Already Trapped (Laura Frost FBI)

it a cursory glance. She knew it couldn’t be as simple as Rondelle had laid it out. If it was simple, the FBI wouldn’t be so badly needed. And Rondelle trusted them enough to send them on the complicated cases—just like he had said on the phone.

Rondelle smiled just slightly. “They weren’t together at the time. They were each in their own respective homes, and they were found within an hour of each other.”

Laura frowned at that, but Nate spoke up before she had the chance to ask. “What are the circumstances?” he said.

“We have a roommate who got home and found the first twin dead in her apartment,” Rondelle said. “Looks like a home invasion through an open window, and the local police immediately thought it was a burglary gone wrong. But then the second twin was called and contacted in order to inform her of her sister’s death, and when they got no response, they busted into her home and found her dead as well. Both of them showed signs of having been killed within the same evening.”

Laura nodded. “So we’re dealing with someone breaking and entering both homes and killing the sisters, without much of a gap in between. Must have been premeditated.”

“And that’s why they want us to investigate,” Rondelle confirmed. “This isn’t a straightforward case. You need to figure out whether we’re dealing with one killer or two, and what the motive might have been to wipe out both twins in rapid succession on different sides of the city. If this is two people, it shows planning, forethought. Maybe organized crime. And if it’s just one… well. He’s fast. Precise. Left no obvious evidence behind. He’s capable—enough to put the local police out of their element completely. You’d better get moving. The rest of the information is in the file, and your flight is leaving soon enough that I don’t want you to risk missing it.”

They had been dismissed. Laura tensed slightly, waiting for Nate to refuse, to say that he couldn’t work with her or that he would handle it alone.

“After you, Agent Frost,” Nate said, his tone as cool and polite as before.

Laura’s heart sank into the bottom of her shoes as she turned to lead the way. She had been right about Nate’s character—that he would keep things professional. But to her dismay, she found she wished she had never been more wrong about anything.

She missed him already, and he was walking right beside her down the hall.

CHAPTER NINE

Nate shuffled onto the plane behind an elderly woman who kept having to pause and lean on the seats, trying not to grind his teeth. He just wanted to sit down. It was going to be an uncomfortable enough flight as it was, and he needed to get some rest.

It had been a long day, and it had carried on into a long evening. Now it was shaping up to be a long night. Finally catching sight of their aisle number, Nate sighed in relief and half threw his carry-on into the overhead locker, not particularly caring how it landed. There was nothing valuable enough in it to worry about.

He slumped down into the window seat, immediately regretting it. They usually sat the other way around. Mostly because Nate’s broad shoulders left him feeling cramped when he was against the window, and having the aisle seat was a lot more freeing. But he’d sat down so he could avoid having to stand and wait for Laura to stow her bag, because they weren’t technically talking right now.

Which made him both sound and feel a bit like a teenage girl, but it couldn’t be avoided right now. He wasn’t even angry. Not really. He was just exhausted from the day they’d had, and wanted to sit down and be quiet and think about this new case.

“Um,” Laura said, standing in the aisle and blocking an annoyed-looking banker type from getting through. “Did you want to swap?”

Nate sighed, getting up again. It was worth it, not to feel like he was being squashed into a tin can for the whole of the journey. He stepped out of the row of seats to allow her in and then sat again, this time in the aisle seat.

“Thank you,” he said, because he wasn’t going to stop being polite over this. But that was all he said. He didn’t want to initiate any further conversation.

They settled into their seats, buckling up, adjusting the arm rests, all the usual busywork that came with getting on a flight. People around them were just filing into the last seats, and the flight attendants were emerging to start the safety demonstration. A demonstration Nate could recite, moves and all, with his eyes closed and headphones in and one hand tied behind his back. It was one of the perks of being an agent, if it could be considered a perk: frequent travel.

Nate slid his eyes closed for a moment, wishing he’d had more than a short nap before his phone woke him up. There had been so much to process today. Laura being right about the girl being in danger was one thing. Another to add to a whole list of times when she had somehow mysteriously known that something was going to happen. Try as he might, Nate couldn’t make all the pieces fit. Every time there was a new clue, it felt like it only confused him more. He couldn’t work out how she did it.

And she didn’t feel like she could open up to him, which was a punch in the gut itself. After all this time. All they had been through together. And she still couldn’t tell him.

He wasn’t some random agent she passed in the corridor from time to time. He could have understood her cageyness if it was that. People had leads, resources, and they didn’t like to share them. That was fine. That was the process.

But this was more. They were partners. They had been partners for years. If she could trust anyone in the entire agency, it would be him.

The whole thing just made him feel even more exhausted. He wished this flight was long enough for a sleep, but it wasn’t. Only a couple of hours in the air. By the time they landed, they would need to be ready to go. He would just have to preserve his energy as much as possible, and hit the coffee hard when they got to the local precinct.

“We should look at the case notes,” Laura said, her voice tentative.

It almost hurt to hear it. Nate’s instinctive response was to comfort her, but he pushed it down. He couldn’t keep doing this. Letting her get away with hiding whatever it was she was hiding. She couldn’t keep promising to tell him her secrets and then going back on her word. Every time he let things just go right on back to normal, it was like he was endorsing it, telling her it was all right to behave that way. It wasn’t. A promise had to mean something.

“Yeah,” Nate said, cracking his eyes open and looking down at the file she was holding. She’d folded down the tray on the seat in front of her so she could spread the pages out, but there wasn’t much. There wouldn’t be. Not if the murders had only just happened in the last few hours.

“This is an information sheet about the two victims,” Laura said, glancing it over. “Not much to go on, just a few personal details. Identical twins Ruby and Jade Patrickson, both twenty-five. Their home addresses, which is also the location of the two crime scenes. The name of the witness who found them, and at what time both bodies were reported. Rondelle was right—there’s not even an hour between them.”

“Anything as to the MO?” Nate asked. The words felt stiff on his tongue. Laura’s were stiff on the air, too. Like there was a barrier between them, all of a sudden. As if they didn’t even know each other and had to stick to formalities.

“Both victims were stabbed multiple times,” Laura read. “No weapon found at the scenes, and of course the coroner’s report is pending. We’ll have to find out most of it on the ground, looks like.”