Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

Laura nodded. “Right,” she said. She contemplated that for a moment. “It’s going to be hard. Breaking the habit of a lifetime to actually tell someone what I’ve seen.”

“You go somewhere sometimes,” Nate said, suddenly. He was gazing into the distance like he was reliving a memory in his head. “You kind of switch off, just for a second, and then you’re back. And sometimes when you come back, it feels different. I always thought it was just… I don’t know. Your thought process. Like you were realizing something.”

Laura nodded. There was not much to say. He had already worked out the truth: that what he was seeing was the split second for which she was gone, away in her visions, no matter how long it lasted inside her head. “The headaches, too,” she said. “They come from this. Whenever I see something, my head starts to pound.”

“God.” Nate shook his head. “I feel like an asshole. I thought you were just constantly hungover. Or going through withdrawal, I guess.”

Laura’s smile tipped the corners of her mouth but didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I probably was, most of them.”

Nate nodded. Paused. He drained his coffee cup and set it on the table, looking at her. “I should probably head home,” he said. “I didn’t want this to be too… too overwhelming. Not tonight. I just want to do this… slowly, I guess. I don’t think I can handle all the information at once. Let’s just see what comes up when it comes up.”

Laura nodded at that, accepting. She would have accepted just about anything in order to keep him in her life. To go back to being partners again. This was nothing.

“Then I’ll see you on Monday?” she asked.

“Monday.” Nate nodded. He stood, then hesitated a little. “Look, I don’t… want things to be weird between us, even with this new thing going on. I just think we should try and get back to normal, right? As normal as we can. We just go in Monday morning like none of this happened. I don’t know. Like I’ve known for years. No awkwardness.”

“No awkwardness,” Laura promised. “I’ll get you a coffee on the way in.”

“From that deli near HQ that I like?” Nate asked, pausing on his way to the door with a half-smile.

“That same one,” Laura confirmed.

Nate chuckled, low and so familiar it made her want to cry. “Nah,” he said. “You bringing me a coffee first thing? That would require you being a morning person, and we both know you’re not. No weirdness, remember? Get me lunch instead.”

“Deal,” Laura laughed, and then Nate was gone, closing her front door behind him with a brief nod.

Laura took a breath. A deeper one than she’d dared to take in a long while. He wasn’t forsaking her. He wasn’t leaving. He didn’t hate her.

There were things they still had to work on, but they were going to work on them together.

It was all she could have asked for.

There was a weariness that had settled into her bones now, a kind of drop in her energy now that the adrenaline and the relief had worn off. Like it had been the only thing keeping her going all this time, just trying to get to a future reality where Nate had forgiven her. She was exhausted, beyond anything she’d felt for a long time. It reminded her of those nights when Lacey was just born, when the two of them were up every two hours all night and all day, just to keep her fed. Before everything had happened with the vision that had sent her over the edge, the drinking, Marcus, losing Lacey, fighting to get her back.

Laura stood and turned off the lights in the apartment one by one until there was only the light of the moon, coming through from the window that faced in the direction of the city. Sparkling lights fell across the way between here and there, visible from the height of her apartment. She admired the view for one moment, then turned toward her bedroom.

The knock on the door was so loud that she almost fell back through the window in shock, her hand going to her belt for a gun that wasn’t there.

Catching her breath and shaking her head at herself, Laura moved over toward the door, thinking that Nate had probably just forgotten to tell her something. Or, a paranoid part of her brain suggested, he was coming back to tell her he’d changed his mind after all and wasn’t going to be her partner ever again.

She shook those bad thoughts out of her head as well and opened the door, ready to find out what he wanted.

Except her breath caught in her throat, because it wasn’t Nate standing there after all. It was an old man, one she did not recognize at all. A neighbor? She was barely home often enough to know them by sight. Someone else?

Someone sent by Governor Farrow?

Her blood froze. Even though he was behind bars now, he’d had the clout and the finances before to have someone break into her home and leave a threatening message. What if this was him finally managing…

“Laura Frost?” the old man asked. He had a kindly face, like he was someone’s father. Or grandfather, even. Like he wouldn’t hurt a soul. He was dressed well in brown slacks and a gray sweater vest over a beige shirt, like he’d picked out the most inoffensive outfit possible from a catalogue.

“Uh,” Laura said, because all of that didn’t mean she was sure he was someone trustworthy. She knew a trick or two, though—because suspects often used them on her. She didn’t need to say she was before she understood the situation. “Who are you? Do you realize how late it is?”

“I’m sorry about the hour,” he said. “But I’ve been drawn here to you. I don’t get to decide when it happens, it just does.”

Laura frowned at him. “Excuse me?”

She could have slammed the door in his face. He sounded like a nutjob. If it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was probably a duck.

But something held her back. A strange kind of sensation in her fingertips, a tingling—and the fact that when she tried to explain her abilities to people like Nate, they thought the exact same thing. She knew that it was possible for someone to have some kind of sixth sense driving them—because she had one herself.

He looked at her with more confidence now, nodding. She noticed his eyes were a startlingly bright and clear blue against the white of his eyebrows. “You’re Laura Frost, and I’m supposed to find you.”

Laura’s mind whirred. Her gun was in her bedroom, high up on a shelf above the closet, in a regulation storage box. Not the most subtle hiding place, but it wasn’t hidden. It was just out of Lacey’s reach. If she needed it, if he turned out to be someone who had been affected by one of her cases in the past, maybe even a criminal from years ago she had failed to recognize…

She would have it in a moment.

“Why?” she asked, which was the clearest way she knew how to get to the bottom of this and decide whether to let him in or lock the door and call for backup.

He looked at her then in the stillness of the night, those clear blue eyes piercing into her as if he could send his meaning directly through them and into her own without need for words. “You know what I can do, because you can do it to,” he said, his words quiet but spoken with strength and clarity. “I don’t want to say it where your neighbors could hear, but let’s just say I knew what you and your front door both looked like before I got here. I know there’s two cups on that table inside, and a green sofa with cushions that have seen better days.”

Laura stared at him. Lacey was inside the house. He didn’t know that—maybe—but Laura had to keep her safe. Inviting a stranger in was a bad idea.

But what he’d said. What he’d said made so much sense, and it would only have made sense if he was someone like her. If he also saw visions that led him to—what? What else might one do if not solving crimes? Laura had chosen a life path that allowed her to put her visions to work, but what would she have done with them if law enforcement hadn’t been an option?

What would a civilian do with visions of the future?

She’d all but given up on finding someone like her a while ago. Every lead had been a dead end. Every hint had turned out to be just a fraud or someone with mental problems. Or coincidence. Someone dreaming and then a similar event randomly happening later, not true visions. She’d scoured message boards, pored over historical papers and archives, researched everything possible on the topic of psychics, and never before had she managed to find a single human soul in the history of existence who could actually do what she could do.

Laura had responsibilities as a mother. But she’d been wondering for so long. She’d been alone for so long. Desperate for someone, anyone, who could tell her how these visions really worked, how to control them, how to know what they meant without always feeling shaken and confused.

She could suggest they go elsewhere, but she couldn’t leave Lacey on her own, even in the middle of the night. If she woke up needing her mother… no, she couldn’t go for a walk or a coffee with him. There was the option of telling him to come back tomorrow, but it didn’t feel as though that was going to be a real choice either. There was something surreal about this meeting. Like it could only have happened under moonlight.

This man might be dangerous. But she was a special agent. She was dangerous in her own right, and he was an old man. Not as strong, not as fast, not as durable as she was.

And he might have the answers that she needed.

Laura stepped to one side. “Come in,” she said, because she needed to know.