He thought about his sleepless night and how he’d prowled his apartment till he thought he would go out of his mind. He’d eaten two bags of popcorn and drunk a whole bottle of wine, hoping it would lull him to sleep. All it did was wire him up even more.

Andy. He needed to call Andy Hollister to see how Amy was. He punched his name into the computer and up came Andy’s home phone number, a new apartment number, and the office number. He dialed the home number on his private cell phone. Andy answered on the first ring. “It’s Boomer, Andy. Is there any news on Amy?” He held his breath while he waited for a reply.

“Arnie called around four this morning. I wasn’t sleeping. He said…he said…Amy took a turn for the worse around two o’clock. I wanted to go there, but Arnie told me no. He doesn’t want me there. I don’t know why that is, do you, Boomer?”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Andy. Why don’t you go anyway. I think you’ll feel better if you do. Make sure you take your wife with you. That’s what I would do if I were in your place.”

“I think I will do that.” Relief rang in Andy’s voice, hearing someone else make the decision for him. “What about Cady?”

“I’m going to take care of all that today. Don’t worry about it. I’m going to do my best to make it all come out right.”

“Thanks, Boomer.”

“What are friends for, Andy?” He realized it was the truth. When this was all over, he was going to make sure he strengthened his friendship with both Pete and Andy. His father always said you could never have enough friends. Now, he understood what that meant. “Andy?”

“Yeah.”

“If there’s anything I can do, call me, okay?” He rattled off his cell phone number. “You can reach me anytime on it. Don’t worry about Cady. Let me know Amy’s condition.”

“All right, Boomer.”

A turn for the worse could mean so many things. It didn’t have to mean it was as terminal-sounding as the words implied. He realized suddenly that he didn’t have a good feeling where Amy Chambers was concerned.

Boomer dialed again. He caught Pete as he was walking across the yard to open his office. “I just spoke to Andy, and he said Amy took a turn for the worse around two this morning. Amy’s husband doesn’t want him to go to the hospital, but I told him to go anyway. Do you think that was the right thing to tell him, Pete? Now that I stuck my foot in my mouth, I’m not sure I had any right to tell him to do what I would do.”

“Hell, yes, it was the right thing. You know what, I think I’m going to cancel all my appointments and go there myself. If you want to know why, the best answer I can give you is I don’t have a good feeling about all of this.”