Page 38 of Relentless
“Nice to meet you all,” Kara said. Ethan murmured something similar, but like Tia, he was anxious to bring everyone up to speed. The sooner the team knew, the sooner their eyes would be on Kara. There was an elephant in the room he wanted to address first, though.
“What about Bantry?” he asked, his gaze darting between Cody and Tia.
“Gone,” Tia answered.
“In what way?” Kara asked. Her cautious, curious tone elicited a lip twitch from Tia.
“Not in the way I’d like, but that’s why it took us so long to get over here. She was loitering around the buses. We wanted to be sure she wasn’t in the area when we talked. She finally left for the venue a few minutes ago. We’ve got eyes on her, so if she decides to wander back, we’ll know.”
“Thank you,” Ethan said. It was already hard putting Kara’s safety in the hands of people he didn’t know. There was no way in hell that he wanted anyone near her that Cody didn’t trust.
“Why don’t you fill everyone in, Ethan?” Kara said. “I’ll text my sister to see if they’ve managed to reach any of my colleagues.”
Ethan nodded and took a seat, leaving a spot beside him for Kara. Tia and Mazi sat across from him at the banquette. Cass, Anne, and Bill leaned against various surfaces.
Taking a deep breath, Ethan started with a high-level overview before diving into everything they knew about Kara’s former teammates. He didn’t go into the investigative piece too much. Neither Tia nor her team needed to know the ins and outs of how Shelley, Danielle, or Sunil died. Instead, he focused on the fact that HICC believed the three had been targeted and that the killer was likely to continue his or her spree until the entire team was dead. Including Kara.
The group asked a few questions as they sipped the coffee Kara had handed out. But mostly they listened. A trait he found comforting and took as a sign that this team wasn’t one to rush into anything.
When he finished, he turned to Kara, who’d taken a seat beside him. “Anything else to add? Or any updates?”
She held up a finger as she finished reading a message on her phone, then set the device on the table. “The good news is that three of my colleagues from that trip are overseas again. Presumably, that means we don’t have to worry about them for the moment.”
“Was that an update from Sabina?” he asked. She nodded.
“So you started with twelve colleagues and, with the three deaths, are now down to nine,” Tia said. “Of those nine, three are safely out of the country, leaving six to keep an eye on. Five, if we consider you already under watch. Have you been in touch with any of those five?”
Kara nodded. “Of the remaining five, HICC has managed to get a hold of two. Lucky—one of the nurses—agreed to go to Mexico to visit his family for a few weeks after learning about the situation. And Shane—the fourth doctor—doesn’t think he’s in any danger so declined protection. HICC will keep trying to reach the other three.”
“Who are the remaining three?” Cody asked. Lying on the couch with his eyes closed, he looked asleep, but clearly, he’d been paying attention.
“Astrid is a nurse. She’s based in…Portland, Oregon. I think. It might be Salem, though. And the last two are Peter, the administrator who is based in DC, and Evelyn, another nurse, who’s based in LA. Or in the LA area,” Kara answered.
“And you suspect it’s someone on the team who’s committing the murders?” Mazi asked.
Kara flashed Ethan a look that edged on panic. “We did. Or rather,Idid.” She paused, took a sip of her coffee, then gently set her mug back down before turning to him. “We never discussed the possibility that itwasn’tsomeone from the team,” she said. “Maybe this has nothing to do with something we saw or heard. Maybe it’s just someone who doesn’t like aid agencies or foreign aid, or…really anything.”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” Ethan said.
“I don’t either,” Tia weighed in.
Kara’s gaze bounced between them. “Why not?”
“Because if you did something to piss someone off, or if your mere existence as an aid worker pissed someone off, they wouldn’t want—or need—your deaths to look like accidents,” he said.
Kara winced but nodded in understanding. “Someone with that kind of anger would want to make a statement. And if that was their goal, they probably would have done something while we were together in South Sudan. It would have made a big splash and put other agencies on alert.”
“Exactly,” Tia said. “Also, the killings, so far, have been subtle. Whoever is doing this is trying to stay under the radar. That leads me to believe it’s someone you know. Not some random person outside the group.”
Kara flashed them all a wry look. “So I have a killer colleague. Isn’t that a great thought to kick off my day?”
“I’m pretty sure your day kicked off just fine,” Cody said.
Tia’s eyebrow went up as Kara grabbed a small pillow from behind her back and threw it at him. It hit Cody in the stomach, startling him even as he chuckled.
“Don’t forget who took care of you earlier this summer when—”
“We agreed never to talk about that again,” Cody said, cutting her off. He even opened an eye and glared at her.
