Lila studied the woman. Yeah, she got why she was brought in now. She had said little during the recitation. When the others kept interrupting her with questions, she had sat back.
“Just one?”
She nodded. “It’s different than the others.”
“She was attacked. Maybe once they got close to her, they just wanted to eliminate her,” El said.
“Nice,” Lila said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.
He shrugged. El never sugar-coated anything. Not for her or anyone else. It was one of the things she had liked about him. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“No,” Miko said. “This was different. If you go all the way back to your family’s murder, it was from a distance. Bombings are very impersonal.”
“It felt personal to me.”
Miko’s face softened as she studied Lila. “I can only imagine. What I mean is that someone wanting you to be abducted…that’s much more up close and personal.”
“They didn’t do it. It sounds like they hired someone,” Aaron said.
Miko was shaking her head, even as some of the pieces of Lila’s warped puzzle started to come together.
“Someone was hired to bring her to their boss. If they wanted to do it at a distance, they would have a bombing again. Or…they would have hired an assassin. Why would he or she want to see her?”
“First, we need to assess if they are after her because of her mother’s work or her grandmother’s work,” Luc said.
“Mother’s,” both Miko and Conner said. The two former FBI agents shared a smile, but Miko’s faded fast as she looked at Lila again.
“We can definitely look at your grandmother’s work, but no offense, most of the people out for revenge due to your grandmother’s work are dead and buried. There is a chance that your family’s murder gave that secondary thrill to our perpetrator.”
Lila nodded. “There are a few children around, but I doubt it has anything to do with my grandmother. Truth is, there are a lot of people who don’t make the connection.”
“Well, we can definitely go to them as a second string, but my gut says it was your mother’s work, or possibly your father’s. Were they both working on the same thing?”
“Yeah. Mom was lead, and section chief, but they were both obsessed with crypto. They warned it could be dangerous to national security. Some of these people are in question because of their work for and with the CIA, as I said. The rest are terrorists who were the early birds to grab up those crypto worms.”
“And you’re sure this other guy you mentioned…Viktor Romanov…he isn’t part of it?” Conner asked.
Lila had forgotten to mention him to Ian so he was probably going to complain about that.
She nodded. “He doesn’t exist. I think he might be legend someone created and used to divert attention from someone.”
“So, let’s set that aside for a moment.”
“Why would we do that?” Jenner asked. He had been the quietest in the group.
“Because, if we can figure out why the attacks changed, it might help us whittle down the list,” Miko said, her exasperation easy to hear. It was odd, but there was a bit of tension between Miko and the other team members, but Lila got it. Miko was a profiler, the top in the US, and a person like that freaked people out. They were probably worried she would profile them. She probably did, just like Miko was profiling Lila.
Before they could explore that, another beep sounded and Luc looked at his tablet.
“Ian and Emily are here.”
Soon, there was a clatter of Ian and Emily Daniels walking in.
“I’m just saying that whoever is driving picks the music, Mix. You need to suck it up.”
“I did not want to hear you singing Sabrina Carpenter at the top of your lungs.”
Her heart jumped into her throat and her hands immediately started to sweat. What the hell? She had never really reacted to a man like that. Just the thought of seeing Ian again had her entire body overloading.
