Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Laura paced back and forth in front of their adopted desks as she waited for the line to connect, chewing on one of her fingernails.

“Hello?”

“Ah! Ms. Papadopoli,” Laura said, yanking the nail out of her mouth. “It’s Agent Frost. Can you do me a favor? I need to see some pages from your ancestry book. Do you have a scanner there?”

“No, I don’t,” she said, but then paused for a moment. “I do have the original PDF versions of the pages that I sent to the printer.”

“Good enough,” Laura said. “I have certain pages I need you to send over. The massacred family tree, and then the one with Ebediah Michaels and all of his descendant pages. Got that?”

“I’ll send them as soon as I can get them uploaded to my email,” Alice said, with a business-like tone which Laura very much appreciated.

“What are you expecting to find?” Agent Moore asked, as Laura hung up and thanked her.

“I don’t know yet,” Laura said. “It’s just a theory—I can’t be sure.”

“Will it prove that Allan McLean is the killer?” Agent Moore asked. “Did you figure something out about his background that he won’t be able to deny?”

Laura glanced at her sideways. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think it’s him. I know you’re convinced, but I have a feeling… I can’t explain it, exactly. I just don’t think it’s him. I believe his alibis and excuses.”

Agent Moore frowned, the expression turning into a little pout. “But it is him,” she said. “We found him just about to kill his next victim!”

“Was he?” Laura asked. “He had no weapon on him. We know the killer uses a long-bladed weapon, so it’s not as though he could just use something from inside the house. And he sat down to have a coffee with his supposed victim, which would be a huge change in his MO—the killer just lures them outside and takes them out. Even this distant cousin of his swears it was all innocent.”

“But he wouldn’t know, would he?” Agent Moore asked. “The cousin. And maybe he was doing a kind of recon, working his way up to the murder. We know Hank Gregory was supposed to be meeting some new relatives he’d only just met. Maybe that’s how he does it. Gets to know them first so they’ll come outside when they see him.”

Laura shook her head. “Sorry, kid,” she said. “I’m just buying everything he says. Either he’s not the killer, or I’m more naïve than I thought.”

“I’m not a kid,” Agent Moore complained. “I’m not that much younger than you.”

Laura gave her a look. “What were you doing with your life nine years ago?”

Agent Moore frowned, tossed her auburn ponytail over her shoulder. “I was in high school, studying. Obviously.”

“Well, then, you were in high school and studying when I went through the FBI entrance exam,” Laura said. “So, to me, you are a kid. And you’ve got a lot to learn.”

Agent Moore folded her arms over her chest, a flare of pink starting high up in her cheeks. “I’m not stupid just because I’m young,” she said.

“Alright.” Laura shrugged. “Well, if you’re not stupid and you’re sure that we have the killer already, then you can stay here. I have an inkling of who the real killer might go after next. Once I check the genealogy records and I have a name, I’m going to go and watch them, make sure they don’t get attacked.”

“And I get to continue the interview and try to get him to confess?” Agent Moore asked, her eyes lighting up.

Laura shrugged again. “If you like,” she said, turning away at the sound of a ding from her computer. An email alert.

Truth be told, she had deliberately pushed Agent Moore toward an opposing position. Normally, the rookie was all too accommodating, happy to follow Laura around wherever she went. This time, that wasn’t going to work. She need them to be at odds so Agent Moore would stay here, while Laura went out.

Why? Because she couldn’t explain otherwise how she knew which person to protect. There was no way anyone could know what she did unless they were there. Since she couldn’t come out and say that she’d seen a vision of the past, she was going to have to lie now and then think of something really good to make up later.

She read through the email attachments quickly while Agent Moore happily skipped back out to the hall. Laura had something much more important to focus on. If she was still harboring any belief that Allan McLean was the killer, she wouldn’t have allowed Agent Moore to go in there alone—but as it stood, the timing and the content of that last vision had convinced her otherwise.

She needed to do this alone. Agent Moore would be fine, and she would get a bit of solo experience to make her less green. A win all around.

She pored over the file which showed the victims of the original massacre, trying to think. There had been an order to the deaths she saw in her vision. A young woman first. Searching the names and dates, she saw a twenty-five-year-old who had died on that day nearly two hundred years ago. And how old had Janae Michaels been? Laura checked her notes. Twenty-five.

Then there was James Bluton, who was in his thirties—several of the young men matched up with his age, but most notably was one who was listed as the husband of the young woman who had died. The most likely to be running toward her to try and save her life, of course.

The third victim in modern times had been an old man—Hank Gregory. The two who had died back then—their father was also one of the victims of the massacre. He’d been older, too. Old enough to match.

She had it.

There was a pattern here—one she wouldn’t have seen without her visions of the past.

The killer must have known something about the original massacre, too. He must have access to some kind of firsthand document—perhaps a report from the local authorities at the time, or an eyewitness account from the sole survivor. Once, Laura might have thought that there was a possibility he was seeing visions of the past, too. In all her years of searching, though, she had still never found anyone who could do what she could. She was no longer willing to even consider it. Not only was it too heartbreaking to be let down time and time again, but it was also chilling to consider she might share an ability with a killer.

But this was good. This, she could use. The vision had shown her what happened next: a woman, in her forties or so, she had thought. She consulted the chart of those killed in the massacre and, yes, there she was. A woman from a separate arm of the family, a cousin to the three who had died first. She was next. That meant there had to be someone who was the modern-day equivalent, someone from the killer’s bloodline who was around the same age.

Laura checked the pages Alice Papadopoli had sent over, and there she was. A forty-five-year-old woman who lived on the outskirts of town. Hannah Martinez, who must be from a branch of the tree that had at some point married into Hispanic blood.

She was just a name on a piece of paper—a birth date with no death date next to it. A woman alone, no spouse, no children. But Laura knew she was more than what the pages could say. She was a woman. A human. Someone with hopes, dreams, aspirations, relationships.

She was the next victim.

Hannah Martinez was going to die today—unless Laura could get over there in time to save her.