Months of being beaten. Months of psychological trauma that could never be undone. Months for a six-year-old girl, stuck at home with a bully who wielded a belt and no one who was brave enough to stop him. Amy had no chance.
And the Governor would probably be furious about this – about Laura confronting him and taking Amy. Would he take that anger out on his daughter? Laura didn’t doubt it.
Amy had left her toy rabbit on the chair. Laura moved forward to pick it up. If anyone was going to tell Amy she was going home, Laura would take that burden herself – and maybe it would give her the chance to play for time, to think of something else.
But as her fingers made contact with the rabbit, she felt a familiar stab of pain in her temple. A headache.
The same kind of headache that always preceded a vision.
Laura felt herself pulled down into it with horror, praying as she went that she would not be forced to see Amy beaten and broken at the end of her young life.
CHAPTER FOUR
The vision sucked Laura under like a whirlpool of darkness, dragging her away from the present and into the future. Even though her physical body remained still, and everything happened in only the blink of an eye, reality inside the vision was different. She never knew how long the vision would last, or where it would take her.
Only one thing was certain: the amount of pain she felt before and after the vision was a clue to how far into the future the vision took place. And with this one, she could work out that it had to be at least a couple of years away. The pain wasn’t bad enough for it to be current – so why was she seeing it now?
She found herself in a courtroom, hovering over the assembled onlookers and the jury like an eagle. The edges of the room were nebulous, floating off into darkness, but the center of the vision was strong. Below her, Laura could see a prosecutor and a defense team, lawyers in sharp, expensive suits who had to be from one of the top law firms in the state. Governor Fallow was sitting between them.
He was balding a little; Laura could see from up here. His frame seemed to have thinned out a little, his shoulders sloping more than she remembered. He was focused ahead, as everyone was; Laura felt her gaze being sucked in that direction, powerless to resist.
At the front of the courtroom, a television had been wheeled into place. There was something playing on the screen. A recording. Laura’s heart leapt into her throat. It was Amy on there, Amy as she was now, small and delicate and fragile. And the Governor was standing over her with his belt in his hand, and he brought it down –
Laura forced her eyes closed, fighting against the vision as hard as she could. She didn’t want to see this, but she heard it, and she heard the gasps of shock from the jury. She knew what this was: a trial of John Fallow, surely not still Governor at this point. The trial for his abuse of his daughter.
Laura opened her eyes and looked around, away from the video, but there was no sign of Amy in the courtroom. At least, not that Laura could see. Maybe she was giving evidence remotely. Perhaps she hadn’t been called yet.
But, wait – the video. Laura focused on it again. It was… yes, it was filmed sometime recently. Amy looked just the same as she had only a few minutes ago when Laura had left her with Agent Jones. And the footage was distorted somewhat, part of the screen covered by something. Something fluffy and white and…
The toy rabbit. Laura would bet on it. It was the toy rabbit Amy was carrying around with her, leaning slightly in front of the screen. She needed to study it for more clues – to see what else she could figure out – how she could get this footage before Amy had to go back -
Laura surfaced from the vision like she was shooting up out of water and gasping for air. Cold ice drenched down the back of her spine. What the vision told her was that, right now, they were on the right path – that they might end up in court, if they carried on how they were.
But that courtroom had been far into the future. And that footage might have been the first of many. And even if Laura was seeing it now, that didn’t mean that it was guaranteed to happen – anything could take place between now and then to push the future she had seen off-course. She couldn’t tell whether the video had been taken already or would be taken in the future. And if it still had yet to be taken, that meant Amy would be beaten again.
She couldn’t let that happen.
So, why had she seen it now? Just because she was touching the rabbit? Laura looked down at the stuffed toy in her hands, her mind racing. If she could figure out if that footage existed yet…
“Agent Frost?” Director Grenford prompted, making her realize she had been staring at the toy in silence. “I’ll come along with you to meet the Governor, to see if we can’t come to an agreement. Yes?”
Laura could barely concentrate on what he was saying. It didn’t matter. What mattered was this. The toy rabbit had been in the footage. It had been central to the footage. That was why it had triggered the vision, right?
But for a stuffed toy, why was it… so heavy…?
Laura prodded the rabbit’s plush stomach and felt something hard inside. Turning it over, she realized it wasn’t a toy – at least, not just a toy. It had a zip up the back, concealed beneath a strip of fur folded over. It was probably supposed to contain a heated pad for comfort, but that wasn’t the only thing that was in there now.
It was a cell phone.
“Wait a second,” Laura said frantically, n
eeding to delay everything, to make everyone stop until she could figure this out. She dug the phone out and turned it over, tapping the screen. To her relief, it woke up – and there was no password protection, no fingerprint needed.
It was an old model, and a simplified one from what she could see on the screen. The wallpaper was a photograph of Amy with her mother, both of them smiling – though Laura could see the ghost of tension around Mrs. Fallow’s eyes. The apps were all brightly colored cartoon logos, looking like the kid-friendly locked version of the phone. This was Amy’s. She must have put it inside the rabbit so that she could keep her two dearest possessions close at hand at all times.
A six-year-old having her own phone seemed ridiculous to Laura, but then, Amy’s father was rich enough to provide her with whatever he wanted. And it wasn’t as though Laura was up to date on parenting, exactly. It had been a long time since she’d even been able to see her own daughter, with the ongoing custody struggle – no, don’t think about that now, focus, save Amy…
Laura opened up the gallery app, scrolling through the photos and videos. There were a few recent ones, and her heart almost stopped when she saw a frame she recognized. The phone half-covered by the rabbit’s ear.