Kiss (32 page)

“And you were captivated by my wit and charm, and I was captivated by the fact that you worked for the CPA who audited MMV’s books.”

She chuckled. “I never would have disclosed that to you, Prince Charming.”

“You didn’t. I knew the firm. You only told me you worked there. I talked you into the rest.”

“No you didn’t. Landon and I have our issues, but I wouldn’t have betrayed him like that.”

“You did it to prove me wrong, Shauna.” She looked at him. Well. Yeah. She might have done that. “You love the truth, you know.”

The first rays of light broke the horizon on Shauna’s side of the car. “So, what convinced me that you were right?”

“The facts convinced you: A profit-sharing structure that shifted the quarter immediately preceding MMV’s first profit spike. Exponential profits in certain MMV subsidiaries—eight, to be precise—rather than across all nineteen. International subsidiaries that looked more like shell companies than legitimate businesses.”

Shauna blew her mussed-up bangs off her forehead. “That’s all?”

“The shift in profit-sharing reduced employees’ takes to a stunted rate that was much slower than the actual growth. In theory, the executive officers took the balance, but in reality, the sum total was tipped into McAllister’s coffers. And not one of them objected.”

“That kind of thing is hard to hide.”

“Not when everyone is in on it. They’re being compensated some other way.”

“What did we learn about the subsidiaries?”

“That they’re nearly phantoms. We got far enough in investigating one of them to find a residential address. That’s it.”

Shauna let these details sink in before she said, “Wayne found out. I tipped him off somehow.”

“He’s not stupid. And you asked a lot of questions. I still have some things to teach you about subtlety in investigating.”

“Guilty, and sentenced to time already served?” She apologized with a smile.

“I’m not blaming you, lovely.”

Shauna returned to the trail of her thoughts. “Money laundering isn’t something most people commit murder to hide.”

“No. It’s not. Although it’s also true that people murder for far less.”

“But we’re family,” she murmured.

“You are.”

“And Rudy. No one loves Rudy like Landon and Uncle Trent do. What happened to him nearly dashed Landon’s will to run. Why would anyone hurt Rudy?” Shauna let her question hang for several seconds. “Maybe I have this all wrong. Maybe the accident was a freak coincidence? Wayne jumped on the opportunity? I was upset that night—”

“That’s not what happened.”

She turned toward him again. The morning sun revealed the strong lines of his face, his certain jaw.

“Rudy wasn’t supposed to be in the car. He insisted on riding back with you after you argued with McAllister.”

“Landon and I fought about the money?”

“You challenged him on where it came from. He kept reciting the party line.”

“Of course he would.” She sighed. “You were with me—you let Rudy come?”

“Rudy was so good for you, Shauna. He was always cool when you were hot. I zipped my lips and let him work his calm on you. Where I went wrong was letting him talk me into taking the backseat. If he—”

“No ifs. None of those. It’s all I can do to handle the facts. So Rudy wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“If the argument hadn’t taken place, it would have been just you and me in the car. Someone had a plan in place. A plan that they couldn’t retract.”

“Not Landon. Not even Trent. I can’t believe it. They would have called it off.” Wayne, of course, could think up something that heinous.

“You came down onto the bridge. An SUV swerved into the oncoming lanes.”

“A black SUV.” She saw it in the memory she had taken from Deputy Cale Bowden. The witness leaning impatiently against the rear fender. She gasped.

“That’s where I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“The guy drinking scotch in the hotel. He was driving the SUV. And I saw him one other time—at the park. Barton Springs. He had a knife. The knife you picked up.”

“You sure? How could you have IDed him? He flicked on his high beams and blinded all of us. He straddled the lane lines so you couldn’t veer right. You went left.”

“Directly into the truck behind him.” She still didn’t remember any of it though she knew the scenario by heart.

“I swear, he didn’t try to dodge you.”

“No. I don’t think he did. He works for Wayne—” Several possibilities clicked together in Shauna’s mind. “He told me Wayne owes him money. Do you think it’s because I didn’t die in that accident?”

“It’s possible. No pay for an incomplete job. If it’s true, you can bet the man didn’t get paid for keeping an eye on you at the hotel, either.”

“I’m not going to lose any sleep over that. How did you avoid being hurt, Miguel? When we went off that bridge.”

“The back window popped out. I can’t explain how I was thrown. I was in the water—that part is not clear to me. By the time I made it back to the car, they had you in the ambulance. If only I’d—”

“No ifs.”

Miguel took a deep breath.

Shauna said, “Tell me about the deal you made with Trent Wilde.”

“How did you know about that?”

“I . . . am putting things together in my mind.” If she was right, he would remember this part—the details of their agreement hadn’t appeared in the memory she’d taken from him. “You disappeared to protect me, you said.”

“I promised to drop the story, stop pursuing it to the end.”

“Not enough for the man, I’m sure.”

“I also promised to disappear, sever all ties to you. Your family.”

“In exchange for my life.”

Miguel nodded.

“And if I died?”

“I told them I had hidden the information I’d collected so far, and that if either one of us died, the person who held it for me would release it.”

“Corbin?”

Sadness crossed Miguel’s features. “No. But they probably thought so.”

“Who had it?”

“It was a bluff, really. You had it.”

She had it. Of course she did. Her mind went to the papers Khai had rescued for her. Shauna leaned forward. “So what’s to prevent us from reopening the story now?” she asked.

His mouth fell open. “Uh, the fact that it nearly killed you the first time? The fact that I don’t give a rip anymore about where the money comes from? They can keep it.”

“But I still have the information.”

He ran a hand through his hair.

She shot her question to him with her eyes.

“If they had killed you . . .” he said. The possibility thickened the air. “If they had killed you, that story would have been the last thing in the world I cared about. I only need them to believe someone has it.”

“I have it. Khai brought me some papers—”

“No, Shauna.”

“Listen,
Sabueso
. I would have—”

“I mean no, it’s not in those files.”

“Then where is it?”

“Shauna, don’t. We can leave this all behind us.”

“And never know the truth. And never feel safe. Don’t tell me you don’t care about that. I wouldn’t believe you.”

He hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.

She put her hand on his shoulder, ready to pull it away if she had to.

“Don’t you see? This isn’t about money laundering. It can’t be. Murder doesn’t make sense otherwise. This is about something much bigger, about a father who’s trying to kill his children, and a criminal who’s sitting in the White House.”

“
That
is well outside the scope of anything we can prove, and you know it. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s beyond what you even want to believe, Shauna.”

“Call me lovely. Please.”

His shoulders dropped a quarter inch, and Shauna sensed him soften.

“Tell me where I hid it. Because if everything you’re telling me is true, I’m certain I would have told you.”

29

From a warm coffee house in the SoCo District of Austin, around the corner from the
Statesman,
Miguel and Shauna nursed hot drinks and waited for Khai, who was coming into town by the metro bus.

Miguel’s foot tapped against the rail beneath their stools at the window front, out of sync with the music.

Though Miguel had not yet bought into Shauna’s plan to follow the money laundering story to its full revelation, he had convinced her of the foolishness of returning to the McAllister estate to retrieve the data. So, during the long wait for Khai, Shauna found herself sitting gingerly on the twin blades of impatience and caffeine. This morning she drank the bitter coffee that she normally avoided, thinking she could hold off the lingering effects of her forced sleep. It had been a long time since her mind felt sharp.

Khai finally appeared at the door, toting a small paper shopping bag with twine handles, which she set on the counter between them. Miguel got off his stool and held out his hand to greet Khai.

Instead of taking his hand, Khai stood on her toes to wrap him in a warm hug. “I’m so sorry about Corbin,” she said, stepping back to see Miguel’s face. “He kept your secret for you.”

“Thank you for keeping ours now,” he said.

Khai nodded and gestured to the bag. “That’s it, yes?”

Shauna reached in and withdrew the cedar elephant, trumpeting as if happy to finally be remembered.

Miguel nodded. “That’s it. May I get you something to drink?”

Khai held up her hand. “I’ll get it. You take care of this.” She gestured to the wooden creature.

As Khai went to the counter, Miguel and Shauna moved to a booth away from the window. Miguel waited for Shauna to sit, then slipped in on the opposite side.

Shauna examined the elephant, which was about the size of a small cantaloupe, but didn’t see how it was a container as Miguel had claimed. “You’ll have to show me how this works,” she said, holding it out to him.

He took the carving from her. “Guatemalan puzzle box,” he said. “A gift from me to you. Two weeks before the accident.”

“What was the occasion?”

“An anniversary. Of sorts.”

“My mother was Guatemalan,” Shauna said.

Miguel grinned. “As was mine.” He caught the expression on her face and said, “You were surprised the first time too. Now watch.”

Miguel carefully pried the elephant’s tusks off its face. They came away as pins that held the trunk and head together. One piece at a time, in conscientious order, Miguel dismembered the animal until it looked neither like an elephant nor a box. Shauna counted eight pieces on the table, plus the container that Miguel still held. It would have been the bulky abdomen, formed in two parts and now separated from the legs.

He parted the halves and revealed a small bundle of black fleece in the center that prevented the contents from rattling.

Shauna lifted it out of the wood and set it on the table to unwrap it. The bundle wasn’t tidy; maybe she had wrapped it in a hurry.

No doubt.

The flash drive hidden by the fleece was almost identical to the one she had seen in Miguel’s memory.

“This looks familiar,” she said, handing it to him to examine.

“That’s a good sign, right?”

Shauna wondered when—and how—it would be appropriate for her to tell him why it was familiar. She rolled the question around in her mind, fingering the fabric absentmindedly. Her fingers came upon a hard round object in its folds.

“There’s something else,” she said, pulling back the material.

Tucked into one corner that had been carefully folded into a pocket shape was a ring. A solitaire princess diamond set on a wide platinum band, the brilliant-cut square flanked by two baguette diamonds. Stunned, she looked at Miguel for an explanation.

He looked as stunned as she. But only for a moment.

“Well. Yeah.” He coughed and took a sip of his coffee. “It hadn’t occurred to me you’d hide that here, but it makes sense.”

Shauna couldn’t manage to form the right question. She picked up the ring and slipped it onto her left ring finger. A perfect fit. She took it off right away and laid it back on top of the fleece. She was certain she blushed.

“You didn’t say anything about this.”

Miguel fingered the paper napkin on the table between them, his eyes averted. “You told me you only wanted the bones.”

“But this—this is like a whole skeleton.”

She hadn’t meant to come off so negatively. To soften the mood, she asked, “Why would I hide it?”

Good-natured humor flickered across the surface of Miguel’s distress. “You can’t think of a single reason why you wouldn’t want your family or your bosses to know you are—were—engaged to me?”

Well. When he put it like that. Obviously, she’d been stunned once again out of reasoned thinking.

“
Were
? Did I break it off?”

He hesitated. “No.”

“No, but . . . ?”

“But I won’t hold you to a promise you can’t remember making,” he murmured.

Shauna stared at the ring. It was beautiful, the design and cut she would have picked for herself if she’d had the choice. Maybe she had.

“When were you going to tell me?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t figured that out. If I should have said something sooner—”

“It’s okay. Really.”

She picked up the jewelry and laid it in her palm, sensing all of Miguel’s emotions—yearning, fear, love, regret—focused on her. She did not have to look to know his gaze rested on her rather than on the ring. Embarrassment and giddiness tangoed in her stomach.

“That first time I went to see you,” she said. “In the kitchen.”

“I didn’t believe you couldn’t remember,” he said. “Corbin had told me, but . . .”

Now more than ever, she hated that she didn’t remember. She hated that a good man was in the position she’d put Miguel in, the position of knowing that the woman he loved didn’t at all feel the way she once had, and through no fault of his own. She tried to imagine how she would feel to have lost some-thing, someone, like that.

She thought of Rudy. Not even close, she knew, but as close as she herself could get.

She wished she could tell Miguel she loved him, but she couldn’t. Not honestly. Not yet. She barely knew him.

He held out his hand, palm up. “This is more awkward than I could have predicted. I can hold on to that for you if you want. For now.”