Stephen White - Warning Signs

"What was in the purse?"

"What you'd expect. Wallet, ID, about fifty bucks."

"And the denim? Blue, faded, what?"

"Blue, not too old. From The Gap."

"Great," Sam said. "Just fucking great. Now she has money and street clothes. Has anybody called RTD or the taxi companies?"

"We're on that."

Sam stuck his hands in his pockets, probably to quell his impulse to place them around somebody's neck.

I couldn't see sticking around any longer. I'd been able to convince myself that I might be of some assistance in helping Sam evaluate Marin Bigg. But I didn't see a thing that I could contribute now that the task had evolved into searching for her. Anyway, my ass hurt.

I said, "I'm going to get a cab home, Sam. Call me if there's something else that I can do."

"Yeah," he said.

Reading between the lines, I realized that his words were kind of like "Thanks for your help."

"Wait a second. Before you go, give me your take on all this. She's hurt, she's on the run. Her mother's dead. Her house is surrounded by the good guys. Where would she go? The girl? Where do you think she'd go?"

"That's a tough one. She's young. I'm not sure she'd do anything that you or I might consider predictable."

"Think."

"Assuming that this kid Ramp set off the bomb that killed her mother, she'd try and find him, I think."

"To get even?"

"Possibly. But maybe to join back up with him. It all depends where her allegiance was strongest."

"You mean to him or to her mother?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. She didn't seem that tight with her mother when I saw her yesterday."

"She could forgive Ramp for killing her mother?" Sam looked a little incredulous at the thought.

"Naomi was about to turn her in to the police. Or at least turn her in to me. Marin may be part of this whole conspiracy with Ramp. She may feel that she was betrayed by her mother. Teenagers make strong alliances with their friends, Sam. Stronger than with their families sometimes."

"So you think that if we find her in the next little while, she could lead us to Ramp?"

I knew Sam was thinking that leading him to Ramp meant leading him to Lucy. "I suppose."

"But you're not sure when she finds this Ramp whether she wants to kill him or kiss him?"

"She may not be sure, either." I was so tired that I wanted to sit down, but my butt screamed at the thought of having weight on it. "The only thing we know for sure is that one of them is going to eventually show up at Nora's house," I said. "To set off that bomb that they left there. That's your best bet of finding one of them. Stake out Nora's house and wait."

"It's not going to happen. Those damn Fox News people have the story about the bomb at Nora's house already. They ran with it on their nine o'clock news. If the kids are paying any attention at all, they'll know we found that bomb."

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

As the echo of Naomi's warning sounded in my head, a new question surfaced. Was the bomb at Nora's house the one that Naomi was warning me about? The hospital hallway felt cold in the way that only hospital hallways can. I wished I had a sweater.

"Go ahead and go home," Sam told me. "If you hear from Lucy…"

"Of course."

I turned to leave, stopped. "Sam? What if there's another bomb? One that you guys didn't find this afternoon? What if the one at Nora's wasn't even the one that Naomi was telling me about?"

He snapped at me as though he was irritated that I wasn't already gone. "What are you saying?"

"I don't know exactly. It's just that-I'm thinking that maybe there might be someone at risk that we haven't thought about. Maybe there are some people on the wouldn't-it-be-cool list that we haven't even considered."

"More lawyers?"

"I guess. Naomi said, 'That lawyer.' "

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

"You mean besides Nora and Royal?"

"That's what I'm thinking."

Sam's voice took on the timbre of debate. "We checked for bombs around the judge who accepted the plea on Marin's rape. Negative. We checked Cozy Maitlin's house and office. He was the rapist's defense attorney. Negative. We checked everything on Lauren, who was assisting Nora with the prosecution. Negative. We checked and found devices at Nora's and at Royal Peterson's home. So who's left?"

"Maybe Lauren and Nora can answer that. I don't know the system well enough to know who else might have been involved."

He took a step away from me before he stopped and faced me again. "How come every time I think you're going to bring clarity to a process, you end up clouding everything up like a damn fog machine? Why do you think that is?"

S he didn't like being bound.

She despised being gagged.

It was obvious that he hadn't planned for this step, either. The gag he fashioned was a clean white sock stuffed partway into her mouth and held in place by a long strip of duct tape.

The ambivalence she was feeling when he left the trailer ambushed her. She found herself wavering back and forth between wishing that Ramp wouldn't be gone long and hoping that the next person she saw walk through the door of the construction trailer would be the job site foreman stumbling in shortly after the eastern sky was streaked with bands of orange and blue. He'd be carrying a cardboard cup of gas station coffee and his brain would be brimming with the assorted headaches that he'd have to solve before lunch. Lucy imagined that he'd drop the coffee at the sight of the woman duct-taped to his sofa.

But Lucy was also hoping that Ramp wouldn't be gone long.

There was a name for what she was feeling. She tried to remember what she'd read about it. It was something Scandinavian. The Copenhagen Effect? No. The Stockholm Syndrome? Yes, that was it. The Stockholm Syndrome. Something about a train hijacking. The psychological phenomenon where hostages begin identifying with their captors.

Was she identifying with him? Lucy didn't think so. His rationalizations for the next day's terror rang hollow for her.

But she liked Jason Ramp Bass. She liked his charm. She liked his respectful manner. She liked the fact that he adored his mother. She even admired the way he'd managed to subvert his rage into something concise and, well, neat.

She wished she could see a clock. She wished she could roll onto her side. She wished she could empty her bladder. Mostly she wished she could call Sam and tell him to send in the cavalry.

People were going to die tomorrow. Nobody knew but her. And she couldn't do a thing about it.

L ucy had dozedoff and didn't realize the door to the trailer was opening again. She didn't even hear Ramp enter or approach her.

He touched her gently on the cheek and said, "Hey, gotta get up. Plans have changed. Lucy, Lucy."

When she opened her eyelids, the soft blue of his eyes filled her vision like the sunlight fills the morning sky. Behind him the room was dark but the picket fence shadows still lined the ceiling.

"Hi," she said into the gag. Her heart pounded in her chest and the tape around her body suddenly seemed too tight to allow her to draw a breath.

Part of her response, she knew, was terror about what was going to happen next.

Part of it wasn't.

H e removed theduct tape but not the gag and neither the wrist nor the ankle restraints, and he helped her to her feet.

"I'm going to carry you outside to the truck. You want to use the bathroom first?"

She nodded definitively.

She guessed he was only five ten or five eleven, maybe one hundred sixty pounds, but he lifted her effortlessly and carried her out the door the way a new husband lifts his bride over the threshold. She would have hooked an arm around his neck if she could, but she couldn't.