Already Gone (Laura Frost FBI)

“Afraid not,” Fred said. “We’ve got seven cameras running twenty-four hours a day, so it would be hours of footage to look through for little reward. As I say, my son and I do check all of the footage as much as we can, and there’s nothing that was flagged within the timeframe of these phones going missing.”

Laura was barely listening. She had a good idea of what was going on here. The son was tall and lanky, not as well-built as she would have expected. But he might have had hidden depths. It was altogether possible, she thought while looking at him, that he was capable of strangling someone to death.

“Hey,” she said, getting his attention. “Could you pass me that pen over there? I want to make a note of something.” She gestured to a pen lying on the far end of the counter, next to where he was sta

nding.

“Sure,” he said, his voice coming out high and cracked; he cleared his throat as he picked up the pen and walked the two steps closer to her.

Their fingers brushed as she took it from his hand, and Laura felt a pulse of pain in the middle of her forehead, mild but distinct. She lowered her gaze to the pen, feeling the vision take hold of her—

Laura was standing in the same store, behind the same counter. It was later at night, and the place was deserted. Except for Fred’s son, leaning on the counter with a bored expression.

He stood up and ambled out from behind the counter, heading toward a nearby display rack. It held various electronic items, phone accessories like headphones and wireless ear buds. He rearranged a few of the cases, putting them back into the correct places. He glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the room, and as he straightened up, his hand brushed over one of the packets.

He continued rearranging the shelves, moving down the whole of the rack to the center of the room. Laura watched, hearing only the gentle buzz overhead of the lights, as he casually slipped the box he had picked up into his pocket, below the range of the camera.

He turned and drummed a brief pattern on top of one of the packets of cereal at the end of the rack, as if he had run out of things to do. He wandered around for a few more minutes, the time agonizingly long; Laura couldn’t help but wonder when the vision would end. It was beginning to feel excruciating.

And then he turned and walked toward the back room, out of range of the cameras, and Laura saw him slip the box out of his pocket and into his backpack.

Laura blinked, finding herself resurfaced back in the real world. It had been minutes in there, but for the others around her, only a second or two had passed. There was a moment of sharp, crushing pain in her head that subsided to a dull ache and lingered. She guessed from the intensity of the vision that this little setback would put him off for a while. The pain wasn’t strong enough, despite the repeated visions of the day, to suggest that it was going to happen any time soon. He would be too scared to take another phone, in case the FBI came back. But eventually, he would get bold again.

Because he was the one who had been skimming stock out of the store. He was the one who had taken the phones.

Laura didn’t have any time to mess around. If he was the killer, then he could be going off and finding his next victim as soon as his shift ended. She needed to move things along, right now. If anyone asked how she guessed it, she could just say that his nervous behavior had made her suspicious and she’d taken a gamble.

“You took the phones, didn’t you?” she said, looking him directly in the eye as she said it.

Behind her, she heard Nate and Fred turning to look. She heard Fred expressing some kind of noise of disbelief, but she didn’t turn or look away. She held the kid’s gaze, watching as he tried to open his mouth to deny it. As he saw deep in her eyes that she knew, and she wasn’t going to be misled. As he realized that he was now in trouble with not just his father, but the FBI.

And she was watching when he turned on his heels and ran.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Laura set out at a run herself, hampered by having to go around the side of the counter first. The kid was already dashing headlong through the store, his sneakers squeaking on the floor as he hurled himself around the corner toward the door. His father gave a single shout, but the kid didn’t respond or look back.

Laura swore mentally, hearing Nate react behind her as well. The kid was fast. He was tall and lanky, and that went in his favor. He was already out the door as Laura turned the corner after him, knocking a few bags of chips to the floor as she took it too fast.

She took the force of the door swinging closed on her forearms as she shoved through it, reversing the momentum. The kid was running through the parking lot, in what seemed like a straight line. Laura kept after him, but she could see it was almost pointless. He was opening the distance between them inch by inch. She pushed her straining muscles harder, trying to force them to a faster rhythm.

Behind her, she was aware of Nate’s footsteps—but they peeled off, going in a different direction. She hoped he had some idea that would help. She could only stay on the kid, keep him in her sights. She had no hope for anything more than that. If she could just have a vision now—if it would just come—if it would tell her where he was going so that she could cut him off—

But there was nothing she could do. Running like this, focusing all of her attention on catching him, she didn’t have the mental space to focus down on each of her senses. And besides, what could she touch? When she had gone after the kidnapper, it had been her hand on the grip of her gun that had triggered it. Now, she had no idea what would set her vision off.

She reached for the gun at her hip, losing a precious second of pace as she twisted to touch it. But there was no tricking the visions. She knew she was never going to pull the gun on this kid, not unless he was armed himself. That wasn’t protocol. She had no proof that he was a killer—only a suspicion that he was a petty thief.

The kid vaulted a low wall at the edge of the parking lot and ran between two buildings ahead, a warehouse and what looked like some kind of entertainment center—Laura didn’t have enough time to take it in. She saw the thin strip of alleyway between them with diminishing hope. It was dark on the other side. If she didn’t catch him here, she would have no way of seeing where he had gone.

She put on one last desperate, hopeless lunge of speed as he reached the end of the alley, knowing as she did that it was pointless. She was going to lose him. He would be out of her reach—they’d have to set up some kind of manhunt—have to track his phone or go to his regular haunts—

And the car screeched around the corner, flashing out in front of the mouth of the alley so quickly that Laura could barely process it.

The kid bounced off the side of the car and hit the concrete, going down hard. The door was flung open even as Laura breathlessly closed the distance down, and Nate got out from behind the wheel—dragging a pair of handcuffs off his belt as he did so.

“Kid, what’s your name?” he asked, as Laura panted to a stop beside them. They both looked down at him. He appeared physically fine, though too scared or winded to move.

“Hunter Mason,” he said, breathing hard himself.