Shiver

music interrupted: “Here’s my number, so call me, maybe?”
    Coming out of nowhere as it did, the bubbly song was so unexpected that all five men in the car, including Danny, froze. The incongruously lighthearted tune repeated itself one more time before Danny realized that what they were hearing was a ring tone.
    “Is that a fucking cell phone ?” Sanders demanded with outrage. “Didn’t I say no phones ? Didn’t I say ?”
    That must have been before he joined them, Danny reflected. They were in the black Taurus that hadn’t just been flipped on its hood. Damaged but still drivable despite Sam’s mind-blowingassault on it, it had just pulled out of Miss Kitty’s parking lot and was racing for the expressway. With his mobility severely limited by his leg and other injuries, his authority nonexistent because in the eyes of these jokers he was a protected witness cum prisoner, and any chance he had of breaking free and going to Sam’s rescue himself further hampered by being the only unarmed one of the lot, all Danny had to work with was words. He might be having an inner meltdown over Sam’s safety—Veith and his surviving thugs would almost certainly come across her in the course of their search for him, and if they found her it was a foregone conclusion that they would torture and kill her in an attempt to wring his whereabouts out of her—but rushing to her rescue on his own was impossible in his current state. He had to persuade Sanders that saving her life was worth the effort, and so far Sanders wasn’t persuaded.
    “. . . call me, maybe?”
    “Is that you ?” Sanders glared at him through the rearview mirror. On either side of him, Groves and O’Brien were staring at him, too. Even Abramowitz, who was riding shotgun, had turned around to look.
    That’s when Danny made the connection: it had to be Sam’s phone, which he had pocketed after calling Sanders, bebopping away.
    “Oopsy,” Danny said. Wincing at the pain involved in moving, Danny pulled the phone out of his pocket. O’Brien and Groves frowned at it.
    “You want me to confiscate it, boss?” Groves sounded just a hair too eager. His shoulder jostled Danny’s. On Danny’s otherside, O’Brien tensed like he was just waiting for the word. Both of them radiated aggression. The three of them were crammed into the backseat together because Sam’s escape had left the other car totaled. A clean-up crew was already on its way to deal with the mess they’d left behind, but Sanders, afraid of being overtaken by another Zeta assassination squad before he could get the government’s star witness—that would be him, Danny, or rather, Rick Marco—to safety, had refused to wait. Having been swiftly bundled into the car as Sam had hightailed it out of the parking lot, Danny had been demanding that they go after her ever since while his rescuers had alternated between affixing blame for the night’s series of debacles anywhere it would stick and flat-out refusing to do what he was telling them to do. Their mandate was to ensure his safety and no one else’s, Sanders told him, and that, as Danny knew from his own experience with orders from on high, was a hard nut to crack.
    “Touch this phone and I’ll break your faces,” Danny said, meaning it. “Keep your mouths shut, all of you. I’m answering this.” He frowned at the incoming number in the glowing little box on the phone’s case. The name on the caller ID—Cindy Menifee—meant nothing to him. The fact that whoever was on the other end was calling Sam at this hour did. It seemed like a pretty safe assumption that the caller had to know her well. He briefly considered the possibilities: maybe this person could get a message to her for him, warning her again about what she was facing, reminding her how thin was the thread by which her life now hung, telling her someplace she could meet up with him. Or maybe it was Sam herself, realizing that he had her phone,borrowing a phone to call him. Maybe she had figured out what a mistake she had just made, or . . . something.
    Okay, his thinking was admittedly a little bit fuzzy. The wonder was that he was still thinking at all. He was dizzy and in pain, and if ever the adrenaline coursing through his system wore off he figured he would crash like a freight train with no brakes. But right now he had to do what he could to save the girl who had saved him, because he owed her and because she was an innocent bystander who