Already Trapped (Laura Frost FBI)

She hung up, not wanting to make any more noise than was necessary. They’d missed him once. She wasn’t going to miss him a second time.

She pulled her gun from its holster, checking the safety, and held it in both hands ready.

“What was that?” Nate asked, his voice a low rumble in the silence of the room. He sounded annoyed. She hadn’t intentionally meant to shut him out of the update. She just had other things on her mind.

“Kenneth Wurz is dead,” she said, turning her head toward him and whispering it in the gathering darkness of the room. “They didn’t protect him enough. Let him go back into the apartment alone. Five, probably going on ten minutes ago.”

Nate inhaled sharply. “We have to get over there.”

“No, we don’t,” Laura said. “We need to wait.” She turned her head away, expecting that to be the last of it.

“How far away is Kenneth’s apartment?” Nate asked instead, making her turn back in exasperation. They were supposed to stay quiet. If the killer came up and heard someone else’s voice, or even just a whisper in the dark, he wasn’t going to hang around.

“Fifteen minutes on foot,” Laura whispered back. “It’s not far. He’ll be here soon.”

They lapsed into silence again, waiting. Laura couldn’t allow the tension in her body to go down. Her heart rate remained high, fluttering in her chest with nerves. He could be here any minute. If he drove, it would take him no time at all to arrive. Factor in a little time to scout the place—or maybe he didn’t need it. Maybe he already knew his entrance point so well that he would just smoothly come inside without waiting.

Or try to lure Kevin Wurz out, not knowing he wasn’t here.

No, the other three had been home invasions. He would be here. Laura tightened her grip on the handle of her gun, flexing her trigger finger just to test it. Any second now.

“We should go.”

Laura almost spun and pointed her gun at him, Nate’s voice was so unexpectedly loud. She turned her head instead, glaring at him. “Quiet!” she hissed, as angrily as she was able to without making herself louder. He was going to ruin their stakeout.

“Laura, I’m serious,” Nate said, although he conceded a little by whispering back. “There’s no point in staying here any longer. It’s been half an hour, double the time he’d need to get here. And that’s not even including the time it took them to find the body after he was gone.”

Laura looked down at her watch, checking. He was right. It hadn’t seemed like that long, with the adrenaline rushing through her veins. It had felt like no time at all, one long suspended moment of waiting. “It’s too early,” she whispered back. “He might still be checking the place out, waiting to come inside.”

“Laura, this is pointless,” Nate insisted. His repeated use of her name ground on her nerves, how he sounded so annoyed when he said it. “We don’t have to be here. We have no idea if he’s even coming.”

“But if he does, and we miss him, then we miss the chance to stop him from killing again,” Laura countered. “He’s just taken his third victim. You think he’s going to stop?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to do. That’s my point,” Nate said. “We’re investigators. We have to investigate facts and clues, not sit around waiting for something to happen. We need to be at that crime scene while it’s still fresh. We might pick up on something that the locals haven’t.”

Laura bit her lip. “You go, then. I’ll stay.”

Nate let out a sharp, frustrated breath. “You know that’s not safe.”

“But I still think he might show,” Laura said. “I’m not leaving this place unguarded.”

“Fine,” Nate snapped, then seemed to take a long and calming breath. “I’ll send Frome a message to assign some officers over here. They can take over from us and keep watch, while we go to the other apartment.”

Laura didn’t want to go. She could see, too, that activity at the apartment might easily scare the killer off. But when she looked at Nate, she saw he was serious.

He’d taken a leap of faith yet again by following her here. And she still couldn’t tell him why. Maybe things would be better between them if she bent a little now and then, too.

“All right,” she said. “They’d better make it quick.”

***

Laura stepped inside the apartment with one last deep breath, knowing it might be the last one that was easy to take in. Within seconds, the smell hit her nostrils: the sharp tang of blood. The scent of death that she was all too familiar with. At least this one was fresh. The older they were, the worse it got.

“Detective Frome,” she called out, bringing his attention their way. He was standing in the living room of the apartment with a loose cluster of other detectives, discussing something in serious and quiet voices, standing with arms crossed over chests or on hips.

> “Agents,” he said. He looked pale. Laura wondered how many homicides he’d actually attended. Even if the answer was a lot, there probably weren’t too many that he felt personally responsible for. She felt bad for him, but underneath that was still a little anger. He should have known to protect the victim first. “The body is this way—in the bedroom.”

Laura hadn’t needed him to tell her that. Even if her nose hadn’t told her, the crime scene photographer flashing his bulb through the doorway would have. “You were first on the scene,” she said. “Tell me your impressions.”