Kiss

by Ted Dekker

  She only needed five minutes. If Frank followed through.

  38

  The small warehouse sat fifty feet off the nearest dock. The narrow Houston Ship channel divided here, one branch cutting under Brady Island and the other heading north and west toward the heart of Houston. Shauna pulled the Jeep in at the back and grabbed her bottles of water before getting out. A mild onshore breeze ruffled the collar of Shauna’s blouse and gave her a chill.

  Walking around the building, she passed an exterior metal staircase that ran up the east-facing side to what she presumed were offices. Beneath the steps, she found an open door. A light over the top spilled out into the unpaved alley between this warehouse and the next.

  She set the water down against the steel siding before stepping in. The door closed behind her and created an echo that bounced off oil barrels and shipping containers. The air smelled burnt and dusty.

  “Back here, babe.” Wayne’s voice bounced around too, but even if she had known where it came from, she wouldn’t have followed it. She needed him to step outside with her.

  “I’ve come as far as I’ll go,” she said. “Where’s Miguel?”

  “I don’t know. Come back here and maybe I’ll tell you.”

  “You’ll never tell me.”

  “Getting smarter, are we?” She heard another door shut, and the sound of his hard-soled shoes on concrete. She pressed her back against the crash bar, not sure from where he would appear. “You know why I won’t tell you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Because I really don’t have the information.” He emerged from the right, popping out of shadows at the end of a row of containers. He wore dress shoes and a lightweight jacket.

  “I don’t believe you. You’ve never spoken a word of truth to me. Maybe not to anyone.”

  He nodded, shrugged. “I guess that would make the truth all the more confusing when it’s finally spoken.”

  She didn’t believe him. The whole point of this maneuver was to manipulate her—he knew exactly where Miguel was. Wayne took a step toward Shauna, and she shoved the door open with her backside. She spun and ran toward the Jeep.

  She had taken six long strides down the alley toward the rear of the building when Wayne took her down from behind, tackling her at the shoulders and driving her into the gravel. The grit grated her chest. The wind left her, and her vision clouded at the edges.

  Her spirit sagged. This was not what she had intended. She meant to get closer to the Jeep.

  Wayne flipped her onto her back, then straddled her waist on the ground, trapping her hands with his knees. She felt her throat gape, willing to take air in but drawing nothing. The muscles in her own chest would suffocate her if they didn’t relax.

  She finally took in a gasp. Wayne patted her cheek.

  “That’s it, Shauna. You stay calm now.” She gulped air, and he withdrew an object from his jacket pocket. Two objects. A roll of tape, and a paper packet that fluttered to the ground. He tore off a long piece of the tape, then used his knees and his free hand to set her on her side. She fought him, but he out-muscled her easily.

  “You could make this so much easier if you’d let me take care of you,” he muttered.

  Wayne bound her wrists, then turned her back over so that her hands were like a rock under her spine.

  His hands found the paper packet. It was a sterile packet of some kind, like the kind that held gauze. Only she feared this one held something less benign.

  He peeled the wrapper away and withdrew a patch that looked like an extra-large bandage. Then he opened the top two buttons of her blouse and slapped the patch right over her heart. He shoved the wrapper back in his pocket. Shauna’s breath quickened. Where was Frank?

  “That won’t take long,” he said. “Not as fast-acting as a needle to the bloodstream, but safer for me with all the thrashing you do.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you back to the beginning.”

  The skin under the patch burned.

  “I need you to tell me where Miguel is.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. I think I’ve figured out how this little mind trick you’ve developed works, and the sad thing is, I don’t think it’s very effective against your enemies. Which puts me at a nice advantage in a case like this. The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t make the drug very appealing on the foreign markets. So we need to work out that little kink. You and Miguel can help us with that.”

  “Don’t you have enough of a foreign industry going to keep you busy?” If Frank had ditched her . . .

  Wayne seemed surprised at that. “You found out about our little operation? Well, we’ll have to take care of that particular memory. Maybe there’s a way to target specific—”

  “Human rights violations? Trafficking in children? There are thousands of ways to break the law, Wayne. Why would you pick that one?”

  “Nice paycheck. Cushy lifestyle.” He leaned over and exhaled directly over her mouth and nose. “Pretty women.” Wayne hovered for a threatening second. “And the loyalty of the most powerful man in the world.” He shifted as if to stand.

  “If you think he’ll stay loyal when he finds out—”

  Wayne laughed. “You always were naive, Shauna. That’s what I like about—”

  A cannon that was Frank shot Wayne off of Shauna’s body and hurtled him sideways. The men wrestled and she heard Wayne shout. Shauna rolled to her knees and eventually found her feet. Frank, who was probably thirty pounds heavier than Wayne, found the top of the pile and lifted a fist.

  “Don’t knock him out!” she yelled. She rushed over.

  Frank swore and cuffed Wayne in the shoulder instead of the face.

  “My hands, my hands. Frank, help me get loose!” She needed to peel this thing off her chest. She needed to stay alert. Her blood was zooming through her veins now, carrying Wayne’s drugs to her brain.

  “Kinda busy here,” Frank grunted. He’d pinned Wayne beneath him but had yet to secure the man’s thrashing arms and legs.

  “Tape in his pocket,” she said, rushing to the stairwell. She checked the metal railing. It was so hard to see! She leaned her shoulder into the rail and dragged it over the surface, found an edge sharp enough to snag her shirt. She lifted her wrists to it and began to saw. She hoped she still had enough time.

  Shauna’s vision tunneled for a second, then cleared. She had to hurry before the full dose of whatever sedative was in that patch reached her head.

  She felt the tape giving way by the time Frank hauled Wayne to the stairs with wrists, knees, and ankles bound. She rushed Frank.

  “Help me!”

  He had her wrists undone in seconds, and she clawed at the patch, peeling it away and tossing it into the gravel. She raced for the water bottles, stumbled halfway there, then kept going. She could not mess this up.

  By the time she returned, Frank had Wayne inclined on the stairway, head on the bottom step, feet pointing toward the top. Frank held him by the ankles. Wayne’s shirt was bloody, and from the awkward position of his body, Shauna thought one of his legs might have been broken.

  “Was that really necessary?” She knelt on the ground at Wayne’s head, felt her equilibrium tilt, then level out.

  “You said I could do what I want.”

  “When I’m done.” Shauna unscrewed a bottle. Between the two, she had about a liter.

  Frank held his watch up to the faint moonlight.

  “I give you three more minutes.”

  “Let me have your shirt.”

  “What?”

  “Take off your shirt.”

  He peeled it off and tossed it to her. She wrapped it over Wayne’s face. He rolled his head around, but she secured the cloth by tying the arms behind his head.

  Wayne was groaning, from pain, she thought. She tipped the bottle so that water ran into his nose through the cloth. He choked and sputtered.

  “Remember when you tried to drown me, Wayne?” He
thrashed as she let another dump rush into his mouth. She gripped the hair at the back of his head to keep it steady. “Maybe you don’t, because your memory of that moment is mostly mine now. Your memory of stabbing me in the ribs. So I thought I’d re-create the moment for you.”

  She held the bottle up so that the water came out in a steady stream. She’d get a few seconds’ worth out of this, and that might be enough.

  Wayne thrashed violently, but she held on. “I need you to tell me where Miguel is, Wayne.”

  “Dunno,” he managed.

  “You do, and I need you to tell me now, because the whole world is about to descend on this place and haul your sorry self out of here.”

  The water continued to flow, and Wayne’s back went rigid.

  “He’s not gonna say a thing,” Frank said.

  Shauna lifted the bottle and stopped the flow.

  “Where?” she said.

  “Wilde,” Wayne said. “With Wilde.”

  She emptied the bottle on his face.

  “Not true,” Frank said. “Don’t believe it.”

  Shauna leaned in to Wayne’s ear as her first bottle ran out. She reached for the second bottle.

  Wayne gulped air.

  “I only need one word, Wayne. You know what that is?” She unscrewed the cap. “It’s please. You say please. You tell me you don’t want to drown. You beg me to save your life. Because otherwise, I will keep you under.”

  Wayne cried out. She tipped the next bottle over his face. “Just say please, babe.”

  This time, Shauna let the water flow, slow and even, enough to keep the sensation strong. Honestly, she didn’t care if he said please. She really didn’t need him to say anything. She only needed him to need her. When he acknowledged that she had the power to keep him alive, he would need her more than ever.

  He started convulsing.

  This would take all of a few seconds. She could find Miguel hiding out in Wayne’s mind in maybe ten more. Surely a trained marine could hold his breath for thirty seconds.

  Of course, from Wayne’s point of view, that wasn’t how this particular form of suffering worked.

  He was hysterical now, choking on his own need to stay alive.

  She was almost out of water.

  “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.

&
nbsp; 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?