“Maybe you shouldn’t stand up.” Taran rose. “You should sit until the ambulance arrives.”
“Mo luaidh, someone just tried to run us over.” I turned to the teenagers. “Did you see the make and model of the car? A license plate? Did you see anyone get into a car before we came out here?”
The teenagers glanced around at one another in a panic, their voices clashing as they proclaimed it was too dark, that they hadn’t seen anyone, that the headlights just suddenly came on when me and Taran appeared.
Fuck.
Fear shot through me as I turned to Taran. I didn’t want to scare her, but almost being mowed down just a few days after her house was broken into seemed a bit too much of a coincidence.
An hour later the incident had brought an abrupt end to the ceilidh. Everyone was asked to stay inside while our small police force investigated and while Taran and I were checked over by the paramedics. Of course, Ramsay did not obey that directive and had gone into hunt mode.
When it was relayed to him that the community center didn’t have any security cameras, I thought my friend might lose his mind.
“What do you mean you don’t have security cameras?” He directed his outrage at Aodhan.
Aodhan, unruffled as always, shrugged. “We live on an island with the lowest crime rates in Scotland. Why waste money on security cameras?”
Ramsay looked ready to explode at that. “Oh, I don’t know, so that if two people are almost flattened by an assailant, we can ID the fucking vehicle?”
PC William cleared his throat to intervene. “This is getting us nowhere. Ramsay, I’ll ask you again to stay out of police business.”
At that, my friend had grunted and approached me and Taran. Forde had checked us over, and we were both okay. My back was a bit sore, and he’d warned me to keep an eye on that, but otherwise we were free to go once the police were done with us.
Ramsay lowered his voice. “I’ll look into it.”
In other words, he’d use his friends in high places to see if he could find any footage from town business security cameras that might have recorded images or video of the culprit.
Unfortunately, I’d been too busy making sure Taran was out of the car’s path to have noted anything about it. Taran thought the car was red, but that’s all she’d seen.
“A word.” I jerked my head to the side, and Ramsay followed me until we had space between us and the small crowd stillgathered in the car park. The doors to the community center opened and the guests flooded out. My sister, London, and Tierney rushed toward Taran. “Is it possible this is about Taran?”
Ramsay’s brow furrowed. “Well, it’s got to be about one of you.”
“Her house was broken into two days ago. Now this.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s something to consider.”
“What can you do to find out about the car?”
Ramsay was relaying his plan to me when Cammie’s cursing screech made my heart falter. Our heads whipped toward my sister as PC William approached her. She waved her phone angrily in his face.
Ramsay and I were by her side in seconds. “What is it?”
Cammie shoved the phone at me, her arm trembling. “My neighbor Aileen just texted this to me.”
On her screen was a photo of my sister’s familiar secondhand sage-green Range Rover Defender. Spray-painted across the side were the words YOU’RE NEXT.
Forde yanked the phone out of her hand, his expression hardening as he stared at the screen.
What the fuck was going on?
My gaze flew past my sister to Taran and then back to Cammie.
Maybe … maybe this wasn’t about Taran or Cammie.
Aware of PC William’s presence as he insisted on taking the phone from Forde, of Tierney asking worried questions, Forde demanding Cammie tell him if she’d been threatened before, of London holding Taran close in comfort … I felt sick to my stomach.
“Quinn?” Ramsay seemed to sense my inner panic.
