Kiss (16 page)

Shauna laughed aloud and the receptionist looked up from her computer monitor. A door in the side of the room opened and the man with a mane of auburn dreadlocks, the man from MySpace, rushed in, hand extended. With his other hand, he pushed his glasses back to meet his eyes.

“Ms. McAllister, sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. She stood and returned his firm shake, half expecting—half hoping for?—another jolting fall into a vivid scene. If she could avoid a dead faint.

His palms were warm and dry. He pumped her arm vigorously.

No connection.

She would have to try a different approach.

“I am so, so happy to meet you,” she gushed. “I’m a huge fan. I read every-thing you write. Everything I can find, that is.”

He blinked.

“Uh, thank you.” He seemed to recover from her forward personality. “You can’t believe how amazing it is to me that you contacted us. I mean, do you have any idea what kind of a fortress your father has up there in West Lake? It’s like they’ve got the phone lines rigged to electrocute anyone who calls. I haven’t been able to find out much about you or your brother since you made your break from Hill Country. I’m really sorry about him, by the way.”

He led her back through the door and down a narrow hall, walking fast and tilted, as if he were rushing headlong into a strong wind.

“So I take it our little family tragedy has become your beat?” she said with as much excitement as possible, taking long strides to keep up.

“Not exactly. But your dad sorta consumes the headlines. I don’t have a lot of competition when it comes to the family stuff.”

“Really? That might give you and me all kinds of unexpected opportunities.”

He squinted enough to tell Shauna he was not at all following her implications, then plowed on. The hallway opened up on one side to a newsroom that was noticeably quieter than she would have imagined. Keyboards clicked and low voices murmured. A few heads turned to look at her.

Scott reached a conference room on the left and opened the door.

“Even the whole Ecstasy fiasco.” He switched on the lights. “You’d be surprised how few people are interested in that.”

“Lucky for me.” Shauna selected a chair that faced the window and gave her a view of the newsroom.

“They say, ‘Shouldn’t be surprised that kids of a pharmaceutical giant have free access to the stuff.’ It’s run-of-the-mill. State of the union. Pretty sorry state if you ask me.”

“I guess it would be, if you think your presidential candidates are giving the stuff to their own kids.”

“Are they?”

Shauna tilted her neck and shook her head like a scolding mother. Or a teasing mistress. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. “Now, I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than that, Scott.”

“Unfortunately, intelligence is not contagious.”

Unfortunately, neither was her sweet-talk. He went to the corner of the room and lifted a half-full coffeepot off a warm burner. Shauna wondered how long it had been sitting there. He poured two cups black and carried them to the table.

“So where’d it come from?” he said.

“What?”

“The Ecstasy.”

“I’ve been wondering the same thing.” She wrapped her hands around the cup. “And if you’re the journalist I think you are, maybe you could help me find out.”

His eyebrows peaked like box flaps over his thin rectangular lenses, and he pursed his lips. “Ooh. Classic garden-variety denial.” He took a big gulp of coffee. “But I won’t harp on you. You didn’t come here to be abused.”

This was turning out to be a horrible waste of time. She would have to be more direct.

Did she dare?

“Who would willingly take abuse? I came here to ask a favor of you.”

“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.