Donovan’s vision continued to narrow, the sun spot growing bigger and brighter with every step he took. A nickel. A quarter. A half-dollar. He felt his body beginning to give out on him, the chain-link fence within his reach but at the same time seeming miles away.
Then, inside the circle, he saw it: a face. Nothing more than a fleeting glimpse, a quick flash of sense memory. Dark eyes, malevolent smile, reptilian tongue flicking between the teeth.
Gunderson.
Donovan hit the fence hard and collapsed against it, fingers caught in its wide mesh, the circle of light widening as Gunderson’s grin flashed at him again.
Give us a kiss.
Donovan willed the vision away, trying desperately to see past the light toward the embankment below. But everything outside the circle was a blur.
Was the hulk down there?
Legs collapsing beneath him, he felt himself falling. He scrambled for purchase, trying and failing to hang on to the fence. After a moment of blackness, he realized he was on his back, staring up at the pale afternoon sky.
His head continued to pound, but his vision had cleared, and now sounds of traffic filtered in, horns honking, angry shouts. Ski Mask had undoubtedly reached the bottom of the embankment and was either getting away or would soon be roadkill. But Donovan couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.
A voice called out to him. “Jesus, Jack, you got a friggin’ death wish or what?”
A moment later, Waxman crouched next to him, out of breath, fingers pressing Donovan’s neck, checking his pulse. “You are one dumb motherfucker.”
Struggling for air, Donovan tried and failed to get some words out, offering Sidney little more than a wheezy grunt.
“Don’t worry,” Waxman said. “I called it in. He won’t get far.”
But Donovan had something else on his mind, trying again to get it out. Another wheezy grunt.
Waxman leaned in closer. “What?”
“… It was real…” Donovan said between breaths.
Waxman frowned. “Real? What are you talking about?”
“… the dream.”
The frown deepened. “Sorry, old buddy, you lost me.”
“A. J… Gunderson.”
“What about them?”
“They were there,” Donovan said, knowing that where he’d gone when he’d hit that black river last night was as real as the ground beneath him, and the gray sky above.
The netherworld.
Purgatory.
The road to Yaru.
It didn’t matter what the name was. He’d been there, and it was real. And he remembered it all.
He looked up at Waxman, at the puzzled expression on his friend’s face.
Then he said, “I saw Gunderson.”
35
Rachel checked her watch and discovered it had stopped: 1:28 p.m. About the time she and Jack had left the hospital.
They’d lost another hour since then, maybe more, and Jessie was only a stone’s throw away from what most people in law enforcement considered the cutoff point between hope and despair: the twenty-four-hour mark.
The majority of children abducted by strangers wound up dead within the first three hours. The rest rarely made it past twenty-four.
And even if Jessie was being kept alive by those stolen oxygen tanks, there was no telling how much longer they’d last.
But Rachel wouldn’t allow herself to give up hope. Not yet, at least.
She had been waiting here for what seemed an eternity, listening to the radio until a song came on that reminded her of her ex.
The Eagles. “Tequila Sunrise.”
Two bars into the thing, she jabbed the off button with such ferocity she almost broke a nail.
No point in reliving that nightmare.
But then it was too late, and all the memories came crashing back, all the times she’d spent behind the wheel of a car very similar to this one, a four-year-old Toyota she and David had scrimped and saved to put a down payment on. And what she remembered in particular were the late nights after David and his buddies from the muffler shop had poured their paychecks down their throats and she was dragged out of bed by a drunken phone call.
Then it was into that Toyota and out to McBain’s. Rachel’s taxi service.
“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.