Kiss (26 page)

“How many did he take?” she asked.

Beeson uncrossed his arms and shook his head. “Impossible to say without the camera. It seems like these are a select few of many, though. An edited few.”

Shauna looked at Wayne. She could not read his expression.

“Why do you think that?” she asked.

“Each of these was e-mailed to the same account at six-hour intervals across Friday and Saturday.”

“What account?” Wayne asked. “You have an address?”

Beeson produced a printout of one of the e-mails, which showed the header and the attachment. The message read only, “Snap out of it!”

Shauna looked at the recipient’s handle.
Sabueso.
She felt sick. Wayne studied the sheet, swore under his breath.

“You know the recipient?” Beeson asked him.

Wayne shook his head. “Which is only more infuriating,” he said.

“Was Mr. Smith stalking you?” Beeson asked Shauna.

She had expected him to ask her about the e-mail address, and so she could not have anticipated the actual question if she’d had an hour to imagine it.

“Stal—
no.
No! He was a member of the media, for goodness’ sake.”

“That day at the courthouse he all but sneaked up on you,” Wayne said.

“Like any paparazzi would.” At the same time, Shauna recalled Scott’s claim that her story was not generating much public interest.

“Tell me about that,” Beeson said.

“I was trying to get her out through the back,” Wayne said. “The man was there waiting, practically jumped her.”

“He didn’t
jump
me.”

“But he anticipated where you would be?”

“Obviously,” Shauna said. This revelation irritated her.

“Did you ever receive any suspicious phone calls?” Beeson asked. “Anything off-color, maybe any you thought were pranks?”

“No! Not since going home. He didn’t even know my phone number!”

“You sure? Because phone records show evidence of three text messages sent to your cell phone from his the night of his death. And a reply from you.”

Shauna looked at him and shook her head. Her nerves were zinging, cuing her to flee the room as fast as she could. With all her strength, she kept her feet in place. “What did they say?”

“Don’t know. Can’t find the phone. Just the records. Care to offer me your phone?” Detective Beeson had moved around the table and now leaned over the back of the monitor.

“Not without a warrant,” Wayne muttered. He was writing down
Sabueso’s
e-mail address.

His intervention on this point stunned Shauna. She looked at him, still finding it likely that he had sent the messages from Corbin’s phone after killing the poor man. So why wouldn’t he want Beeson to see the phone? Why was he still compelled to keep up his love-and-protect act?

She’d expected Wayne to hand her over to the authorities, along with Corbin’s camera and cell phone, which she had hidden in the closet of her bedroom.

“I’ll have one after lunch,” Beeson said. “In the meantime, let me get a clear picture here, Ms. McAllister: Mr. Smith was photographing you since the day you left the hospital, but he was not stalking you.”

“My father is a media darling. Corbin was a journalist—”

“A photographer,” Wayne said.

“He moved into an apartment you used to inhabit, but he was not obsessed with you.”

Shauna gripped the back of a chair. She had yet to sit down.

“Tell me again the nature of your scheduled meeting with him?”

“He claimed to have information about the accident I was involved in.”

“You said he wasn’t connected to your case.”

“He
wasn’t
.”

“Was the information incriminating?”

“I don’t
know
what the information was! And if it was incriminating, why in the world do you think he would give it to me?”

“Because he was obsessed with you. Because he wanted to extort money from you.” She dropped her head into her hands. “It would explain how he paid for the place.”

Beeson straightened and crossed his arms again. “Let me tell you what I think happened: Daughter of a wealthy politician is in a high-profile accident, accused of pretty serious charges. Most of the evidence county sheriffs are able to collect is circumstantial. Did you know there were no fingerprints lifted from the bottle of MDMA purportedly found in your car?”

Both Shauna and Wayne snapped their eyes to Beeson’s. “I haven’t met with my attorney yet,” Shauna said through tight lips.

Beeson’s mouth turned downward, musing. “Maybe the water destroyed the evidence, but from what I can tell the thing was wiped clean.”

“I thought that case was in the sheriff ’s jurisdiction,” Wayne said.

“We’re not so territorial as you might think,” Beeson said. “But I haven’t finished my theory yet: local reporter-photographer, whatever he is, realizes he is in possession of incriminating evidence—”

“What evidence?”

Beeson’s eyebrows rose. “—and rather than deliver it to authorities, he decides to take over your old life, stalk you, blackmail you.”

Shauna sank into a chair and Wayne put a steadying hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged it off. Word by word, Detective Beeson shredded her first impression of him as a softhearted rookie.

“You are furious. You want off this legal hook. You set up a meeting with him to buy his silence.”

“I didn’t.”

“And because he would overpower you in a fight, you let yourself into his home—for reasons I cannot guess, he has not changed the locks—”

“The door was open.”

“And kill him in his sleep.”

She shook her head.

“You can’t prove any of this,” Wayne said.

“Ms. McAllister, where is Corbin Smith’s camera?”

Shauna balked. She could not let Wayne know she had it. “It was gone when I arrived that morning.”

“When you arrived with Mr. Spade it was gone. Where did you take it the night before?”

“I didn’t,” she whispered. “I wasn’t there.”

“Shauna, babe, he’s fishing.” Wayne placed his hand under Shauna’s arm and directed her to the door. Her stomach seized, smothered in this room with a man who wanted to kill her and a detective who wanted to convict her. “Is she under arrest?”

Of course, if Shauna could get Beeson to arrest her, she might stand a chance of bending his ear without Wayne around to listen. But an arrest would also further complicate everything.

“Not yet.”

“Then she is not going to sit here and take this abuse from you.”

So much pretending.

“I’ll be in touch after lunch, Ms. McAllister. Stay in the area.”

The afternoon glare cut through the colonnade of river birch that lined each side of the McAllisters’ private drive. The trees hadn’t yet started to bud, and the naked branches cast shadows in lines alternating with harsh noontime sun. Shauna closed her eyes against the strobe effect. Exhaustion from her sleepless night and circumstances pounced on her.

“What should I do?” It was the third question Shauna had asked that Wayne did not answer. He gripped the wheel of his truck and frowned as he drove, apparently undecided about his own course of action.

Shauna hadn’t wanted him to answer any of the questions so much as buy into her act of dependence on him. She was even less certain than before, how-ever, that he bought anything from her at all.

“Did you really get three calls from Smith’s number?” he said after a full minute of silence, as if she hadn’t spoken a word.

“Text messages,” she said. “I didn’t know who sent them. I could delete—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Shauna thought hard on her answer. This question did not contain the usual warm concern. And what to do with her belief that he had sent the messages?

“You were so worried about the other stuff already. I didn’t want you to stop me from going to see—”

“What did they say?”

“I don’t—I can’t remember exactly.” She pulled her phone out of her purse, trembling. “I’ll show you.” She flipped the cell open and found the first mes-sage, handed it off to Wayne. He scrolled through, only half his attention on the road now. He spent more time studying them than it could have taken to read them. What was he looking for?

She feared his next question would be about Corbin’s camera. It was impossible that he hadn’t realized it was gone from his truck.

“Will Beeson really get a warrant?” Shauna asked.

“Yes. Did you reply to any of these?” She showed him. “Don’t erase any-thing. I don’t see how this incriminates you. If anything, it could help.”

“Shouldn’t we ask the attorney?”

“No.” He gave the phone back to her. “You should have told me about these.”

“And what would you have done if I had?” Shauna hadn’t meant to sound annoyed, but there it was. Wayne looked at her sideways and frowned.

He measured his words. “I would have prevented you from getting involved.”

She tested the waters. “Involved in what?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think, Wayne. How could you have known that the texts were connected to Corbin?”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that you”—she barely caught her recklessness before it ran away—“would have known. Corbin’s number. Would have known that he was in trouble of some kind.”

“And just how would I know that?” Wayne pulled into the drive and threw the gearshift into park, turned, and drilled her with his frustration. His eyes were hard.

She reached out to him to defuse the situation. She had gone too far.

In one swift motion, though, he snatched her wrist and yanked her arm toward him. She gasped, surprised both by his force and his anger. Why did Beeson’s accusations of her have him so rattled?

“Don’t try to smooth this over, Shauna.” Her name was a hiss between his teeth. “I have done my best to earn your trust, but if you’re going to go sneaking around because you think I’m the bad guy here, there won’t be anything I can do to help you.”

Shauna tugged on her arm but he held it fast. His breath was hot on her face.

“
Tell me
what you think my involvement with Corbin was.”

She could not come up with any lies. Only a half-truth. What would he do to her if she told? If she didn’t?

“I found Corbin’s phone in your truck.”

Shock replaced the anger in Wayne’s eyes. Shauna knew she was not as good a judge of character as Khai might be, but she believed fully that the news had stunned Wayne. His lips parted and he dropped her wrist. He straightened and stared out the windshield for a moment, and when he looked back at Shauna, all hostility had left him.

If he knew she was not telling the full truth, he would ask her what else she had found.

“Where was it?” he asked.

“Wrapped in my jacket.”

Wayne grabbed his laptop out of the back, then put his hand on the door and opened it. “Where is it now?”

“It’s in my room.”

“And what a perfect place for it. Why don’t you set it out on the table for Beeson to find?”

His condescension stung. She stared at him.

“Go get it,” he said. Then he stormed into the house.

Shauna stumbled up the steps after him, thinking through how to retrieve the phone without also showing him the camera.

What was she going to do with the camera?

Wayne took his laptop into his room first, giving Shauna just enough time to grab a tissue and get the phone out of the WalMart bag that she’d hidden on the floor in the back of her closet. She rushed out her bedroom door, right into Wayne’s chest.

She held the phone out to him, wrapped in the tissue. He evaluated this, then took it from her while looking her in the eye.

“You’re smarter than a lot of folks give you credit for, Shauna.”

She was too afraid to be insulted.

He leaned in to her and placed a cold kiss on her forehead.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll make some calls.”

He returned to his room and closed the door.

Shauna moved immediately. She had only minutes, if not seconds. She rushed to her closet, collected the camera, and burst into Khai’s room through their shared bathroom without knocking.

“Khai, I need your help.”

Khai was putting clean linens on the bed. Shauna shoved Corbin’s bundled camera into the woman’s hands.

“This camera belonged to Corbin Smith. I need you to take it to a detective at the police department for me.”

“How did you—”

“I found it in Wayne’s truck. I don’t have time to explain, but I need you to take this down now. Do not tell Wayne.”

Khai lifted her eyebrows but didn’t ask.

“The detective is Beeson. Tell him that I found this in Wayne’s truck. Tell him what you told me about how Corbin was helping you, that the pictures on it might connect some dots—” And in that split second, some dots connected in Shauna’s own mind. “What was Corbin helping you to investigate?”

“I volunteered him to help the organization document a suspected human trafficking ring in Houston. He was working with police up there.”

“Human trafficking?” Shauna murmured. “What had he found out?”

“I never knew. It’s only been a couple weeks. We didn’t talk much.”