Kiss (34 page)

Shauna noticed for the first time that an identical tumbler one-third full of dark creamy liquor over ice sat in front of Rudy.

“Congratulations.”

“A bit prone to accidents these days, are we?” His gaze fell on her swollen cheekbone again.

“Apparently so.” She looked at Rudy, grateful for his presence. “Landon, I need to talk with you about a . . . sensitive matter. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Campaign’s going fine, thanks for asking. Ahead in the polls by 15 per-cent and growing, so long as I don’t slow down and Anderson doesn’t make any more royal mistakes in front of the press.”

Landon referred to the deputy campaign manager who had replaced Rudy and couldn’t resist a camera.

She knew she would have to wait, let him stay in control of the conversation. “I’m sorry he’s been such a headache.”

“Well, I can tolerate a dull pain so long as it gets me where I need to be.

Rudy here, though, he gets the credit for the grunt work. Anderson didn’t have to do a thing but keep Rudy’s strategy in motion. You did a fantastic job, son.”

Shauna felt a fresh grief for what she had lost in Rudy. Grief, it turned out, was all that connected her to her father anymore. The loss of her mother and the loss of Rudy fell heavily on them both, but from different angles. She wondered if grief would eventually be what severed their thin ties.

Perhaps. If Landon continued to blame her for the wreck.

“Will Rudy go to the White House with you?” she asked.

“Maybe. Like to have him there. But his therapy is here. We might have to wait and see, give him time.” His mouth moved around these words like someone else had fed them to him. Patrice, no doubt. The practicality couldn’t hide the underlying passion. If it were up to Landon, these two would never be apart.

Shauna took a risk. “I would like to help with Rudy. Here. As long as he needs it. If you trust me with that.”

“Pam’s doing a fine job.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“What was so important that you crashed our little meeting here?”

Faced with the opportunity she had insisted was so critical, she realized she didn’t know where the front door was. How to enter this conversation? There was the direct:
What part are you playing in the laundering scheme that’s funding
your campaign?
There was the oblique:
Would you tell me about the profit-sharing
structure at MMV, why it was changed a few years ago?
There was the reluctant:
I heard this rumor, and I can’t possibly believe it’s true.
And there was the desperate, bottom line:
Wayne tried to kill me, and I need to know you’re not a criminal
about to take the White House; I need to know you weren’t behind it; I need to
know you love me too much for that.

In one second she shut the door on each of these options, seeing intuitively how far south they would go, and how fast. These questions would fail to get her closer to both her father and the truth. Was there even a way for her to have both—intimacy and honesty? Or were they mutually exclusive where Landon was concerned?

When her father rose from his seat as if to end the conversation, she threw off the burden of her hesitation and spoke the next words on her lips without thinking them through.

“You and I fought right before the accident.”

“I’m not sure an apology is worth much at this point.”

“I wasn’t—that’s not what I meant to do.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

Shauna took a deep breath.

Landon said, “Rudy would not have gone back with you if you weren’t so hot under the collar.”

“Tell me what we fought about.”

Landon dropped back into his seat. “Now isn’t that ironic? You can’t even remember.”

“Tell me.”

“You got some crazy notion into your head that my out-of-pocket donation to the campaign was dirty. That’s ridiculous, Shauna. I can’t believe you would think I would—”

“It wasn’t just my notion.” Wrong thing to say!

“No, I don’t doubt that
Statesman
reporter was feeding you ideas, taking advantage of your employment at Harper & Stone. And who knows what else.”

The insult made her flush. She had to keep this conversation on target. “I think the mistake I made was in assuming you were aware of how MMV’s profits had skyrocketed. I assumed you engineered it.”

She hoped he hadn’t engineered it. Oh, how she hoped!

“And how would I do that? I haven’t been involved in their strategies for years. Wilde took that over when I entered politics and has never screwed it up. He’s had great success, ‘Wilde Success,’ we call it, in the international markets. Indonesia, Thailand, even Cambodia. What’s shocking about that? I’ll tell you again, Shauna, and I said this that night—you can check my tax returns, you can audit me, you can hold a magnifying glass over every penny I’ve ever earned. I would not jeopardize my career or my office by doing something so inordinately stupid.”

Shauna put her hand on Rudy’s knee and dropped the tone of her voice to a low, even level. “Landon, I’m pretty sure that my hunches were correct—not about you, but about the money. And I’m even more sure that the accident was no accident at all. Someone set that up.”

Landon shook his head and wagged a finger at his daughter. “Shirk your responsibility all you want, Shauna. It’s still pinned on you, no matter what outrageous ideas you’ll cook up.”

“Wayne and Trent and Leon are in a position to rig MMV’s policies in any way that’s beneficial to them.”

Landon snatched his glass off the desk and marched back to the bar. “This sounds like some half-baked theory that reporter would feed you. What was his name? Lopez?”

Shauna was glad her father wasn’t looking at her. She didn’t want to bring Miguel into this yet.

“I tipped my hand, asked Wayne the wrong kinds of questions. He figured me out.”

“He would have gone to Wilde, and then Wilde would have come to me, and my issues with you would be a whole lot more complicated than they are now.” Landon uncapped the bottle of liqueur and poured it over his watery ice.

Shauna rose and crossed the room to stand next to her father. She needed to keep him calm—for Rudy’s sake—and hoped he would open up to her, for the sake of truth. For the sake of their crumbling relationship.

“He went to Wilde, but the two of them didn’t go to you. Wouldn’t it make sense for them to keep you in the dark? You get legitimate deniability. The less you know, the less you’re guilty of.”

He spun to face her. “I’m not guilty of anything but tolerating your pitiful need for attention.”

She pleaded with her eyes for him to remember that Rudy was still in the room with them. Landon took a drink.

“Of course you’re not.” She laid a hand on his arm. “But Wayne . . . Landon, I have evidence that he tried to kill me.” She pointed at Rudy. “Wayne did this. Uncle Trent did this. Not me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He was closed to her touch. She wasn’t getting anything.

“Rudy wasn’t supposed to be in the car.”

“Wilde would have stopped it.”

“But Wayne had put the machine in motion.
Dad.
Can’t you see what’s going on?”

Landon exploded with just enough self-control to protect his son. His voice and emotions were restrained, but his face was bright red in the dim room. He set his drink on the counter and leaned in close to Shauna.

“
If
Wilde and Spade were involved in anything so illegal, and
if
they thought you were going to expose them, they would have found a dozen other ways to keep you quiet. They would have sought my advice. They live and breathe on my authority. And
if
I knew about it, and
if
I was such a devil that I needed to cover it up, I would have taken out that loco Lopez, not my own children.”

“Wayne tried to kill him too.”

Landon closed his eyes, exasperated.

“Miguel Lopez was in the car with me.”

“You were at the party together? What do you think that says about your motivation, Shauna? And why wasn’t he on scene? Why isn’t he in the accident reports? Are you the only one who saw him? I suppose Wayne planted drugs in your car too?”

Shauna looked at Rudy, unable to bring the conversation around.

“And who else has our dear Wayne Spade tried to take out?”

She knew better than to bring up Corbin Smith at this point.

“People don’t
murder
over money laundering, girl. They don’t kill over a plain vanilla, white-collar crime.”

“No, they don’t. They kill to gain the presidency, Landon. Listen to me. There is something so much bigger than we realize going on here. I don’t know what it is yet, but I promise you—if it’s big enough to kill for, it’s big enough to destroy everything you’ve ever worked for.”

She cupped his face in her hands as if he were the child. “Dad. I’m only here because I couldn’t bear to see that happen.”

As she spoke the words, she was not at all surprised to understand that they were true. She sensed the gap between them close by a hairline, as if he was dropping his defenses against her. Would he give her access to his own mind? Was that what she wanted?

She wanted to be close to her father. She didn’t want to steal from him.

She was close enough to see the horizon of his mind, crowded with a city-scape of memories. She saw the street forged by Landon’s fraternity with Trent. It cut through the peaks and valleys that she recognized as McAllister MediVista’s booming growth. She saw in the background, barely perceptible, the smaller world of his childhood. In the foreground were buildings crowded with people: colleagues he trusted, political opponents he had grown to hate. She spotted her mother in a mansion at the calm center and was tempted to linger there, but unwilling to take something so precious from her father. She saw Patrice, her arm linked in Landon’s at a fund-raiser held at Columbia University, where she was a tenured professor of economics. Shauna saw herself. She saw Rudy.

Rudy, in fact, was everywhere.

He had enough of Rudy to spare.

But that was as close as she would get.

The cityscape vanished. Landon had withdrawn from Shauna’s touch. She caught her breath.

“It’s not possible,” her father was saying, moving away from her into the dim office space. “Trent Wilde would never put us at risk. I trust him with my life.”

She found her bearings again. “But I don’t. If you knew what I have been through . . .”

Landon scowled. Wrong approach.

“Look,” Shauna said. “I haven’t asked you for anything in years. I need your help now. I know you’re mad at me. I know you don’t believe me. But will you help me?”

“If it will keep you clear of me until November 13, sure.”

“I need a place to stay. I need time to sort out the truth in my own mind.”

“And isn’t that a laudable pursuit.” Patrice leaned in the door frame. Shauna did not know how much of the conversation she had heard. “What’s all the drama about?”

Shauna stayed silent.

“It seems my daughter has fixated on a particular problem that doesn’t exist. She’s planning some vacation time to clear her head.” He opened a safe in the wall and withdrew a set of boat keys. “You can stay on the Bayliner. I took it out last time I was here. Nothing for you to do to get it ready.”

She hesitated to take this gift horse. The senator’s cabin cruiser wasn’t exactly a safe house. But maybe it would buy Miguel and her an hour or two to sort things out. She made one more attempt to keep the encounter with her father from unraveling further.

“I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know you’re not . . . that you weren’t . . .” Shauna tried to explain.

Landon’s expression softened from granite to sandstone. He dropped the keys into her palm but didn’t speak.

“Thank you. You won’t . . . if Wayne or Trent ask you . . .”

He guffawed. “I’d have to be drunk to tell them what you’ve just told me.

I can’t afford to look like a half-wit this close to election day.”

31

Shauna stayed only long enough to dash to the guesthouse for a fresh set of clothes. And the medication—maybe she could have someone analyze the pills. And Deputy Bowden’s accident report—she wanted Miguel to read it. And a little bit of cash tucked away in a roll of clean socks.

She left before she decided she needed a suitcase.

Miguel looked relieved enough to hug Shauna when she dropped into the passenger seat of his Jeep carrying her load. In fact, he did hug her, leaning across the gearshift sideways and surrounding her with his strong arms.

Shauna felt her back stiffen before she pulled away.

“I shouldn’t have done that.” He held up two hands. “I’m just really glad to see you.”

“I can’t have been gone more than twenty minutes.”

“The twenty longest minutes of my life. With one exception.”

“Well, I was fine. But it was good you weren’t there. Your name came up.”

“He thinks I’ve filled your empty head with ideas.”

“Something like that.”

“That was pretty clear the night we argued with him.”

“Before my head was even empty.”

He laughed. “So, was he more receptive in the privacy of his own home?”

“Receptive, no. Not at all. He thinks I’m crazy. Still, I’m pretty sure that what’s going on is happening behind Landon’s back.”

Miguel did not say anything to that.

“You still think he’s involved,” Shauna said.

“I don’t see how he couldn’t be. In his position, with money coming out of his own pocket? It’s too much of a stretch to think he’s blind.”

Shauna understood that this latest confrontation didn’t prove anything, not even to her. For now, however, there was no way to explain this to Miguel. She held up the keys to the cabin cruiser.

“I know where we can go until we decide what to do next.”

“What we need to do next is take out Wayne Spade and company before they take us out.”

“Can’t do it without a nap. When did you last sleep?”

Miguel had to stop and think. “An hour here and there, since you showed up Monday.”

“You and I both are going on nearly three days then. Landon has a boat at Yacht Harbor Marina.”