Kiss Her Goodbye

9

The hot item on drive-time talk radio was the transfer of Sara Reed Gunderson to yet another critical-care facility. This was the third such transfer in little over a month. The first came ten days after she was brought to Franklin Memorial, her baby lost, her pulse nearly nonexistent, and her brain showing little, if any, activity.

In other words, Sara was about as dead as you can get without actually crossing over to the other side. The doctors should have pulled the plug that first day, but Sara’s parents wouldn’t hear of it. They still held out hope for their little girl.

Sara’s father, the CEO of a top-flight investment brokerage, used his considerable influence and deep pockets to call in medical experts from around the world. They’d take his money and study her charts and quietly shake their heads.

Sara’s mother appealed to God, but her prayers had apparently fallen on deaf ears. Sara had been in a coma for a month and a half now, and the prognosis wasn’t even remotely hopeful.

Despite Sara’s crimes, and despite her leftist leanings, she was something of a cause celebre to the right-wing fanatics who dominated the talk-radio waves. Whenever a new transfer was announced, discussions about government agencies out of control were renewed with venomous vigor. Most of that venom was reserved for the ATF.

Remember Waco, they’d cry.

The children of Walter O’Brien, and the wife of fellow bank guard Samuel R. Kingman, pointed fingers at no one. They believed Sara Reed Gunderson was an icy-hearted bitch who got exactly the punishment God intended: an eternity in hell.

Their only hope was that her husband would soon join her.

Unfortunately, no one expected that hope to come to fruition anytime soon. Despite the best efforts of the Chicago Police Department, the FBI, and the ATF, neither Alexander Gunderson nor his two surviving comrades could be found.

The FBI, plagued by the more pressing concerns of Middle East terrorist cells, speculated that Gunderson and crew had fled the country, possibly to Cuba. The police commissioner, countering criticism that the CPD was asleep at the wheel, insisted they had headed for the mountains of Wyoming or Iowa, seeking refuge among the local militias.

Neither scenario made sense to Jack Donovan. And as the publicity surrounding the Northland First amp; Trust robbery sank deeper and deeper into the back pages of the daily newspapers, he refused to give up. He maintained that Alexander Gunderson hadn’t left at all, but was holed up somewhere within the city limits.

Waiting. Watching. Planning.

Gunderson would never, Donovan insisted, leave his beloved Sara behind.