Stephen White - Warning Signs

I held up my cell phone. "Ramp just called me, Sam. I was standing outside waiting for a cab and he called me."

Sam grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me down the hall, checking knobs until he found an unlocked door. Once he closed it behind us, he blurted, "Tell me everything."

"He asked me about my 'tall blond friend.' He said it twice. I think he has Lucy."

He leaned his face within six inches of mine and froze me with his glare. "Did he say that?"

"No. But he knows things that I told Lucy. Things about Naomi and Marin and Paul Bigg. And he knew my cell number. Almost no one knows my cell number. But Lucy does."

I watched the tendons at the junctions of Sam's jawbones squirm like fat worms under his skin. "Have you tried her cell phone number?"

"No."

He yanked his phone from his belt and speed-dialed Lucy.

No answer.

He returned his focus to me. "Now tell me every last fucking word of your conversation."

I sat down on a flimsy plastic chair, hanging my wounded buttock over the edge.

I said, "This whole conversation with Ramp is crystal clear in my head. You want to take notes?"

M y relating thedetails of the phone call and Sam's subsequent questions consumed about five minutes. He scribbled details in a notebook for the first sixty seconds or so.

After I was done and he'd asked his last question, he said, "Give me your cell phone."

At moments like this, Sam's intensity overwhelmed his civility, and the rules of polite discourse tended to escape him. I watched as he retrieved the number of the last person who had called me. In this case, that would be Ramp. He then pulled his own phone from a holster on his belt, called the department, and asked somebody to get a reverse listing for the number he'd taken from my phone. He waited for almost a minute before he said, "Figured. Thanks."

"Pay phone?" I said.

"At a 7-Eleven on Speer Boulevard near Federal in Denver. That was a mistake on the kid's part; it's a public place. Maybe there's a wit, somebody who saw him there a few minutes ago."

I couldn't see how that would help us much, unless the witness had thought that the guy talking on the phone had been so suspicious that the witness also decided to scribble down a license plate number or follow Ramp wherever he went after he made the call. I didn't share those thoughts with Sam. Although he was talking out loud, he was really talking to himself, and he was less than not interested in my opinion.

Sam handed me back the phone. "How's the battery on that thing?"

I looked down and checked. "Okay, maybe half charged. Why?"

" 'Cause we have to go to Denver. And when he calls again, I want to make sure the damn phone works."

"Sam, think. Think." I tapped my temple. "What are we going to do in Denver at this hour? We don't know anything."

"For starters, we're going to talk to the guy at the 7-Eleven. See what he can tell us about Ramp."

"What guy? You don't even know that there is a guy. You're guessing about there being a witness. You shouldn't be driving to west Denver on a wild-goose chase, you should be using your time arguing with your colleagues about ways to find Lucy."

With a defeated tone that I wasn't accustomed to hearing in his voice, he said, "I don't expect them to listen to me. There's a search on, but nobody wants to go out on a limb for her right now. Some cops are doing what they can, but to tell you the truth there are more people who believe she's hiding than there are that believe she's been kidnapped."

"You have to try to convince them, then. Tell them about the phone call I got from Ramp."

He stood up, towering over me. "You're right. Even though they're going to think I'm just trying to help Lucy with her defense, I need to try to convince them that Ramp has her." He reached down for the doorknob and added, "There's another bomb hidden someplace here in Boulder, isn't there? That's how you read what Ramp was saying to you?"

"Yeah. That's how I read it. At least one more."

"I agree. Somebody needs to find Marin. She's probably getting into position to set off another bomb."

"The question is, who's the target?"

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

He held the door for me, an act of graciousness that was quite unexpected given the circumstances.

I was a single step past him when it suddenly struck me what Ramp hadn't asked me.

"Sam, Ramp never asked me how Marin's doing."

I turned in time to watch his eyelids drift closed. He said, "Shit."

"That means that when I talked to him on the phone, he either already knew that she'd run from the hospital or he didn't care about her condition. I don't think he doesn't care."

"Shit," Sam repeated. "He's already talked to her." He pounded the doorframe with the blunt side of his closed fist. "What on earth have the two of them got cooked up for us?"

I was about to say, More bombs , but I didn't. Sam didn't often wax rhetorical, but I suspected right then that that was exactly what he was doing.

I kissed my sleeping daughter, inhaling herfreshness, before I crawled into bed next to Lauren. I accomplished it all without glancing at a clock. It was a conscious effort to avoid learning the time-I didn't want to know how little sleep I was going to get. I did consider waking Lauren and telling her that I thought her one and only client had been kidnapped and was being held hostage by a mad bomber. But I quickly decided that would accomplish nothing.

My wounds and aching head combined to prohibit me from finding a comfortable place in the bed. The telephone conversation with Ramp kept playing in my brain as though it were on an endless loop of tape.

In the shallow water of my dreams the bomb in Naomi's bag didn't explode.

G race woke upwith both nostrils plugged with green snot that appeared to have been mixed with Portland cement before it was spread in a thick layer across both of her rosy cheeks. She was as cranky as I was tired. I changed her diaper while I explained the natural history of colds and generic upper respiratory infections, though it didn't seem to placate her, especially when I used a suction bulb to aspirate the volcanic flows from her tiny nostrils. We moved to the kitchen and I mixed her cereal and warmed her formula while Lauren showered. When Lauren was done getting dressed, we would trade places. In between I gave her the headlines about Lucy, then I showered while Lauren fed the baby.

We were rushing. Though my first patient wasn't until nine, Lauren needed to meet Cozy in his downtown office at eight-thirty. Since her car was still in the shop, I was her ride.

Viv arrived right on time at eight-fifteen. Fortunately, Grace's copious snot didn't faze her. Lauren and I each kissed our baby before we headed downtown. Finding a comfortable way to sit on the driver's seat took some considerable imagination on my part. I was grateful I didn't have to deal with a clutch. On the way to work we finally had a chance to talk about the night before, about Marin leaving the hospital, about the call from Ramp, and my fears about Lucy's safety.

She listened with surprising patience. "God, I hope you're wrong about Lucy."

"Me, too."

"You know, Cozy's going to hate this. This morning's meeting? We're trying to figure out a way to control the damage from the story in the Camera about Susan Peterson being Lucy's mother. Now this. God, I hope she's okay. She should never have gone to Denver by herself."

I nodded agreement. "Sam said he'd stay in touch. I'm sure half the Denver Police force is looking for her by now. I promise I'll call if I hear anything." We were stopped at the light on Arapahoe at Twenty-eighth. An ancient Corvair idled in front of us, belching fumes that left me wondering what toxin it was burning for fuel. Lauren was fussing with her eye makeup in the vanity mirror. I decided to risk asking a question that frightened me every time it neared my lips. "You're feeling a little better, aren't you?"