. They were formulated based on my genetic code. How many variables could they possibly have foreseen? And how I can actually take a memory is even more inexplicable. These people I steal from haven’t had any drugs.”

  “Is this something you can control? From your end anyway?”

  She hesitated. “I’m getting better at it.”

  “Do they know what you’re doing? I mean, the people you take memories from.”

  “Did you?”

  He snapped his head to look at her.

  “When?” he asked. His tone was softer now.

  “In the park.”

  “My hand—” He turned up his palm. The skin was still white where she had squeezed it.

  “I can’t explain that. That particular effect hasn’t happened to anyone else.”

  “What did I give you?” he asked.

  “You mean what did I take?”

  “No. I mean what did I give you?” He smiled. “Because you know you can have anything you want. You can wipe me clean.”

  Shauna stumbled over her reply. She had not expected his belief in her, let alone this extreme, inexplicable trust.

  “I saw your memory of confronting Uncle Trent after the accident. In his office at MMV.”

  “Ah.” Miguel nodded as if their bizarre conversation in Victoria now made sense, but his eyebrows drew together and he looked back at his hand.

  “What was it like?” she asked.

  “You holding my hand after everything that had happened?” he teased. She allowed the corner of her mouth to rise.

  “No, goofball. Losing a memory.”

  “It was like knowing you’ve been to a certain city but not remembering the reason for your visit. Or going in to work every day but not being able to remember each hour in detail. Everything is familiar, but incomplete. I can remember that I bargained with Trent, but I can’t remember what happened in the moments before.”

  “What did you feel when I did it?”

  “I felt like I’d stuck my hand into a pool of water charged with a low cur-rent of electricity. At the time, though, I believed that sensation was something else entirely.”

  “Do you remember being in Leon’s office?”

  “I remember laying out how I wanted this to work. I don’t remember how I got there.”

  “So you don’t remember Trent attacking you?”

  Miguel shook his head. “Just the deal. And Leon hauled me out after that.”

  “If I had it to do over again—”

  “Think of that memory as something I entrusted to you.” He reached for her hand. “You can tell me about it when I need to know. Though it doesn’t sound like a bedtime story I’ll want repeated on a regular basis. But if you and me stick together, we won’t have lost a thing.”

  His touch sent an electric jolt up her fingers. She snatched her hand away, set up a barrier in her mind. What he was saying was all wrong. She had no right to rob him for her selfish gain, to make herself complete. She wouldn’t. She didn’t want to.

  He didn’t try to insist. He only said, now understanding, “That’s why you won’t let me touch you.”

  She could barely nod. “I don’t trust myself.”

  “Would you trust me?” Miguel asked.

  On this point? They weren’t exactly talking about financial investments here, or political outcomes or journalistic sources.

  Shauna didn’t know the answer.

  The thirty-two-foot cruiser, tall and as shiny new as the first day Landon bought it, sat in one of the largest covered slips in the Yacht Harbor Marina, and it took the two of them and a deckhand working together only a matter of minutes to get the canvas off and the boat backed out into the lane. They left the bimini top in the locker—wouldn’t need it today.

  Shauna was familiar with the controls and gave Miguel a quick 101 before stepping down into the cabin to shower and change into fresh clothes.

  By the time she returned to the deck, Miguel had turned the engine off to float on the open water. He was stretched out on one of the deck’s wraparound lounges. A phone book from the galley lay on the deck beside him. He sat up right away.

  “I thought I’d have to go wake you up in a couple hours,” she said.

  “You will, but first we should call the detective.”

  Shauna nodded.

  “My phone’s in the cockpit.” He fetched it and returned to the seat, then held on to the phone when she tried to take it. “Before you call . . .”

  “You’ve been thinking again.”

  “Yes. He’ll want you to come in.”

  “I expect he’ll want both of us.”

  “I want you to consider going.”

  “I have already told you all the reasons why I won’t.”

  “I get that, but honestly, jail might be the safest place for you right now.”

  “Right. No one ever got killed in jail.”

  “Shauna. Please.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight.” She sighed and put her hands on her hips. “If I go, what will you do?”

  “I can stay on the outside, help in ways you won’t have the chance to.”

  “I think the police are perfectly capable of doing their jobs without you.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the police. Some of us can get a little farther faster when we don’t have to worry about procedural red tape.”

  “Now you’re talking like a journalist.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  She caught hold of his idea at the same time he uttered it. “Scott Norris,” they both said aloud together.

  “What can he help you discover that Detective Beeson couldn’t?” Shauna asked.

  “You said you think Wayne deserted the Marines?”

  “It was a memory of his. He denied it, but something about it showed up in his psych file. When I accused Trent of paying Wayne’s way out of a court-martial, that seemed to hit a nerve.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to know Scott Norris’s da
ddy, would you?”

  “I’m afraid Scott wasn’t interested in taking me home to meet the family.”

  “Mr. Scott Norris, Sr. works for the CIA, Office of Inspector General.”

  “I can’t imagine he gives Scott—”

  “No no no. Senior is a devout American,” Miguel said. “He wouldn’t necessarily tell us anything, but he might be interested in Wayne Marshall. And anyone who helped him out of the military. Especially if that person might be connected to the White House.”

  “We’re looking at Trent for this, not my father.”

  “Whoever. I’m thinking if we can connect Wayne and Trent to some military subversion, we might be able to come at the money laundering issue through the back door.”

  She cracked open the phone book to look up the police department’s switch-board number.

  “Well, I already owe Scott Junior dinner,” Shauna said.

  “I have a hunch we’ll owe him more than that by the time we’re through.” He handed Shauna his phone.

  “Don’t go promising our first child to him or anything like that, okay?”

  32

  The problem with falling asleep on a rocking boat in the middle of a lake was that Shauna might as well have fallen asleep in a womb, with only the pain of contractions for an alarm clock.

  For Shauna, these came in the form of a ringing cell phone. She awoke with a jerk that tapped her injured cheek into the pillow. She winced, and her hand rose up to cover the swollen skin. How had she rolled onto that side without waking? The cabin was dark. She shifted in the bed, not in the mood to get up yet.

  Miguel’s voice, as groggy as her mind, drifted into the lower level from the cockpit. He talked for a minute, maybe two, but she couldn’t make out the words. How long had they been sleeping? Not long enough, that was sure.