Robert Browne: Kiss Her Goodbye

Oh, shit.

Sara.

Body screaming in protest, Gunderson jumped to his feet and spun, scanning the area until he found the van, which lay on its side like a dead elephant amidst a litter of old bones. There was a spray of blood across the cracked front windshield.

Oh, my fucking Christ.

“Sara!”

Gunderson stumbled toward the van, scrambled up and over it, and climbed in through the side door. He nearly stopped short at the sight of the carnage inside.

Gabe was gone for sure, lying at an impossible angle in back, head canted, eyes open and glazed. Nemo lay faceup across the middle seats, half-conscious and blinking. “What the fuck just happened?”

Then there was Tina. Jesus. Poor Tina had half a steering wheel embedded in her face, her once blond hair now wet and stained crimson, Queen of the Gladiators no more.

And Sara.

She was strapped in front next to Tina, eyes closed, arms dangling, a pregnant Raggedy Ann.

Gunderson felt gut-punched. He climbed over to her, touched her face, her neck, searched for a pulse.

Nothing there.

“No,” he groaned, and unbuckled her seat belt. She fell into his arms, all bony angles and beach-ball belly, as lifeless as a sack of potatoes.

This can’t be happening. Not this.

Blood dripped from the car seat. A dark stain spread at the crotch of her dress.

Gunderson groaned again. He slapped her face, trying to rouse her. “Wake up, baby, wake up!”

He slapped her again and then again, her head flopping listlessly beneath his blows. “Goddamn you, you little bitch, don’t you fucking do this to me!”

The sirens were even closer now. He heard movement behind him, Nemo sitting up, probably still blinking.

“We’re dead, man. We gotta get out of here.”

Gunderson cradled Sara in his arms. He’d never been much for tears, but he felt them coming on now and struggled to choke them back.

She was alive. He knew she was alive. Her pulse was too weak to register, that’s all. There’s no way she was gone. Not Sara.

He turned to Nemo. “Help me get her onto the sidewalk.”

“Are you kidding me? We don’t have time for this shit.”

Gunderson wrapped his fingers around Nemo’s neck and jerked him forward. “Help me get her onto the sidewalk, needle dick, or I swear to Christ you’ll wish you were Tina.”

Nemo shot a nervous glance at Tina’s bloody corpse.

“You’re the boss,” he said.

When Donovan came awake, he saw the big guy in the ski mask getting to his feet. Donovan’s brain kicked into autopilot, sizing him up: six-three, 240 pounds, most of it muscle. He ran the catalog of possibilities through his mind, thinking he knew the names and faces of everyone on Gunderson’s crew, but this guy was a mystery to him.

Of course, the ski mask didn’t help much.

The guy staggered a bit, cradling a nasty gash that ran the length of his left inner forearm. The gash didn’t seem to slow him down. Still wobbling slightly, he glanced back at Donovan, then stumbled toward the overturned van, which lay on its side several yards up the street.

Police sirens screamed in the distance, as if connected to an alternate universe, and Donovan wondered what the hell was taking them so long. He felt as if he were caught in some weird kind of limbo, where time and distance weren’t measured the way they were in the real world.

He tried to move, but couldn’t. The front end of the patrol car looked as if it had been crushed in the jaws of a trash compactor, the crumpled dash pinching his wounded leg. Blood pumped steadily from his thigh, seeping down to the seat beneath him. The entire limb was prickly numb, as if he’d slept on it for two days straight.

Donovan had been wounded twice before in the line of duty. Once as a patrolman in Lakeview. He was chasing a suspect in a liquor-store robbery, a kid no more than sixteen years old, when the kid wheeled around, opened fire, and struck gold with his first shot.

The bullet entered Donovan’s right pectoral and exited just below the armpit. It ripped the hell out of muscle and tissue-he still had the puckered pink scars to prove it-but it had somehow managed to miss any vital organs. The attending physician told Donovan he was lucky his right lung was still sucking air, but Donovan hadn’t felt all that lucky at the time.

The second incident was more serious. Donovan had a detective’s shield by then, working Special Crimes, chasing down a serial rapist who had slit the throats of three of his latest victims, all thirteen-year-old girls.

On a tip from victim number four, who had miraculously escaped unharmed, Donovan and his partner tracked the rapist to a run-down apartment building on the South Side. They cornered him in a dingy basement laundry room, where the suspect, a wild-eyed Neanderthal named Willy Sanchez, had dragged yet another thirteen-year-old.

He was holding her at knife point.

Donovan tried to reason with Sanchez. One hostage is the same as another, right? He set his. 45 on a washer top and offered an exchange. “Come on, Willy, let her go. Take me instead.”

Scared out of his wits, Sanchez at first balked, but finally agreed. Keeping his blade pressed against the terrified girl’s throat, he told Donovan to turn around and back slowly toward him. Donovan did as he was told, sharing a quick glance with his partner, who had his own. 45 trained on Sanchez.

The message was clear: as soon as the girl is free, take the shot.

But as he drew closer to Sanchez, Donovan caught the wild man’s reflection in the window of a nearby dryer. Just a flicker of movement in those eyes told him that Sanchez wasn’t about to let the girl go. He’d sooner slice her throat and let her bleed all over the laundry room floor.

Instinctively, Donovan quickened his step, brought his elbow up fast, and rammed it into the center of Sanchez’s startled face, shattering his nose. Sanchez screamed, reaching for the damage as Donovan grabbed the girl’s arm and spun her halfway across the room.

But Sanchez wasn’t down. With a surge of pure rage, he lunged at Donovan, knocking him sideways against a jumbo dryer. The knife arced upward, sank deep into Donovan’s side, and punctured his left kidney.

As Donovan slid to the musty cement floor, his partner pumped six bullets into Sanchez’s back and head, sending him to the great boneyard beyond in five seconds flat.

The last thing Donovan remembered was the smell of stale dryer sheets and the hysterical sobs of a frightened little girl.

A team of surgeons managed to save both Donovan and his kidney, but the memory of that night still sent a shiver through him. Any pain he suffered was always compared to the heat of that blade piercing flesh.

Thanks to the numbness, the fire in Donovan’s thigh was almost nonexistent now, but he’d gladly suffer a little pain in exchange for mobility. He watched helplessly as the big guy in the ski mask reached the overturned news van. Gunderson and another guy-Bobby Nemo from the looks of him-climbed out carrying a pregnant woman in a Kevlar vest and bloodstained sundress.

Sara Reed Gunderson. The girl next door with a heart of stone.

They laid her on the sidewalk and Gunderson knelt over her, almost reverently it seemed, and felt for a pulse. He obviously wasn’t getting one. Head drooping, he closed his eyes a moment, then abruptly stood up and turned in Donovan’s direction.

Even from this distance, Donovan could see the rage in those eyes. A greater rage than even Willy Sanchez had been able to muster, broken nose and all. Donovan didn’t need a course in advanced logic to know what was coming. He tugged at his leg, trying desperately to pull it free, but the damn thing was wedged in tight.

Gunderson’s hand dropped to a holster strapped at his thigh and pulled out a Beretta nine-millimeter.