Already Trapped (Laura Frost FBI)

All they knew about him right now was that he was tall enough to climb using those railings, that he was bold, and that he didn’t like twins. It wasn’t a lot to go on.

She and Nate headed over to their respective desks, temporary as they were. Nate slumped into his chair with disappointment, running a hand over his short-cropped black hair. “We went after the wrong twin,” he said, at length.

Laura couldn’t help but take that as a personal attack. He didn’t mean “we.” He meant she. She had chosen the wrong twin. She was the one who had told them where to go in the first place. She was the one who had messed up.

If they’d been in the right place, they would have gone inside with Kenneth. They would have checked the apartment, found the killer. Maybe there was still a chance that someone would have gotten hurt—he could have still tried to attack. But they would have caught him, at the very least.

Right now he was in the wind. Knowing that the police were onto him, maybe he would even go to ground for a while. Those cases were the worst. Not knowing when the next attack was going to come. Having to stand down the taskforce eventually, as the leads petered out. Only for it all to begin again as soon as your guard was down.

Laura couldn’t think about that—not yet. There was still a chance he had messed up somewhere.

“We should keep Kevin in protective custody after we’ve spoken with him,” Laura said, because at least this was something that they could address right now. “We have no idea if he’s still in danger.”

“The killer didn’t go after him,” Nate pointed out. “He could be safe.”

“We don’t know that,” Laura sighed.

“We know he wasn’t at the apartment,” Nate argued. She could hear the disapproval in his voice. “He might not be going after both twins at all. Maybe he changed his methodology.”

“Why would he do that?” Laura asked. She knew it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else. They had no idea what was going through this killer’s mind, not yet. “Killers like this don’t just change.”

“We haven’t got any way to know,” Nate said, echoing her own thoughts. It hurt, how much they were still in sync. How much they still followed the same lines of thinking, had the same conclusions. They had worked together for long enough that this was routine now. Just the way they were.

In some way, it reminded Laura of the first time she’d seen Marcus, after they split up. When she begged him to see her so they could talk about access to Lacey. He’d flat out refused. And yet all of his mannerisms, the way he spoke—it was so achingly familiar it made Laura want to cry.

And now here it was, happening all over again. Nate was the same old Nate. He just wasn’t her Nate anymore.

“We need to get back into this case,” Laura said, because there was no point continuing to argue over whether the killer had wanted to strike both twins or not. It was of no consequence, except in maybe understanding the methodology a little more, and they didn’t have enough clues to do that. Either way, Kevin would have to stay protected. They couldn’t let him go back to his home like he was live bait. Whether the killer had evolved or not, they could only work with what they knew for sure. “Figure out why someone is targeting these people in particular.”

“You said that Kevin and Kenneth were involved with the charity,” Nate said, rocking back slightly in his chair. “Were Ruby and Jade?”

“I haven’t seen any evidence of it, but it’s possible,” Laura said. “That’s a question for Kevin. And if he can’t answer it, then maybe the charity organizers.”

“That could be a connection between them,” Nate pointed out. “Something gone wrong within the charity itself. Both sets of twins are around the same age, so if they grew up involved in the charity, they would have a lot of connections.”

“That’s a place to start,” Laura said. “But nothing got flagged up in the twins’ friends lists or social circles. Or the dating app, either. You’d think we would have seen it.”

Nate frowned slightly. “There were no twins in the lists we had at all,” he said.

“And if they were involved with the charity in any meaningful way, you’d expect some of that to spill out into their social lives,” Laura said. It almost felt like she’d won a point, shooting down his theory. But then it wasn’t a real win at all, because they were left with nothing again. They needed a lead. She would chase it down no matter who it came from.

For not the first time and most certainly not the last, Laura wished for a vision. Or at least that the visions she did have would be clearer. What she had seen had been next to useless. Yes, they’d managed to put themselves in the right place at the right time, but without knowing who the real target was she’d been unable to do a thing to stop it.

Nate couldn’t possibly be more disappointed with her hunches than she was with herself.

Laura opened up the screen of her cell phone, opening up social media apps. She began to search around, finding profiles for both Kevin and Kenneth Wurz. “I’ll check to see if they have any friends in common,” she said. “I guess it’s possible that they hung out, and just didn’t connect directly online.”

“There’s a report here,” Nate said. “Looks like it was dropped on my desk overnight.” He passed it over to her.

He hadn’t thought to do so earlier?

She cleared her throat, feeling like she ought to stay professional and share her findings, even if he was being quiet. “I can’t see any connections in common on social media,” she said. “It doesn’t look as though they have mutual friends, or even knew each other at all.”

“And there’s no mention of the Patricksons on the charity site,” Nate said, in a tone of reluctant concession. “They’ve contacted their webmaster for a list of names, but there’s only an email form and not a phone number, so who knows when we’ll get a response.”

Laura opened her mouth to reply to that, but swung around

at the sound of some motion at the entrance of the bullpen. She saw a couple of offices leading in Kevin Wurz, his eyes red-rimmed now and his posture slumped even as he walked. Their interview was here.