“Metropolitan police are requesting that anyone with information about the van or the driver, contact the numberdisplayed at the bottom of your screen. There are concerns throughout London that this was a new terrorist attack, like so many seen across the UK and Europe.”
The broadcast ended with additional footage of the carnage at the Blue Oyster. She closed her eyes, but it was still there.
“It wasn't a terrorist attack,” James said, his voice low as he stared down into his coffee cup. He knew a thing to two about that sort of thing. Then he looked up, watching her.
“And it wasn't random. Whoever was driving that van had a target.”
CHAPTER
TEN
It was crazy, insane. She wanted to laugh, but her emotions were too raw and she was too tired.
“You don't know what you're talking about,” she replied.
He didn't argue, that dark gaze watching her.
“You can't possibly know that,” she told him. Except that it sounded as if she was arguing with herself, trying to convince herself that it was another random accident, someone over the edge trying to prove something, crying out for help, or some relationship gone south, or a terrorist attack. It had all the markings of it that had become all too familiar.
He watched the way her eyes darkened, the denial that the idea was just too ridiculous, but the words never came.
“The encounter at the airport in Edinburgh,” he reminded her, the faint accent surfacing. “The break-in at the Tavern.”
It could have just been a coincidence.
“The tires slashed on your rental car outside the Internet Café.” He walked it all the way back, each incident since she'd arrived.
“A coincidence? Just some street punk out for a thrill? The guest leaving your hotel last night? First impressions are usually correct,” he added.
He saw it too! What she hadn't mentioned was the certainty that someone had been in her hotel room before she returned that night.
“Cate's server hacked into,” he went down the list. “Someone looking for something.”
Each one, by itself might be easily explained, then dismissed. His friend, Dickie Simson, the police inspector in Inverness, said as much. It was unfortunate but when a place like the Tavern sat empty it became an easy target for robbery, vandalism. Easy assumptions. Too easy, and she knew it.
“What information did Brynn Halliday have about Cate's accident?” He kept pushing.
She took a deep breath, going back to those few moments before the van came crashing toward them. She closed her eyes against the image that came next, Brynn Halliday's crumpled body, sightless eyes staring back at her.
“According to her sources...there were witnesses who claimed there was another car involved in Cate's accident.”
Someone looking for something. A target?
He waited. She was smart with a couple of college degrees, and tough when she had to be. She'd handled herself with solicitors, insurance people, the media, and Inverness's finest, not to mention she was CB Ross's editor and friend.
That alone told him a lot about her. As the saying went, Cate didn't suffer fools, and she'd undoubtedly met a lot of them throughout her career.
She'd had a reputation for being tough. She had to be in a male-dominated world, spending most of that career in the field covering wars, third-world conflicts, the fall of foreign governments.
Now, he watched the way Kris turned everything over, thought it through, in spite of the fact that she'd had only a fewhours’ sleep, was bruised and exhausted. It was all there if she was willing to see it.
“That's crazy,” she whispered.
He helped her take that next step. “Brynn Halliday wasn't the target. She simply got in the way.”
“We need to talk.”Cate's last message.
She sat down on the couch, going back through everything that had happened, back to that last text message, back to those first images of the accident, and the newscast.
