“Do you know anything about his family?”
She shook her head. “No. At the time we were all devastated, but we couldn’t do anything about it.”
“How did he die?” Joshua asked, his tone gentle.
She stared at him, her mind trying to pull back to the time it had happened. “I believe there was a stampede, and, when he fell, he got trampled.”
“Why was there a stampede?”
“A series of explosions—fireworks—had gone off nearby. People panicked, and it got a little ugly.”
“A little ugly?” Nico asked. “Somebody died.”
She nodded. “And I forgot all about that. How could I forget about it?”
“Because it’s easier to forget about it than it is to remember,” Joshua said. “It’s a sanity-saving method that we all employ when we need to.”
“Maybe,” she whispered, “but it feels very much like an excuse right now.”
“No, don’t think that way. Were you at that rally?”
“I was, as were the rest of the GA group.” She frowned. “Because we were all there, I see no reason for me to have been targeted.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“No, I’m not sure about it,” she said. “I just remember being devastated that somebody had died at one of these events.”
“Did you have any contact with him?”
She nodded. “Yes, I did. I remember speaking to him earlier. It’s one of the reasons why his face but apparently not his name is something I remembered. I was talking to him about our group and what we were hoping to make happen around the world.”
“Was anybody with him?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Not only was it years ago but there was also a crush of people, and I didn’t speak to him long.”
“So he didn’t email you or have any contact with you other than that?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, looking at him puzzled. “Why?”
“Just that, if he did have contact with you versus anybody else, it would explain why you were targeted.”
“I was one of the speakers,” she said. “And my name was up with a lot of the other organizers, so it’s hard to say. Maybe because I was the only female at the time?”
“It could be something like that,” Keane nodded. “We don’t always know what happens or why somebody is chosen.”
“But there is a reason,” Nico said, “and that’s what we have to figure out.” He returned to the kitchen table and sat down. Joshua pulled out his phone and sent a bunch of texts.
It seemed like she was the only one completely out of the loop. “I guess this is a new avenue to explore,” she said, “but why are we giving up on the other concepts?”
“We’re not giving up on them,” Joshua said, “but the timing would be difficult, and they’re really convoluted.”
“That would be good news for you though, wouldn’t it?”
He nodded. “It would be very good news, if it wasn’t connected to me. Unfortunately it still means it’s connected to you, and that means your life is still in danger.”
She groaned. “Nice.” Needing a distraction, she looked around the kitchen and asked, “What about food?”
“Sure. What do you want to do?” Nico asked. “We can order in, or do you have anything that needs to be used up?”
It was at least something that she could do, and it would take her mind off all this. She walked over to the fridge and opened it up. She had very little in the way of fresh food because she’d gone to Australia. “I should check the freezer.” And she found some leftover spaghetti sauce that she’d made a while back, and there was a lot, about a good-sized pot of that. She brought it out and put it in the microwave to defrost and put on a pot of water for pasta.
As the men continued to talk among themselves, she only half listened. Her mind had glommed onto the kid who had died. As she thought about it, she realized that she’d gone almost into a dark mode for a week afterward. She’d pretty well stayed in bed and cried her heart out but hadn’t told anybody because she had nobody in her life to tell. She hadn’t even had an assistant back then. But just the thought of violence coming out of one of the rallies that they had been in was pretty hard to understand.
She’d given several interviews where she’d apologized profusely and had said that something like that should never have happened, and then she’d basically gone into hiding as the organizers had been blamed as zealots and hadn’t cared about the safety of those around them. And, of course, that had been a lie because she wasn’t even part of the organizers. She’d flown over for the actual rally, but she hadn’t been part of the security or the setup.
Somehow though her name had still been associated with it. Another dark stage of her life. Maybe that was the start of when she’d considered not doing many of the rallies. She had certainly slowed back down and cut her schedule by half, but it hadn’t been enough.
Now she wouldn’t do it anymore. This last trip had finished her. If she’d thought she was done before with rallies, she no longer had any doubts now. If her assistant was associated in any way with this, that was just double the reason to make sure Charlotte completely cut her ties with everything. She thought about all the conversations she’d had with Maggie now, wondering if it was possible that she was related to that boy. Charlotte didn’t know if she was married or had children even. Lord she’d been friends but apparently had kept her back a bit on the friendship level.
Charlotte remembered a faded indent on her ring finger, as if there were a husband. Or had been a husband. People said things like that all the time to avoid the truth, not because they were trying to hide anything but because they weren’t prepared
