Kiss Her Goodbye

53

They got there in less than half an hour.

After making it abundantly clear to Donovan that this was against her better judgment, that he needed to go to the hospital- now — Rachel brought her car around and used her considerable driving skills to get them there in record time.

No doubt about it. He was gonna have to marry this woman.

Despite the ordeal he’d just been through, Donovan felt surprisingly good, thanks in part to sheer willpower, an abundance of hope, and the adrenaline Wong had pumped into his veins.

There were only a few scattered cars in Saint Margaret’s parking lot. They took the elevator to the second floor, and when the doors opened, Donovan was relieved to see that Nurse Baker had not returned. Instead, a lone nineteen-year-old was manning the nurses’ station.

“Sara Gunderson,” he said. “What room?”

The nurse looked at him as if he were something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe. “I’m sorry. Are you family?”

Donovan frowned and flashed his credentials. “Just take us to the goddamn room.”

Looking flustered, the nurse came out from behind the counter. “Follow me,” she muttered, and headed down a hallway.

A moment later she led them through a doorway into a small, dank room, a single bed against the wall, surrounded by a collection of medical equipment, including a ventilator.

The woman on the bed did not even remotely resemble Sara Gunderson. She looked like ninety pounds of nothing. A sickly old woman on the brink of death.

But it was Sara all right. Eyes closed, chest rising and falling to the wheezy beat of the ventilator.

Donovan looked around, surprised not by what he saw-but what he didn’t see. His stomach lurched.

“The window,” he said. “Where’s the window?”

The nurse studied him, clearly confused by the question. “She… doesn’t have one. This is a converted storeroom.”

“How long has she been in here?”

“Sir, if-”

“How long?”

The nurse flinched. “Ever since she was admitted. Why?”

Donovan glanced at Rachel, feeling the ground beneath him roll. Overcome by a sudden, intense despair, he found a chair and sat, the nurse eyeing him with a mix of distrust and concern.

“Are you okay, sir?”

“Get out,” he spat.

“Sir, I’m not sure what you’re-”

“Out,” he repeated. “Get out.”

Looking frightened now, the nurse turned and scurried out the door. Donovan felt Rachel looking at him and held a hand up.

“Don’t say it,” he told her. “Just let me think.”

He lowered his head and stared at the floor, studying the pattern in the linoleum. Everything he’d been through and this was where it ended?

No. There was something here he wasn’t seeing. There had to be.

The puzzle. Concentrate on the puzzle.

One word. Ten letters.

All you had to do was look out Sara’s window.

Cursing himself for being so bad at these things, he glanced up at Sara, watching her chest rise and fall. “Come on,” he said. “Help me with this.”

What had Gunderson meant? If there was no window in the room, what other kinds of windows were there? Sara’s eyes? The window to her soul?

No. Too literary for Gunderson.

Ten simple letters. What could they…

And then it hit him.

Rising, he crossed to the bed and searched the nightstand next to it, but it was littered with medical paraphernalia, nothing else.

“Come on, goddammit.”

“Jack,” Rachel said. “What’s wrong? What are you looking for?”

And then he found it, partially hidden by one of the machines, taped to the wall directly above Sara’s head.

Ten letters.

Photograph.

A Polaroid photo he’d seen at least a half dozen times: Alexander Gunderson smiling for the camera, standing in front of the Lake Point Lighthouse.

“What is it?” Rachel asked.

Donovan ripped the photo from the wall. “Sara’s window.”