Dawn Warner sat at the conference table staring at her phone.
“Hello,” Sinclair said from it.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“I’m still waiting for my team here to get the meeting going.”
“Where’s Hagen?”
“She went to get a cup of coffee.”
“You don’t have eyes on her?”
“Not right this second.”
“Is the Skype connection on?”
“Yes, but it’s just showing her empty chair.”
“For how long?”
“Ten, twenty minutes now. Why? What’s up?” Sinclair said.
“Moment to moment, remember, Francis? Moment to moment! Twenty minutes? Are you crazy?”
“I’m doing everything you said,” Sinclair said. “I can’t have a meeting without my team, can I? First you said she wasn’t coming, so I told my guys to forget the meeting. My closest guys are up in Baltimore, and they’re stuck in traffic coming back.”
Warner felt it in her gut then. Something was off. Hagen was bluffing them. The bold little bitch was doing something, playing some kind of game. What kind she didn’t know. Only that it was bad news.
“Get on her now, Sinclair. Call her. You need to maintain eye contact with her in that building at all freaking times.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so. Listen closely to the words that come out of my mouth and do what I say. That’s your job. I want her in front of that Skype camera now.”
“Okay, okay. I’m texting her.”
Dawn Warner picked up a whiteboard marker and began stabbing its cap into her palm as she paced back and forth.
“What’s up, Boss?” said Fitzgerald sheepishly.
“Screw it,” Dawn Warner said as she began to stab the marker repeatedly into her thigh.
Her gut didn’t lie. Had never failed her. Twenty minutes was too long. Her gut was telling her they needed to talk to Denver. Dicey or not, they needed to bring Denver in on this.
She suddenly flung the marker across the conference table as hard as she could. It sailed off the other end and clicked off a filing cabinet before it landed in the corner wastebasket with a bright clang.
She hit the button on the phone for her secretary.
“Yes?”
“Roberta, get me the Denver Special Agent in Charge now.”