Stephen White - Warning Signs

As he pulled into the ambulance-only zone, I ran to his car, pointing to the phone at my ear. "I think I just heard a woman's voice."

"You're sure?"

"The guy said, 'I thought you wanted to say something.' Then the woman's voice said, 'Ramp, stop, please don't do it. Don't set off any more bombs.' Then the guy said, 'That's it?' "

"Anything else?"

"A car door slammed."

"And now?"

"Nothing."

Sam sighed.

Under my breath, I said, "Oh no. Oh my God!"

Sam threw open the door to his car and started to climb out. He barked, "What? What?"

"I think I just heard an explosion, Sam. A bang. No, more like a deep rumble. Now nothing."

"You're not imagining this? You're sure it wasn't like a car backfiring or something?"

"I don't think so."

Sam fell back down onto the seat and pulled his radio to his lips. He asked the dispatcher to check to see if there were any reports of an explosion in Denver in the last couple of minutes.

"Sam? The car door slammed shut again. Then the guy said, 'Time to go. Time to go.' "

Sam nodded at me. Into the radio, he said, "It's okay, I'll wait as long as I have to wait."

Half a minute passed, then a minute. I couldn't understand the reply when it finally squawked back to him through the radio.

"What?" I asked.

"A bomb just went off at Coors Field. There are casualties. The half of the Denver Police force that isn't at Elitch's is responding right now."

"I can hear the sirens," I said, for the first time realizing that I'd heard the explosion live. I pointed at the phone. "I'm listening to Ramp, Sam. He has Lucy with him."

"Let me have the phone."

He listened for maybe fifteen seconds. "I don't hear anything. You sure it's still live?"

I nodded. "It was a few seconds ago."

He handed the phone back to me. "Keep listening. I have to get the location of this call identified somehow. There's no reason to think this kid is done blowing things up."

An out-of-tune diesel delivery truck plowed up Balsam. I turned away from Sam to escape the noise. The call went dead.

I checked the screen of my phone to be sure. I even shook the handset as though that would restore the connection.

"Sam, we lost it."

"Don't tell me that."

"It's gone."

"Check your caller ID. Find out who the hell called you."

I did. Lucy's cell phone number popped up on the little screen. "It was Lucy, Sam."

He buried his lower lip in his mustache and pondered the cards in his hand. "Here's what I think's happening: She speed-dialed you and Ramp doesn't know that her phone is on. She can't risk saying anything but she wants us to hear everything that's going on. When she realizes that the call got dropped, she'll do it all again. Let's be ready."

I asked, "How do we get ready?"

"I don't know." Sam looked exhausted. "How's Lauren doing?"

"It looks like she'll be okay. She sprained her wrist and she banged her head pretty good. They have her in observation now. Cozy broke a bone in his neck. He's in surgery."

"Damn. Fusion?"

"I don't know, maybe."

"The other girl?"

"Broke her wrist, got burned a little from the coffee. She's home already. Is Marin talking?"

"Not yet. She said she'll tell us whatever we want later in the day. Believe it or not, she lawyered up. Is that ironic or what?"

I didn't want to get lost thinking about the Biggs. "What do we do about Lucy, Sam?"

"I'm not sure. I need to call all this in. Why don't you go back inside and check on your wife."

"What's Denver going to do? Evacuate the whole city until this kid runs out of explosives?"

"We have to find them."

"What about the phone?"

"If it rings again, run back out here like someone's life depends on it."

I consciously placed one foot in front of the other and was mildly surprised when the automatic door sensed my presence on my way back inside the hospital.

S am fiddled with the radio on the dashboardbefore he asked, "What's the pattern here? Red Rocks is an amphitheater, Elitch Gardens is an amusement park, Coors Field is a baseball stadium. What's the pattern? Where does he go next? The new football stadium? The Pepsi Center? What?" He grunted. "If this asshole does anything to the Pepsi Center and I have to miss any Avalanche games, I swear…"

He left the threat unfinished.

We were on the Boulder Turnpike, heading southeast toward Denver, just opposite the Interlocken office park. The morning rush hour was over and the traffic on 36 was merely heavy. Sam was driving his detective mobile. A red beacon on the dash flashed notice of our presence to other cars. I thought the strobe was an inadequate herald, considering our obvious haste. Sam was speeding mercilessly and changing lanes a lot and his driving was making me nervous.

It had been my idea to turn down the offer of a ride to Denver in the Denver Police helicopter. I'd argued that the noise in the chopper would interfere with our ability to hear what was going on if Lucy was able to make another cell phone call. So we were speeding to Denver in Sam's car and I was having second thoughts about not taking the chopper.

I was feeling many things; one of the most prominent was discomfort about leaving Lauren in Boulder.

When I'd told her what was going on with the bombs in Denver and with Lucy and Ramp and the cell phone, she told me to do whatever I had to do, that she'd be fine. I told her Sam wanted me to accompany him to Denver. She encouraged me to go. Adrienne promised to drive Lauren home whenever she was released from the ER, and Viv promised to stay at our house until I got home.

My bases were covered, but my ambivalence was pronounced.

As Sam used the right lane and a good chunk of the shoulder to pass an eighteen-wheeler full of Mercedes SUVs, I said, "I don't think what Ramp's doing is about the buildings, Sam. I think it's about the people. The wouldn't-it-be-cool games that Naomi described were always about people."

Sam scoffed. "He's hit, or tried to hit, three of the most identifiable landmarks in Denver, Alan. You think that's an accident?"

"Not accidental, Sam. But maybe it's incidental."

"I'm too tired. What?"

"He's not after buildings. He's not after body count, either. He could have done any of those buildings when they were full of people, right?"

Sam touched a button on his radio before he replied, "Right. I thought of that, too."

"Well, he didn't. All the venues were basically empty. The bomb he set at Coors Field was actually in an office, not in the stadium itself."

Sam argued, "But people died both times that a bomb went off."

"Exactly. And those are the people we should be paying attention to. I would guess that they were the targets. He's using these bombs to kill specific people, not random people."

Sam looked at his notepad and steered with his knees. I prayed he wasn't going to try to change lanes again, not with his knees. When he looked back up, we were closing on the butt end of a cement mixer. Sam steered around it as though he'd expected it would be in his way. His voice betrayed his skepticism about the hypothesis I was making as he said, "Let's see, three dead so far. And who are they? A couple of ride testers at Elitch Gardens. A bookkeeper for the Rockies and her boyfriend, a…" He flipped a page in his notebook. "The boyfriend was an assistant manager in group ticket sales."

"One more, Sam. Don't forget the woman who died in the car explosion last week."

"Okay, four dead. I'll throw in the housewife from last week. I don't care. Look at the list, Alan; these aren't the kind of people that terrorists usually salivate over eliminating."

"Then we're missing something."