Kiss (20 page)

Khai nodded. “I speak it out loud every day. I came to Texas because Mexico is among the top suppliers of children to North America. The organization helped me to get a work visa. I had to learn English, earn money to live on. I waited and earned my citizenship. It has taken me twelve years, and I will keep doing what I can.”

“Why here? Americans don’t traffic in babies.”

“They do. More than five thousand babies a year. People pay
thousands
of dollars for each child—twenty, thirty, forty. More if their intentions are dishonorable.”

“You said your husband got two fifty for your daughter.”

“The money paid for these children does not go to the biological parents, you can be sure.”

“Why have you told me all this?” she asked.

“Because Wayne wants you to forget your pain.
You
want to forget your pain. I mean to tell you that doing that will only cause you more hurt.”

“I don’t want to forget my pain, Khai. I want to
live
. Something happened to me that someone else doesn’t want me to remember.”

“Of course they don’t! Listen to me. The only things worth forgetting are the offenses others have caused us. Those will distract you from living. But if someone tells you to forget your own history, you can expect he has his own agenda in mind. His own selfishness or his own intolerance for pain. Or some-thing far more harmful.”

“I haven’t forgotten anything
willingly
.”

“Then you will have to work harder than the average person to hold on to what is true. If you forget, Shauna, your suffering will rule you instead of free you.”

She resented Khai’s telling her what to do. The housekeeper couldn’t understand what Shauna had been through, the pain of being responsible for her brother’s condition and another man’s death, the fear of being hunted, the loneliness of facing it without confidence in anyone or anything, not even herself.

“I am sorry about your friend Corbin,” Khai said after Shauna’s silence.

“I didn’t even know him,” Shauna said.

“He cared about you.”

Shauna set her teacup on the night table.

“You
knew
him?” Shauna said, surprised.

“I don’t think our encounters went that deep.”

“What exactly were your ‘encounters,’ then?”

“Back in September, about a week after your accident, I helped a writer at the
Statesman
with a story on human trafficking over the Mexico border. We were put in touch by the organization that sponsors me. I participated in a group interview about a sting operation we had organized.”

“This is before you came to work for my father.”

“The sting was before, but I had been working for your family about two months when the interview happened. The writer brought a photographer with him, and he heard me mention that I worked for the McAllisters.”

“Corbin Smith.”

Khai nodded. “Our director wouldn’t allow him to take any photos, but he stayed through the discussion and drew me aside afterward. He said he was a friend of yours and that he was afraid for your life.”

“You trusted him?”

“I didn’t have any reason not to. He offered to help me with some . . . research I am doing, if I would call him when you were released from the hospital.”

“Research about your daughter.”

“Indirectly.”

“So when you found those documents at my house, you kept them aside for me because you understood that they were connected to Corbin in some way.”

“I kept them because they were hidden. I did see his name on the credit lines, but I never told him I had them. The way Patrice behaved! If she found out . . . then again, I’m not sure they were what she was looking for. Do you know?”

Shauna shook her head.

“Well, I thought if Corbin was right, and you were in some kind of trouble, and Patrice was also connected—”

“I doubt she’s connected to anything except her own interests.”

“She is not a compassionate woman.”

Shauna sighed and flopped back down onto her pillow. “This is a lot to process.”

“But you must figure it out.”

“Why?”

“Because all the pain of your history, all the things you can’t explain right now—all that contains the power to save lives. Including your own.”

“Just because yours did doesn’t mean everyone else’s can.”

“You have to believe it first.”

“I don’t know if I do. Who wants to hold on to their regrets, or their failures, or their disappointments? Why would I want to remember what might kill me?”

“Not hold on to them; be changed by them. Changed for the better. There is a significant difference, and it always leads to life. Remembering Areya saved my life.”

“That’s ridiculous, Khai! I’m talking literally here, and you’re getting all philosophical on me.”

“Do what you want then.” Khai stood and put her still-full cup back on the tray. “Forget. Turn your back on what you are. Make a little life for yourself that looks safe to you. I promise you: it will be poor and entirely unmemorable.”

For an hour Shauna stewed, experiencing irritation and epiphany and apathy in various combinations. Wayne intruded to ask if she wanted some dinner; he would go out for something if she was interested. She asked for a bowl of soup.

Shauna understood that Khai believed what she said. And she knew it was another reasonable argument that she would have to weigh in making her decision about whether to follow Wayne’s advice or Khai’s.

Even her own desires competed with each other. She really did want to live, and she feared for her life. And yet if someone would kill her for trying to uncover the truth, the truth must be compelling, valuable. She really did want to know what happened, ideally to acquit herself of the guilt she felt over her brother’s condition, and maybe even to keep herself out of jail, though there were no guarantees that the truth would do either of those things.

In the end, she took the coward’s way out by landing on what was less a decision than an ultimatum.

She had the files Khai had brought to her the night before. She would read them thoroughly, once, and see if they contained anything to spur her forward. If she finished and still nothing made sense, she would abandon everything and let the future lead where it may.

Shauna rolled off her bed and went to the dresser where she had stashed the articles and e-mails. She separated them into three stacks—articles, e-mails, a lone CD—according to date. The material spanned February to August of that year, beginning with Landon’s victory in the national primaries and ending roughly one week before the accident.

She read the first two articles, which focused, respectively, on Landon’s victory and the landmark health care reform bill he proposed that was so popular among the middle class. She turned to the third article and paused at the photo, a flattering shot of Landon and Rudy on the campaign trail. They sat shoulder to shoulder at an RV’s dinette, leaning over a single sheet of paper, intimate and focused while the other bodies in the background were a blur of motion.

The photo accentuated similarities between father and son that Shauna had never before noticed. Rudy and Landon had always looked alike, but the depth of resemblance in this image unnerved her. Their body posture, the tilt of their necks, the way in which their fingers clutched their pens—how could two men so dissimilar in personality be such twins?

“Senator Landon McAllister (D-TX) and son Rudy McAllister, deputy campaign manager, review changes to his stump speech en route to Massachusetts.”

Shauna looked for the credit line.

Corbin Smith.

She held her breath. Riffled through to find other photos. Many of them were by Corbin.

She looked at the article bylines, starting with the two she’d already read. Miguel Lopez. Miguel Lopez.

Every article in the stack was written by Miguel Lopez.

She reached for her cell phone, found her list of calls made, and scrolled down to Scott Norris’s number. She selected it. Would he be in on a Sunday evening? If he had caller ID, she trusted he might answer.

“Shauna! You call to set up dinner?”

“Did you hear about Corbin Smith?”

“Hours ago. You just hear?”

“Scott, I need to talk to Miguel Lopez. Can you tell me how to reach him?”

“Migu—You are all over the map! I told you yesterday that the guy vanished, disappeared, doesn’t come around here anymore.”

Shauna’s hopes took a dive off their high board into an empty pool.
Miguel
Lopez.
Scott had mentioned him.

“Yeah, you were only half paying attention then.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“I mean when did he disappear?”

“Oh, I dunno. A month, two months ago. Yeah. It was the beginning of September. Chief figured he’d skipped town to work for some bigger fish.

Lopez had been hard on the political beat, tagging along with your father now and then . . .”

Shauna didn’t hear the rest of what he said. Her accident happened September 1. Corbin knew her. Miguel knew Corbin. Miguel and Shauna were connected by this window in time that contained more mystery than reality so far.

Maybe Miguel was Corbin’s witness.

Maybe Miguel was long dead.

Her mind vaulted a dozen other possibilities.

“. . . sent a formal letter of resignation, no explanation. We all thought it was out of character, but you never really know, do you?”

Shauna jumped in when Scott took a breath.

“Where did the letter come from?”

“You mean was it from Lopez?”

“Really, Scott. I mean what city?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

“Could you find out?”

“Why would I?”

“Because you’re naturally curious.”

“Well HR is closed right now. It’s Sunday, so it will—”

“What better time to take a look than when no one is there?”

“You heard of breaking and entering?”

“You’re a brilliant man, Scott Norris. I’m sure you can find a loophole.”

“And risk my career for a source who won’t even talk to me? I don’t—”

“Think of me as a source with connections that might advance your career.”

His half-second hesitation cracked his resolve. “I want an exclusive about the scene at Smith’s.”

“How did you know I was there?”

“I’ve got connections too, you know.”

“Done. But all that comes later. Call me back?”

“Maybe.”

Shauna closed the phone and leaned back against the foot of the bed. If Lopez’s resignation letter took her to a dead end, where would she look next?

18

Shauna’s phone rang in the bedroom an hour later, while she and Wayne were finishing their soup in the kitchen. Khai had gone out for the night. Shauna excused herself to answer it. Scott Norris’s number showed on the ID.

“Yes?”

“Old home address on the letter, on the return envelope. Not helpful. But you might be interested in this: a Victoria postmark?”

Could mean anything. Dropped in a post office box en route to anywhere. Mexico, for example.

Looking for a particular Miguel Lopez in Mexico would be like looking for a one-cent error in Microsoft’s books. Impossible to find.

She sighed.

“Thanks anyway.”

“I still get my exclusives.”

“Sure. But later.”

“Don’t be a stranger.”

Shauna stood facing the wall next to her bed for a full minute, closed phone in her hands, before her mind remembered what her eyes had registered on two other occasions. Corbin’s receipt, the one he had scrawled his message on, was from a liquor store. Victoria Liquor. In Victoria? Or was that just a name? She had given that note to Detective Beeson this morning. If she racked her brain hard enough, she might remember.

Nope.

What was the other?
Victoria, Victoria.

The address on the paper that appeared in her coat pocket the day she arrived at the guesthouse.

The day Corbin had confronted her outside the courthouse.

She recalled his awkward toe-stomping. Had he dropped the address into her jacket then? She hurried into her closet to find it.

“Everything okay?”

She whirled. Wayne leaned against the door frame. “Yeah.”

“Who called so late?”

Why did she feel relief that she’d stowed away the newspaper articles before he returned with the meal?

“Wrong number.”

Wayne didn’t challenge her, but his eyes didn’t believe her either. Instead he said, “I called Trent today to explain why I spilled the beans last night.”

“And?”

“He’s worried about you.”

“I guess that’s better than being angry at you.”

“I’ll say. You should give him a call tomorrow. Put his mind at ease.” He gestured toward the living room sofa. “Up for some TV? Get your mind off things? We can avoid the news channels.”

She straightened a blouse on its hanger. “I’m sorry. I’m so tired—I’ve been lying in bed all day and I’m exhausted.” She tried a halfhearted laugh. “How does that work? You go ahead though. Maybe tomorrow we can do something?”

“I understand. A good night’s sleep does wonders for the perspective. Sleep well then.”