by Blake Pierce
And then she’d been in the house when her father went on one of his rampages, took things too far, and beat his own wife to death. If Laura hadn’t had another vision warning her, she’d have ended up another victim.
Laura walked up the short path to the front door, flanked by a white-painted portico that added a suitable amount of stately drama to the property. She was going to get the chance to touch Amy again today, and she was already mentally bracing herself for another vision. Another sign of calamity.
Amy had been taken in by her uncle, a certain Dr. Christopher Fallow. A man of whom Laura had absolutely no experience. The fact that he’d agreed to let her see the child again had to be a good sign, but how much of one she wasn’t sure. Was it just going to be a smokescreen? An attempt to fob her off with a family-friendly face, the same way that John Fallow had always operated?
She needed to know for sure.
Laura knocked, loudly, feeling the power of that knock reverberate through her hand even as it shook. She was nervous, badly so. Afraid. Not for herself, but of what she was going to find. Of the fight not yet being over.
She knew she was going to do whatever it took to make sure that Amy was safe. But that, in itself, was the scary part. Putting everything on the line. Never quite knowing whether it would be enough.
“Hello?”
The door opened with a rush, and Laura found herself standing there agog, somehow not ready for it to happen even though she’d been the one to knock. She took in the man who stood in the doorframe immediately, her brain marking comparison points to John Fallow.
He had the same dark hair as his brother, the same kind of build. Tall. But he was slimmer, actually, as she looked at him, and his beige slacks paired with a white button-down shirt seemed somehow more casual than anything John Fallow would ever wear. He was never not in a suit. Even the day Laura had watched him carted off by the local police, covered in his wife’s blood, he had seemed somehow stiff and formal.
Christopher’s eyes, too, were softer. The same dark shade of brown, but softer somehow. There were more fine laughter lines around them. He was in his late thirties, Laura estimated, not yet showing any signs of gray in his hair. Fit, slightly tanned, and with a wide smile that showed straight white teeth, almost dazzlingly so.
“You must be Laura,” he said, his initial doubt cleared up.
Laura found her voice, checked herself, cleared her throat. “Hello,” she replied. “And you’re Christopher Fallow.”
“That I am,” he said, with another wide grin. His mouth was still open, like he was about to say something else, but whatever it was, it was cut off immediately. There was a kind of screeching sound from somewhere inside the house, and before Laura had time to process it, she was being tackled around the legs by a streak of pink.
A streak of pink that turned out, once she’d managed to stop herself from falling over, to be Amy Fallow.
The blonde-haired, blue-eyed child looked up at Laura with an expression of absolute joy and excitement, hugging her tight around her legs. “You came to see me,” she said, making Laura blink her eyes quickly twice to clear any moisture from them as she looked down at her. With the instinct of a mother, she found herself reaching for Amy in return, laying her hand on top of one of her tiny arms and using the other to stroke her hair out of her face.
“Of course, I did,” Laura said, waiting for the vision to come. Her skin was in contact with Amy’s. She tried to concentrate, to will something to come. She took a deep breath, honed in on her senses. “I said I would, didn’t I?”
Nothing was coming. No single hint of anything. If there was something bad coming in Amy’s future, then Laura was none the wiser to it.
Of course, the frustrating thing was that a lack of vision didn’t mean she was safe. It just meant that, for whatever reason, Laura wasn’t having a vision.
But Amy was smiling, and she was clean and well-dressed and looked healthy, and that was a good start. It just wasn’t a vision that Laura was going to trust entirely, not until she had more evidence to support it.
“Would you like to come inside?” Christopher asked, his face hovering behind a kind of pleased look at Amy’s happiness and something else, something Laura found it hard to put her finger on. Almost like he was put out.
“Sure,” Laura said. “Amy, why don’t you show me your new room?”
“Yeah!” Amy cheered, disengaging from her legs and immediately dashing back inside with the kind of enthusiasm only a six-year-old could muster.
Behind her, Christopher stepped back uncertainly, hesitating. Laura zeroed in on that immediately. He didn’t look happy about her request. But a moment later he stepped fully aside, gesturing her in. “It’s upstairs, first door on the left,” he said – a necessary instruction, given that Amy had already shot away out of sight.
Laura’s mind was in full FBI mode, searching every corner as she moved through the house and up an impressively wide staircase towards the upper floor. She was looking for small signs that might give something away: a smudge of blood in a corner that hadn’t been properly cleaned up, anything that was broken or looked newly repaired since that could be a sign of violence. Everything seemed so neat and proper. Wasn’t that in itself a red flag? He’d known she was coming over.
Laura stepped into Amy’s room – and into a little girl’s dream. The walls were painted a light pink, and all the furniture looked brand new. She didn’t recognize any of it from the Governor’s house. She supposed the whole place was still locked down, almost everything saved as evidence. The bed was heaped high with plush toys, and there was a dollhouse resting on a side table with so many dolls accompanying it they couldn’t all fit inside.
It was impressive, for sure. And as Amy rushed through showing Laura all of her new toys, along with their names and a description of their life stories, Laura tried to analyze whether that was a good or a bad thing.
Amy had never wanted for anything at her father’s home, after all. She’d had anything money could buy. Anything but stable and loving parents.
“Can I get you something?” Christopher asked from the doorway. Laura turned around to see him standing there, shuffling his feet, his hands in his pockets like he couldn’t figure out what to do with them. “A cup of coffee?”
“Thanks,” Laura said. “That would be great.”
“Actually, maybe we could drink it downstairs?” Christopher suggested, raising an eyebrow slightly.
That thing she hadn’t been able to put her finger on: Laura saw it now. He was nervous. Unsure of himself.
A new parent, thrown into a situation headfirst. She could see how that might build the nerves. Still, it was something to keep an eye on.
“Of course,” Laura said, though she wished she could stay with Amy. She’d like to take the girl aside, talk to her alone. Make sure that nothing was going on. But she wasn’t going to come out and say that in front of Christopher. She didn’t want to give him the opportunity to send Amy some kind of signal about behaving herself and staying quiet.
The three of them moved back downstairs, into an airy kitchen complete with a breakfast bar. Amy scrambled up onto one of the stools beside Laura as Christopher poured the coffee, with a juice for the girl.
“So, how long have you lived in this neighborhood?” Laura asked, for the sake of making conversation as well as to dig up a little more information on his background.
“Oh, a few years,” Christopher said, glancing at her in apparent surprise at the question. “I just got back to the US – let’s see… yes, a little under three years ago.”
“Back?” Laura asked, her interest piqued. “Where were you before then?”
“Around,” Christopher shrugged, with a self-effacing smile. “I’d been with Doctors Without Borders for about ten years. Since not long after I finished my residency. I moved around West Africa a bit during the Ebola crisis and stayed on a little after that to provide healthcare for HIV and AIDs patients. I came
back when my mom got sick.”
“Amy’s grandmother?” Laura said. Obviously, his mother would be Amy’s grandmother. But this was the first she was hearing about any sick relative. And she didn’t want to react to the fact that he seemed to have dedicated a decade of his life to serving others, rather than making money as a doctor at home. It almost seemed too good to be true. Like he was leaving her a trail of breadcrumbs to why she should go away and stop worrying about Amy.
And she was never going to do that.
“Yeah,” Christopher sighed, setting down the mug of coffee in front of Laura. “She only hung on a few months, but it was worth it to be with her at the end. Anyway, coming back here reminded me about what I was missing, and I ended up taking a job at a hospital around here and staying.”
“What were you missing?” Laura asked. It didn’t escape that this felt a little like interrogating a suspect. Only in a much more comfortable setting.
“Family,” Christopher said, looking at Amy and smiling a sad kind of smile. “And good coffee.” He let his face brighten with the joke, raising his mug in the air and taking a sip.
Laura wasn’t going to let him fool her with that kind of routine. Anyone could be charming and pleasant and yet turn out to be a psycho. Even selfless doctors who gave ten years of their lives to looking after the most unfortunate and needy in another country. And then came home to look after a dying parent. And then volunteered to take in a small child after a relative was no longer able to look after her.
Though even she had to admit, he was looking pretty good on paper.
“Can I go play outside?” Amy asked, interrupting the conversation and making the adults both turn in her direction.
“No!” Christopher said sharply – and Laura knew that she was right.
Something here was very, very wrong.
CHAPTER FOUR
Laura’s hand formed into a fist on the countertop, her mind ready to reach for her gun. Not that it was necessary, not right now – and besides, she was off duty, not even wearing it. But she was angry. She’d almost been fooled. She’d really started to think that Christopher Fallow could be genuine.
He sighed, the sharpness going out of his face. “Sorry, sweetie, but we talked about this,” he said, focusing on Amy. “Not until the fence has been put in around the pool, okay? I don’t want anything to happen to you. You’ve got to stay inside unless I’m with you.”
“Then let’s all go outside,” Amy said. She seemed to have recovered a little. Laura noticed how she’d shrunk down at his sharp word, like she was bracing for the hit. Her voice still trembled slightly, pleading rather than suggesting.
The only thing was, she couldn’t tell whether that was a learned reflex because of her father, or whether the girl had come to expect it from Christopher as well.
“In a little bit,” Christopher said, glancing at Laura. “Actually, I wanted to talk to Laura about some… some grown-up stuff. Why don’t you play in your room for a little bit? You can take your juice with you.”
“Okay,” Amy said, getting down from her stool. She was obedient, not even sulking. It was like she’d learned to accept being told to go away, rather than getting hit or shouted at, as the best option. It still made Laura’s heart break every time she saw a new sign of the damage that had been done to the beautiful, sweet little child. She shouldn’t have had to go through any of that.
It wasn’t until Amy was out of the room completely, her tiny footsteps disappearing up the stairs, that Christopher seemed to sag.
In front of Laura’s eyes, he dropped the charming and friendly smile, the almost fatherly look – the one that just seemed to need a little more practice – and leaned against the counter as if he needed the support. When he looked up at her again, he seemed tired, drained. Barely holding it together.
“Christopher?” Laura asked, prompting him, but also with some concern. The man looked like he was about to fall down.
“Sorry,” he said, running a hand over his face. “God, I’m just… I’m so scared something’s going to happen to her.”
Laura found herself blinking. “What?”
He gestured around, presumably at the house in general. “It’s just… not child-proof. At all. The whole place. After I agreed to take her on, at first, I was just thinking about making sure she would be happy again. Getting her to school, making sure I had childcare covered while I was at work, that kind of stuff. But then I found this article about child-proofing your home and I just… do you know how many things there are that could hurt a child in a kitchen alone?”
Laura felt like she was on the back foot. This wasn’t what she had been expecting him to say after sending Amy upstairs. Maybe some polite but thinly veiled threat about leaving them alone. An attempt to reassure her that he was going to look after her and she didn’t need to check up on them again. Even an outright charm offensive.
But not this.
“Yes, I do,” Laura said, as evenly as she could. “I have a daughter around Amy’s age, myself.”
“You do?” Christopher’s eyes seemed to light up with hope. “Oh, God, please help me. I don’t know if I’m doing anything right. Will you just… will you take a look around with me? Just see if anything stands out to you? And… her toys and her clothes and all that stuff. I went to the store and just asked them to give me everything a six-year-old girl might need, no expense spared. I have no idea if they gave me everything or just ripped me off.”
Laura held up a hand, trying to slow his rapid babbling. “Christopher?” she said, hoping it would get his attention and make him focus.
“Chris,” he said, like it was an automatic reflex. “Sorry. I hate my full name. Always makes me feel like I’m being summoned by my dad.”
“Chris,” Laura said, keeping her tone the same. “Just slow down. Making a child happy is not about buying them everything under the sun.”
“I know that,” he said, nodding glumly into his coffee cup. “I just… I don’t know what else to do. She’s been through so much. How am I supposed to make her feel safe, now? After what my brother did… I just can’t even stomach the thought of it.”
“You make her feel safe by showing her that she is safe,” Laura said. She glanced down at the counter for a minute, considering her next words, before looking up at him again frankly. “And by showing me. Because if I get even a hint of concern that things aren’t right here, I’m not going to hesitate.”
“No,” Chris said, seemingly in full agreement. “No, you shouldn’t. But I’m not going to… I mean… I’m not John.” He said the last words with what seemed like some difficulty, having to swallow around a lump in his throat.
“I will hold you to that,” Laura said, making sure he kept eye contact, that he saw how serious she was.
And, totally unexpectedly, he smiled.
He wasn’t a bad-looking man, Chris Fallow. And when he smiled like that, it transformed him. Made him charming and handsome and erudite. It was the kind of smile you’d want to take home to meet your parents. But Laura wasn’t going to let her guard down just because of a smile like that.
“I’m glad,” he said. “Because I was going to ask you for your help.”
“My help?” Laura frowned.
“Well, I know you have kind of a bond with Amy,” Chris said. He gestured helplessly in the direction of where Amy had gone. “Actually, you’re kind of all she talks about. Christ, I think she likes you a lot more than she likes me. It’s kind of intimidating. And now I know you have a young daughter, too, it’s perfect. Isn’t it?”
“What is?” Laura asked guardedly.
“I mean, you must know… everything,” Chris said. “Everything she’ll need, how to look after her, even what she’s like. I wasn’t around much before the last few years, and lately I’ve been busy at the hospital. I didn’t even know what kind of toys she would like. But you can help me. Can’t you?”
Laura must have been looking at him somewhat askance becau
se Chris laid his hands down on top of the counter and stared at her, like he was trying to stare into her very soul.
“Please?”
Laura sighed, shaking her head. “You don’t even have to ask. Of course, I’ll help out. Anything to make sure Amy is safe and happy from now on.” And, she added privately in her own head, anything to make sure that she could keep an eye on him.
Even if he was putting his best foot forward now, that might not last. And Amy was too important, too vulnerable, for Laura to leave that to chance.
“Thank you,” Chris said, breaking out into another grin. He genuinely looked relieved. “Thank you, so much. Can I take your number, so I can annoy you with stupid questions and call you if I need emergency help?”
Laura dug her cell phone out. “Not just in emergencies,” she said. “You can call me about this any time. I’ll answer. I might not be in the state, but I’ll answer.”
“That’s good enough,” Chris beamed, typing on his screen as she pulled up her own contact book. They exchanged numbers quickly, and Laura was about to set the phone back into her pocket when she felt it buzzing.
For a second, she assumed it was just Chris testing her number by calling it. But then she saw the caller ID and frowned.
“Hang on,” she said. “I’ve got to take this. It’s work.”
“Oh, sure,” Chris said, gesturing for her to step out and lifting his coffee mug in a kind of salute. “Please.”
Laura moved only as far as the hall before she answered, knowing whose voice she would hear on the other end of the line.
“Agent Frost, I hope you’re enjoying your day off,” Chief Rondelle said, his familiar tone carrying just the lightest edge of humor.
Which meant only one thing.
It wasn’t her day off anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Laura arrived at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI headquarters, Nate was already there. She pulled up next to his car in the parking lot and rushed to the elevators, knowing she was behind. She’d been further out than usual, in the suburbs where Chris and Amy now lived. From what Rondelle said on the phone, this was urgent.
