Kiss

Thomas Nelson

Chapter One

Nightmares of death by black water ticked off the hours of the deepest sleep Shauna McAllister had ever experienced. In an eternal loop, she choked and drowned and was somehow resuscitated, only to choke and drown again, and again, in an endless terror. Always the same fight, the same thrashing for air. Always the same intense agony for the same amount of time before the screen of her mind dimmed.

Then it would flicker back to life.

Merciless, exhausting.

Her stomach hurt with the penetration of a hundred slicing knives, cutting her enough to scrape and bleed and sting. The cold water was not a strong enough anesthetic.

She could not remember where she was or how she had come to be here.

Why wasn't her father with her? And where had Rudy gone?

The water closed over her head again. She considered welcoming death and letting her fatigue have its way. She was so tired.

Something touched her. A stable hand, gentle and helpful, grabbed her wrist. In that Herculean grip was all the strength she could not muster. And so it was that at the very moment she resigned herself to drowning, she sensed as she rose through the black waters that maybe she would not die today.

Shauna broke the surface, gasping and flopping like a snagged fish tossed onto the deck of a-

No, she was on a bed, some narrow thing that rattled when she moved. Her hands hit metal rails and she grabbed hold to avoid sliding back underwater, though some sixth sense told her there was no water. She started coughing and could not stop, as if the oxygen in this place would kill her just as quickly as liquid.

How did she get here?

Someone shoved a pillow under her shoulders. Someone was speaking. Several people were speaking at once, animated and urgent.

She opened her eyes and took her first full lungful of air.

A middle-aged woman in nurse's scrubs stood next to the bed, bright eyes wide and gap-toothed mouth slack. She hit an intercom button in the panel over the bed, punching it so hard the plastic speaker rattled.

Shauna was half-aware of people spilling into the room.

"Dr. Siders," the woman said into the wall. She put a hand over her heart as if to prevent its escape. "We need you here now. She's awake!"

* * *

Still disoriented, Shauna lay at the center of the small gathering in the room. Through her mental haze, she locked onto a tall doctor in a white lab coat as he moved to the head of her bed. The man was 80 percent limbs and 20 percent torso, long and wiry and strung taut.

"Hello, Shauna. You can hear me?"

She felt her chin dip a fraction of an inch.

He put his hand on her arm. "I'm Dr. Gary Siders. And you-well let's just say you're one very lucky girl. Without a doubt, the most unusual case I've had in here for a while."

Where was here? Where was Rudy?

She tried to remember. Random images collided in her mind in a wreck that could not be construed as an explanation: shopping at an open-air market in Guatemala, congratulating a colleague at the CPA firm where she worked, stir-frying veggies in a wok at her downtown loft.

These stray events seemed disconnected from this white bed, this white room, these people dressed in white. She couldn't remember, and the void was the most disconcerting piece of this white puzzle.

She saw a flash of color. Blue. A blue class ring on a long, angular hand that was supporting a man's chin. A handsome man. He stood under the TV, arms crossed, and his worry-lined forehead tripped some wire in Shauna's brain that said friendly. His brown eyes held hers and he smiled almost imperceptibly, hopefully.

Her mind held no recognition. But he was a relief to her senses, a warm, sympathetic object in an unfamiliar, cold room. She smiled back.

On the other side of the bed, her eyes landed on Patrice McAllister.

Shauna shivered involuntarily. How was it possible, after all these years, that the woman could make her feel afraid? Patrice wore her trademark navy blue pantsuit and deadpan expression. She had all of Diane Keaton's good looks, but her heart was a stone.

The scar tissue under Shauna's arm seemed to burn, as always when Patrice stared at her. Shauna looked for her father. No sign of him. No surprise there.

Instead, she saw Uncle Trent standing behind Patrice. A close-cropped layer of white hair covered his sun-spotted head. Trent rested his hand on Patrice's shoulder as if forcing her to stay put. The laugh lines around his eyes eased Shauna's fear.

In these beats of recognition, Shauna felt her body with new awareness, as if her senses had been on vacation and just returned: the stiffness of her limbs, the pain in her stomach, the hardness of her mattress, the discomfort of her itchy sheets. She wanted to get out of bed. Her muscles would not respond.

"Let's sit you up." The doctor reached the controls for the hospital bed, and she rose with a whir. "Better?"

"Where is this?" her vocal cords rasped.

"Hill Country Medical Center."

She'd been in this hospital many times, but never as a patient. Behind him on a counter, old flowers wilted in dirty water. Other empty vases lined up behind these.

"How long?"

"This should only take about five minutes. We'll schedule a complete neuropsychological evaluation when we know you're up for it. That will take a day or two."

"I mean, how long have I been here?"

He hesitated. "Six weeks."

Six weeks?

"You've drifted in and out for several days, never fully awake."

"I don't remember any of that."

"Not unusual."

"What day is it?"

He checked his wristwatch. "October 14. Sunday. You came in September 1."

September.

She tried to remember August.

Nothing. July.

Nothing. Farther.

Nothing.

She'd been here six weeks? Her mind didn't want to connect with the idea of it, much less any specific memory.

He flashed a blinding light across her eyes and she winced. The stranger under the TV stepped to the bed and placed a warm hand on her blanketed foot. The gesture gave her courage. Who was this man? Someone she trusted, apparently.

"Follow my fingers," Dr. Siders said. She focused on his sinewy hand, contemplating how so much time could have slipped by without her knowing it. Six weeks from-

From what?

She'd taken her trip to Guatemala. That was when, March?

He lifted the blanket and ran a fingernail along the sole of her other foot. Her reflexes snatched it out of his reach. "You have no respect for the Rancho Levels-if you move through those any faster, I'll have to discharge you this afternoon. The GCS score is useless. Apparently all you're guilty of is a concussion. No TBI. The MRIs and CATs are clear, though they're not the most reliable, considering you're in a drug trial."

She had no idea what he was talking about.

"Can you tell me who's here in the room with us?" he asked her.

Shauna kept her eyes on the doctor. "My father's wife, Patrice McAllister. And Uncle Trent-Trent Wilde, a family friend. He's not actually my uncle."

"And what does Mr. Wilde do?"

The answer came to her without her needing to search for it. This surprised her. "He's the CEO of my father's company. McAllister MediVista."

"Where is that company located?"

...