Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller) by Robert Gregory Browne Read Free Book Online

HER bus and had to catch a cab to school. Not something she liked to do, but she was a big girl. It was either that or be late again, and late was not an option.
     “Bellanova Prep,” she told the driver, and gave him the directions.
     The driver was a bald-headed perv who acted as if the only time he’d ever seen a girl in a school uniform was in some cheesy porn flick. All the way there he kept glancing at her in his rearview mirror.
     Jessie shifted uncomfortably on the backseat and folded her arms across her chest, watching the morning whip by.
     Vendors washed down sidewalks in front of flower shops and bakeries and delicatessens that promised mile-high pastrami sandwiches; harried moms dropped their squealing kids off at concrete nursery schools; men in gray suits with gray faces marched dutifully toward gray office buildings. It seemed to Jessie that people were always in such a hurry to get somewhere, but did any of them really know where they were going?
     She sure didn’t. Not yet, anyway.
     After a while, some guy in a funky old Jeep pulled up alongside the cab and blocked her view. Not that she minded. He was pretty cute. Way too old for her, close to thirty probably, but he looked familiar and she was sure she’d seen him on TV. Maybe one of the entertainment channels. She couldn’t be sure.
     The ponytail was a bit much—who the heck wears ponytails these days?—but the body wasn’t bad. Taut, muscular, looking like he’d spent a lot of time outdoors chopping wood or something. He had nice gray eyes and an easy smile, which he flashed in her direction as he sped up and turned a corner.
     Bellanova Prep was less than a mile away. Jessie had half a mind to tell the driver to turn around and “follow that Jeep,” but that would be a little reckless, now, wouldn’t it?
     Jessie was not a reckless girl.
     Moments later, as she paid the driver and got out of the cab, she could swear she saw the Jeep again, out of the corner of her eye. She glanced up the street, but saw no sign of it—if it had even been there in the first place.
     As she hurried up the steps and fell in with the crowd of kids piling in through the school’s cathedral-like entrance, she found herself thinking about that Jeep, and about sixth-period math and a guy named Matt who sat across the aisle from her.
     She wondered how he would look with a ponytail.
     

9
     
    T HE 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 célèbre 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