Kiss Me, Kill Me

by Maggie Shayne

  “What brought you to this town? What brought you to Sam?”

  “I hired a private investigator. I used a false name. I paid him—a lot—and I might as well tell you, I’m the one who offered the reward, as well.”

  “The reward that got Kyle killed, you mean,” Carrie asked her.

  “We don’t know for sure the reward was the motive, Carrie,” Gabe reminded her. “We do know now that it wasn’t Nate Kelly.”

  “We only know it wasn’t him alone,” Carrie said. “His time of death fits.”

  “It might not have been him at all,” Gabe insisted. “And we have no idea what Sam’s abductor’s motive is, seeing as the reward’s been withdrawn. Even if it was the money in the beginning, there was no way my mother could have known that would happen.”

  Carrie ignored him. “What did this P.I. find out for you?”

  The old woman sighed. “That there were only a handful of sixteen-year-olds with May or June birthdays in this town. I managed to get my hands on a copy of the school yearbook, and I knew as soon as I saw Sam that he was Gabe’s son.” She lowered her head, her face crumpling as she wept openly. “God, please let him be all right.”

  “He’d better be.”

  “I only wanted to spend some time with him,” she muttered through her tears. “I wasn’t even going to tell him. I just wanted to spend some time—” she sniffled “—with my grandson. You told me, Carrie, that he was meeting his friends at that ice-cream place and going camping for the weekend, and I just wanted a chance to see him before he left. I thought I might have to leave before he got back. So I went out there, and I waited for him, and I told him I had car trouble. I asked him to take me up to the falls. And now…” She choked back a sob, then lifted her head again.

  “I knew Kyle wasn’t Gabe’s boy as soon as I saw him. He looks nothing like either Gabe or Livvy. So that left Sadie or Sammy. And even though I felt right to my toes that Sam was the one, I wasn’t sure. At least not until I saw Sadie’s mother—she looks just like her.”

  “She looks like her minus years of alcohol ravaging her health,” Carrie said softly. Incredibly, she found herself starting to believe the woman.

  “I couldn’t tell the police all of that—not without giving away your secret, Carrie. And despite what you might think of me, I didn’t come here to ruin your life or your career. I only wanted to get to know my grandson, not to challenge you for him. At least, not once I saw what a good mother you were.” She sighed. “I was stunned to find you in town, too, Gabe.”

  “I knew you hadn’t come just to see me,” Gabe said. “At least that explains why you had the yearbook, with the faces circled.”

  “All the prospects were circled, then crossed off as I ruled them out.”

  Carrie looked into the front seat, met Gabe’s eyes in the mirror. “And you honestly didn’t know she was the one who’d offered that reward? Or that she was here in town?”

  “I swear, I didn’t know. I’d have sent her packing if I had. And that reward—hell, I thought she was trying to collect it, not pay it out.”

  “I didn’t know it might become a possible motive for a killer,” Rose said slowly. “I withdrew it as soon as I found out. God, I’ve messed everything up so badly that I don’t know how I’ll ever make it right.”

  Carrie shook her head. “If you’re not telling me everything, I swear to God, Rose…”

  “It’s everything. I swear. Except that I’ve been deliberately avoiding running into Gabe ever since I realized he was here.”

  Gabe was turning the car, pulling into the hospital parking lot, maneuvering slowly toward the E.R. entrance. “I still don’t understand what your motives were, Mom,” Gabe said. “If you were the one offering the reward, then you weren’t after the money. So what were you after? The notoriety? The fame?”

  Roseanna lowered her head as the car came to a stop at the E.R. doors. “I don’t expect you to believe me, Gabe. But I wanted to know my grandson. I wanted…to have the kind of relationship with him that I never had with you. And…and I guess that when I realized you had been denied your own son, denied even knowing you had one all these years, I saw my own actions in a different light.”

  “As much as I dislike the deal you made with my birth father,” Gabe said, “he wasn’t denied the chance to know me. You can’t take the blame for that.”

  “No, Gabe. You don’t undersssstann…”

  Carrie frowned at the woman, first because of what she’d said, and then because of the odd slur in her voice as she’d said it. She saw that Roseanna’s mouth was slack on one side and shouted, “Gabe, forget this! We need to get her inside now!”

  She dived out of the bus and ran to the E.R. doors, pushing them open and shouting, “I’ve got a head injury with a possible bleed! I need a gurney and an O.R., STAT! Someone page a neurologist. This patient is stroking out. Move!”

  Then she turned to run back outside again, only to see Gabe, his mother’s unconscious body in his arms, on the other side of the doorway. “What happened to her?” he asked.

  “I think there’s a bleed in her brain.” A nurse wheeled up a stretcher, and he lowered his mother onto it. “Pressure might be building up under her skull,” Carrie went on, following as the gurney was rolled into a treatment room. “We need to get her into surgery immediately to relieve the pressure and stop the bleeding.” She turned to the nurse. “You get hold of a neurologist?”

  “Chelsea’s on the phone with Dr. Kramer. They’re getting an O.R. ready upstairs. CT is ready for her now. I’ll take her.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  “Will she live?” Gabe asked, as the nurse began to wheel his mother away.

  Carrie blinked at the woman, unable to take her eyes off the darkening bruise from the killer’s blow to her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry, Gabe. I’ll do all I can. I didn’t mean what I said—you know I’d never hurt her.”

  “I know—it’s just—what is that?”

  “Hold up,” Carrie told the nurse. She bent closer. “It’s…it’s an imprint. She said he punched her in the face, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah. The bastard was wearing a ring.”

  “A ring with a figure eight embossed on it.” Carrie lifted her head and met Gabe’s eyes. “Ambrose,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Go, take care of her. I’ll get hold of Bryan.”

  She nodded, dipping into her pocket and tossing him her cell phone. “The number’s in there.” Then she raced down the hall after the gurney.

  18

  Ambrose led Sam into the tumbledown cabin and closed the door behind him, plunging them into inky blackness. Sam heard locks turning, then fading footsteps as the man, who seemed a stranger to him now, stomped away from him through the darkness. A second later there was a flare of light as Ambrose struck a match. It glowed orange on his face, then grew brighter as he held it to the wick of an old kerosene lantern.

  Then Ambrose paused, gave his head a shake and said, “Sit down. I’ll show you.”

  He brought the lantern to a rickety table, set it in the center, then looked around the room and found a chair Sam wasn’t sure would support his weight. “Sit,” Ambrose said again.

  Sam looked at him, then at the door.

  Ambrose pulled a gun from inside his jacket. He didn’t point it at him, but the sight of it made Sam’s heart pound harder.

  “Sit,” he said once more.

  Sam sat.

  Ambrose reached into his jacket again and pulled out a rolled-up newspaper, then unrolled it and laid it on the table. The headline was about the missing baby from sixteen years ago. “See?”

  “See what?”

  “The obvious. It’s you, don’t you get it?”

  Sam did, but pretended not to. “No, I don’t.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll clarify. At the beginning, before I came here, I was thinking about the reward. I’d find the missing child and get proof he or she was the one they were
looking for, and then I’d collect the money. It was almost too much to resist, you know? But then I realized that reward was only put there to get my attention.”

  “To get your attention?”

  “Yes. They had to make sure I would notice it, would look into it a little bit.”

  “They?” Sam frowned. “Who are ‘they’?”

  Ambrose looked bewildered for a moment, then looked at the tabloid again. “I knew her. Your birth mother. Olivia.”

  “Look, I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

  “I’m not confused!” Ambrose snatched the newspaper away, throwing it onto the floor, and got to his feet. “Why did you take off the tape? I didn’t tell you to do that, did I?”

  “No. I’m sorry. It was really uncomfortable.”

  “Well, I can’t have that. I won’t stand for disobedience. Do you understand?”

  “Okay. Okay, I—”

  “You will do as I say. You’ll do as you’re told from now on, or there will be repercussions!”

  “All right.”

  “I know you’re the one. I’m certain now. That’s why I dispensed with that suffocating ski mask. Don’t you see? You’re the only sixteen-year-old in this town who was born at the right time, besides those other two.”

  “Kyle and Sadie, you mean?”

  Ambrose closed his eyes. “But I ran their blood. It wasn’t my type.”

  “Maybe it was the mother’s type.”

  Ambrose’s eyes flashed. “It would be my type. I know that.”

  “How do you know that?” Sam asked.

  Ambrose lashed out and backhanded him right across the face, knocking Sam out of the chair and onto the floor. “Because I do,” he said. “I know.”

  Sam didn’t move as Ambrose paced away, locating a backpack in a dusty corner. He must have stashed it there earlier. God knew he’d had time. It was after dark. Sam guessed he’d been taken between one-thirty and two this afternoon. “I know because Livvy’s blood type was in the autopsy report, which was posted online by the National Insider. Kyle’s and Sadie’s blood wasn’t her type, either. So that only leaves you.”

  Sam said, “Unless the kid isn’t in Shadow Falls anymore at all. Did you ever think of that? This missing kid could be anywhere in the country. In the world for that matter. Are you going to kidnap every kid ever born in May or June sixteen years ago?”

  “He’s here. I know he’s here. I feel it. It has to be you.”

  Sam didn’t respond. It seemed safest not to say anything. This guy was completely nuts. And then he caught himself responding anyway. “Why did you kill Kyle? If you’re just trying to find your kid, why kill Kyle just because he wasn’t the right one?”

  Ambrose stared down at Sam, and his face softened as he reached out his hand and waited for Sam to reach back. When Sam didn’t, he lowered his own with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “My mother said you injected him with enough Benterol to kill a horse,” Sam said. “How was that not supposed to kill him?”

  “I misread the label.” He lowered his head. “I only wanted to keep him out long enough to take him into the woods and leave him there to be found by the searchers.”

  Sam remembered Ambrose being the one to find Kyle’s body. He remembered how far off the planned grid Ambrose had wandered, how far ahead of them he’d been. But he also remembered his reaction. He’d been sick, horrified. It hadn’t seemed fake.

  “He wasn’t supposed to die,” Ambrose said, and Sam thought there was a tear in his eye as he said it. “Neither was Nathan, but he saw the girl when she got away. And he saw me, too, running after her. He tried to reach her first, called out to her. Then he saw her fall, and he stood there, on the edge of that steep cliff, looking down at her. He had to die. He saw me. There was nothing I could do. I pushed him over and left them both.” He closed his eyes, shook his head slowly and pushed a hand across his brow. “I was so relieved that Sadie survived the fall.”

  And that was when Sam saw the roll of duct tape in the man’s left hand and the needle in his right.

  “Listen, if that stuff killed Kyle, it’ll kill me, too.”

  “No. No, it won’t. I checked the label more carefully this time. It’s point one zero cc’s, not ten. It’ll be fine. I just didn’t see the decimal point.”

  “Just tie me up again,” Sam said. “Just tie me up again and I won’t try to get loose. I promise.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be good enough, Sam. You’re too smart.” Ambrose smiled. “Just like your father.”

  Sam rose from the floor, backing slowly away and racking his brain to think of something, anything, to distract the man. And then something came to him. He prayed he was as good an actor as his drama club director kept saying he was, then grabbed his chest and started sucking in noisy breaths, one after another. He fell onto his knees and kept panting.

  Frowning, Ambrose moved closer. “What—what’s wrong? Sam, what’s wrong?”

  “A-a-asthma!” Sam stammered. “Need my in-in-in-haler!”

  “Where is it?”

  “H-h-home!” Reaching up a hand, Sam clutched Ambrose’s shirt and whispered, “Don’t let me d-d-die…Fa-Father.”

  And then he rolled his eyes back in his head and fell backward onto the floor, refusing to wake up, even when Ambrose bent over him, shaking him. The man didn’t inject him with anything. He didn’t bind him again. He didn’t threaten him. He held him in his arms, rocking him back and forth, and weeping. “I won’t let you die, son. I won’t let you die.”

  Batshit crazy, Sam thought. The guy was completely and totally batshit crazy.

  His mother was in critical condition and awaiting brain surgery. Gabe could hardly believe she was at death’s door. Suddenly she opened her eyes.

  He sat by her bedside, glad she had come around and he would have a moment to talk to her before the operation.

  “Oh, Gabe,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve messed up—badly.”

  “Yeah, you have. But I believe your heart was in the right place. I just…I need to know if there’s anything else you haven’t told me. Anything you’ve remembered…about the man who took Sammy. Any hint he gave as to where he might be going. Anything at all.”

  She shook her head. “No, there’s nothing. But I do have something I need to say before…before the operation.”

  “All right.”

  She closed her eyes. “You’ll hate me for this. But I don’t think that’s going to matter so much. The thing is, you’ve hated him your entire life, when there was never really a reason.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Roseanna licked her lips and met Gabe’s eyes. “Where is Carrie?”

  “She had to leave. She made sure there were plenty of people here to take care of you, but she had to go with the police, Mom. She had to go find her son. Our son.”

  “My grandson.” She inhaled nasally and closed her eyes. “Your father doesn’t even know you exist, Gabriel.”

  Gabe frowned hard. “I don’t understand. He’s been sending money all these years to keep you quiet—”

  “No, not him. His handlers. His attorney. His people, the ones he pays to take care of things for him. They never told him about you, Gabe. Part of our arrangement was that I would never tell him, either. If I did, the payments would stop.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

  She had tears streaming down her cheeks now. “I never told him about you. His handlers didn’t, either. They didn’t pay me just to keep the public from knowing, but to keep Sammy Gold from knowing. He never knew about you, Gabe.”

  Gabe’s heart seemed to crack in his chest. “He never even knew I’d been born? Mom, why?”

  “I think they knew the kind of man he is. All that stuff about family and honor and doing the right thing—that’s who he is, Gabe. It’s not a part of his act. It’s for real. If he’d known about you, he would have insisted on
being a part of your life. He would have confessed the affair to his wife, maybe ending his marriage, and for sure tarnishing the family-man image and doing irreparable damage to his career. Fans are…well, they can be terribly unforgiving, you know.”

  “He doesn’t know?” Gabe kept saying it over and over in his mind, still not quite sure it was for real.

  “He doesn’t know,” she said. “He’s never known.”

  “You didn’t tell him. You kept my father from me for money? All those years?”

  “I’m so sorry, Gabe. I’m so very sorry. I’d take it back if I could. I…I’m dying, Gabe. I’m dying.”

  “You’re not dying. Carrie says this can be fixed. It’s—”

  “It’s cancer. It’s inoperable. They said six months—three months ago. And it’s really getting bad now. The pain. The weakness. It’s hitting me harder than before, and it’ll get a lot worse for me from here on in. Until the end.”

  He stared at her, unbelieving. His mother…dying.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want your pity. But then this story about Livvy and her missing baby broke, and it just seemed to me to be a final chance to do the right thing. Find your son for you. To make up for robbing you of your father. And I did—I did—but then I lost him again.”

  “Sam’s going to be all right, Mom.”

  “I’d give every penny I ever had to make sure of that, Gabe. I swear I would. But I know it’s probably too little, too late.”

  The door opened and the pretty blonde nurse who stepped in said, “We’re ready to take you to surgery now, Ms. Cain.”

  His mother nodded. “I’m ready to go.” She looked at Gabe, looked at him hard. “I love you. No matter what you think, I love you. I always have, in my own selfish way.”

  The nurse tapped his shoulder. “You’ll have to step out of the way.”

  He did, and then the nurse pulled the bed straight out the door and headed down the hall to the elevators. Gabe followed and watched the doors close on his mother, then lunged and caught them before they shut all the way.