Anythingdrabble Challenge 166 - Under threat

[m_findlow]

Title: Under threat
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Kathy Swanson
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 166 - Sabotage at anythingdrabble
Summary: Kathy Swanson has been given a case she can't say no to.

Kathy Swanson winced at the bitterness of the coffee in her cup. It was nothing to do with a lack of sugar in it, but the way it rolled around on her tongue the moment she read the words of the report in front of her. She hadn't wanted to believe it last night, but SOCO had come back and made their conclusions definitive. Someone had intentionally cut through the brake lines on the car, knowing that it would lead to an accident. And it had. Spectacularly so, she remembered, the mental images of the big black car crumpled into the side of a row of terrace houses at the bottom of a T-junction. With the speed that the car would have gained as it hurtled down the hill out of control, it was a wonder anyone had walked away alive from it. She could appreciate that even for a team of skilled special ops people, something like that would leave you rattled. More so now that it had been confirmed as no accident. Someone had meant for Harkness and Jones to get hurt.

She'd had to cash in a few chips to get them to give her the case, but Jack had been insistent that if the police intended on investigating this, he wanted her on the case. She supposed she should take that as a compliment. Harkness was a right pain in her arse sometimes, but she quite liked Jones. He didn't feed her the same load of bollocks as some of the others, and was even helpful on occasion. And, at the end of the day, the pair of them were both Cardiff citizens just the same as everybody else. Had some other poor sods had the same thing happen to them, she'd be required to see the investigation through. It was conduct endangering life at best, attempted murder at worst, and murder was still something this city fortunately didn't see much of.

What made her uneasy about it all was not that Jack had requested her help, or that someone might dislike Torchwood enough to want them dead. It was the simple fact that someone actually had the guts to try it. You had to have some real brass to sabotage a car that was built like a tank and occupied by people who carried guns. She'd seen some of the things they faced and she didn't begrudge them the task. There was a touch of respect under the brusque demeanor she gave them when they turned up to upend her crime scenes.

She set the report down and pushed away her coffee, no longer interested in finishing it. At some point she was going to have to deliver to Jack the kind of news she didn't want to. Someone wanted them dead, and if they'd tried it once and failed, there was nothing to say they wouldn't try it again. And next time they might not be so lucky as to escape with their lives.