Kiss

by Ted Dekker

“I can give as well as I take.”

  “You’re going to think I’m a little off.”

  “Try me.”

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He sputtered. “Pardon me?” He swiped at brown liquid that had sloshed onto the table.

  She leaned across it. “Kiss me.”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “Lady, you come from the craziest family I have ever—”

  She must have checked her brains at the door to experiment with a journalist. She had just set herself up for the worst kind of exposure. She dropped back into her seat.

  “I want to talk about Rick Bond,” she said.

  He closed his slackjawed mouth, stood, and put his coffee cup in the trash. “The truck driver? You promised me an exclusive interview.”

  “If you continue to be so stubborn I might have to reconsider.”

  He wagged a finger like a metronome and moved toward her. “Exclusive.”

  She glared at him, and he grinned. He leaned down over her and kissed her hard on the mouth before she could react.

  She froze, and he laughed. “You got your kiss. I’ll get my interview.”

  Flustered at losing control of the situation, she consented. Anger burned her cheeks, but whether it was from his brazenness, her foolishness, or the fact that the kiss was just a kiss, she couldn’t tell. Her vision stayed clear, the room stayed stable.

  A complete and utter waste of time.

  “Rick Bond,” she said.

  “Yeah. The guy whose truck you hit. What do you want to know?”

  “You interviewed him after he sued my father.”

  “I did. Tighter lipped than a clamshell until he got his victory. Then the attorneys couldn’t make him shut up.”

  “What did he say that didn’t make it into your article?”

  “Well now I can’t go around quoting everyone from memory. I’ll have to look up my notes.”

  “The gist of things would be fine.”

  “You after something in particular?”

  “I want to know what he said about what happened on the bridge.”

  “Said he was so upset about hitting you, even though it was your fault, that he lost his dinner all over some deputy’s shoes. Ha! That didn’t make it into the article.”

  Shauna took a sip of the rancid coffee without taking her eyes off Scott. It was the only way to prevent her from saying something she should never in her life say to a member of the media.

  Something more than what she’d already said.

  “Critical information,” she managed.

  Scott was still laughing.

  “Who called 9-1-1?”

  “Bond radioed in for help. The guy in the SUV—what’s his name? Danson?—used his cell phone. You had double coverage.”

  Well then. She couldn’t even credit her mystery passenger with an emergency phone call.

  Smith had been full of it, making her think that there had been a third person in her car. What had he meant to accomplish by telling her lies? Was he just a distraction, a pursuit that would take her away from the truth?

  She wondered if Scott knew the guy. She tested the water. “There was a reporter that managed to get through that metaphorical fortress you mentioned.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  Shauna shrugged. “He told me he has a witness who saw another passenger in my car.”

  “Really? Someone saw this on a dark road on a stormy night? Sounds to me like you found yourself an amateur looking for an angle.”

  Could be. “An amateur who found his way to me when you couldn’t, though. He didn’t ask me anything. Except whether there really was someone besides Rudy in the car.”

  “Was there?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Convenient.”

  Shauna grew impatient with Scott’s smart mouth. “I’m wondering if this person can answer the Ecstasy riddle.”

  “Dealers make a profession out of not being found. And of forgetting.”

  “It wouldn’t be a dealer, Mr. Norris. Just someone who remembers.”

  “You’ll have to ask Mr. Journalist to put you in touch with his sources, then.”

  Shauna sighed.

  Scott shook his head and finished his coffee. “He’s a phantom too, huh?”

  “Did the truck driver say anything about the passengers in my car?”

  “Bond saw Rudy fly out through the side door when your little hybrid went airborne. The kid almost came down on his engine.”

  Shauna found a focal point in the newsroom—a bulletin board next to an exit—and concentrated on the arrangement of the notices tacked to it. Anything to avoid the image of Rudy catapulted into a rainy night sky.

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “Rick Bond? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Why not?”

  The door next to the bulletin board opened.

  “I think it’s my turn to ask questions now, right?” Scott lifted a small electronic notepad out of his shirt pocket.

  A tall, blond man came in through the door into the newsroom.

  Smith.

  Shauna stood. “Who’s that?”

  “Who?” Scott looked.

  “The blond one. Old army jacket.”

  “Oh him. That’s Smith.” Scott studied her face. “Don’t expect him to kiss you too.” He tapped on the pad with his stylus.

  “His name is actually Smith?”

  “Corbin Smith. Freelance photographer. Used to be a good one.”

  “Used to be?” She had her hand on the doorknob now.

  “A journalist buddy of his went missing awhile back. Miguel Lopez. Dropped off the face of the earth. Resigned. No notice. Everyone here took it hard, but those two were pretty tight. Brotherly love, you know, nothing weird. Now he’s a little off in the head. Conspiracy theories and all that. His pics aren’t what they were.” He returned his attention to the notepad. “Not sure how much more work the chief is going to give him. You ready for questions?”

  “Later,” she said, opening the door.

  He looked up, and his box-flap eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean, later?”

  “You think I’d answer your questions before the trial?” she said, pausing in the doorway. “My lawyer would have my head. But I’ll promise you an exclusive afterward.”

  “You’d better promise to buy me dinner, too, after all that.”

  She stepped out of the room.

  Corbin Smith had paused at a desk, apparently waiting for the man behind it to get off the phone. An unlit cigarette protruded from the corner of his mouth.

  Scott called out, “And another kiss!”

  At the sound of Scott’s voice, Corbin turned toward the conference room, caught sight of Shauna coming his way, and pretended not to notice her.

  But she’d made eye contact with him and saw the worry in his downturned mouth.

  He withdrew a CD from the pocket of his battered green jacket and dropped it on the desk. “Call me,” he said to the man, then he took long steps toward the nearest door that led out of the room.

  “Wait,” Shauna called after him. “Corbin?” She picked up her pace.

  But his legs were longer than hers and moved through the room on auto-pilot. They carried him through the exit in a few paces.

  The door slammed behind him.

  She hurried, reached the door, threw it open, and burst through.

  A painful grip seized her left arm, and she gasped as the door latched a second time.

  “Not here,” Corbin said, shoving her in front of him and pushing her down a cinderblock hall toward the rear of the building. She heard the sound of sheetfed presses clattering on the other side of the wall. “I’ll talk to you, but not here.”

  He took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth with his free hand and crammed it into his breast pocket, staring straight ahead at a stairway leading upward at the end of the hall. When they reached it, he shoved Shauna into the
shadowed alcove underneath and released her arm. She rubbed the skin where he had gripped her.

  “I want to know—” Shauna began.

  “Sh.”

  He fished a piece of paper—it looked like a receipt—out of one pocket and a pen from the other. Put the pen cap in his mouth and started writing.

  “Who knows you’re here?” he asked around the pen.

  “Just Scott. Will you—”

  “Don’t count on it. Wait here for five minutes after I leave. Then you can go.”

  “Why do—”

  He shoved the piece of paper into her hands and recapped the pen.

  “Because we’ll both live longer that way,” he said. Then he left her alone, and Shauna shrank back into the protection she hoped the shadows would offer her, aware now that she was completely blind to the danger she was really in.

  14

  She pushed her body into the corner of the shadowed stairwell and tried to take shallow breaths. Though the noise of the running presses would cover most sounds she might make, Corbin Smith had frightened her. She did not respond to Scott’s calls when he came lumbering through, leaning into that invisible wind. She pulled her knees to her chest and bowed her forehead onto her kneecaps.

  She walked around the bends in her mind without encountering any new ideas until a door slammed.

  She looked at her watch. She’d been here almost thirty minutes. Corbin’s message was a limp wad in her damp palm. She smoothed it out and read it by the light of her cell phone.

  6 am tomorrow—Apt 419

  Apartment 419? Of what building? How was she supposed to—?

  That was her old loft number.

  How did Corbin Smith know where she used to live?

  She turned the paper over in her hand. It was a store receipt. Victoria Liquor. One item, $36.72. Maybe a carton of cigarettes.

  She guessed her way out to the back of the building, then scrambled around to the little MG in the front. She drove south out of the parking lot through the SoCo District.

  A part of her felt foolish for allowing Smith’s cloak-and-dagger games to frighten her so much. What if he was only a lunatic conspiracy theorist, as Scott had suggested?

  But Corbin Smith had hardly seemed unstable outside the courthouse. Cocky, but not unstable. Truth be told, her foolishness over Scott and the kiss, which had yielded nothing, took away any rights to prejudge the photographer.

  It was barely five o’clock. With two hours to kill and no desire to go any-where alone, not even home, she pointed the car west onto Ben White Boulevard and picked a very long route to the restaurant.

  Even so, by the time her car was in the northbound lanes of 71 and she reached the 620 fork at Bee Cave, she didn’t turn toward the Iguana Grill. Instead, she stayed on 71 and headed toward the bridge where her car had flipped and Rudy’s life was irreversibly changed.

  She had time. She needed time.

  Her foot came off the accelerator as she approached, and she gripped the steering wheel with both hands.

  She couldn’t cross.

  She pulled Rudy’s little MG onto the narrow shoulder near the guardrail, hoping traffic would move around her. A set of tire skids crossed the lanes in front of her.

  Her skid marks? She looked, then let her head drift slightly left of the mark, into the oncoming lanes.

  A dark stain spread like a malignant cancer on the pavement. After all this time.

  She felt lightheaded.

  Rudy.

  She laid her head on the steering wheel, expecting to be pummeled with vivid and horrifying recall and hoping it would not happen. Dr. Harding was surely right. This could not be an event she wanted to remember. The amnesia was a mercy. The unknown was a deserved but endurable pain.

  She should practice putting it out of her mind, moving on.

  The pulse of a siren and a loudspeaker jolted her out of her daze.

  “Remove your vehicle from the bridge.” A gold sheriff ’s sedan was growing larger in her rearview mirror. She was too far out to back up, not legally any-way. She jerked the car into gear and hoped he would not ticket her. She eased out over the water, focusing on the dashed line, staying in the outside lane. He passed her, and she gripped the steering wheel tight in both hands, opting not to look at him.

  There was no other route back into town except to pull a U-turn, probably illegal, and cross the bridge one more time.

  She focused on breathing.

  It was not until she turned north toward Lakeway that she realized the delivery truck had not left any skid marks in his lanes.

  Wayne was already seated when Shauna arrived, distracted and distressed, at the Iguana Grill. The hostess took her to a patio table at the rail overlooking Lake Travis. Wayne stood and greeted Shauna by pulling out her chair.

  Not sure what this encounter might hold, she avoided his gaze by facing the lake, which was streaked with the rays of the setting sun.

  “I hope you don’t mind my sitting down already. The table came open and I jumped on it.”

  “Glad you did.”

  “You look great.”

  “I feel a little frazzled. Maybe I should go freshen up.”

  “No, I mean it. Your hair is windblown and your cheeks are pink. It’s a great look for you. The time out did you good. Enjoy the spa?”

  She offered him a noncommittal mm-hm and picked up the menu, feeling his eyes studying her face. It had not occurred to her to fabricate the content of her imaginary consultation before now.

  She set the menu down and leaned in toward Wayne. “Actually, I should tell you what happened.”

  He took her hand and kissed her palm.

  A knifing pain behind her eyes and a bright light cut through her vision. She saw behind the light a crowd of people running toward her, hundreds of people, a stampede in a swath so wide she expected to be trampled. She turned around—maybe she could outrun them—and realized that she was encircled. They rushed toward her, the center, in an implosion of arms and legs.

  Shauna braced herself to be crushed. She tried to focus on faces. Someone who would help her, sweep her up into the crowd so that she didn’t get sucked down under it. But they came too fast. She held up her arms and felt her knuckles hit limbs. Bodies jostled hers. She fell. She closed her eyes, started grabbing for someone stronger than she was.

  She seized a muscular forearm and held on tight.

  The crowd vanished.

  All except for one man. A brown-skinned Latino, handsome, in an attractive blue guayabera shirt. But his dark brown eyes were nearly black and popping with fury. She let go of his arm, and he frowned, distorting his sleek and symmetrical anchor beard.

  He was pointing a gun at her.

  She gasped, surprised but simultaneously aware that she might not be the target.

  Was this Wayne’s memory?

  Had this man threatened Wayne?

  Then the image vanished.

  All in less than a second.

  Wayne flinched.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She dropped her hand and blinked. Caught her breath. Decided to meet this mess she was in head-on.

  “I need to talk to you about something.”

  Worry lines creased his brow. “Anything.”

  “I don’t think your name is Wayne Spade.”

  Relief filled his laugh. “Is that all? You about made my heart stop. My name is Wayne Spade, legally anyway. I changed it a while back. Unfortunate family issue. Used to be Wayne Marshall. What kind of digging have you been doing?” His tone was good-natured.

  “I was actually trying to figure out . . .” Something entirely different, for sure. I was trying to figure out whether my dreams belong to you. Not an explanation that would roll off her tongue. As it was, he’d just reduced her mountain to a molehill. Maybe he could obliterate it completely.

  “Last night at the theater,” she said, “I overheard a part of your phone conversation.”

  He dropped his
shoulders and leaned back into the chair. He blew out a sigh. “You did? Well, this is awkward.”

  A woman approached the table and offered Shauna a drink. She asked for water, and Wayne asked for more time to look at the menu.

  When the server was out of earshot, Shauna said, “Can you help me understand?”

  Wayne looked out at the lake.

  “Are you protecting me from something? Something I can’t remember?”

  “When you and Rudy collided with that truck—your uncle Trent went ballistic. He cried foul long before anyone suggested MDMA might be part of the case. Said someone was sabotaging your father’s run for office by harming you both.”

  “Patrice suggested something similar. Only she blames me.”

  “Trent never thought the accident was . . . an accident.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me this? Why haven’t you told me?”

  “For your dad’s sake. I know you and your father have issues. But I wish you could have seen his reaction to what happened that night. He flew in from New Hampshire on a private jet. I honestly thought that the blow might kill him, both of you at once. If he thought the accident was an attack on his family . . .”

  Confusion turned up the heat in Shauna’s face. “So instead of figuring out if it was, you two thought it would be better for Landon if the world blamed me? Let me take the fall so my father can take the White House? Is that what I’m not supposed to figure out?”

  Wayne took her hands in his again, and his expression pleaded with her to understand. “We didn’t plan that, Shauna. But we can’t prove any alternative theory. Everybody tells the same story. Everyone’s accounts line up. The sheriff ’s investigation doesn’t contradict anything—not the reports, not the eyewitness testimonies, not the forensics, nothing.”

  “But why keep this from me?”

  “You would rather go around believing someone tried to kill you? Might try again?”

  “I don’t like either option.”

  “Trent will be really upset when he finds out I’m telling you all this.”

  “He doesn’t have to know.”

  “I offered to stay with you. Wanted to. Trent thought—” Wayne ran a hand through his hair.

  “He thought what?”

  “He thought that if he’s right about the staging, if anyone still has a mind to hurt you, you would need an ally close by.”