Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) (2 page)

 They sneaked into the bell tower atop Old Main, got high, and spent the night laughing and talking. And in those hours, she discovered that he could read her feelings like no one she’d ever met. By the time the sun came up, they’d made love twice and Sara knew this was it.

 He was the one.

 A month later they married and Sara dropped out of school. Her old man nearly had a brain aneurysm when he found out, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. She knew he had tried to buy Alex off, but Alex had told him to go take a flying fuck. For once Daddy’s money was useless.

 Besides, Alex had his own financial strategy.

 “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.”

3

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 & 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.

 S.A.R.A.

 Gunderson was its founding father.

 The group’s recent stockpiling activities had put them squarely on Donovan’s radar screen. Yet despite his insistence that they be taken seriously, both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security considered a ragtag band of malcontents hardly worth their time. They were too busy scooping up olive-skinned bogeymen and carting them off to Guantánamo for a round of zap my privates.

 Donovan knew different. With all the weaponry Gunderson had accumulated, the guy was capable of doing just about anything.

 But a bank job?

 A.J. was right. It didn’t make much sense. Unless, of course, Gunderson was vying for more attention. Something he seemed to crave.

 “Home stretch,” A.J. said. “Twenty seconds to spare.”

 Shooting through an intersection, they made yet another quick turn that had Donovan gripping the armrest. Why A.J. never took the straightforward route was beyond him. With a sigh of resignation, he dropped the crossword to the seat next to him. No way he’d finish it now.

 Up ahead loomed the forty-story building that housed Northland First & Trust, the carnival already in motion. Patrol cars formed a barrier near the bank’s front doors. The street had been blocked off; a throng of rubberneckers had lined up behind long wooden sawhorses, anxiously awaiting the big showdown. News vans struggled to find a place to perch that was within camera range. A
SWAT
van sat at an angle several yards behind the patrol cars. Standard procedure meant a platoon of sharpshooters already occupied various sweet spots in neighboring buildings.

 Gunderson or not, Donovan didn’t envy whoever was inside that bank.

W
AXMAN AND THE
local
SWAT
commander were waiting for them as they pulled up next to the van. Donovan swung his door open, climbed out. “Sing to me, Sidney.”

 Waxman and Donovan had come up together through the ranks of the ATF, and Donovan had long considered him his best friend.

 He was also a damn fine agent.

 “It’s him, Jack. Gunderson, the missus, and two shooters in ski masks. Video feed was cut right after they made entry, so we’re flying blind.”

 A.J. joined them as they crossed toward the barrier of patrol cars. “He make contact?”

 Waxman shook his head. “Not a word.”

 Donovan shifted his attention to the
SWAT
commander—a barrel-chested guy with a neatly trimmed mustache. “What about hostages?”

 “We’re estimating as many as thirty. What’s this asshole’s story, anyway?”

 “Just another pretty boy looking for attention,” A.J. said.

 Donovan gestured toward the bank. “Any way out besides the front doors?”

 “Not without a sledgehammer and a whole lot of elbow grease. We’ve shut down the elevators and sealed off the lobby. There’s a fire door in back, but it doesn’t connect directly to the bank. He’s boxed himself in.”

 “Trust me,” Donovan said. “He went in, he’s figured a way out.” Gunderson always had an angle. The trick, of course, was figuring out what it was before he had a chance to use it.

 They crouched low as they reached the patrol cars, taking position behind them. A.J. aimed a pair of field glasses at the front doors.

 Like those in the windows, the blinds were drawn shut.

 “Visibility stinks,” he said. “Shooters don’t have a prayer.”

 Donovan pulled his cell phone from a pocket of his flak jacket. “Let’s see if he’s in a talkative mood.”

 He punched in the number for dispatch and had the operator patch him through to the bank. He had never considered himself much of a negotiator. Found it difficult to buddy up to these scumballs. But if it meant getting the hostages out of there alive, it was worth a shot. Maybe he’d get lucky and Gunderson would tip his hand.

 He thought about that a moment and almost laughed out loud.

 What’s an eight-letter word for
fat chance?
 

4

K
INLAW WAS PISSED
. Three years wearing the uniform, busting his ass on the streets, taking shit from civilians who considered him barely a step above Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, and here he was pulling duty at the
rear
of the crime scene. You’d think the dues he’d paid, he’d at least get a front-row seat.

 But no. The supervising officer had decided Kinlaw and a handful of his fellow uniforms were best put to use at the back side of the bank building, just in case the suspects got clever.

 The way Kinlaw saw it, they’d have to be friggin’ geniuses, considering there was only a single fire door and no ground-floor windows back here, and the building was made of solid concrete and steel. But who knows, maybe they’d launch hang gliders off the fortieth floor and make their getaway at three hundred feet above street level.

 Uh-huh. Sure.

 Just once in his life, Kinlaw wanted to be out where the action was. Maybe even get in a shot or two when the fireworks started. Assuming there’d be any fireworks.

 Instead he’d have to stand here like an idiot for God knows how long, feeling like the designated driver while everyone else partied hardy. Sometimes he wanted to take this badge of his and…

 Shit.

 Some bozo in a van was trying to edge past the barrier at the top of the block. Big Channel Four news wagon that wasn’t even supposed to be back here. Kinlaw sighed and trudged up the street toward it. All his time on the force and he was nothing but a glorified—