“He’s going to mess up sooner or later,” Laura said, meeting Nate’s eyes. “Maybe he already has. And we’re going to be there. We’re going to see it. And we’ll take him down.”
Nate nodded after a moment, seemingly awed by her fierce response. He reached out, holding something towards her. “Here’s the photo of the clock, by the way,” he said. “You left it inside. Figured we might end up needing it again.”
“Thanks,” Laura said, taking it from his outstretched hand – and feeling a headache hit her square in the temples.
She pulled the photograph back towards herself, trying not to let anything show on her face –
Laura was looking down at her from close above, at her face. She was lying there, still as stone, the life draining from her. Veronica. Veronica Rowse.
Where?
The mortuary?
The funeral home?
Laura could make out nothing past the edges of the vision, past the edges of Veronica’s face. There was only her skin, pale white, and her closed eyes. Her lips with that faint tinge of blue.
Laura hovered there, staring. Something was happening. Something to the body. She couldn’t see, but it was moving slightly in her vision, the face pulled in subtle directions in reaction to whatever it was. Was she being dressed for her funeral? Prepared by the mortician? What was happening?
Was the killer going to come back and find the body and do something to it?
Why was she seeing this?
It happened so fast; Laura wasn’t even sure what she was looking at for a second.
Veronica Rowse with her cold, dead face – Veronica who was in the mortuary already, cut up and sewn back together again – Veronica who was dead, dead, dead…
Her eyes flew open, and she took a breath, and Laura saw that she was alive.
Not just animated – alive.
And it was impossible, totally impossible, because she was dead, and –
Laura blinked, moving to put the photograph back in her pocket. Nate walked past her to go to the car, leaving Laura a moment alone. She caught her own reflection in the window of the store, how wide her own eyes were, and fought to get herself under control.
“Who’s driving?” Nate called over, from beside the car already.
“You can,” Laura said, without turning. Then she did turn, made herself do it, made herself go and get into the passenger seat like everything was fine.
Once she was buckled in, she could stop focusing on moving herself forward. She looked out of the window so that Nate couldn’t see her face as he started the engine and began the drive back. She pretended she was watching people walking around on the morning streets.
But she didn’t see a single thing at all.
Inside, her head was in turmoil. She didn’t understand. What she had seen, it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t add up. It had to be some kind of… mistake?
What could it mean?
She saw visions of the future. That much was the one thing she was sure of. And though they were only visions of a possible future, still subject to change, the rule she had relied on for her whole life was that the vision was still possible at the time she saw it. When she changed things in real time, the visions adapted, kept up. Showed her how things would be now that the change had come.
They didn’t show her things that couldn’t happen.
And yet, what she had seen was impossible. She knew it was. She’d seen Veronica Rowse’s body in person. She had no doubt it was the same woman. But you didn’t just wake up from the dead when you’d been gone for a couple of days. Much less so when the coroner had cut you open to check for any other signs of injury or distress.
Laura brought her hand to her forehead, rubbing it hard. Something was happening here. Something she didn’t understand. She couldn’t interpret what the vision meant.
How was she going to figure out what it meant?
“Captain Blackford, would you mind staying back here to get those records?” she said, as she called his number, even though it wasn’t really a request. It was a decision. “Nate and I need to head back to the precinct. Having all three of us working the same angle is a waste of time. We need to keep moving – right now.”