Lynnette got to her feet and straightened her clothing. “I need coffee.”
“We don’t want you here if the cops are looking for you.”
“Don’t worry. No cops. I got stranded downtown when I missed my bus.”
The girl looked her over, checking out Lynnette’s luggage and purse. “Looks like you could’ve gone to a hotel. Why didn’t you?”
“Nice talking to you,” Lynnette said. “But I need some of that coffee.”
“Why you takin’ your bag with you?” the girl called out as Lynnette walked away. “Afraid I’ll steal something?”
Pretending she didn’t hear, Lynnette went straight to the restroom and got in line. A few minutes later she stepped inside. While she was there, she applied a fresh coat of makeup to her bruises and scrubbed her hands. With the strap of her purse again across her neck and shoulders, leaving one hand free, she went straight for the food cart, filled a Styrofoam cup with coffee, grabbed a bagel and tucked it in the outside pocket of her carry-on, and headed for the door.
The early morning sun hadn’t burned through the frosty haze, so it looked as cold as it felt. She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and walked until she found a bench where she could eat her breakfast alone. The chill air kept her from lingering too long. As much as she feared going back to the bus station and running into the fat man, she didn’t want to book another flight or rent a car and drive to California.
If she truly wanted to protect Blue and Grace, she needed to stay as far away from them as she could. The way she saw it, she had only two options. Either hurry to the Amtrak station and see if she could get a seat on the westbound train, or go to the bus station and head anywhere except Fort Collins.
She took the fat man’s phone out of her purse and turned it on, then stuffed it in a pocket. If he called her, perhaps she could trick him into telling his location. She didn’t want to return to the bus station until she knew for sure he’d moved on.
As she began to shiver, she stood and walked. Within a minute or two, the phone beeped. She pulled it out and looked at the display. Seventeen messages. The first three came from her cell phone number. She didn’t recognize the others.
When she reached another bench, she sat down, pushed the hood off her head, and fiddled with the display menu until she retrieved the voice mail. Predictably, the fat guy used 1234 as his password.
As she expected, he was looking for her and he was furious.
Lynnette had only herself to worry about. Still, she couldn’t get Grace off her mind. She considered calling Blue. She could even call Grace’s parents and make certain Grace reported in.
Oh, hell. I don’t know what to do.
She glanced at her watch. Still too early to contact the FBI. She wondered if they had offices in downtown Denver.
She punched a couple of buttons to retrieve the next message, the one that didn’t come from her cell phone.
“Sammy, you were supposed to be in L.A. by now. Where the hell are you? Call me.”
A man’s voice, a man with a Spanish accent. Cuban? Mexican? If the guy on the phone wanted to talk to Sammy, did he have something to do with the laptop case and its contents? Assuming this Sammy was the fat man, was he supposed to deliver the stuff to this guy who left the message? Lynnette listened to the next voice mail.
“Your Denver to L.A. flight was cancelled, you prick. I have to find out on my own that you didn’t get on the next flight? What’s going on? You trying something funny, Sammy?”
The phone rang. The number of the incoming call matched the ones from the man with the accent. Lynnette waited until the ringing stopped, then dialed her own cell phone number, wondering if the fat guy, Sammy, would answer. The phone went directly to voice mail.
“Some guy with an accent is looking for you. He sounds mad.” She stopped, looked at the phone in her hand, and disconnected the call.
What the hell am I doing? Have I lost my mind?
After working her way through the phone’s menu, Lynnette figured out how to set it to vibrate instead of ring when a call came in. Then she listened to more messages, three of them direct threats against Sammy’s life. Too nervous to listen to more, she left the phone on and put it in her jacket pocket. The fat man hadn’t called her since late the night before. He had turned off her phone. Anxious to get his case and in more trouble than Lynnette, he should be trying desperately to get in touch with her.
She pulled the phone out and checked the time of the last message left for Sammy. Nearly two o’clock in the morning. Nothing since. Very odd, considering the urgency of the other messages. She went over what she knew so far, then began to worry about the part she didn’t know.
Sammy, the presumed owner of the phone and maybe the laptop, was supposed to deliver something to someone in L.A. and he didn’t show up on schedule. This man in L.A. must be powerful—powerful enough to dispatch a couple of thugs to Denver to find Sammy. They could be in Denver already. They could have found Sammy early this morning and now have her stuff. Maybe that’s why the calls stopped. The man in L.A. might know she had the phone—and everything else in the case.
She looked over her shoulder. No thugs in sight. She tried to reassure herself. No one wanted to kill her. The fat guy had a nasty temper and a filthy mouth. If she returned his case, he would never bother her again. She took a deep breath.
No more craziness. No more paranoia.
She needed to think, get her priorities straight.
She glanced at her watch. Six o’clock. She needed to call her broker and the bank, but it was too early. They wouldn’t be in their Florida offices for another hour. She pulled the phone out of her pocket and checked to see the balance of minutes remaining in the display. Plenty, thank goodness.
“Hey, aren’t you cold?”
Lynnette jumped and thrust the phone in her pocket, pushed herself up from the bench, and grabbed the handle of her carryon. “Yeah,” she said. “I better get moving.” She glanced at the woman in jeans and a heavy flannel jacket who had walked up behind her. Lynnette hadn’t heard a thing.
If that had been the fat man, he could’ve killed me.
“Come on in,” the woman said, pointing to a tiny shop a few feet from where Lynnette stood. A sign on the door said
Caffeine on Tap.
“I’ll give you a cup of coffee.”
Inside the cozy shop, the woman pointed toward a table and chair in one corner. “You hungry? I have cinnamon rolls just out of the oven.”
Lynnette turned down the rolls but accepted a huge cup of coffee.
The woman got busy behind the counter and ignored Lynnette for several minutes. An empty newspaper rack sat by the door. A small television occupied one end of the counter, its screen dark. Lynnette passed the time by reading the handwritten menu on the wall chalkboard.
The woman poured a cup of coffee for herself and leaned against the counter. “I don’t want to be nosy,” she said. Apparently she meant it, because she didn’t say anything else, didn’t ask any questions.
Lynnette chose not to answer at first, but then felt rude in the face of the stranger’s kindness. “It’s complicated.”
“I figured that.”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Okay. Suit yourself.”
Lynnette sipped her coffee, feeling more and more uncomfortable as the coffee lady continued to watch her. “Listen, I appreciate the coffee, but I have to get to the bus station.” She stood up at the same moment a door opened at the back of the shop and a man carrying two newspaper bundles strode toward the rack. She waited as he ordered a cup of coffee. After stacking the newspapers on the shelves, he handed a paper to Lynnette and laid one on the counter. With the cup of coffee in his hand, he shouted, “See ya!” and hurried out the door.
“Sure you don’t want more coffee?” the woman asked.
“Thanks, no.” Lynnette folded her newspaper and shoved it in the outside pocket of her carry-on.
“Whatever’s going on, maybe I could help.”
Lynnette shook her head. “I don’t think so. Thanks, anyway.”
“Why don’t you sit and have something to eat?”
Too pushy. She acts as though she’s trying to keep me here.
Had the fat man been here looking for her?
Without another word, Lynnette pulled the sweatshirt hood over her head and walked out the door. She crossed the street at the next intersection and walked away as fast as she could. She’d told the woman at the coffee shop she was headed to the bus station, so she couldn’t go there. At the end of the block, she turned in the opposite direction.
At the next corner, Lynnette doubled back toward 16
th
Street, where she stopped and peered around the corner toward the coffee shop. A police car sat in front, its lights flashing. An officer stood by the front door. The coffee lady pointed in the direction Lynnette had walked when she left the shop.
What the hell?
Lynnette stepped out of sight and leaned against the building, rubbing her forehead as though to massage the frown away. It made no sense for that woman to call the cops.
What’s going on?
Hadn’t she just told herself to pull it together, stop acting so paranoid? Now that she didn’t have to worry about Grace, why didn’t she return to the coffee shop to talk to the police? They could track the fat man and exchange the laptop cases. No muss, no fuss, no danger.
For Pete’s sake, the cops probably stop there for coffee every day.
Then why did the coffee lady point in the direction Lynnette had gone?
It had to be Carl. He had reported her missing or he had accused her of some kind of crime. He must have figured out she was in Denver by tracking the credit card purchase and charming some airline cutie into checking the passenger list for both legs of the flight. One call to Denver P.D. from one cop to another. That’s all it would take. And here she was, wandering around downtown in the early morning, before most of the businesses were open. She’d stand out like a sore thumb with her carry-on bag. She had to ditch stuff right now so she didn’t look like a stranded traveler.
Backtracking to an alley she’d passed only moments before, Lynnette hurried toward the nearest dumpsters and stepped between the first two. She pulled off the black wig and threw it away. She took off her jacket and turned it inside out so the gray, quilted lining showed. Next she removed the red sweatshirt and dropped it on the ground. Hoping the absence of red and purple would be enough to make her less obvious when seen from a distance, she slipped the jacket on inside out. Sammy’s phone bumped against her hip. It would be harder to get to it, but she didn’t think she’d have room in her purse for the phone. She threw the purple gloves on the ground with the sweatshirt.
The carry-on case came next. She took the newspaper from the outside pocket and stuffed it into her purse. After removing Sammy’s laptop case, she stuffed the cash into her pants pocket. The brown manila envelope rolled easily and fit inside her purse. After peering around the dumpsters to make sure no one watched, she threw the bag away. She went through the rest of Sammy’s laptop case and pulled out the things she would need. The laptop she’d carry under her arm. The phone charger and the computer’s brick and cord went into her purse. Sammy had two flash drives in his case. She took them as well. When she had everything, she tossed the laptop case into the dumpster with the carry-on bag.
Her purse weighed a good ten pounds and felt way too full for comfort. She took a deep breath and let it out.
Comfort is not the primary issue here.
What could she discard? She took a quick inventory and removed her water bottle, a bag of cough drops, all of her keys, six ballpoint pens, and a half-empty notebook. She tore out a half dozen pages of the notebook and stuffed them back in her purse with a pen. After chugging most of the water, she tossed the bottle.
She couldn’t do much about her purse and her brown Reeboks at this point. She listened for a moment and didn’t hear anyone in the alley. Just as she stepped out from between the dumpsters, a bread delivery truck turned in from the street. She stepped aside to let it pass, then followed as it cruised almost to the end of the block before stopping. The back door into a business stood open. The aroma of bacon and coffee floated into the alley.
Lynnette ignored the bread man and thoughts of breakfast and walked around the truck to the end of the block. She needed a cyber café with no cop car parked outside the front door. Or anyplace with public computers, or wireless if she wanted to risk using Sammy’s laptop. And she needed to be far away from downtown.
A college campus. Big cities had colleges, and college libraries often opened early to accommodate students. As she drew near one of the hotels, she saw a line of cabs in the circle drive. Lynnette walked across the street to the first driver and said, “Take me to the campus?”
“D.U.?”
“Yeah.”
“What building?”
“The library.”
Denver, Colorado
Thursday, January 23
As soon as the taxi entered the ramp to I-25, Lynnette felt safer. By the time she watched the cabbie drive away from the library, she had shaken the anxiety she’d felt since hearing the first voice mail message from the man with the accent.
The cab driver barely looked at her. She’d done her best to avoid drawing his attention by staying quiet and giving him a good tip—not too big and not too small.
Lynnette entered the library and found the restrooms. Looking at herself in the mirror, she noted her bruises had turned a sickly yellow around the edges. She washed her hands and face and dabbed more foundation over the worst discoloration, blending it as best she could. She ran a comb through her hair and fluffed her bangs.
No one seemed to notice when she wandered into a large room filled with tables and ringed with low-walled study cubicles equipped with outlets. Signs placed throughout the room advertised free wireless, but Lynnette didn’t want to use Sammy’s computer unless she had to. Instead, she sat at one of the public-use computers and put her purse and Sammy’s laptop on the floor between her feet. After slipping her jacket off and stuffing it behind her back, she logged on to her email account.