by Ted Dekker
No. That was idiocy. All she needed to know was that she was beginning to manipulate this gift of hers more precisely. She had no business adding real stealing to the mix.
But her life was in this folder. Would it truly be stealing to take it? Shauna lay the thin file on Dr. Harding’s desk and flipped through it, scanning the woman’s notes on their meetings so far. No surprises jumped out at her.
She took the notes anyway, leaving a few other documents behind, then rushed the empty file folder back to its drawer.
She flipped back through the names to put it away.
Madigan. Matthews. Marshall.
Marshall, W.
Wayne? She set her own folder on the adjacent counter and, holding the spot with one hand, withdrew his file too. She opened it. One page.
At the top: Wayne Marshall, aka Wayne Spade.
The bathroom door opened.
Shauna snatched out the paper, married it to her own notes, dropped the folder back into place, and eased the drawer shut, hoping for silence. The gliders didn’t make a noise until she heard the slick click that explained how expensive this four-drawer cabinet was. She raced back to her seat, crammed the pilfered documents into her tote bag, and straightened up holding a tissue packet at the same time Dr. Harding emerged with a dish towel.
“I can’t say how sorry I am,” Shauna blurted. “I’ll leave the hospitality to you from now on.”
“No harm done.” The psychologist’s bright blue broomstick skirt was wet black across the lap. Shauna hoped the woman kept a change of clothes handy.
Shauna blotted at the damp chair, and her tissues disintegrated in seconds. “I hope this won’t stain.”
“I’ll add it to your bill.” Shauna straightened, her back to the desk and the file folder, and saw that Dr. Harding was smiling at her. She held out her hand to Shauna. “Let me toss those for you.”
Shauna deposited the tissues in her palm and took the dish towel. “If you have to have it cleaned, please send me the tab.” She bent over the chair again.
Dr. Harding didn’t answer, and when Shauna looked, she saw the red-haired woman bend over the counter to toss the wad in the trash can, then straightening, eyeing the folder on the surface.
She hadn’t. Oh, she had. She’d forgotten her own file.
“I must have left this out,” the woman murmured. Shauna pretended not to hear. She folded the damp cloth and placed it on the tea tray, then sat down and returned the tissue packet to her purse while she watched from the corner of her eye.
Dr. Harding walked to the cabinet and positioned herself between Shauna and the digital panel. She lifted her hand to punch in the security code and then paused without touching the keypad. Shauna held her breath.
“That’s ironic,” the therapist said, glancing over at Shauna. “Weren’t we just talking about how easy it is to forget things?”
Shauna had her answer. The memories collecting in her mind were not merely borrowed; they were stolen, lifted, filched, as absent from the victims’ minds as experiences that had never happened.
Back in the car with Wayne, Shauna found her phone on the passenger seat.
“Detective Beeson called while you were in,” Wayne said. “Wants you to come see some photos.”
“Now?”
“I told him we could come when you finished.”
“Let’s go, then.”
What would Shauna have done if Dr. Harding’s memory had included only patient names and unattached diagnoses? Was it sheer luck that she’d landed on the combination, or information Shauna had successfully targeted? Shauna really didn’t have a handle on this at all yet. What if Dr. Harding had unwittingly divulged her bank account information? Her PIN number? How would Shauna have verified the truth of that?
Would Shauna go so far with her need to know that she would commit a crime?
There was confidential data on Wayne stuffed into the side pocket of her purse. So she had already done something illegal. But besides that, how would the law classify her stealing of memories? Most likely she’d be laughed out of her handcuffs at any police station. But assaulting a person with intent to harm—now, that was no laughing matter, was it?
Intent to harm. Sheesh. She wasn’t harming anyone.
Was she? She of all people understood the pain and consequences of lost memories.
An image of her mother frowning at her with arms crossed flashed through Shauna’s mind.
This wasn’t the same.
No. It was not even close to being the same. She was in pursuit of truth. Someone had tried to kill her. She looked at Wayne. She needed to hone this gift just to survive him.
She needed to do this one more time. As was quickly becoming clear to her, she’d likely not have too many opportunities to put her hands on the memories of any one person. Her thievery left impressions.
So what next? What could she reasonably hope to find out with Wayne all but dancing on her toes? She didn’t want to fish for life stories and pin numbers.
And who could tell her about her own past? Patrice? That woman wouldn’t open up to her any time in the next millennium. Landon? Shauna, frankly, didn’t have the guts. Rudy? Too much of a gamble, even if she had access to him. Who could say what might or might not be intact in her little brother’s mind? He couldn’t afford to have her take any of it.
Her mind moved out of the house. Scott Norris? The reporter was among her failed attempts. Too big a risk to revisit that.
Who, who?
“What did she say?” Wayne asked out of the blue.
“Hmm?”
“What did she say about Houston?”
“Oh that!” Shauna had completely forgotten it. “She said it’s a great idea. She said you’ve been really instrumental in my progress, and she thinks it’d be good for me to stick with you.”
He smiled at her. “I’d like that.”
“Me too,” she murmured. His words were so easy to believe. She had to match them.
“Look, I’ll call the attorney today, try to move up your appointment with him. See how quickly we can get this behind us.”
Quickly, quickly. Yes. She needed to move fast. Faster than Wayne could move, if she wanted to avoid another Detective Beeson–type processing her murder as well as Corbin Smith’s. Faster than might be possible.
22
“Those are pictures of me,” Shauna said from the doorway, not sure what she had expected. Murder scene images, maybe. Not this.
They sat in front of a computer monitor in one of Detective Beeson’s labs, scrolling through a brief slide show of images. Five images of her, duplicates of the images she had seen on Corbin’s camera, but only five. There she was in the courtroom with Wayne, and dining with Wayne, and driving with Wayne, and moviegoing with Wayne. She winced at the photo of her kissing Wayne.
“These were found on the laptop we took from Corbin Smith’s apartment,” Beeson explained in his baritone voice. Her apartment.
“How many did he take?” she asked.
Beeson uncrossed his arms and shook his head. “Impossible to say without the camera. It seems like these are a select few of many, though. An edited few.”
Shauna looked at Wayne. She could not read his expression.
“Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Each of these was e-mailed to the same account at six-hour intervals across Friday and Saturday.”
“What account?” Wayne asked. “You have an address?”
Beeson produced a printout of one of the e-mails, which showed the header and the attachment. The message read only, “Snap out of it!”
Shauna looked at the recipient’s handle. Sabueso. She felt sick. Wayne studied the sheet, swore under his breath.
“You know the recipient?” Beeson asked him.
Wayne shook his head. “Which is only more infuriating,” he said.
“Was Mr. Smith stalking you?” Beeson asked Shauna.
She had expected him to ask her about the e-m
ail address, and so she could not have anticipated the actual question if she’d had an hour to imagine it.
“Stal—no. No! He was a member of the media, for goodness’ sake.”
“That day at the courthouse he all but sneaked up on you,” Wayne said.
“Like any paparazzi would.” At the same time, Shauna recalled Scott’s claim that her story was not generating much public interest.
“Tell me about that,” Beeson said.
“I was trying to get her out through the back,” Wayne said. “The man was there waiting, practically jumped her.”
“He didn’t jump me.”
“But he anticipated where you would be?”
“Obviously,” Shauna said. This revelation irritated her.
“Did you ever receive any suspicious phone calls?” Beeson asked. “Anything off-color, maybe any you thought were pranks?”
“No! Not since going home. He didn’t even know my phone number!”
“You sure? Because phone records show evidence of three text messages sent to your cell phone from his the night of his death. And a reply from you.”
Shauna looked at him and shook her head. Her nerves were zinging, cuing her to flee the room as fast as she could. With all her strength, she kept her feet in place. “What did they say?”
“Don’t know. Can’t find the phone. Just the records. Care to offer me your phone?” Detective Beeson had moved around the table and now leaned over the back of the monitor.
“Not without a warrant,” Wayne muttered. He was writing down Sabueso’s e-mail address.
His intervention on this point stunned Shauna. She looked at him, still finding it likely that he had sent the messages from Corbin’s phone after killing the poor man. So why wouldn’t he want Beeson to see the phone? Why was he still compelled to keep up his love-and-protect act?
She’d expected Wayne to hand her over to the authorities, along with Corbin’s camera and cell phone, which she had hidden in the closet of her bedroom.
“I’ll have one after lunch,” Beeson said. “In the meantime, let me get a clear picture here, Ms. McAllister: Mr. Smith was photographing you since the day you left the hospital, but he was not stalking you.”
“My father is a media darling. Corbin was a journalist—”
“A photographer,” Wayne said.
“He moved into an apartment you used to inhabit, but he was not obsessed with you.”
Shauna gripped the back of a chair. She had yet to sit down.
“Tell me again the nature of your scheduled meeting with him?”
“He claimed to have information about the accident I was involved in.”
“You said he wasn’t connected to your case.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Was the information incriminating?”
“I don’t know what the information was! And if it was incriminating, why in the world do you think he would give it to me?”
“Because he was obsessed with you. Because he wanted to extort money from you.” She dropped her head into her hands. “It would explain how he paid for the place.”
Beeson straightened and crossed his arms again. “Let me tell you what I think happened: Daughter of a wealthy politician is in a high-profile accident, accused of pretty serious charges. Most of the evidence county sheriffs are able to collect is circumstantial. Did you know there were no fingerprints lifted from the bottle of MDMA purportedly found in your car?”
Both Shauna and Wayne snapped their eyes to Beeson’s. “I haven’t met with my attorney yet,” Shauna said through tight lips.
Beeson’s mouth turned downward, musing. “Maybe the water destroyed the evidence, but from what I can tell the thing was wiped clean.”
“I thought that case was in the sheriff ’s jurisdiction,” Wayne said.
“We’re not so territorial as you might think,” Beeson said. “But I haven’t finished my theory yet: local reporter-photographer, whatever he is, realizes he is in possession of incriminating evidence—”
“What evidence?”
Beeson’s eyebrows rose. “—and rather than deliver it to authorities, he decides to take over your old life, stalk you, blackmail you.”
Shauna sank into a chair and Wayne put a steadying hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged it off. Word by word, Detective Beeson shredded her first impression of him as a softhearted rookie.
“You are furious. You want off this legal hook. You set up a meeting with him to buy his silence.”
“I didn’t.”
“And because he would overpower you in a fight, you let yourself into his home—for reasons I cannot guess, he has not changed the locks—”
“The door was open.”
“And kill him in his sleep.”
She shook her head.
“You can’t prove any of this,” Wayne said.
“Ms. McAllister, where is Corbin Smith’s camera?”
Shauna balked. She could not let Wayne know she had it. “It was gone when I arrived that morning.”
“When you arrived with Mr. Spade it was gone. Where did you take it the night before?”
“I didn’t,” she whispered. “I wasn’t there.”
“Shauna, babe, he’s fishing.” Wayne placed his hand under Shauna’s arm and directed her to the door. Her stomach seized, smothered in this room with a man who wanted to kill her and a detective who wanted to convict her. “Is she under arrest?”
Of course, if Shauna could get Beeson to arrest her, she might stand a chance of bending his ear without Wayne around to listen. But an arrest would also further complicate everything.
“Not yet.”
“Then she is not going to sit here and take this abuse from you.”
So much pretending.
“I’ll be in touch after lunch, Ms. McAllister. Stay in the area.”
The afternoon glare cut through the colonnade of river birch that lined each side of the McAllisters’ private drive. The trees hadn’t yet started to bud, and the naked branches cast shadows in lines alternating with harsh noontime sun. Shauna closed her eyes against the strobe effect. Exhaustion from her sleepless night and circumstances pounced on her.
“What should I do?” It was the third question Shauna had asked that Wayne did not answer. He gripped the wheel of his truck and frowned as he drove, apparently undecided about his own course of action.
Shauna hadn’t wanted him to answer any of the questions so much as buy into her act of dependence on him. She was even less certain than before, how-ever, that he bought anything from her at all.
“Did you really get three calls from Smith’s number?” he said after a full minute of silence, as if she hadn’t spoken a word.
“Text messages,” she said. “I didn’t know who sent them. I could delete—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Shauna thought hard on her answer. This question did not contain the usual warm concern. And what to do with her belief that he had sent the messages?
“You were so worried about the other stuff already. I didn’t want you to stop me from going to see—”
“What did they say?”
“I don’t—I can’t remember exactly.” She pulled her phone out of her purse, trembling. “I’ll show you.” She flipped the cell open and found the first mes-sage, handed it off to Wayne. He scrolled through, only half his attention on the road now. He spent more time studying them than it could have taken to read them. What was he looking for?
She feared his next question would be about Corbin’s camera. It was impossible that he hadn’t realized it was gone from his truck.
“Will Beeson really get a warrant?” Shauna asked.
“Yes. Did you reply to any of these?” She showed him. “Don’t erase any-thing. I don’t see how this incriminates you. If anything, it could help.”
“Shouldn’t we ask the attorney?”
“No.” He gave the phone back to her. “You should have told me about t
hese.”
“And what would you have done if I had?” Shauna hadn’t meant to sound annoyed, but there it was. Wayne looked at her sideways and frowned.
He measured his words. “I would have prevented you from getting involved.”
She tested the waters. “Involved in what?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think, Wayne. How could you have known that the texts were connected to Corbin?”
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that you”—she barely caught her recklessness before it ran away—“would have known. Corbin’s number. Would have known that he was in trouble of some kind.”
“And just how would I know that?” Wayne pulled into the drive and threw the gearshift into park, turned, and drilled her with his frustration. His eyes were hard.
She reached out to him to defuse the situation. She had gone too far.
In one swift motion, though, he snatched her wrist and yanked her arm toward him. She gasped, surprised both by his force and his anger. Why did Beeson’s accusations of her have him so rattled?
“Don’t try to smooth this over, Shauna.” Her name was a hiss between his teeth. “I have done my best to earn your trust, but if you’re going to go sneaking around because you think I’m the bad guy here, there won’t be anything I can do to help you.”
Shauna tugged on her arm but he held it fast. His breath was hot on her face.
“Tell me what you think my involvement with Corbin was.”
She could not come up with any lies. Only a half-truth. What would he do to her if she told? If she didn’t?
“I found Corbin’s phone in your truck.”
Shock replaced the anger in Wayne’s eyes. Shauna knew she was not as good a judge of character as Khai might be, but she believed fully that the news had stunned Wayne. His lips parted and he dropped her wrist. He straightened and stared out the windshield for a moment, and when he looked back at Shauna, all hostility had left him.
If he knew she was not telling the full truth, he would ask her what else she had found.
“Where was it?” he asked.
“Wrapped in my jacket.”
Wayne grabbed his laptop out of the back, then put his hand on the door and opened it. “Where is it now?”
