Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER TWO

Laura had watched him fall.

The vision had been so strong, and the headache following it so intense. She knew it was happening now. It had to be. It was so strong, there was a chance that she was even too late.

But she couldn’t be.

Not for Nate.

She had to save him.

She’d gotten a concussion when the killer in her last case tried to make her one of his victims, sure, and maybe that was making the headache worse—it was hard to tell—but somehow in her gut, Laura knew. He was in danger. The worst kind of danger. And with the intensity of the headache that always followed her visions and gave her a clue about the urgency of what she had seen, she knew she barely had any time to get to him.

But there was one big problem. She couldn’t see what he was falling from. The vision hadn’t shown her enough to know where he was, and Nate still wasn’t answering her calls. There was still time to save him, to push things onto a timeline where the vision she had seen of the future never came to pass.

But only just.

If Division Chief Rondelle didn’t answer her call and tell her where Nate was—

“Laura,” Rondelle said, his voice crackling through the phone she’d stuck between her left ear and her shoulder, propping it up so she could drive the car. She was heading through the dark streets of D.C. already, toward Nate’s place, even if she didn’t know whether he was going to be there. It was the only starting point she had, given it was too late at night to expect him at the FBI headquarters.

“Sir,” Laura shot back, her voice desperate, “I need to know where Nate is right now!”

There was a pause.

She knew what he was thinking. Nathaniel Lavoie had requested a transfer. He didn’t want to be Laura’s partner anymore. The tension between them was obvious. Laura had been trying to get in touch with Nate for weeks, and Rondelle had borne the brunt of a lot of that attempted contact.

It must have sounded to him like she was losing it.

Like she was going to go over and scream at Nate until he cancelled the transfer and agreed to be her partner again, or something worse.

“Laura,” Rondelle began, but she didn’t let him finish. She knew that tone. She’d heard it from him so many times before. When he was telling her to drop the bone she had and let it go. When he was telling her she wasn’t allowed any information about Amy Fallow, the little girl Laura had saved from a homicidally violent father—a ban she’d managed to circumvent anyway. And all the times recently when he’d told her to let Nate go, to stop trying to convince him to stay, to leave him be.

She couldn’t let him give her the same speech again. Not now.

Not while Nate’s life hung in the balance—literally. She’d seen him falling from a great height, his mouth open in a scream, his arms and legs windmilling uselessly as he tried to save himself.

He wasn’t going to make it.

Not unless she could get there and stop him from falling in the first place.

“Sir,” Laura snapped, cutting Rondelle off. “This is serious. I have reason to believe there is a threat on Agent Lavoie’s life.”

Rondelle paused again. “Agent Frost, that is a serious statement. Are you sure about this?”

“SIR!” Laura yelled, unable to take the delay for a moment longer. “His life is at risk—please! Just tell me where he is!”

“Alright,” Rondelle replied, his voice taking on new urgency from the other side of the line. “I do know that Agent Lavoie received a strange call about meeting someone at a bridge. He called it in to let me know—thought it was kind of suspicious and wanted it on record. He said he thought it might be one of his informants wanting a chat.”

“Which bridge?” Laura demanded, tapping on the screen of her GPS urgently as she attempted to take a corner blind and one-handed. Her tires screeched as she braked hard to avoid a slower car in front, then powered forward around it.

“I’m not sure,” Rondelle replied. “He didn’t include that detail in the message he left.”

“River bridge or traffic bridge?” Laura asked desperately. She tapped the screen again, searching for some kind of landmark that might give her a clue. Something connected to Nate.

She only dimly heard Rondelle express that he still didn’t know, over the pounding of the headache, increasing sharply and making her swerve the wheel to the side—

Laura watched Nate backing up against a railing. He was shocked, his hands out in front of him in a gesture of defense, staring at someone behind Laura. Someone she couldn’t see. As was usually the case, the vision wouldn’t turn, wouldn’t show her the one thing she really wanted to see.

Nate’s back was against the rails. He shook his head, opening his mouth to say something. Laura couldn’t hear it. All she could hear was the screech of the brakes of a train pulling into a station, overpowering Nate’s voice completely.

He was desperate. Trying to reason with someone. To make them see sense.

But it didn’t work, because in the next moment he was somehow tumbling back over the railing, some great force hitting him in the chest and making him overbalance, his tall height used against him to move his center of gravity over the top tail. He was going over and there was nothing Laura could do to—

Laura groaned with the force of the headache attacking her as the vision cleared. She was used to the momentary interruption, to finding herself back at the wheel of a car. She’d learned how to deal with that a long time ago. But she wasn’t ready for the headache, the pain that almost crippled her, making her eyes want to squeeze tightly shut against the light of the sun.

She had to resist. She swerved only momentarily, keeping her car on the road. She checked the map on her GPS and then hit the accelerator, pushing harder.

“Laura? Are you alright?”

Shit. Laura had forgotten she was still on the line with Rondelle. “I’m fine,” she said, intending to end the call so she could concentrate on getting to Nate faster.

“I thought I heard a groan of pain,” Rondelle pressed.

Laura shook her head impatiently. She couldn’t waste time on reassuring him or figuring out a way to explain away everything with a neat ribbon on top. Nate was in danger.

“I know where he is,” she said, shortly. “I’m going there now.” She cut the call, not bothering to stop and explain how she knew.

The sound of the train had been her first clue. He was above a rail line—not just that, but a station. Then there had been the double rails he was leaning on, with a lower panel of frosted reinforced glass. She’d driven under that overpass enough times to know exactly where it was.

She was less than ten minutes away across the city.

She was going to make it in five.

Laura gunned the accelerator, shooting out around the car in front and then cutting past the car in front of them, earning honked horns and the angry squeal of brakes behind her. She didn’t have time to care. Even if she caused an accident, it meant nothing.

She had to save Nate.

“Come on, come on,” Laura muttered to herself, hitting the steering wheel in frustration as she pulled up behind slower-moving cars with no room to pass. She needed to get through. No single millisecond of delay was acceptable. She had to get through.

The cars moved, the road clearing as they turned to left and right, and Laura put her foot to the floor again, pushing forward as fast as she could. She would never forgive herself if she couldn’t get there in time. She would never forgive herself if Nate went over alone, no one to save him.

For months she’d been having this vision. Not a vision, really—a feeling. A black shadow of death hanging over Nate. She’d tried to keep him out of danger at every possible turn. She’d taken the riskier tasks, tried to make him stay in precincts and cars so he was safe. She’d shied away from his touch, the thing that would trigger that nauseating black aura and cloud her mind until she wanted to throw up. She’d risked their relationship.

In the end, she’d realized that thinking about telling him she was psychic would make the aura of death lessen, so she’d done it. She’d told him.

And it had all been a waste, because now he thought she was crazy, and he was going to die anyway.

Up ahead in the distance, Laura spotted the bridge. Consulting the map for a split second, she spotted the station just to her left. She was almost there. She was almost with him.