by Blake Pierce
Laura watched Atlanta flash by outside the window. Not a great neighborhood. There was more graffiti and broken glass than there were open businesses, by what she could see. Leaving him alone here was even more of a concern, not that he would listen. She just had to think of something. But then they were pulling up outside a security fence bolted with a heavy chain, and Laura still hadn’t thought of anything.
“There’s a number on the sign,” Nate said, nodding ahead. “I’ll see if I can get hold of the guy with the keys. If I can’t, I’ll just hop the fence. I’m sure the security service will either see me doing it and come to try and arrest me, or they won’t see me at all. Either way, I’ll get in. You’re heading out to this one next, right? The closed-up grocery store.”
“Right,” Laura said. She was still hesitant. She felt like she was about to lose him, and she was letting the opportunity to stop that from happening slip through her fingers.
Her fingers…
And she did it, without letting herself think. She reached out and put her hand on Nate’s wrist, felt the bare skin under hers. He was surprisingly warm, given the cold of the night.
But Laura barely even registered that, because swirling all around her was that death. That blackness. So hard to quantify, but there, hovering around her like sickness, making her want to throw up. To get away.
The feeling that he was going to die.
She fought for breath, for the nausea to go away. At least it hadn’t changed. She would have expected it to be darker, deeper, more choking if he was about to die right now. She would have hoped for a vision.
But then again, she didn’t really understand how it worked anyway. The only other time she’d really, fully experienced it had been with her father, and one shadow of death didn’t necessarily have to act like all the others.
But, still.
“Nate,” she said, choking the words out and trying to sound normal while she did it. “Be careful.”
He gave her an odd look, something almost sentimental, and nodded. “I will,” he said, opening his door and getting out of the car, pulling away from her hand.
Laura sat back in the driver’s seat as he slammed the door shut and walked towards the gates in the glow of the headlights.
She’d had no vision, she told herself again. If death was waiting for Nate inside that complex, there was nothing she could do about it. That was cold comfort, but it was something. He wanted this. It was his choice.
She still felt sick and afraid as she drove away.
“Okay,” she said out loud, as she looked down at the reprogrammed GPS and tried to focus on going in the right direction at a good speed. More to hear the sound of her own voice than anything else. To try and reassure herself.
It didn’t really work.
***
It was only as she pulled up outside the grocery store that Laura remembered she had her own safety to think about, too. Going in distracted would be a much bigger risk than going in alone. She had to focus, think. Get her head back into the right place.
She just wished a vision would come. Something about Nate. Something about the case. Anything. Right now, she felt like she was fumbling in the dark. And even though this must have been how most people felt all the time, without the promise of a vision ever to enlighten them, she hated it.
The property was all boarded up, heavy padlocks on the front door and wooden coverings over all of the windows. Still, it hadn’t stopped someone from getting in. There was graffiti all over the exterior and scattered broken bottles and empty cans lying in the short section of what would have once been landscaped grass before the street. Either teenagers, or homeless people, Laura had to bet.
She moved around the property once, first in a circle, checking out all possible entrances and exits, her mind on high alert. She couldn’t risk being ambushed, alone out here. In the front of the store, there was enough light coming from nearby streetlights to still give her enough to see by. Round back, though, the shadows were long. She had no choice but to switch on her flashlight and point it around, lining it up with the barrel of her gun just for safety’s sake. If someone sprang out of those shadows at her while she was looking, she wasn’t going to get caught unaware.
The radio she’d been given to keep track of the investigation crackled at her belt, and Laura jumped, swearing. She retreated back to the street before turning it up to listen in, taking it off her belt and holding it to her ear.
“ – New report,” someone was saying, a male voice she didn’t recognize. “We’ve just had confirmation the woman has returned home. She wasn’t missing, just told us some story about losing her cell phone and getting stuck out of town. False alarm.”
“Thank you.” That was Captain Blackford, his tone sharp and businesslike. “HQ, report. That’s how many missing women left unresolved?”
“That was the last one, Captain,” someone fired back, a woman this time. “All new missing women cases from the past twenty-four hours are marked as resolved.”
“Alright.” A pause. “Let’s go back further. Past forty-eight. Keep searching.”
Laura turned the volume down again, partly relieved and partly dismayed. The local police were doing their jobs, despite how unwilling Captain Blackford might have seemed. They were marking off every task that Laura and Nate had asked of them. The missing women – whoever this new victim was, it was looking like she hadn’t even been reported as gone yet. As the night wore on, that might change. But for now, it was only the locations that could give them anything.
Laura turned her radio down to the minimum volume and approached the closed-down store again, this time looking for the entrance point.
She’d seen it, round the back. A boarded-up window where the nails had been wrenched out on one side. The boards were still hanging in place, but it didn’t take an expert to see how easily they could be moved aside to let someone in.
Laura approached cautiously, listening hard, first pointing her flashlight at the window itself and the surrounding area. It had rained within the last few days, and there were no footprints on the ground beside it. That would have been a dead giveaway if someone was inside now. But then again, the soil looked solid now, like it might not take prints too easily. Maybe it was possible someone had gone in within the past day.
Laura crouched by the window, looking down. On the ground, her flashlight had picked out a glint of something. A nail. It must have been one of the ones torn out of the boards. The head was rusty from where it had been sitting in the elements since the place was boarded up. The rest of it, though…
Laura reached out and touched it, seeing how the part of the nail that had been inside the wood was still clean and rust-free. A headache sparked in her temple as she realized what it meant: that it must have been pulled out recently, because otherwise it would also have rusted by now, or at least picked up more dirt than this. It might even have been moved away by the elements or by foraging city animals –
Laura saw it like a flash. A glimpse of something within the darkness, like a lightning flash illuminating a scene. A white barn. Falling apart. The paint peeling back away from the dark wood underneath. A high window so obscured with grime it was impossible to make it out.
An old tree beside the barn. Twisted up towards the sky, bare branches reaching for something. An old scar down the trunk, something like an old lightning hit or the blow of an ax that had never returned to finish the job. Dead leaves on the ground around it.
From one strong and thick branch, almost improbably, a rope swing holding a tire. Something that had once come off a tractor or some other piece of farm equipment. Big and bulky. The rubber cracked and worn in places now and dropping away, the rope dark with age, like it might snap at any moment.
Laura blinked, clearing her head. She dropped the nail and wiped her hand on her pants leg, thinking. What had she seen?
And why?
She concentrated, putting it together piece by piece in her mind. Her
visions showed her the future, but not always the future she was interested in. Not always murder or terrible things. But there was always some kind of connection, some trigger.
The nail had set off the vision. So, what was she seeing? The place where the nail would end up? That seemed unlikely. The head was rusted already, and it had been dropped on the ground. How likely was it, really, that someone was going to gather it up and go use it to board up another place?
Then it had to be something to do with the person who had pried the nail off the board. And if that person was the killer…
Laura stood up, filled with new resolve. The entire time she’d been here, she hadn’t heard any movement from inside. Nor had she seen anyone skulking around the place, watching her or it. It seemed as abandoned as it was supposed to be.
She was going to have to take the risk that her assumption was correct.
Laura reached out and grabbed the edge of the lowest board, finding it loose enough to swing out past the edge of the window frame and down. She lowered it until it hit the ground, watching the other boards follow suit without it propping them up. The window was wide enough and high enough up that the boards left an opening behind – an opening big enough for someone to climb through.
There was no glass behind it. The window itself was long since gone, not even a single shard of glass intact.
Laura leaned forward, shining her flashlight into the hole. She swept the narrow beam of light across shelving units, caked with dust and cobwebs, some of them still containing the odd abandoned can of something. A few of them had been tipped over, maybe moved back purposefully.
She swung the beam of light up from that spot –
And then she saw it.
A platform, set up high above the cashiers’ lines, rigged in position. There was a rope hanging from the beams of the roof, dangling ominously with nothing inside it. There was no one here.
But she was on his track.
And she knew where he must be now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Laura sat back inside the warmth and comfort of the car, away from the potential exposure of the store. She pulled the radio off her belt and spoke into it urgently.
“Unit required to the abandoned property marked with key A152 on the map,” she said. “We have a hit on a future location setup.”
There was a flurry of crackling over the radio in response, as though several people had all pushed their buttons at once in knee-jerk surprise.
“Unit seventeen, please respond,” the operator at HQ came back.
“Unit seventeen, en route.”
“Agent Frost?” that was Blackford.
“Go ahead,” Laura told him.
“You have a platform setup?”
“Affirmative,” Laura replied. “No sign of suspect or victim. The property is at this moment empty.”
“Unit seventeen, stay alert,” Captain Blackford said. “You too, Agent Frost. No telling when this guy will show up.”
“Agreed.” Laura paused, wondering if she should say it, and then gave into her instincts. They needed to track this new place down, the one she had seen, in case it was where he was now. Yes, she was probably going to sound crazy if anyone asked her how she knew what she was looking for. Yes, if Nate heard, he was going to think she was hallucinating or something. But there was a life on the line, and none of that mattered if she could save it. “Can I get local assistance identifying a locale? I’m looking for a white-painted barn. Abandoned.”
There was a short pause. Then, “Ma’am, there are a lot of abandoned barns around the outskirts of the city. Might need to have more data on that one.”
Laura thought for a moment. “There’s a big tree outside, looks like it got struck by lightning or something. Huge tire on a rope swing, like a tractor tire.”
There was another pause, longer this time. Silence. Laura was about to repeat her request, wondering whether no one knew what she was describing or whether the message simply hadn’t been clear enough, when the radio crackled to life once again.
“I can’t be absolutely sure, but that sounds like the old Thousand Oak property.” It was a new voice, one she hadn’t heard before. “It’s not within the scope of our search right now, given the location and the type of property not matching up with what we’ve been seeing so far.”
“Thousand Oak?” Laura repeated, already using one hand to type it into her phone’s map search. “Is that the name of the farm?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s out by Interstate 285, down off the way a bit.”
Laura found it on her search, quickly inputting the information into her GPS. “Thank you. Unit seventeen, what’s your ETA at marker A152?”
“ETA two minutes,” came the voice which had first confirmed they were on the way.
Laura started the engine, waiting impatiently for them to show. As soon as they were here and able to surveil the place, she could go.
She dialed Nate’s number, knowing she was going to need back-up – but he was going to have to find his own way there. She couldn’t spare the time to go back in his direction.
Because she knew where the current victim was hanging – and they had another hour to get there. But that didn’t mean she wanted to waste a single minute. Not if that person was hanging there even now, trying to tear the skin off their own hands to get out of their ropes.
***
Laura wrestled the car into submission along the old dirt track, cursing every time she hit a rock or tree root in the path and jolted herself up and down. She’d switched the headlights down to the lowest possible setting, needing to see but also dreading the idea of being seen.
If the killer was still around here, there was every chance that he would try to stop her from interfering. That he would be watching and waiting to make sure his victim died as intended. And she was alone.
If he took her out, then Nate might arrive too late.
“Come on,” Laura muttered to herself, leaning low over the steering wheel as she strained to see. Up ahead, it loomed like a ghost out of the darkness: the white-painted barn, glowing in the lights from the car.
Laura killed the engine immediately, taking only a moment for her eyes to adjust to the new darkness. Even though the city wasn’t far away – just a couple of minutes back through twisting back roads to get within sight of the interstate – it was private and dark here. The trees formed a natural shelter, and the overgrown fields close around the farm were another barrier to the rest of civilization, so near and yet seemingly so far away.
The farmhouse itself was in bad repair, a very visible hole in the roof even from here. There were no cars parked outside, no sign of anyone else around. Laura waited only the shortest time she possibly could to be somewhat confident there was no one hiding in the shadows before grabbing her flashlight and cell phone from the seat beside her, slipping the phone into her pocket and holding her gun instead. She left the radio on her belt but turned it to silent. If someone was here, the last thing she wanted was for them to hear her coming.
Laura didn’t hesitate as she got out of the car, closing the door as quietly as she could and advancing the rest of the way on foot. The farmhouse was directly ahead of her, but the barn was off to one side, a short walk further on. The tree stood outside just as she had seen it, hanging silently, the tire waiting like it was a trap.
There was barely a sound outside, other than a few bird calls that seemed to retreat further away. No doubt fleeing the presence of a human in the area. She hoped their killer was not an ornithologist, someone who could read distress calls and know that the birds were issuing a warning. But it was all down to chance, now. If he was here; if he wasn’t. If he attacked her; if he didn’t.
All she could do was proceed with caution, and hope.
She couldn’t wait any longer – not when someone’s life was in danger.
A cloud lifted from over the moon, and in the stronger light the barn seemed to glow a ghostly white. Laura looked at her
wrist and was able to make out the time: it was just before eleven. She still had time. There was still an hour before the platform would drop.
If her visions had been accurate, she still had an hour to save a life.
She might have paused then, approached things more carefully, but the image of Veronica Rowse’s destroyed hand was there behind her eyelids when she blinked her eyes. There was no getting rid of it. She needed to get in there, and now. No waiting for Nate. No putting him into the line of fire again, either. He would be much safer if he simply joined them when it was all over.
Laura half-ran up the slight incline towards the barn, as fast as she dared while still being able to keep her gun steady in front of her. Her eyes darted from side to side all the time, looking for some hint of movement. Something that would tell her it wasn’t safe.
Her shoes crunched on dead leaves as she passed by the tree, a slow breeze stirring them around her but not strong enough to lift them into the air. They only rustled, so many sepulchral fingers at her feet. She felt a familiar tension running up her neck, adrenaline flaring through all of her nerves as she darted towards the front of the barn.
The huge doors that blocked the entrance were closed, but there was no padlock or chain on them. Laura didn’t need to look for another way in, but this one was dangerous. She gulped in breath of freezing cold air. There was no time. She had to do this now. She had to get in there, before it was too late.
She touched the door handle, grabbed it hard, and yanked it back, completing the motion by pulling her hand back to the gun as quickly as she could.
She stood there for a long moment, unable to make out anything in the gloom of the inside of the barn. The moonlight didn’t penetrate this far, and she stood with her legs planted apart and her gun up, ready to fire. Ready to fire at anything that tried to walk out of there, or move in the corners of her vision, or lift a glinting weapon of its own…
