Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) Read online

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Rachel looked at David for a moment. His shoulders shook as he sobbed. Then she said, “Let him go.”

  Jack nodded and gestured to A.J. “You heard her.”

  A.J. was panting and his face was red. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Do it.”

  A.J. frowned, then reluctantly rose and stepped away as Jack bent and grabbed David’s arm, helping him to his feet. David’s eyes were red and rimmed with tears, but he didn’t look at Rachel.

  She watched Jack guide him out the door and onto the sidewalk. Watched them through the front window, Jack’s body language revealing only patience and authority as he sat David at the curb. He said something and David reacted visibly, looking up sharply, then slumped his shoulders in resignation as he did what he’d never done with Rachel: listened.

  Jack continued talking, took out a business card, scribbled something on the back, and handed it to him. David nodded and glanced back toward the deli. Wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve, he got up and shuffled away, heading down the street.

  “Jesus Christ,” A.J. said, storming toward Jack as he came back inside. “You’re really gonna let that scumbag skate?”

  Jack patted his shoulder. “Go buy yourself a cup of coffee.”

  LATER, WHEN she and Jack were alone in his office, she asked him what he had said to David.

  “I told him he was lucky,” Jack said.

  “Lucky?”

  “Lucky he’d had the time he had with you, lucky you were the forgiving kind, because his luck is wearing thin.”

  “And what makes you think I’m so forgiving?”

  “Because you didn’t make a scene, you treated him with a dignity he clearly didn’t deserve. Even when he gave you that knot on your face, you were more concerned about him than yourself.” Jack looked at her. “Am I wrong?”

  Rachel shook her head, knowing that most men—men like David—would never have been able to read her so effortlessly. Something about this new boss of hers, something that went much deeper than his good looks and easy smile, set him apart from the men she’d known.

  Anyone else in that restaurant would have taken David down for what he did—A.J. was practically frothing at the mouth. But instead of using his fists, Jack had counseled David. A move that was as unexpected as it was noble.

  She later learned that what Jack had written on the back of his card was the name and number of an alcohol treatment facility. She wished she could say that David had used it, but she was pretty sure he never had.

  But he didn’t bother her again. Not even a phone call. And that was the last time she saw him.

  SHE AND JACK had worked together for two years, their relationship close, sometimes moving right up to the water’s edge. But neither had ever taken the plunge.

  There was the job. And office protocol.

  And the timing just never seemed right.

  Besides, maybe she was fooling herself. Maybe Jack didn’t feel the way she did. She had given him all the signals without actually throwing herself at him, but he had never quite responded the way she’d hoped he would.

  So she waited. Because that’s all she could do.

  And here she was, still waiting, sitting behind the wheel of another Toyota thinking about David and Jack and of the events of the last couple of years. And the last several hours.

  Hope and despair.

  Was she witnessing another self-destruct?

  Jessie was missing. The man who’d taken her was dead. How long could Jack keep going before he folded under the weight of it all?

  And what if they never found her? What then?

  Before she could even allow herself to think that far ahead, an ambulance streaked by, siren screaming, then tore around the corner past Tony Reed’s warehouse.

  Knowing this couldn’t be anything but bad, Rachel flew out of her car and ran across the rutted blacktop. Following the path of the ambulance, she rounded the side of the building just in time to see Jack and Sidney emerge from a nearby alley, Sidney struggling to keep Jack upright as the ambulance came to a stop and two paramedics jumped out.

  Barely able to walk, Jack waved them away. The paramedics ignored him and took over for Sidney, guiding him to the rear of the ambulance. Throwing the doors open, they sat him down on the lip of the doorframe as one of the paramedics pressed a stethoscope to his chest.

  Rachel just stood there, holding her breath, wanting to shoot him. Kick him.

  Punch him, at the very least.

  Maybe he wasn’t technically her responsibility, but he might as well be, because she wasn’t about to waste all this anger on anyone else. He was her jump start, goddammit, and two years exchanging glances and quick smiles and tucking away her feelings was two years too many.

  Screw the job, screw office protocol.

  Screw the waiting.

  And despair need not apply. Only hope.

  Hope was essential.

  They would find Jessie and things would change—oh, boy, would they change.

  That is, of course, if she didn’t kill the bastard first.

  36

  DONOVAN WASN’T ABOUT to go back to the hospital. Not a chance.

  His heart was still doing a dance inside his chest, but it had started to slow and he could already feel his strength returning. Another trip to the hospital would only be wasted time—time he couldn’t afford.

  As he sat at the back of the ambulance, arguing this point with Waxman and the paramedics, Rachel walked up and joined the chorus. She looked upset, and Donovan felt a twinge of guilt. But he didn’t back down.

  “Look at yourself,” Rachel said as she angled one of the doors to show him his reflection in the window. “You think you’re doing Jessie any good in this condition?”

  Donovan was surprised by what he saw. Skin pale. Dark circles under his eyes. Pupils dilated. He looked like a skell, a hype. One fix away from the graveyard.

  They told me you were dead.

  A whisper of voices cascaded through his already crowded brain, and before he could stop them he was thinking about where he’d been and what he’d seen. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing the thoughts away, and when he opened them again, Rachel was staring at him, full of concern. Waiting.

  “It’s almost twenty-four hours,” he said. “If I give up now—”

  “For God sakes, Jack, nobody’s asking you to give up. Just get some rest. Let Sidney take over for a while.”

  “You don’t understand. There are things going on here. Things I can’t explain.”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, brother, here we go again,” Waxman muttered.

  Rachel glanced in his direction but he looked away, studying the ground. Frowning, she returned her gaze to Donovan, concern giving way to puzzlement.

  “What things?” she repeated.

  At the periphery of his brain, Donovan saw a turbulent sky, dark craggy mountains. A crowd of people marching like lemmings into the darkness.

  He considered telling her about it, but held back. He didn’t want her looking at him the way Waxman had. What little he’d related to his friend had been greeted with a heavy—and entirely reasonable—dose of skepticism.

  Actually, that was putting it mildly.

  Waxman thought he was nuts.

  “Later,” he said. “Right now we’ve got a suspect to track.”

  Rachel started to protest, but he cut her short by turning to Waxman and gesturing across the street to the parking lot. A small group of people were gathered outside Reed’s warehouse door, watching them. Reed’s cast and crew.

  “Get a canvass started. See if somebody knows that asshole’s name. And get Al working the F-150. Maybe the guy was stupid enough to drive his own truck.”

  “Wishful thinking,” Waxman said, pulling out his cell phone. “You see Reed over there?”

  Donovan squinted at the crowd and shook his head. “Nope.”

  “I’l
l check inside.”

  “Wait for me.” Donovan got to his feet, but his legs were as weak and rubbery as month-old celery sticks. He grabbed the door to steady himself.

  Rachel took his arm. “Jack, let Sidney handle this.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Not if you keep going at this pace.” She clearly wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t about to budge, either. She sighed. “At least let me get some food in you. You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  She was right. He hadn’t even thought about food. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized he was famished. The tap dance in his chest had nearly subsided, but a bit of nourishment might make him feel better.

  “She’s making sense,” Waxman said. “You keep running on empty, sooner or later you won’t be running at all.”

  Donovan felt the heat of Waxman’s gaze, judging him, the flicker of doubt in his eyes.

  He wanted to resist, but he knew full well that Waxman could handle Reed as well as he could. Probably better at this point.

  It was his turn to sigh. “Someplace close,” he said to Rachel. “A quick refuel and that’s it.”

  She squeezed his hand and started across the street. “I’ll get my car.”

  Donovan watched her go, feeling as though he’d just escaped a lynching. She was as stubborn as he was.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Waxman asked.

  Donovan looked at him. “I know you think I’ve lost it, Sidney, but I saw what I saw.”

  “I don’t doubt that, old buddy. But you are under a lot of stress.”

  “Just get me a goddamned name.”

  Waxman nodded. “Consider it done.”

  THEY FOUND A deli about three blocks over.

  Donovan thought the short ride might rejuvenate him, but when he stepped onto the curb, the world started to sway and he nearly lost his balance.

  Rachel came around the car, took his elbow, and guided him inside to a table.

  “Déjà vu,” she said as she sat him down. “Only in reverse.”

  Donovan had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t have the energy to try to figure it out, so he forced a chuckle and left it at that.

  She waved a hand toward the menu mounted over the counter. “What are you hungry for?”

  Donovan scanned it. “Pastrami. Mile high.”

  Rachel mumbled something he didn’t catch and headed for the counter where a stout, round-faced woman waited to take their order. It was long past lunchtime, but still too early for dinner, and the place was nearly a ghost town. All but two of the remaining tables were empty.

  Donovan watched as Rachel put in their order, but his mind was on a different plane, thinking of Waxman and Reed and Ski Mask.

  And the dark place. The road to Yaru.

  He thought about the stark landscape, remembering what A.J. had told him. That we bring our own baggage to the place, our minds filling in details to help us cope with something we don’t yet understand.

  Did this mean that some of the walking dead found themselves in a field of lilies or on a beach at sunset? Were others cruising through a Vegas casino, slot machines spitting out shiny silver dollars?

  What did it say about Donovan’s state of mind that his chosen deathscape was as bleak and as cold as the far side of the moon? Had the dark world he’d conjured up always been there at the periphery of his brain?

  He thought about the job, and about the death and destruction he’d witnessed over the years. He thought about his parents, both gone, lost to a plane crash in the Bahamas just months before his divorce.

  And he thought about his sister. The other Jessie.

  Jessica-Anne Donovan, as smart as she was artistic, a scholar, a painter, a terrific pianist—and a victim of suicide just three days before her nineteenth birthday. She had suffered a nervous breakdown during her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence and come home to recuperate. A week later, Donovan—still in high school—trudged in from a long afternoon of football practice to find her hanging from a ceiling beam. A lavender robe tie was cinched around her neck, her once beautiful face an unnatural shade of blue.

  Donovan was devastated, but he wasn’t surprised. Nobody was.

  No matter how cheerful she might have pretended to be, Jessie-Anne had always worn sadness like an accessory. It shaded her eyes. Colored her speech.

  And Donovan had never known why. Wasn’t sure she had, either.

  All these years later, he didn’t often think about her. He usually pushed such distractions aside, refusing to allow himself to succumb to sentiment. And to the guilt he felt, the feeling that if only he’d come home earlier he could have stopped her.

  Maybe he had paid for that. Maybe he was a fraud. Maybe, like his sister, he had never been as happy or content as he pretended to be. Could her death be the reason he’d so often ignored his wife and kid in favor of work? Was he afraid to get too close?

  That bleak world he’d visited last night might well be a reflection of a bruised and battered soul. And now, with Jessie gone—his Jessie—he wondered if he’d ever have a chance to heal.

  Rachel came back from the counter and sat across from him, her eyes immediately registering concern, as if she sensed the depth of his mood.

  “What is it?” she said.

  Donovan shook his head, dismissing the question, afraid to say anything. Afraid she, too, would think he was nuts. But what was the point? Sooner or later he’d have to spill it. Better for her to hear his version now than Sidney Waxman’s later on.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “You ever think about life after death?”

  Rachel looked surprised. “Maybe you should ask my grandmother. She’s got a whole boatload of theories on the subject.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  Rachel sobered. Touched his hand. “Jack, if this is about Jessie, you can’t start thinking like that.”

  “This is about me.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Donovan shook his head again, having second thoughts. “You’ll just think I’m crazy.”

  “And that would be different how?”

  Vintage Rachel, he thought, but it sounded forced. Unnatural. She shifted in her chair, but he sensed her discomfort was more than physical.

  At the table next to them, a man in a gray suit was finishing up the last crumbs of a corned beef on rye as the fingers of his free hand toyed with the seal on a pack of Marlboros. The guy was obviously trying to quit and couldn’t decide whether to succumb to his addiction.

  “Jack?”

  Donovan returned his attention to Rachel, but said nothing.

  She prodded. “Earlier you told me there were things going on. What things? What did you mean?”

  Donovan hesitated, glancing again at the pack of Marlboros. Fingers scraped the cellophane. “You remember what the paramedics told you at the hospital? That I was dead?”

  “You think I’d forget?”

  He thought he saw a flicker of dread in her eyes, as if she was anticipating where he was headed and wasn’t quite sure she wanted to go there with him.

  “I wasn’t just floating in the river, Rache. I went somewhere.”

  “Went somewhere,” she repeated.

  “At first I thought it was just some screwy dream, but now I know it was real. As real as you are. And this place.”

  “You’re telling me that when your heart stopped …”

  She didn’t finish, so Donovan finished for her. “Tunnel, bright light—the whole ball of wax. And that wasn’t the end of it.”

  Rachel fell silent for a long moment and he was sure that once she’d processed his words, she’d give him that same look Waxman had. Then her gaze steadied and she reached across the table and grabbed both of his hands, holding them between hers.

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, her cell phone rang.

  Donovan was halfway through his story, delivering it in fits and starts, remembering new detai
ls as they came to him, and hoping she wouldn’t run screaming from the place once he’d finished. At one point, the stout woman brought their sandwiches over, but Donovan barely noticed her.

  Rachel answered the phone, listened a moment, then passed it across to him.

  It was Waxman.

  “The F-150’s a bust,” he said. “Stolen off a dealer’s back lot. They didn’t even know it was missing until we called them.”

  “Wonderful. What about Reed?”

  “Turns out our boy’s been riding his ass for weeks. Reed’s so terrified of the guy, he threatened to lawyer up and take his chances. Once I promised him a night in a cell with Bobby Nemo, he got very cooperative.”

  “A name, Sidney. Give me a name.”

  “Luther Dwayne Polanski. Like the movie director. Twenty-eight years old, did a six-year stint at Danville Correctional for armed robbery and aggravated assault.”

  “Let me guess. He was there the same time as Gunderson.”

  “Their sentences overlapped by about a year. Luther was released six months ago.”

  Donovan thought back over the weeks immediately following the Northland First & Trust heist. Gunderson’s sheet had revealed a short stint at Danville for weapons possession, and Donovan and A.J. had been out there a half dozen times, looking for possible associates of Gunderson’s. Neither the warden nor the guards had ever mentioned the name Polanski.

  “I talked to his PO,” Waxman said. “Says Luther’s been a model parolee. Shows up twice a week like clockwork, has a job washing dishes at a place called Millie’s Diner. They told me he hasn’t been to work for a couple days.”

  “Where’s he living?”

  “His mother’s house in South Deering.”

  Donovan stood up, feeling the room sway only slightly this time, the news giving him a renewed sense of energy.

  At the table next to them, the man in the gray suit crumpled his napkin, then rose and headed for the door, leaving the unopened pack of Marlboros behind.

  Attaboy, Donovan thought. He’d never been a smoker himself, but at this moment he could almost understand the guy’s reluctance. There was something alluring about that little red-and-white box. Something … familiar.