Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) Read online

  Adrenaline buzzed through Donovan’s body, his head pounding now. He spun Reed around again and shoved him back into the leather chair. The force sent Reed toppling to the polished wood floor.

  Donovan started toward him, but Waxman blocked his path. “That’s enough, Jack. Take a couple of deep breaths.”

  “He knows. He’s hiding something.”

  “He ain’t Nemo. And this isn’t gonna help.”

  “You have any other suggestions?” Donovan pushed past Waxman and moved toward Reed again. “Your sister’s in a coma because of me, Tony. At least that’s what your buddy Alex thought. Maybe the two of you didn’t share a whole lotta burgers and beers, but Sara’s something you had in common.”

  “Fuck you,” Reed said.

  Donovan reached down, grabbed him again. “Where is she, you little turd?”

  He was about to lift him up off the floor when Reed threw his hands up in surrender. “All right, all right!” he shouted. “I’ll tell you what I know!”

  Donovan let him loose, backed off. Reed took a breath and climbed to his feet as they waited.

  “Here it is, no bullshit: Alex did come to my house. And he did say something about you. But all he wanted from me was money. That’s all they ever wanted. He and Sara. I was their personal bank account, whether I liked it or not.”

  “What about Jessie?”

  “I swear on my sister’s life I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about. I haven’t seen Alex in weeks.”

  Donovan stood there, wanting to pound the crap out of Reed, wanting to make him squeal the way Fogerty had. But something clicked in his brain, and in that instant he knew this was a waste of time.

  Reed was telling the truth.

  Donovan relaxed, turned to Waxman. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Huh?” Waxman said.

  “He’s clueless. Let’s go.”

  Waxman looked as if he’d just dropped in from another planet and couldn’t quite fathom the behavior of this alien beast. “Did I just miss something?”

  A guy with a clipboard appeared in the office doorway. One of the crew members they’d seen earlier. “Hey, Tony. The creep’s back.”

  Reed’s face went pale. “What?”

  “I told him you were in a meeting, but I don’t think—”

  A deep baritone cut him off: “Hey, asshole, you trying to hide from me?”

  All at once the doorway filled with a hulking mass of muscle in a Gold’s Gym T-shirt, his fierce gaze directed at Reed. “I need cash, man, and I need it now.”

  Donovan’s own gaze dropped immediately to the hulk’s inner left forearm. A long, puckered, pink scar ran the length of it, bearing all the earmarks of a homemade stitch job.

  Donovan’s heart skipped.

  Holy shit. Ski Mask.

  At that instant, the hulk’s head swiveled in Donovan’s direction, the eyes going wide. Without missing a beat, he grabbed Tony’s crew member by the shoulders, hurled him at Donovan and Waxman, then turned on his heels and ran.

  34

  HE WAS ALREADY across the warehouse by the time Donovan reached the stage floor. Coming around a corner, Donovan heard the echo of a door banging open and saw a blast of sunlight, the hulk’s massive frame silhouetted against it as he darted outside.

  Cutting a diagonal path toward him, Donovan plowed through a gaggle of cast and crew members milling around a catering table. The angel let out a shriek, wings fluttering, as he swept past her. He brushed against a light stand and it toppled over with a loud crash, more shrieks and cries of alarm rising behind him.

  Somewhere in the confusion he heard the sound of Wax-man’s voice, shouting for people to “Move!” There was another loud crash and Waxman let loose a flurry of profanities that would make a truck driver blush.

  Donovan ignored the commotion. Reaching the door, he slammed through it and found himself in a parking lot, pale sunlight glinting off the windshields of a dozen or more cars. Squinting against the light, he quickly scanned the lot, his pulse up, heart pounding in his ears, head now feeling as if he’d been worked over by a jackhammer operator on a vicious amphetamine high.

  Across the lot, the hulk was about to climb behind the wheel of an F-150, but quickly abandoned that idea when he saw Donovan coming his way. Taking off on foot, he cut across a narrow side street, blew past a forklift operator unloading rolls of carpet from a container truck, and headed into an alley between two warehouses.

  Donovan followed, the thud of his heart growing louder with every step. As he neared the alley, the forklift operator swung into a reverse arc, warning beeps shrieking. Donovan veered around him and reached the mouth of the alley just as the hulk made an abrupt left turn at the far end.

  Donovan felt his chest seizing up but pushed himself, picking up speed. As he moved deeper into the alley, its walls seemed to close in on him, that odd sense of déjà vu sweeping over him again. For just a moment, he felt separated from his body, as if some dark part of him were being sucked away. The faint whisper of voices filled his ears.

  Donovan shook off the feeling and continued forward, bad leg throbbing, lungs scorched by every ragged intake of breath. Reaching the end of the alley, he turned left and saw a vacant lot up ahead, its far end bordered by a chain-link fence.

  The hulk was halfway across it.

  Relying on pure adrenaline, Donovan willed his feet to move even faster. He knew he’d pay for this, probably wind up right back in the hospital, but he couldn’t give up. Not now.

  But as the hulk neared the chain-link fence, the pounding in Donovan’s head grew so fierce it overrode everything else. He was suddenly deaf to the world, his vision narrowing, a circle of light the size of a penny pulsing like a tiny sun spot between his eyes.

  The hulk was halfway up the fence now, limbs moving furiously as he scrambled up and over it. Beyond it was a steep, grassy embankment that sloped downward toward a highway. Midafternoon traffic streaked by.

  Donovan’s vision continued to narrow, the sun spot growing bigger and brighter with every step he took. A nickel. A quarter. A half-dollar. He felt his body beginning to give out on him, the chain-link fence within his reach but at the same time seeming miles away.

  Then, inside the circle, he saw it: a face. Nothing more than a fleeting glimpse, a quick flash of sense memory. Dark eyes, malevolent smile, reptilian tongue flicking between the teeth.

  Gunderson.

  Donovan hit the fence hard and collapsed against it, fingers caught in its wide mesh, the circle of light widening as Gunderson’s grin flashed at him again.

  Give us a kiss.

  Donovan willed the vision away, trying desperately to see past the light toward the embankment below. But everything outside the circle was a blur.

  Was the hulk down there?

  Legs collapsing beneath him, he felt himself falling. He scrambled for purchase, trying and failing to hang on to the fence. After a moment of blackness, he realized he was on his back, staring up at the pale afternoon sky.

  His head continued to pound, but his vision had cleared, and now sounds of traffic filtered in, horns honking, angry shouts. Ski Mask had undoubtedly reached the bottom of the embankment and was either getting away or would soon be roadkill. But Donovan couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

  A voice called out to him. “Jesus, Jack, you got a friggin’ death wish or what?”

  A moment later, Waxman crouched next to him, out of breath, fingers pressing Donovan’s neck, checking his pulse. “You are one dumb motherfucker.”

  Struggling for air, Donovan tried and failed to get some words out, offering Sidney little more than a wheezy grunt.

  “Don’t worry,” Waxman said. “I called it in. He won’t get far.”

  But Donovan had something else on his mind, trying again to get it out. Another wheezy grunt.

  Waxman leaned in closer. “What?”

  “… It was real …” Donovan said between breaths.

  Wa
xman frowned. “Real? What are you talking about?”

  “… the dream.”

  The frown deepened. “Sorry, old buddy, you lost me.”

  “A.J…. Gunderson.”

  “What about them?”

  “They were there,” Donovan said, knowing that where he’d gone when he’d hit that black river last night was as real as the ground beneath him, and the gray sky above.

  The netherworld.

  Purgatory.

  The road to Yaru.

  It didn’t matter what the name was. He’d been there, and it was real. And he remembered it all.

  He looked up at Waxman, at the puzzled expression on his friend’s face.

  Then he said, “I saw Gunderson.”

  35

  RACHEL CHECKED HER watch and discovered it had stopped: 1:28 p.m. About the time she and Jack had left the hospital.

  They’d lost another hour since then, maybe more, and Jessie was only a stone’s throw away from what most people in law enforcement considered the cutoff point between hope and despair: the twenty-four-hour mark.

  The majority of children abducted by strangers wound up dead within the first three hours. The rest rarely made it past twenty-four.

  And even if Jessie was being kept alive by those stolen oxygen tanks, there was no telling how much longer they’d last.

  But Rachel wouldn’t allow herself to give up hope. Not yet, at least.

  She had been waiting here for what seemed an eternity, listening to the radio until a song came on that reminded her of her ex.

  The Eagles. “Tequila Sunrise.”

  Two bars into the thing, she jabbed the off button with such ferocity she almost broke a nail.

  No point in reliving that nightmare.

  But then it was too late, and all the memories came crashing back, all the times she’d spent behind the wheel of a car very similar to this one, a four-year-old Toyota she and David had scrimped and saved to put a down payment on. And what she remembered in particular were the late nights after David and his buddies from the muffler shop had poured their paychecks down their throats and she was dragged out of bed by a drunken phone call.

  Then it was into that Toyota and out to McBain’s. Rachel’s taxi service.

  “Best goddamned driver in the state,” David would say with a wheezy chuckle. His breath stank of cigarettes and Jose Cuervo and God knew what else as he staggered out of the bar and climbed in next to her. “How much I owe you, babe?”

  More than you’ll ever know, Rachel thought.

  The next day, she’d give him holy hell while he cradled the toilet bowl in agony and promised never to take another drink. Ever.

  But a few days later, Rachel’s taxi service was back in business—surprise, surprise—the sober nights becoming fewer and farther between.

  Then the abuse started, the smacks across the face when she talked back to him.

  “Stupid Chink bitch!” he’d scream, showing her the back of his hand, cocked and ready to fly. Despite her fear, Rachel thought the epithet a little wacky, because David himself was half-Chinese.

  She called it quits the night he dislocated her jaw. Called a real taxi service and got the hell out of there.

  She moved in with Ma and Grandma Luke, into their cramped little apartment in Chinatown. She stayed there nearly a year, thinking she was a failure because she hadn’t been able to keep her husband from self-destructing.

  That first night, Grandma Luke had traced a finger along Rachel’s swollen jaw and told her, in quiet broken English, not to blame herself. David was kai dei, a bastard, who didn’t deserve to occupy even a small place in Rachel’s heart.

  Rachel hadn’t bothered to tell her grandmother that her heart was as cold and dead as an old car battery. She knew it would be a long time before someone came along to give it the jump start it needed.

  Then she met Jack.

  It was a humid Friday afternoon and traffic was a bear, but she had managed to make it to the Field Division office relatively dry and on time.

  Deena Crane, an ATF support staff supervisor, was impressed enough by Rachel’s test scores (and a three-year stint at the legal aid clinic in Chinatown) to usher her straight into Jack Donovan’s office. The bureau was gearing up a new task force, for which Jack had been named lead agent, and they desperately needed help to reduce the clutter they’d already accumulated.

  This was close to a year after her divorce. The only thing on Rachel’s mind was finding a job that paid enough to get her out from under Ma’s and Grandma Luke’s feet. During that year she’d had to endure the Wrath of David, at first begging her to come back, then later threatening her. Always drunk, of course.

  Every other week she’d find him waiting on the narrow steps that led up to her mother’s apartment, which was located above Ling Su’s, a popular seafood restaurant. She remembered the pungent kitchen smells mixing with the heat and the stench of tequila on David’s breath as he professed his undying love. The waves of revulsion had nearly smothered her.

  Despite David’s proclamations, there was that oh-so-familiar fury in his eyes, and she wondered what had happened to the fresh-faced college boy she’d fallen for. Was he still buried in there somewhere? Driven into retreat by whatever demons haunted him?

  These were questions she had asked herself over and over in the last months of their marriage, but she’d never found a satisfactory answer.

  Maybe there wasn’t one.

  A request for a restraining order was filed and granted, but David routinely ignored it. His job at the muffler shop long gone, he was living on the streets now, spending most of his time with a group of newfound friends in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven just a couple blocks south of Chinatown. That put him within walking distance of her doorstep. She called the police a few times to shoo him away, but a week or so later he’d show up again, looking gaunt and filthy.

  And dangerous.

  Then the investigative analyst position at the bureau opened up and Rachel met Jack and dreamed of escape. A better-paying job, a place of her own, and hopefully no more David.

  When Deena first ushered her into Jack’s office, Jack had been brusque and preoccupied, searching for something he’d misplaced on his desk. But when he finally raised his head and took a good look at her, he paused, his eyes clear and direct and pleased by what they saw.

  Then the look passed and he avoided her gaze as if he’d been caught in some forbidden act, busying himself with his search until he uncovered a copy of the Chicago Tribune, folded to the crossword puzzle. Picking up a stubby pencil, he told her to have a seat and sank into his own chair.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re the first to make it through that door.”

  “She has all the qualifications,” Deena told him. “And a solid ninety-eight on the written exam. That puts her at the top of the list.”

  Jack nodded and looked at Rachel. “You have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”

  My own apartment, Rachel almost said, but resisted the urge. “I’ve seen my share of cop shows.”

  Lame, she thought, immediately regretting it.

  Way to kill ’em, Rache.

  Jack looked at her as if he wasn’t sure if she was joking, then dropped his gaze to the folded newspaper in his hands.

  “Tell me this,” he said without looking up. “What’s a six-letter word for German mythological protector?”

  Now it was Rachel’s turn to wonder. Was he serious?

  She thought a moment, reaching back to a class she’d once taken in college. World Mythologies. She’d always been good at retaining trivia (most of it about as useful as her degree in art history) and she was pretty sure she knew this one.

  Mentally counting the letters, she shrugged and said, “Kobold?”

  Jack’s eyebrows went up and he put his pencil to work, filling in the appropriate squares.

  Then he smiled.

  Rachel thought it looked good on him. Maybe too good. A
s their eyes met, a spark of electricity stuttered through her dormant heart.

  “Welcome to the fun factory,” he said.

  THE INCIDENT THAT really warmed her to Jack happened one afternoon several weeks later. She was living the dream by then—the new job, the upstairs floor of a duplex in Bridgeport that she was just able to afford—and, miraculously, no sign of David in over a month.

  Until that afternoon.

  She and Jack and some of the crew were in the middle of a working lunch at Boysen’s Deli, just across from the federal building, when the door burst open and David staggered in, drunk and disorderly, a filthy, disheveled mess. His angry eyes searched the place until they locked on Rachel.

  “Fuckin’ bitch,” he muttered, his voice slurred. “You think you can sneak out on me?”

  Rachel felt her scalp prickle and her cheeks get warm as she shot up out of her chair. Jack was on his feet, too, and so were A.J. and Sidney, all three threatening to make a move toward David. But she waved them off and went around the table to where he was standing. The eyes of everyone in the restaurant were on her as she approached him.

  “David, please,” she said, taking his arm. “Let’s go outside.”

  But David recoiled at her touch and swung his free arm, backhanding her. She yelped and stumbled into the table as David clenched his fists and staggered toward her.

  A.J. was the first to reach him and wrestled him to the floor. David hit it hard, grunting, resisting with everything he had—which wasn’t much. And as A.J. held him there, David let his body go limp and started to cry. Buckets.

  Rachel felt a hand at her elbow and turned to find Jack. He guided her into a chair, his grip firm and sure and welcome, steadying her not just physically, but emotionally as well. The shame and anger and embarrassment she felt quickly drained away, and as she watched David cry, nothing remained but pity.

  Jack brushed her hair aside and studied her cheek, which felt as if it were on fire. “You’ll be wearing that for a while,” he said. “You okay?”

  Rachel nodded.

  “I assume this guy is your ex?”

  Another nod. “He’s had a little trouble accepting it.”