Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Laura drove the short distance back to the Sheriff’s station chewing her lip, unable to think of a single thing to do next other than what they had already been doing. She only stopped when she tasted blood, realizing she had bitten right through the delicate skin under the force of her own thoughts.

“Are we just going to keep on calling people?” Agent Moore asked. She sounded dejected. Like she’d been counting on the lead to pan out.

She wasn’t the only one.

“Yeah,” she said, parking in front of the station and resting for a moment, her hands still on the steering wheel. “Yeah, you head in and keep going through your list. Let me know if something comes up.”

Agent Moore nodded at her with a bright smile, apparently finding the energy from somewhere to raise herself up. “It’ll work out, you’ll see,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Or there’ll be a lead from the rest of the calls. You’re Special Agent Laura Frost—I’ve heard enough about your cases to know you’re going to solve this one, just like all of the others.”

Agent Moore opened her door and got out of the car, practically skipping into the station. Apparently, it wasn’t possible to keep her down for long.

Laura sighed, rubbing a hand across her face now that she was alone. The “superhero agent who knows how to solve every single case” thing was already wearing thin. It was a lot of pressure. She wanted to solve the case, obviously, but at least if Agent Moore had a little less faith in her she might end up trying harder.

What was she going to do now?

Sit there and call every single person on the list, along with Agent Moore, until they ran out of names and still didn’t have any leads? This was a needle in a haystack situation. Except the haystack was also full of needles. They knew it had to be someone from that bloodline who was at that convention, but—

But, did they?

No, Laura realized, sinking her head into her hands even more. They didn’t even know that. They were aware of the connection between the victims, but that was all. And if they didn’t work on this fast, they would be looking at the body of a fourth victim tomorrow morning.

She knew what she needed. Who she needed. She just…

Didn’t know whether it was alright for her to need him anymore.

But lives were at risk, and Laura was tired, and she needed help. Her hands did it almost without consulting her brain—picking up her cell phone, finding Nate’s number, pressing call. And then she was waiting, the phone pressed to her ear, the incessant dial tone an unwelcome companion for the delay.

And then it hit his voicemail message, and Laura hung up quicker than she’d moved in a long time. The last thing she wanted was to record an awkward message—even a few seconds of silence.

He hadn’t picked up. He was still ignoring her.

She took a breath, but it stung in her chest. She found herself double-gasping, a sob wracking her body which she hadn’t expected. She wiped her eyes quickly, stared out of the window across an empty plain toward the fields, braced her fist against her mouth. She needed to keep it together.

But this was shaping up to be one of the hardest cases to get started on that she’d ever come across, for one reason or another, and she just didn’t know when the rainclouds were going to part and show her the way illuminated before her.

There wasn’t any time for wallowing.

Laura forced herself to open the car door and get out, following in Agent Moore’s footsteps. She found her right where she expected her to be: sitting at the same table in the small bullpen, calling her way through the list. She was just putting the phone down as Laura walked in, and she beamed at her.

“You got something?” Laura asked, seizing onto that look immediately.

“Not yet!” Agent Moore exclaimed. “But I just got to cross another name off the list, so we’re that much closer to finding out who did it!”

That much closer. Maybe that was the way she should be thinking about it.

Every step forward they took was a step in the right direction. So what if the steps were taking longer than they usually did? They were still moving forward. The killer couldn’t outrun them forever. Sooner or later they would find him, or he would make a mistake. Hell, maybe he already had. They were still waiting for Jerry’s report on the most recent body, after all.

She was going to get this one. She had to.

“I’m going to head next door, talk to Jerry,” she said. “Oh—what’s this?” She had almost tripped over a filing box that was sitting on the floor by the desk, right where she wanted to turn to walk out of the room again.

“That’s evidence from the case,” the old-timer deputy, who was still sitting in his spot at the back of the room, spoke up. “The Sheriff left it there earlier. He asked where you were sitting and I said there. Then he went right back out again. Guess it’s a busy one this week, huh?”

“Well, there is a serial killer on the loose,” Laura said, tilting her head and considering her words as she stooped to pick up the box. “Or a spree killer. Time will tell.”

She put the box up on the desk and took off the lid, starting to rifle through the contents. Most things were sealed in bags or tubes, but she flipped through each one to examine it. There was junk mail that had apparently been waiting on Hank Gregory’s doormat in the morning. Bracelets that Janae Michaels had been wearing when she died, but which had not been found to have any forensic value. Even a sample of the corn from the field where James Bluton had been found.

Laura picked up the next evidence bag, holding a bloodied handkerchief that had been in Hank Gregory’s pocket, thinking to herself that she was getting tired because her head was starting to hurt just a little again, and—

She was there again, in the field. In that time so many years ago. Generations.

They were talking, just like before. They were standing around, the three of them, gesturing loosely to the field, one of them leaning on some kind of stick. A walking stick, maybe, or for hitting the corn to create a path, or Laura didn’t know what else. She wasn’t a farming expert.

Then, as before, the one who was facing back over the rise of the hill, looking up beyond where the house was in modern times, looked up and his face dropped. He screamed. He turned and began to run away, and within a few moments, the others did the same and followed. Laura saw their faces as they noticed whatever it was that was behind them.

There was a clear hierarchy as they ran. She turned to follow them, almost as if she was fleeing in their footsteps.

Or chasing them.

The one who had seen the threat first led the way, far out in front, clearly the least at risk of whatever it was that they were running from. Then there was another man, and the last, the one who had carried the stick, was at the back. He was slower than his companions, so much so that he seemed to be falling behind with every step. He was desperate, but not enough.

There was a flash of silver in front of her—a curved blade slicing across his back. A blade on a long handle. Blood flew across her vision, thrown up into the air by the arc of the blade, splattered high and wide. She felt more than heard the screams turn to cries of agony as the man who had been last fell to the ground, his back carved open, blood pouring from it in huge gushes.

He was dying—that much was clear. The slash was so deep that Laura saw a white flash of bone. Blood was pouring out at a rate so fast he surely couldn’t survive long. But the scythe came down again all the same, viciously tearing at him as he begged for his life, turning to look over his shoulder, his eyes wide and staring—

Laura caught the evidence bag she almost dropped, then placed it back into the box carefully.

She was processing what she had seen, and it was giving her new hope. She was on the right track, wasn’t she? The victims in her vision were killed with great slashes of a large blade—just the same as the victims they were dealing with today.

It left her with many questions still to answer. Chief among them was the fact that time travel did not exist, so how was it that she was seeing a vision from long ago in the past that seemed to warn of the same killer she was dealing with now?

But she did have one gain from the vision that she could work on right away. An idea that had formed as she watched it happen, knowing that it was the mirror image of what was happening here. No, make that two things: first, that the murder weapon was a scythe, something used for farm work—and probably not as regularly these days, either.

Second, that she knew where she needed to go next.

“I’ve changed my mind about Jerry,” she announced to Agent Moore. She nodded at her list of names on the desk. “Bring your phone and your list. You can continue making calls on the drive over. Come on—let’s go.”