Free The Last Passenger by Manel Loureiro Page B

she crawled frantically across the ground to get away from the car’s back wheels.
    The driver of the SUV hit the brakes, unsure how to proceed. The taillights cast a red glow over Kate as she desperately gasped for breath on the ground, trapped between the SUV and the front of the house. If the driver put the car in reverse, she would be crushed like a grape. The cabdriver ran toward them, club in one hand, phone in the other, screaming frantically.
    It was enough to make the mystery driver step on the gas and tear away at full speed. Before the cabdriver reached Kate, the SUV had already rounded the corner and disappeared into the night.
    “Are you all right?” shouted the driver, a nervous wreck. “I told you this was a bad neighborhood. Bad neighborhood.”
    Kate got up, trembling, her head whirling.
    Someone had tried to kill her. She had no idea why.

IX
    Thirty minutes later, Kate was in her hotel room standing beneath a jet of hot water as steam clouded around her. Her left arm had an enormous bruise that was slowly taking on a sickly yellowish hue.
    Who would want to kill her?
    She dried herself with a wide cotton towel and put on pajamas while she considered the possibilities. The only reason that came to mind was her newfound interest in the Valkyrie , and she could think of only one person who would care: Isaac Feldman.
    Any other reporter might have given up the story right then and there. In fact, Kate considered it several times as she brushed her teeth and got ready for bed. But the very idea of going back to the office with her tail between her legs made her dismiss that thought.
    This had been Robert’s story. Thinking about him made her heart cave under the weight of her sorrow. Robert had never given up when something good came along. She would do as he would have done. Not only for him but for herself, too. If she truly wanted to make something of herself in this profession, she couldn’t let herself be rattled.
    But they had tried to kill her.
    It suddenly dawned on her that she had almost been run over by a car just an hour earlier.
    Run over.
    Like him.
    It hit her harder than the SUV ever could. Her legs began to shake, and she had to sit on the bed to hold back a swelling flood of hysteria. Her emotional floodgates burst open, and she began crying uncontrollably, inconsolably. Her tears were a mixture of the tension from the fateful afternoon and the throbbing pain that had burrowed into her weeks ago, never letting go. Until now it had not been afforded the luxury of being let out.
    Tears streamed from Kate’s eyes. Lights swirled through her mind; the SUV’s headlights fused together with the morgue’s fluorescent lights from a month ago, when she had identified her husband’s broken body.
    She had almost suffered the same fate. Cold. Dead. Displayed on the mantle next to Robert in an urn.
    Her fears slowly spun into a cold, merciless anger. She would not be deterred, nor would she let someone scare her away. If, for some strange reason, Feldman wanted to keep her away from the Valkyrie , she would not let him. Suddenly, she felt much better.
    That night she slept surprisingly well. The next morning she woke up and put on a blue tailored suit with long sleeves to cover the bruise on her arm. When she was ready, she went down to the lobby and waited for a taxi.
    Thanks to the file Robert had left behind, she knew Feldman lived in a mansion forty minutes away. Although the gambling tycoon never gave interviews, Kate figured she could improvise. She had no appointment and no plan, but the worst he could do was turn her away. Plus, if she didn’t manage to talk to Feldman directly, someone nearby might be able to give her a clue as to the whereabouts of the Valkyrie .
    Since the ship had been taken from the navy yard, there had been no sightings of it. As if the earth had swallowed it whole.
    One thing was certain: there was no way it could be in a junkyard. Nobody pays that kind of money for