Seeking The Truth. Terri Reed
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beneath the other woman’s curiosity, Rachelle fought the urge to fiddle with her purse strap or fix her hair. Best never to let anyone see a weakness. She lifted her chin, met her gaze and smiled.
“Hi, Danielle,” Carter said. “This is Rachelle Clark. Rachelle, Danielle Abbott, our computer tech.”
“Nice to meet you,” Rachelle said, then winced inwardly at how her accent had thickened. It did that sometimes when she was nervous.
“Likewise.” Danielle’s curiosity sparkled in her hazel eyes.
“I need a favor,” Carter said.
“Sure.” Danielle’s gaze snapped back to Carter. “Anything.”
“Can you access the MTA database and bring up the video surveillance from the 81st and Museum of Natural History subway platform?”
“Of course. We have access to all the five boroughs’ databases.”
As Danielle’s fingers flew on the keyboard, Carter told her the time frame he needed to review.
Rachelle’s heart rate ticked up as she realized he wanted to see the push that had caused her fall. Steeling herself against reliving the nightmare, she hovered over Carter’s shoulder.
“Here you go,” Danielle said.
“Fast-forward a bit,” Carter instructed.
It was strange to watch people in the video coming and going at a fast clip. There was the family she’d found Carter talking to when she arrived. Then she was on-screen talking to him. She couldn’t help but critique herself. She hadn’t realized she’d fidgeted with her notebook and pen the whole time she’d been talking to him. A nervous habit. One she intended to break.
“There!” Carter pointed to the screen.
Coming down the stairs was a man wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt, baseball cap and sunglasses. He stepped onto the platform and wandered from one end to the other, slowly making his way closer and closer to Rachelle with each pass.
Everyone surged forward in anticipation of the train’s arrival.
The mystery man paused right behind Rachelle. From the angle of the video it was too hard to see his hand on her back, but then she was stumbling, her feet trying to find purchase on the slick floor. The man watched her go over the edge of the platform, and then he turned and fled back up the stairs just as the witnesses had said. The video screen froze.
A shudder of terror worked its way over Rachelle’s limbs. She wrapped her arms around her middle. Definitely nightmares tonight.
Danielle turned to face her with wide eyes. “That was you.”
Rachelle nodded, feeling a bit sick to her stomach.
“There’s no good shot of his face. He obviously knew where the cameras were located.” Frustration reverberated in Carter’s voice.
Finding her own voice, Rachelle stated, “That still doesn’t mean it was a deliberate act. He probably didn’t realize how hard he pushed me, then got scared when I fell. He doesn’t look familiar to me.”
Carter frowned. “How would you even know if he was familiar to you? He was never directly in front of you, so you never got a good look at him.”
She couldn’t argue with his logic. She shrugged, hoping the fear stealing over her wasn’t apparent. If this was a targeted incident...
“Danielle, I need to see what cameras we have on the street between here and the subway.”
Without a word, the tech analyst swung back around to her monitors and typed on her keyboard. A few seconds later, traffic cameras from the area appeared.
“Go back about half an hour,” Carter said.
The video was a blur in Rewind but then came into sharp focus as Rachelle and Carter stepped into view to wait for the light to change at the corner. As the video rolled forward it caught Carter rescuing her from the careening sedan.
“I thought so,” Carter muttered.
“What?” Rachelle asked, unsure what he’d seen.
To Danielle he asked, “Can you pull video from the street right outside of the subway station about ten minutes prior to when the sedan showed up there?”
When the video was running, Carter pointed to the sedan parked at the curb. It pulled away and slowly rolled down the street.
“The sedan was waiting. Whoever it is knows where you live and expected you to take the train home.” His grim gaze met hers. “It deliberately tried to hit you.”
“And the plates were pulled,” Danielle mused, sending Carter a look even a noncop could decipher.
Rachelle swallowed back the bile rising in her throat. Her mind went numb. Someone was trying to kill her?
“Thank you, Danielle,” Carter said as he put his hand on the small of Rachelle’s back and led her out of the video monitoring room.
In the hallway, he stopped her. “Now we know. You’re being targeted. Why?”
Hoping to buy time to make sense of things, she bristled. “Why are you making this out to be my fault?”
“I’m not saying it’s your fault.” He frowned. “I’m just wondering what kind of stories you’ve been working on that would generate somebody’s animosity.”
Someone like the person who killed Jordan Jameson?
She leaned against the wall as her knees weakened. “My assignments are fluff pieces,” she told him, which was the truth. “In fact, I’ll be covering the upcoming celebrity charity ball at The Met next week. I had to talk my editor into giving me a shot at writing an article about the K-9 trials. He wanted to give it to one of the boys.”
“Boys?”
“The male staffers,” she clarified, “though they usually act like teenage boys.”
“Would one of them have a reason to want to harm you?”
She let out a grim laugh. “No. The guys are harmless. Macho, arrogant, egotistical, but harmless.”
He peered at her closely. “What aren’t you telling me?”
How did he know?
It could only be one thing that had put her in the crosshairs of a killer, but if she told Carter about her investigation into his brother’s death then any hope of advancing her career by solving Jordan Jameson’s murder would be gone.
But if she died, then what did her career matter?
* * *
Carter watched the play of emotions on Rachelle’s pretty face. He wanted her to trust him but wasn’t sure how to make that happen. They’d only just met. Trust had to be earned. But he’d saved her life twice. Such heroics had to go a long way toward building confidence in his ability to protect her. “Whatever it is, spit it out. I can help you.”
The noise she made was half moan, half scoff. “I think I know what the guy who pushed me meant by ‘You’re getting too close.’”
“Go on. Tell me.”
She licked her lips. His eyes tracked the motion.
“I am working on an investigative piece.”
He jerked his gaze from her mouth to her eyes. “Into what?”
Inhaling as if to brace herself, she breathed out and said, “Your brother’s death.”
“Excuse me?” He reeled back a step, his mind grasping to comprehend her words. “You’re... I thought you said you’re only assigned fluff pieces.”
“I am. This is something I’m doing on my own.”
His