Invincible, in fact.
Twenty minutes and two beers later, Luther pulled up outside.
“Saw you on TV,” he said, as Gunderson climbed into the truck. “Everything go okay?”
“The bait’s dangling from the hook as we speak.”
Luther nodded, his expression grim. “You hear about Bobby?”
“Tell me.”
“Feds picked him up.”
Gunderson wasn’t surprised. Bobby had always been careless. Right out of the box he’d hooked up with some strip-club skank, a mistake he was destined to regret-although Gunderson hadn’t expected the inevitable to happen quite so soon.
No matter. It was, after all, what he’d been counting on.
“Good,” he said, and smiled. “Things are about to get interesting.”
Gunderson’s own home away from home was an abandoned train yard near Cicero, an industrial suburb with smog thick enough to choke a rhino. The yard had once been a main stop on the metropolitan freight line, but the lines connecting to it had long ago been discontinued, and it quickly became a ghost town. Talks about clearing it out had dragged on for decades. Thirty-five years later it was still standing, but was so overrun with mangy cats and rodents that even the crackheads stayed away.
The perfect place to remain anonymous.
It was dark by the time Luther dropped him off, a mile and a half from the yard. Searching the streets of a rundown, blue-collar neighborhood, Gunderson found just the right car to take him home: a beat-up Corolla with missing hubcaps. No doubt its owner was already stationed in front of the tube, waiting for a beer and a blow job.
It was a chilly, moonless night. When he pulled up to the train yard gate, it seemed as if the Corolla’s headlights were the only illumination for blocks. Killing the engine, he got out, unhooked the padlock, and rolled the gate open.
He stood there a moment, listening, studying the darkness. The maze of rusted-out train cars was barely visible beneath the blackened sky, but the yard seemed clear. No unaccounted-for sounds. No flicker of flashlight beams or glow of cigarettes.
He was alone out here, as always. Alone with the cats and the rodents and his thoughts of Sara.
She’d been lying in a hospital bed for weeks now, her body useless to her, her mind stuck in limbo.
He had visited her several times since her transfer to Saint Margaret’s. The hospital was small, its security system a joke, and the graveyard shift was little more than a skeleton crew-a lone guard and a couple of nurses who spent most of their time yukking it up in the break room.
A temporary rerouting of the alarm wires and an accommodating fire exit had made it easy enough to slip into Sara’s hospital room and watch her, the wheezy drone of the heart/lung machine and the steady beep of monitors telling the world that she was alive only because of them. One yank of the plug and she’d be on her way to the next life.
Gunderson had considered pulling it, but could never quite muster up the courage, always hanging on to the hope that he might somehow get her back.
Then, on his third visit, just as he was about to leave, he heard it.
Sara’s voice.
… Release me…
It was little more than a whisper in a corner of his mind, but he was certain it was her.
… Release me…
Heart filling with joy, Gunderson leaned over her, looking for a sign of consciousness, but she was as still and as quiet as the dead.
“I’m here, baby,” he said softly. “Talk to me. Tell me what to do.”
The voice was so weak it almost brought tears to his eyes:
… Release me.
Then she was silent.
Several minutes passed as Gunderson waited, hoping for more, but nothing came. He heard footsteps in the hall and knew that the night guard was making his hourly rounds.
Time to go.
He squeezed Sara’s hand, promising to return, then took the fire exit out to the street, an idea forming at the periphery of his brain.
Sara’s body might be useless, but she was in there somewhere, begging to get out. And while pulling the plug might free her, it wouldn’t bring her back to him. Not in the flesh. Not to this world.
But what if he could find a way to make that possible? If he truly believed the things he said he did, how could he deny her that chance? How could he deny himself?
And then it hit him. The perfect solution. A marriage of vengeance and need, all wrapped up in a nice little fifteen-year-old package.
Sara would be his again. Not the same, perhaps, not as exquisitely beautiful, but the flesh was much less important to him than the mind and the heart and the soul.
And now that Bobby was in custody, the plan he’d waited to put into motion was about to kick into high gear.
And he was ready.
No, not just ready.
Eager.
20
When he heard the car pulling up, Donovan checked his watch: 8:35. He’d been waiting here twenty short minutes.
He stood in a corner of a dilapidated train car, near the rear door, his back pressed against the mottled fabric that lined the walls. The air was thick with the smell of stale cigarettes and half a century’s worth of mold.
Earlier, a sweep of his flashlight had told him that this had once been a passenger car. A luxury one at that, built at the turn of the century. How it wound up in the middle of a freight yard was anyone’s guess.
A slower sweep had told him that amidst the litter of butt-filled ashtrays and Baby Ruth wrappers, Gunderson had stockpiled enough weapons and ammunition to launch a Cuban invasion. Donovan had them cleared out immediately, of course. No point in taking chances.
His earpiece crackled.
A.J.’s voice: “It’s him.”
Donovan raised his two-way. “Any sign of Jessie?”
“Negative.”
“All right. Stay put until I give the signal.”
Outside, the car approached slowly, its engine rattling. It sounded small and foreign. Probably a beat-up Honda or Toyota, several years old, which undoubtedly matched its surroundings. Gunderson would be sure to steal a car that blended in.
The question was whether Jessie was inside. Could he have stashed her in the trunk? On the floor, between the front and back seats? Or was she with him at all?
The sight of those muddy boot prints had left a queasy feeling in Donovan’s stomach. In his gut he knew Jessie wasn’t in that car, and finding her would be problematic at best. All he’d managed to get from Bobby Nemo was this train yard and the location of Gunderson’s makeshift digs. Nemo had claimed no knowledge of Jessie other than Gunderson’s initial plan to snatch her.
Gunderson himself wasn’t likely to be much more helpful, but Donovan would tie the bastard to a stake and strip the flesh off his body, piece by piece, if that was the only way to break him down. The moment Gunderson
