by Ted Dekker
“No,” Landon said, shrugging Trent off.
“She’s going to bungle everything.”
“Shut up, Trent.”
Patrice appeared and gave an object to Trent.
“Please,” Shauna whispered. She squeezed Landon’s hands, and his fingers brushed Miguel’s ring. She saw him register it, then nudge it with his thumb.
“Miguel,” she whispered. “They’re going to kill Miguel. He knows everything.”
“Stop,” Trent said. “She’s full of lies!”
“And you aren’t?” Landon snapped. “Shauna may be the only one in this room who is telling the truth!”
“You’ll lose everything, you fool.”
“I’ve already lost everything. But maybe it’s not too late to get my daughter back.”
Shauna’s eyes registered the gun in Trent’s hand as it slashed through the air and crashed into Landon’s temple.
“Dad!”
Her father staggered.
Trent leveled the gun at Shauna’s ear. Landon shouted something.
Shauna dropped to her knees and threw her arms over her head. The gun-shot filled the room.
But the detonation came from behind her, from the door. And she was not dead, not hit, not even touched.
She turned and saw two black-suited men gliding through the open door, sidearms raised.
“No one moves.”
She tried to get up, but Landon’s security detail would have none of it.
“Down!”
“Leave my daughter. Take her.”
Shauna saw that her father had regained his feet and was pointing at Patrice.
The men glanced at each other.
“She’s at the heart of this mess.”
Trent lay prone in a pool of blood on the marble floor, gun still in his out-stretched hand. He’d been hit by one of Landon’s men. He did not move.
Patrice was fixated on the still body. Slowly her eyes lifted, shifted to Landon, then over to the agents. “Don’t be ridiculous. He was trying to—”
“Get her out of my sight!” Landon thundered.
The closest agent nodded. “If you’ll come with me, ma’am.”
“No.”
The other agent crossed to her, grabbed her arm, and jerked her across the foyer toward the hallway. “Politeness doesn’t work on this one,” he said to his partner.
She went unwillingly, uttering a string of vile protests.
“You okay, sir?”
“I’m fine. Help Joe, and get the authorities out here.”
The agent nodded and followed the other toward the kitchen, phone already in hand.
For a moment they faced each other, father and daughter, unsure. Then Landon extended his hand to Shauna and helped her up. Through the door-way, Shauna saw a brown SUV appear at the end of the drive, creeping toward Wayne’s Chevy.
“Are you hurt?” Landon asked.
Shauna hardly heard him. Her eyes were on the SUV.
“Miguel!”
She launched herself across the foyer and had taken two steps before Landon grabbed her arm and snatched her back. His grip was so strong that she smacked into his chest.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Helping you get Miguel,” he whispered.
She pulled against him. “He’s in that car!”
“You go and they’ll bolt, Shauna. They’re looking for Wayne. They see his car and think he’s here.”
He was right, she realized, and the knowledge intensified her fear.
“They’re going to kill him!”
Landon spun Shauna to face him and gripped her by both shoulders. “No, they are not. Do you hear me? I will not let them.” Shauna heard but did not understand. “Listen to me, Shauna. I need you to tell me where Wayne is.”
“The police have him.”
“Do these men know it?”
She shook her head.
Slowly, Landon released her, holding up his hands as a protective warning. “Wait here. Don’t move! They see you, it’s over, you understand?”
Landon snatched up the gun that Trent had struck him with. “What are you going to do? You can’t go—”
“Yes!” Then he calmed and searched her eyes with his. “Yes, I can. I’m not their enemy, you are. I can stall them until the police get here.”
“Your guards—”
“Would spook them as quickly as you would. I’m not supposed to be here.”
He stepped up to her, put his arm around her, and pulled her close. She could smell his cologne. Irrational peace washed over her, like the love of her mother.
Like the love of God.
Landon hadn’t held her this way since she was a preschooler prone to tantrums. Back then, they would end in her clinging to him while he stroked her hair until her heart settled. Now, he touched his palm against her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Shauna. So sorry.” He kissed the crown of her head and rested there for a moment.
She closed her eyes, still high-strung from the confrontation and wanting not to be. He broke away from her before she was ready.
“Don’t move,” he said.
He tucked the gun out of sight, behind his belt, and stepped out into the dim hours of the morning.
Shauna hurried to the window, watched her father crossing the lawn in the glow of the porch lights, and prayed for Miguel. She prayed that he was alive, that they could get to him soon, that neither he nor her father would be harmed in the midst of all that was about to happen.
The SUV came to a stop, abreast with Wayne’s truck. She half expected the driver to gun its engine and blast down the drive at the sight of Landon approaching. But her father was right. Wayne’s men didn’t see him as an immediate threat.
Landon walked up to the car and signaled for them to roll down the window.
After several seconds and a harsh tap on the door, the window slid down.
For half a minute they talked. About what, Shauna had no clue.
Landon was gesturing toward the house, perhaps suggesting the men come inside.
She saw the man in the passenger seat check out the red Chevy, then turn back to Landon and shake his head. He pointed at the house and then hooked his thumb toward the rear of the SUV as he talked to her father. He wanted Wayne to come out here?
The driver leaned forward as if to restart the engine.
Landon grabbed his door and yanked it open. The man started yelling. Landon leaned into the cab and dragged him out by the hair at the nape of his neck.
Shauna strained to hear any sign that police were on their way. What was taking so long?
Her father was familiar with firearms, as were most Texans, but the ease with which he withdrew Trent’s gun from his waistband and shoved it into the driver’s face surprised her.
What was he doing?
The man was begging Landon not to shoot him as he dragged him into the headlight beams at the front of the car.
The passenger was clambering out of his side and crouching low between the SUV and Wayne’s truck. He slunk toward the rear.
Miguel. He would get Miguel, use him as leverage. She had to get to him first.
Shauna flew to the door and leaped out onto the porch. She jumped the brick steps before thinking that she should have fetched Landon’s security detail for help.
She started screaming, hoping they would hear her.
She was halfway across the lawn in a full sprint when the first gunshot popped like ice breaking off a glacier.
Shauna stumbled. Dad?
God, please, please.
Landon was still standing. The driver had dropped to the ground, hands clamped over his ears, swearing a stream. Landon held his gun level between the two vehicles, aimed in the direction of the passenger. She saw smoke rising from the barrel.
Everyone was shouting. The two agents cleared the brick steps and hit the ground behind her at the same moment that she found her feet again. They bolted toward Landon.
She r
aced to the SUV. The passenger, screaming and clutching his bleeding leg, had collapsed at the rear tire. Shauna jumped over him. At the back, breathless, she threw open the hatch. Miguel lay in the cargo hold.
He was so pale, nearly folded in half and limp. No no no.
“Miguel?” She jumped in next to him and placed her hand over his heart, begging God for a rhythm. She couldn’t feel anything. She tried to find a pulse in his neck—so faint! But he was breathing. Shallow.
Distant sirens sounded on River Oaks Boulevard.
He was so cold.
She lifted his head into her lap and brushed his hair with her fingers, waiting for other people to come help her do what she could not. She was crying again.
“Don’t forget me,” she murmured. “Please don’t forget.”
42
Shauna lay on a cot in Miguel’s Houston hospital room, staring at the ceiling. She wasn’t sure what time it was, or what day, or whether she would ever move from this spot. She didn’t care whether she should shower, whether she would eat, or whether she could answer the phone if it rang again.
In four days, Miguel had shown no sign of regaining consciousness. Shauna grilled the attending physician on Miguel’s condition. They had no clear picture of his mental state. He was stable and would likely survive the ordeal, but precise details would have to wait until he was alert.
Drs. Carver, Siders, and Harding and various Hill Country Medical Center Staff had been arrested at their homes as they left for work Thursday morning, for their role in falsifying and misrepresenting the clinical trials of MMV’s experimental drugs. Their information was not all that useful to Miguel’s doctors. Apparently it would take more than four days to sort out the truth.
Dr. Siders admitted to injecting Shauna with MDMA while she was in the emergency room.
Frank Danson was arrested in Denver Saturday when he attempted to use one of Miguel’s credit cards. He was charged with Corbin’s murder, but Frank’s attorney planned to negotiate a reduced sentence for Frank’s “assistance” in bringing Wayne Spade to justice. The Jeep had been recovered, along with the pearl-handled knife and the medications administered to Shauna.
Trent Wilde died en route to the hospital, shot clean through the heart by the agent sworn to defend the senator. After a standard review, Landon expected Joe to be reinstated.
Confiscated phone records, e-mail messages, and documents from Wayne’s and Trent’s computers implicated Leon Chalise in the ring. He was arrested Thursday evening, ten minutes before he was due to board a flight to Brazil.
Patrice McAllister confessed to planting MDMA in Shauna’s car and apartment. She took the fifth regarding her role in the trafficking operation.
All charges against Shauna were dropped.
Wayne Spade thought he was a student at Arizona State named Wayne Marshall, late for football practice, hung over from a night of heavy drinking. His attorney was cooking up an insanity defense.
Without it, Wayne faced a possible life sentence for his leadership in the trafficking ring and laundering, in addition to a court-martial for his desertion in Iraq, and a second possible life sentence for his attempted murder of Shauna McAllister. If implicated as a coconspirator in the murder of Corbin Smith, he might face the death penalty. And he didn’t remember any of it.
Landon withdrew from the presidential race Friday morning, when Scott Norris’s first-scoop story hit the AP wires. Landon’s MMV shares bottomed out within a half hour of his withdrawal, leaving him with too little to pay restitution to other shareholders and to employees who’d lost their fair portion of the profits. His accountant estimated it would take years to climb out of the hole. His attorney said it was too early to tell whether Landon would serve a prison sentence for his role in the records tampering, but they could hope for a censure and a minimal term.
He stepped down from his leadership of MMV’s board by Friday afternoon, then resigned from his post as senator as people were leaving work early for cocktails. By Friday night, he had returned home, dismissed everyone from his staff except Pam Riley, and fallen asleep draped across the foot of his son’s bed.
Thirty-six hours to lose his career, his business, his livelihood, his wife, his best friend.
All he had left were his children, just as he had more than two decades ago when Xamina died.
Shauna watched her father’s humiliation without joy.
And when her own interrogation with every involved authority and a few psychologists temporarily ended late Saturday afternoon, she had taken up residence next to Miguel, collapsing on the cot, exhausted and tearful. Tear trails encrusted her hairline and neck.
She dozed on and off. It seemed she hadn’t slept at all. Someone was knocking on the door, and she wished the noise into silence.
The doorknob unlatched. A blinding beam of light fell across her closed eyes, and she crossed her arm over her face as a shield.
The door closed and someone walked into the room.
She smelled her father’s aftershave.
“Shauna, honey.” His voice held inflections she hadn’t heard from him before. Hope. Affection. Regret. With his free hand he lifted her arm off her eyes and fingered Miguel’s ring.
“Shauna, come sit up with us.”
For two hours Shauna sat by Miguel’s side with her father, studying every line and pore of her fiancé’s face, and holding his hand.
After an hour of silence, Landon said, “I went to church this morning.”
Shauna took her eyes off Miguel and rediscovered her father.
“I haven’t been to church since your mother died.”
Shauna hadn’t thought of church in years. She withdrew her hand and wiped her palm on her filthy jeans, nearly five days old now.
“The preacher was speaking out of the book of Revelation. I didn’t hear anything he said but the Scripture, ‘Remember the height from which you have fallen.’” He turned his eyes to Shauna. “‘Repent and do the things you did at first.’
“Shauna, honey, I’ve forgotten so many important things, things your mother used to hold in front of me. This is an honest-to-goodness starting over for me. I hope”—he cleared his throat—“I hope you will forgive me.”
Shauna stared at him, half believing as the years of hurt and rejection lifted for a moment. She wanted a new beginning with her dad. She’d wanted it all along. The words she wanted to say knotted in her throat, so she grasped his hand in hers and smiled at him until she could find her voice.
“Yes,” she said, “I forgive you.”
After that, neither McAllister said anything; their presence with each other said enough for the time being.
At seven o’clock, Shauna was driven out of the room by restlessness. She needed to walk off the what-ifs. What if Miguel never awoke? What if he awoke and could not remember her? What if the effects of the drugs Miguel and she had received were irreversible?
She borrowed Landon’s rental car and found a mall, bought a fresh pair of pants and a blouse without trying them on, showered at his hotel, and returned to the hospital. Landon had continued to sit with Miguel in her absence. She stopped at the cafeteria on the way back to Miguel’s room and shared a tuna sandwich and an apple with her father. Shauna managed about three bites.
Landon left at nine.
Shauna slept just under the surface of her awareness and woke before the sun rose. She resumed her study of Miguel’s face, looking for a way to remember everything she had known about him without having to steal it. She discovered nothing.
Nothing but a growing love.
At ten, someone knocked on the door. Shauna turned, and a young woman in a candy striper’s frock leaned in and whispered, “Can I get you anything? Something to drink? A blanket?”
Shauna stared. The girl was probably a mere sixteen, give or take. Her sleek black hair was pulled back into a tail, and her bronze skin glowed with the same youthfulness that radiated from her smiling eyes.
Her duotone ey
es. Brown and hazel. Just like Khai’s.
Shauna caught herself gawking. “I’m sorry. Your eyes. They’re beautiful.”
The girl giggled. “That’s okay. They’re a good conversation starter, you know? How many people do you know have heterochromia iridis? The way I see it, you can either make it work for you or you can be a freak. I myself prefer the former.”
Shauna nodded and managed, “Actually, you look like someone I know.”
“You mean the eyes? That would be amazing if I could meet them some-time. I mean, I’ve only met one other person in my whole life. It’s genetic, you know. My dad says it means I can see all the nuances of the world.”
“Smart dad.”
“The smartest.”
Shauna caught a look at the girl’s ID badge. Amy Mitchell.
“Well, if you don’t need anything I should get on.”
“Thanks,” Shauna said. “Maybe I’ll see you again? I could introduce you to my friend.”
“You bet.”
Amy left the room and Shauna continued looking at the space she had occupied. There was no way to be sure she was Khai’s daughter. The chances were onion-skin thin. And yet . . .
Miguel’s sheets rustled. Shauna spun. He was watching her.
“Miguel.”
He closed his eyes as if he had a blockbuster headache, then opened them again. He took a deep breath.
“Are you hurting? Should I get the doctor?” Shauna gripped the bedrails near his head and pulled her rolling stool closer to him.
He lifted his hand off the bed. No.
She rested her chin on her hands. Oh, she wanted to touch his face, hold his hand, kiss him! She wanted tangible evidence that he was not severely harmed.
That he remembered her. She couldn’t bring herself to ask.
He turned his head toward her and took a long look at her hair, her face, her hands.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
Shauna straightened and touched her bruised face with her left hand. Tears sprang to her eyes, but not because her skin was tender.
He had forgotten.
She swallowed and forced a controlled voice. “I tripped in a stairwell.” That was all she could manage.
