Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) (20 page)

 “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. As their eyes met, a spark of electricity stuttered through her dormant heart.

 “Welcome to the fun factory,” he said.

T
HE 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.”

 “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.”

L
ATER, 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.

S
HE 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

D
ONOVAN 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.