Robert Browne: Kiss Her Goodbye

“Please, don’t hurt anyone else.” This from some sweaty little ass-bag in a bow tie. “Take whatever you want.”

Sara figured him for the bank manager. Probably treated his employees like shit. You could see in his face what a creep he was.

He reminded her of her father.

She leveled the pistol at him and he ducked, covering his head with his hands. She had half a mind to pull the trigger just because the sight of him made her sick, but that wouldn’t be right.

Another of Alex’s tenets: no unnecessary killing.

The two guards had been shot in self-defense. If they hadn’t been crazy enough to try to draw on her, they’d still be alive instead of lying in pools of their own blood and waste.

Sara felt kind of bad about the older one. When she gave him the look and pointed her gun at him, his watery gray eyes got all big and scared. She’d practically had to force herself to pull the trigger.

But it was his own fault. He should have gotten down and stayed down like she told him to.

Stupid old fool.

There was movement toward the back of the room and Sara fired another round into the ceiling. A woman screamed as plaster showered down around her.

“I’m not gonna tell you again,” Sara shouted. “You move, you die. Got that?”

She gave everyone the look now-that flat, deadly, animal stare she’d practiced for hours. Alex said she had a natural propensity (his word) for sweetness, and he’d spent days working with her, teaching her to turn it on and off. He said her ability to do that was better than any weapon he owned, and Alex owned a lot of weapons.

Speaking of which, where the hell was he?

The guards had been immobilized; the room was under her control…

He should’ve been here by now.

Before she completed the thought, the bank doors burst open and the love of her life strolled in.

Gunderson hated bank jobs. They were messy and unwieldy and full of unknown variables. You never knew when some nutcase might decide it was more important to die a hero than tuck his kids into bed that night.

On top of that, the labor-to-profit ratio was a bit too thin to make it all worthwhile. He could make more money copping credit card numbers off the Internet.

But bank jobs generated heat. And if you’ve got a message to get across, as Gunderson did, then heat is what you need.

He pushed the bank doors wide and gestured for Luther and Nemo to go in first. Like Gunderson, they sported black battle gear, ski masks, and Colt Commando 733s. A bit showy, but that was the point.

Their armbands featured hand-sewn Chinese characters against a black background, the symbol for warrior, a favorite of Gunderson’s. Sara had designed them one night after a particularly athletic bout of lovemaking. He was her warrior, she’d said. His energy inspired her.

And she, in turn, inspired him.

Gunderson hefted the 733 and pushed in after Luther and Nemo. Sara was near a counter at the center of the room, her game face on, the nine-millimeter he’d given her for her birthday clutched in her left hand.

Her wedding ring glinted under the fluorescent lights-a $40,000 work of perfection he’d stolen off some fake-n-bake bitch in Boulder City after he’d boned her silly.

Nothing but the best for his Sara.

Gunderson crossed to where Sara was standing and handed her a Kevlar vest. She waved the nine, indicating the crowd of civilians facedown on the floor. “Proud of me?”

Gunderson smiled and rubbed the swell of her abdomen. The kid was kicking like crazy. “Always, baby. Always.”

As he helped her into the vest, he marveled at how good she looked pregnant. He couldn’t imagine anyone more beautiful than she was right now. Or any other time, for that matter.

She was the kind of woman men write sonnets about. Fight duels over.

And she was his. All his.

Gunderson pulled off his ski mask, kissed Sara’s forehead, then turned and pointed his 733 at the nearest surveillance camera, blasting it right off its swivel mount.

There was an audible reaction from the crowd as camera guts blew everywhere.

Gunderson smiled. “All right, folks, settle down. This, as they say, is a stickup.”

D — E-A-T-H.

A five-letter word for crossing over.

Donovan was trying to pencil it in when A.J. spun the wheel and took a turn at high speed. The Chrysler’s tires groaned beneath them, the shift of force pinning Donovan against the passenger-side door.

“Easy, Hopalong, you’re messing up my perfect penmanship.”

A.J. grunted and took another turn, this one only slightly less severe. A.J. never said much when he drove. Especially if he was in a hurry.

The call from Sidney Waxman had come in at 9:15 a.m. The Madison Street branch of Northland First amp; Trust was normally a ten-minute drive, depending on traffic, but with the siren on and the bubble flashing, A.J. swore he could make it in under five. That meant two to go, give or take, allowing Donovan just enough time to polish off this bitch of a crossword he’d been struggling with all morning.

Donovan was seriously addicted to crosswords. Every workday started with a glass of grapefruit juice, a sharp No. 2 pencil, and the Tempo section of the Trib, where the checker-box monstrosity was nestled among the art reviews and horoscopes.

Working the puzzle prepared him for the day ahead. Sharpened his mind. Unfortunately, he was notoriously bad at solving the damn things. So bad, in fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually finished one.

But he was close this time. Very close.

“Four blocks and counting,” A.J. said, breaking his silence. “If I push it, I can beat my own record.”

Donovan glanced up from his newspaper. “Why settle for silver when you can grab the gold?”

A.J. grinned and punched the accelerator, a man with a mission, living life on a perpetual caffeine high. Donovan was only a dozen years his senior, but working next to a live wire like A.J., he sometimes felt like a very old man.

Of course, that might have something to do with all the pain and aggravation he’d managed to pack into his thirty-nine years. Both parents were dead. His sister had committed suicide when he was seventeen. And his wife and kid-make that ex-wife and kid-barely knew he was alive. Donovan wasn’t quite sure how or when he’d let it all slip away, but he had and felt guilty because of it.

Actually, guilty was too mild of a word. What he really felt like was an A Number One shitheel and held no illusion that either wife or daughter would disagree.

The only part of his life Donovan really had a handle on was the job. He’d been a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives long enough to consider it a lifetime commitment and had spent ten years prior to that with the Chicago PD. He was a rising star in a vast federal bureaucracy and, so far, hadn’t managed to disappoint.

There was always tomorrow, of course. Or the rest of today, for that matter. But Donovan had enough confidence in his abilities on the job to ignore the failures of his personal life and approach the future with optimism.

Cautious optimism.

A.J. turned a corner. “You think we’re looking at another snipe hunt?”

“Sidney says it’s the real thing.”

“Doesn’t make any sense. Why would Gunderson take down a bank?”

Donovan shrugged. “I stopped trying to figure out that asshole a long time ago.”

Alexander Gunderson was another puzzle Donovan had yet to solve. The task force he headed had been formed specifically to investigate a local arms-trafficking ring with suspected ties to a nationwide network. The deeper they dug, the more Gunderson’s name had come up. So Donovan kept digging and was introduced to the organized anarchy of a small but potentially destructive new militia organization: the Socialist Amerikan Reconstruction Army.