Kiss (30 page)

Could they create a new trauma? A new coma? Was the memory wipeout contingent on dosage? On mental distress? Could they determine to wipe out six months, eight months, a year? How far could they go without actually killing her?

This, not murder, was what terrified Shauna.

Her wrists and tailbone had gone numb, so she adjusted her position, cracking her head against the bottom of the vanity counter.

The blow stung and brought tears to her eyes. She leaned her cheek against the cool pipe until the pain faded.

A half hour passed before Wayne came back in. He cut off her plastic cuffs and let her stretch out. He went to the sliding door that led out onto a third-floor balcony, raised the curtain, and looked outside.

“I could use something to eat,” she said, sitting on the queen-sized bed.

“You’ll stay here tonight, then tomorrow you’ll go with Trent up to Houston.”

“Why tomorrow?”

“Because he’s having a few things brought down for you.”

“Like?”

He dropped the curtain.

“As I said before, it would help us to know exactly how much you remember. Or don’t.”

“You wouldn’t believe anything I told you.”

“That depends.”

“Help me out here.”

“Trent is both unwilling to travel with you in your current headstrong state and unwilling to administer another round of narcotics—”

“
Narcotics?
”

“There are several different ways to get us all back to square one. That’s the easiest option.”

Shauna couldn’t speak.

“But that’s also risky. If it’s true you can take memories from people—”

“I have plenty of yours.”

“And I wouldn’t know it, would I?”

“I think you
do
know it. You know without a doubt that I know things I couldn’t otherwise, and that I’ve asked questions about you that no one else would think to ask.”

Wayne dropped onto the bed next to hers and faced her. “This is what I hate about the human brain. It’s so hard to quantify. But as I was saying,
if
it’s true, Trent doesn’t want to lose any data about this . . . bizarre side effect.”

“Then all he has to do is keep me drug free.”

“You understand why that’s not reasonable for us.”

“Why don’t you kill me then?” she whispered.

“Many reasons. One being that you are valuable research now.”

“Most lab rats die sooner than later.”

“And if I can prevent that from happening, I will.”

“Don’t insult me.”

“I only kill when it’s absolutely necessary. I never wanted to kill you.”

“Oh? So then why did you try?”

Wayne stood, looked around as if he would find the appropriate words somewhere, then managed to say, “I am considerably in debt to your uncle.”

“He’s not my uncle! And yes you are in his debt. He paid your way out of a court-martial and now you’ve got less control over your own life than you ever did in the military.”

The light in his eyes went flat, and Shauna realized that her words had struck their mark.

Wayne sighed, loud, dramatic, and leaned over to open the drawer of the nightstand between the two beds. He withdrew a syringe and a vial. Shauna recoiled.

“Please don’t.”

“Nothing in here but a sleep aid,” he said, pricking the vial with the needle and vacuuming the suspension into the plastic tube. “Just something to keep you from getting all upset over nothing.”

“I don’t need it.”

“You’ll have it anyway.”

She jumped up for the door, but he was more agile and lithe than she. He secured her before she even left the bed. Her reflexive scream was cut off by his arm, which he threw down across her throat at the same time that he pinned both her legs down with his shin.

“Believe me”—his words slapped her face—“if it were strategically wise to kill you, I would have done it awhile ago.”

He plunged the needle into her thigh and she groaned at the burn.

“Correction,” he said. “I do
really
want to kill you. So don’t give me any more excuses.” He released her, and she rolled over to face the wall.

After a half minute of silence, Wayne left the room.

At the click of the door, Shauna tumbled off the bed and onto her feet. How much time did she have before the stuff kicked in? She reached the closed door and opened it wide, ready to face Wayne and Trent with nothing but her wits and luck and dare them to try to keep her here.

The door screeched on its hinges.

They were not there. The door to the bedroom on the opposite side of the suite was closing. Wayne? Maybe.

She felt her muscles begin to sag.

A man rose from the love seat, a pistol holstered under his left armpit.

She recognized this man but could not come up with a name for his face, nor a context in which she might have known him. She didn’t spend much time on that, however, recognizing in his body language a clear message:
I am
your babysitter.
This man was the reason Wayne was free to leave her uncuffed in the bedroom.

He crossed his arms and looked down at her. He was easily over six feet. She was tall herself but less than half his weight, she estimated. His white shirt and tie, black slacks, and glistening shoes suggested FBI, but the scotch glass on the coffee table, more than half-full, contradicted this image of on-duty, law-abiding, law-enforcement officer.

Shauna looked at the door that exited onto the hall and mentally calculated whether she could reach it before he did, if she chose that option.

The man bent over, picked up his drink, and took a swig of the alcohol, withdrew a knife from his belt with his other hand, and threw it at the door. It embedded itself in the frame at what would have been the height of her ears, were she standing there.

The knife had a pearl handle.

Where had she seen that pearl—?

“You were stalking me at the park,” she blurted.

The man snickered. “Not you, my boss.”

His boss?

“Wayne owes me some money.”

“Wayne? Why?”

He looked at her as if she didn’t really expect him to answer.

“You’re working for him now anyway?” she asked. What kind of business relationship did these two men have? Her head felt thick. She put her fingers to her temple.

“You ask too many questions.” He sat back down and put his feet up on the table.

“What? He promise to pay you later? Wayne’s a liar, y’know.” She sensed the room begin to tilt.

“Yeah. We’re surrounded by liars, aren’t we? Get back in your room now, before I have to take you in.”

Shauna closed the door before she fell back into the bedroom, not even able to reach the bed.

We’re surrounded by liars.
Where had she heard that before?

27

Someone kicked her out of her stupor, tripped over her body, and grunted his surprise. She had been dreaming of football, of all things, of backyard scrimmages and scuffles, of bodies hitting each other without the protection of bulky gear.

At the physical sensation of being tackled, new images swept the athletics aside. Drugs and needles and scowling men in lab coats accelerated her pulse and warmed her bloodstream. She rolled onto her back and stared the black room in the heart, so dark in her own mind that she couldn’t make out shadows.

She heard herself breathing hard, scared.

“Wayne?” she said.

A male voice whispered something but she could not distinguish the words. She was so frightened, but not clearheaded enough to think her fear through. She noticed tears on her face, running into her ears.

Firm hands gripped her arms and hauled her up into a sitting position. Her equilibrium lost its footing, and had she not been held up, she would have fallen right over. She felt her neck tilt backward and snap back up, barely hinged.

The voice spoke again. More whispering.

She heard herself mumbling. “IdunnoIdunnoIdunno . . .”

He laid her down gently and left her, then reappeared in the form of chilling water, splashed all over her face and neck. She gasped and opened her eyes wide, still seeing nothing in the black room.

“You need to wake up.” Low, barely audible.

Shauna couldn’t will her body to move. Her tears started flowing, but she didn’t know why.

A hand clamped down over her mouth.

“Sh. You’ll wake him up.”

Who? Who would wake up?

“Get up.”

The demands twisted her fear into fury. She was aggravated, disoriented. She was wet and cold.

“No,” she managed. She thought she sounded drunk.

He left her alone again—seconds or minutes, she wasn’t sure—and found it within her brain to wonder if she would be doused again. She didn’t care.

He returned and gripped the front of her blouse, pulling her upright by the collar. When she was vertical, he emptied a bucket of ice down the front of her shirt.

Her breath left her, and she went rigid. The ice pooled in her lap and seeped into her slacks. She shouted her protest. The hand clamped down on her lips again until she quieted.

The dropped bucket bounced silently off her leg and onto the carpet. She sensed smooth palms grasp her wrists. The man tugged on her arms until they threatened to leave the sockets, and her body raised off the ground.

“Stand up or I’ll have to drag you out of here by one arm, lovely.” The words reached into Shauna’s consciousness clearly this time, and she allowed herself to believe that he did not mean to harm her.
Lovely?
She tried to remember what the word meant. She focused on her knees. Bend. Lift. Straighten.

Sway.

She leaned in to a sturdy body and sagged.

“Wayne?” she said again. She knew it wasn’t him, but she couldn’t think of any other names.

“Not on your life,” he said.

“I need more water,” she muttered.

Together they wobbled a few steps, to the vanity, she thought, and she heard water running. This time when he threw it in her face, she was sure he got himself wet as well.

She found this unreasonably funny.

And also, underneath her giggles, which she tried so hard to stifle, illuminating.

Shauna took a deep breath and tried to focus her eyes. Still too dark for her to make out his face.

“What next?” she said.

“We leave.”

“Race you.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“I’m fast.”

“I need you to shut up now.”

She nodded, but then thought he couldn’t see her. So she said, “Okay,” and kept an arm around his waist as he half guided, half dragged her toward the door.

He opened it onto equal blackness. The creaking hinge was all the prompting her mind needed to fill in the details of the room. Chandeliers. Scotch. Knife. She wondered where FBI-not-FBI was.

“Where are—?” There was the hand over her mouth again. So annoying.

Her head was taking way too long to clear out. Right then and there, she decided she really wanted to go back to sleep.

Water dripped from her hair onto her shoulders.

Her body was moving toward the door, then a sharp object clipped her in the thigh. Hard enough to bruise.

“Ow!” She hadn’t meant to shout, but there it was.

Her companion swore and dropped his own efforts at silence. He shoved her into the wall, using it to help hold her up while he fumbled for the doorknob.

“You don’t have to be—” Shauna began.

He threw the door open and whipped her out into the hallway, spraining her elbow in the process. She whacked her wrist on the door frame as her limbs slipped through, still not fully connected to her brain.

There was the pain, and then, in rapid succession, three other observations that struck her like hailstones and finally awakened her from her bleary state.

The first was a blond watchman crumpled in the hall outside the door.

The second was the face of her cohort, one frowning Miguel Lopez.

And the third was the sound of an opening door inside the room, accompanied by a shout.

“Show me how fast you can run,” Miguel said, yanking her away from the elevator and toward a red exit sign.

Run down stairs?

Her legs somehow remembered what to do, though Miguel would not let go of her wrist and would have pulled her along regardless, she thought. Either that or he would have amputated her hand with his tourniquet grip and run off into the night.

They both fell into the crash bar of the exit at the same time Wayne Spade threw the hotel room door open and spotted them at the end of the hall. He lifted a gun in their direction, but didn’t fire before they fell through.

“Idiot,” Miguel said, pushing Shauna down the stairs ahead of him. “Doesn’t he know not to leave his valuables in a hotel room?”

Shauna made it down two flights before the heel of her shoe snagged on a step, as instantly disabling as gravel under a turning motorcycle. Her limbs locked up and her mind missed the beat, and the fog of her sleepiness crowded in on her again as she took seven stairs face-first, watching the handrail rush up to meet her eyes.

Wayne stood over Frank Danson with a gun, spinning a silencer onto the end of his barrel. The man was collapsed in a chair, only just starting to arouse from his electrified stupor.