"Yes. We had just finished our meeting with Samantha Barkley's friend, and we were walking to our cars."
"Where's Malone now? I thought I saw him talking to you when we pulled up."
"He went to speak to Dominic."
"Why? Does Dominic own this building?"
"Not according to the woman from the Building Department. She said it's owned by Wexler Properties, but maybe Dominic has a link to that company." She turned as Jason joined them with a serious gleam in his eyes.
"What's your assessment, Kara?"
"This is tied to the café. But we need to figure out how and why before something else blows up. Unless we're no longer taking the lead?"
"We're still running with this, but we can tap into Damon's team as needed."
She was thrilled to hear that. "Good. Also, it's possible the man who killed Cray was here today. I sent Wes a partial license plate to track down. If he was here, he links to both bombings. In the meantime, I want to go to the hospital and talk to the survivors."
"I'll go with you," Tyler said.
"Keep me posted," Jason said.
"My car is a few blocks away," she told Tyler.
"That's fine," he said, falling into step alongside her. "So, Malone seems to be helpful."
"You sound surprised," she said dryly. "What is it about him that bothers you so much?"
"Maybe you should ask him what it is about me that makes him flee whenever I arrive," Tyler countered.
"Now you sound like him. Answering a question with a question. What was going on when you two met overseas? Was it something that involved both of you?"
"I can't say. It's classified."
"Well, that tells me something." She thought for a moment. "You both barely remembered each other, but when you did, your reactions were equally suspicious. Something happened that neither of you was happy about, maybe blaming whoever else was involved."
"I don't know exactly how Malone was involved," Tyler said. "But something went wrong, and I don't know whose fault it was. That's all I'm going to say about it."
"Fair enough. But we're not in the Middle East right now; we're in Manhattan, and Max is a conduit to Dominic Ashford. We need his access." She paused as they crossed the street and walked down the block to her car. The street was much emptier now, but the smoke still hung thick in the air. "I was thinking when we heard about Vincent Castellano and his link to Petroysan, who is linked to Samantha's current case, that the café bombing was just about her. But if that building doesn't tie to Samantha, then…I don't know. If it connects to Dominic, then she was targeted because of him and not her case."
"That would mean Petroysan is also tied to Dominic."
"Dominic mentioned his name when we first spoke to him, but that was in connection to Samantha. He didn't mention that he had a relationship with him?"
"It's interesting that there were so few people in the building," Tyler said. "Even though the blast was bigger, the body count was still small."
"Which isn't the way it usually goes," she agreed. "I wonder what any of those people would have had in common with Samantha."
"We need to find out if she worked on any cases that involved the Building Department. I'll text Alina and see if she and Zane can turn their search through Barkley's case files in that direction," Tyler said, pulling out his phone.
They got into her car a moment later, and as she drove to the hospital, she thought about everything she knew. The low body count was a good thing, but also slightly puzzling. Why wouldn't the bomb have gone off at a time when more people would be on-site? And if someone was targeted, as Samantha might have been, why would anyone blow up a building just to get to one person? It seemed excessive.
"Maybe there's something significant about the manner of the attack," she murmured, glancing over at Tyler as she stopped at a light. "Someone wants the big blast, but they're not trying to kill a large number of people. What's the psychology, the motivation?"
"I don't know, but we need to figure it out."
"I hope Whitney Holden is at the hospital. She was the woman who got out of the building right before the explosion. She kept changing her story, and she took off the second my back was turned. Maybe her being out of the building was just a lucky break, or maybe it wasn't."
Chapter Eleven
