Donovan’s heart skipped.
Holy shit. Ski Mask.
At that instant, the hulk’s head swiveled in Donovan’s direction, the eyes going wide. Without missing a beat, he grabbed Tony’s crew member by the shoulders, hurled him at Donovan and Waxman, then turned on his heels and ran.
34
He was already across the warehouse by the time Donovan reached the stage floor. Coming around a corner, Donovan heard the echo of a door banging open and saw a blast of sunlight, the hulk’s massive frame silhouetted against it as he darted outside.
Cutting a diagonal path toward him, Donovan plowed through a gaggle of cast and crew members milling around a catering table. The angel let out a shriek, wings fluttering, as he swept past her. He brushed against a light stand and it toppled over with a loud crash, more shrieks and cries of alarm rising behind him.
Somewhere in the confusion he heard the sound of Wax-man’s voice, shouting for people to “Move!” There was another loud crash and Waxman let loose a flurry of profanities that would make a truck driver blush.
Donovan ignored the commotion. Reaching the door, he slammed through it and found himself in a parking lot, pale sunlight glinting off the windshields of a dozen or more cars. Squinting against the light, he quickly scanned the lot, his pulse up, heart pounding in his ears, head now feeling as if he’d been worked over by a jackhammer operator on a vicious amphetamine high.
Across the lot, the hulk was about to climb behind the wheel of an F-150, but quickly abandoned that idea when he saw Donovan coming his way. Taking off on foot, he cut across a narrow side street, blew past a forklift operator unloading rolls of carpet from a container truck, and headed into an alley between two warehouses.
Donovan followed, the thud of his heart growing louder with every step. As he neared the alley, the forklift operator swung into a reverse arc, warning beeps shrieking. Donovan veered around him and reached the mouth of the alley just as the hulk made an abrupt left turn at the far end.
Donovan felt his chest seizing up but pushed himself, picking up speed. As he moved deeper into the alley, its walls seemed to close in on him, that odd sense of deja vu sweeping over him again. For just a moment, he felt separated from his body, as if some dark part of him were being sucked away. The faint whisper of voices filled his ears.
Donovan shook off the feeling and continued forward, bad leg throbbing, lungs scorched by every ragged intake of breath. Reaching the end of the alley, he turned left and saw a vacant lot up ahead, its far end bordered by a chain-link fence.
The hulk was halfway across it.
Relying on pure adrenaline, Donovan willed his feet to move even faster. He knew he’d pay for this, probably wind up right back in the hospital, but he couldn’t give up. Not now.
But as the hulk neared the chain-link fence, the pounding in Donovan’s head grew so fierce it overrode everything else. He was suddenly deaf to the world, his vision narrowing, a circle of light the size of a penny pulsing like a tiny sun spot between his eyes.
The hulk was halfway up the fence now, limbs moving furiously as he scrambled up and over it. Beyond it was a steep, grassy embankment that sloped downward toward a highway. Midafternoon traffic streaked by.
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.
