The Thunder Keeper(16)

Vicky checked her watch. Twenty to five. It would take forty minutes to get to DIA, longer in the rush hour. She’d never make it before Lucas’s plane arrived. She found her cell phone in her bag and dialed information. In a few seconds she was connected to the airport, arranging to leave a message for her son, the old feeling of failure nudging its way into her consciousness. She could imagine the expectant look on Lucas’s face when he arrived at the gate, the dark eyes darting about, the ready smile dissolving into disappointment and, finally, into acceptance.

There would be a page: “Lucas Holden. Please pick up the white courtesy phone.” And the message: Sorry. See you at the house.

Vicky walked back to the waiting area and sat down. The young couple stared into the center of the room with the absorbed resignation that, she knew, mirrored her own.

She would wait. She was the attorney Vincent R. Lewis had risked his life to talk to. She would not leave until someone came through the steel doors and told her whether or not he was alive.

“Vicky?”

She glanced around at the tall, sandy-haired man standing in the entrance. Steve Clark, an old friend from undergraduate days in Denver, now a police detective, dressed in tan slacks and navy-blue sport coat and white shirt, with the knot of his red tie slightly loosened at the collar. Still handsome, in a more mature way, still the confident smile and intense brown eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Walking around in front of her chair, he reached down and took her hand. The warmth of his palm against hers made her realize how chilled she was.

“I could ask you the same question.” She withdrew her hand slowly.

“I’m working on a hit-and-run case.”

“So am I.”

She drew in a breath and heard herself giving the same explanation she’d given Nathan Baider ten minutes before. When she finished, Steve took her hand again. “I didn’t know you were back. Why didn’t you call me?”

She stared at him. Had he heard anything she’d said? It had been six years, a lifetime ago, since they’d meant anything to each other.

“I’m sorry,” she said. In the look that he bestowed on her, she saw that he understood that she was sorry things had not turned out the way he’d hoped all those years ago.

“Can we talk about Vince Lewis?” she hurried on. “Is he going to make it?”

Steve gave a little shrug. “Let’s hope so,” he said. “They just wheeled him into surgery. No sense in you hanging around. Could be several hours.”

She repeated what she’d told the officer earlier, then found a business card in her bag, scribbled her home number on the back, and handed it to him. “Call me as soon as you know anything,” she said.





8


The cab crawled through the rain along Speer Boulevard, wipers slashing at the windshield, water from other cars running over the hood. The driver let Vicky out at the downtown garage where she kept the Bronco. Within ten minutes she was heading west on Speer again. Lights from the skyscrapers winked in the rearview mirror. Ahead, the mountains were lost in banks of descending gray clouds.

She crossed the viaduct into north Denver, swung onto Twenty-ninth Avenue, and continued west, finally stopping in front of the 1890s farmhouse she’d rented. The white stucco house occupied a little bluff surrounded by the Victorians and cubelike bungalows of later decades that lined both sides of the block. A remnant of another time, the farmhouse, like her people.

She ducked out into rain-blurred headlights from the taxi drawing in behind. Her pumps sank into the soggy grass while she waited for Lucas to pay the driver and emerge from the backseat. He was as tall and as handsome as his father. More so, she thought: the black hair glistening in the rain, the still-innocent look in the narrow, sculptured face. He shrugged into the straps of a bulky red backpack and came toward her.

“Hey, Mom,” he said.

She threw her arms around him, pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him. His cheeks felt warm beneath the cool slick of rain. She could hardly believe he’d taken a job in Denver. For the first time in years she would be in the same town as one of her kids.

“Come inside. You’re drenched.” She took his hand and led him up the concrete steps to the porch, her other hand fumbling for the key in the bag dangling from her shoulder. She let him in first and reached around to flip on the light in the entry. “Let me put your jacket on the coattree,” she said. “I can set your backpack in the living room.”

“Mom, what’s next?” He was smiling. “Some hot cocoa?”

“Would you like some?”

He threw back his head and laughed, a low, relaxed sound that rebounded off the stucco walls. Pinpricks of light danced in his dark eyes.