White Sister

U T. +

It s me. "Just a minute. I'm in the hall up on five. I'm going outside." I waited for two minutes, hearing his footsteps as he left the building. Once outside, he came back on the line. "Shane?" "Still here." "I heard you got out. I'm glad. How's Alexa?" "I don't know. The doc says time is our ally whatever that means. Thanks a bunch for showing up and supporting her." There was a long silence while he dealt with the cheap shot. Then he pushed on. "Listen, you asked me about Alexa's computer last night. Me and Rafie talked. We know how jammed up you are, and frankly, man, I'm not sure what I would do if Frannie was laying where Alexa is." I waited, while it sounded like he was walking again. Then he said, "Just a minute. I'm in the parking lot. It's a mess out here. Lotta TV people. Gotta find a better spot." There was more walking and his breathing got louder. Then, the walking stopped and he spoke again. "Rafie and I figure you probably made a copy disk of the files on Alexa's computer before you gave it to us. You don't have to say yes, or no, but when we went back to get the computer from Documents, we found out that operations Nazi, Commander Summers, already took the computer out of there. It's up on the sixth floor in Ramsey's office along with the report. Rafie and me don't even know what's on it. But we chatted up one of the guys over in Documents. He didn't know we were being screened off by the sixth floor and let something drop." "I'm listening." "The code they were using is fairly simple. It's just every other sentence." "Really?" "Yeah. You erase the first, the third, the fifth, et cetera. What's left is the message." "What is it that you want from me?" I was feeling like this was some kind of setup, but I wasn't sure. I'd screwed with them so much, I couldn't read those two anymore. "If you've got a copy of those e-mails, and you can decode the damn things, Rafie and me could use a call." "Why should I trust you guys?" There was a long moment before he said, "Because Ramsey is starting to panic. This isn't like with Tony Filosiani. Everything on the sixth floor is about containment now. But me and my bow-legged Mexican partner still want to clear this damn murder case."