Already Missing (A Laura Frost FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 4)

by Blake Pierce

  There was nothing. No movement on the floor. She lifted her eyes. Was there movement up there? She couldn’t make out enough to see. The cloud had drifted over the moon again, leaving her almost blind. There was no sound, nothing that told her of anyone moving towards her…

  And then she heard it. A creaking noise. A dry, rhythmic creaking coming from somewhere up towards the top of the barn, where the hayloft ought to be.

  With shaking hands, Laura reached down and grabbed the flashlight she had stashed in her pocket. She lifted it again to place it along the barrel of the gun, to hold them both steady together in case she still needed to fire.

  She turned on the flashlight.

  And the beam of light hit the man swinging from the rafters of the barn, tied completely with ropes around the whole of his torso, a clock timer on his chest showing a countdown to zero.

  No.

  Laura froze, staring up at the body in dismay. She was supposed to have another hour. There was supposed to be more time.

  How could she be late, when it wasn’t midnight yet?

  Laura jumped, turning around with her gun outstretched at the sound of a noise behind her. When she realized it was a car, she immediately ducked inside the barn, hiding to one side of the doors. Using them as cover. If she needed to, she could fire from here. Maybe get a good shot off before he even saw her…

  She aimed her gun at the silhouette emerging from the car, ready to pull the trigger.

  ***

  Nate got out of the car and began to move towards the barn, keeping the headlights on to illuminate the interior of the building. There was no one framed in the doorway, but…

  Then someone stepped out, and Nate’s hand went to his gun immediately.

  “It’s me,” Laura said, heavily, sounding like she was relieved – but also dismayed at the same time.

  “Laura?” Nate called out, his voice louder than hers, breaking what felt like a sacred silence around the farm. “You alright?”

  “Yes,” she said, but her shoulders slumped as she said it. “The victim is inside. We’re too late.”

  Nate turned to the cops who had given him a ride, the two of them only just now filing out of the car behind him. “Get around the perimeter and look for the suspect,” he said. “He might still be out here. Keep your wits about you.”

  They both nodded, setting off at a rapid pace. Nate walked forward instead, towards his partner. She had turned away from him, looking back and up at something on the inside of the barn. As Nate stepped closer, he saw what it was.

  The man hanging from the ceiling, still swaying slightly from side to side like a macabre pendulum.

  “A man,” he said, out loud, because the surprise was almost too much.

  “Yeah.” Laura’s voice was low, down. Dejected.

  “He’s changed his MO,” Nate said, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. This was shaping up to be a real headache of a case. “Targeting a man and changing the timings. That’s… is it a change, or an escalation?”

  “I don’t know,” Laura sighed.

  “But killers don’t just change their MO,” Nate said, as if saying it out loud would make the universe go back on what it had done and make things simpler again. He was almost pleading. “We already have a victim profile.”

  “Looks like we were wrong,” Laura said. She glanced at him with a humorless smile. “Third victim proves the rules. And we don’t know most of them, it turns out.”

  Nate hesitated, looking at her. For as hard as he was taking this, she seemed to be doing worse.

  She’d sounded so sure that this was the place where the killer would be, on the phone. On the radio, too, she had described it exactly. Nate glanced around from his position in the doorway, taking it in. The white-painted barn. The tree with the large tractor tire hanging on a rope swing. It was like she had described. She got it spot on. But how had she known?

  When she called him, she had sounded so urgent and frantic that he hadn't taken the time to ask. He just trusted her, like he always did. It always seemed to be that way, with the two of them. Laura telling him things she had discovered, but never how. He'd thought that they were finally getting to the bottom of things, given that she'd said she was seeing to righting things and he had been able to offer her support. But now it was occurring to him, more strongly than ever, that she still knew things. Things he couldn't explain.

  And if the visions weren’t real, then he was still missing the true answer.

  “How did you know to come here?” he asked, keeping his voice pitched low. The two cops weren't back yet, still completing their circuit around the large barn. Still, he didn't want them to overhear this. “Was there a picture, or something?”

  Laura shot him an odd look. “What? No. What do you mean?”

  “I heard you on the radio,” Nate said. “You described this place exactly. How did you know to come here?”

  Laura looked away from him, as if she did not want to see the expression on his face. As if she couldn't meet his eyes. “I just... you know I have my ways.”

  “We're back to that again, are we?” Nate asked, only just holding back from making the words come out as a growl. “Hiding things from me?”

  “I'm not hiding things from you, Nate,” she said. “I just know that you're not going to like the answer.”

  He could have pressed it, right there. He should have. If it was anyone else, any other topic, then the good cop inside of him would have asked. Got to the bottom of things.

  But something about her tone, the way she said it and the way she wouldn't look at him, made him stay quiet. He mulled over her words in his head. He wouldn't like the answer, whatever that meant.

  He hoped it didn't mean what he thought it meant. But he couldn't see how it could mean anything else.

  It meant that she had already told him how she knew, and he hadn't believed her.

  But it was ridiculous, wasn't it? To believe something like that? Psychic visions - they didn't exist in real life. This wasn't a TV show. They weren't caught in some high-budget Hollywood movie. This was real life.

  It wasn't possible. What she was telling him could not be real.

  And yet, how could she possibly have known to come here if she didn't find any physical evidence pointing her in the right direction?

  He knew Laura. He knew that there was no way she would hide evidence if she'd found it. Not even to make herself look better. If there was a photograph, then it would be solid evidence for an upcoming trial. If she had any inkling of who the killer was, she would be telling him, trying to track the guy down.

  So if she didn't have any evidence, and she didn't know who it was and wasn’t trying to track them down, then…

  It only seemed to leave one possibility.

  A possibility that Nate just could not accept.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He was parked further down the street, like he always tried to be. The further away you were from the location you were actually going to, the less likely it was that someone would connect you with it. His favorite thing was to park outside of a residential property, making it look as though he was simply visiting the people who lived there. Or perhaps that he was the homeowner himself.

  It was a simple trick, and yet it was effective. People didn't usually ask what you were up to. Except for the homeowners themselves, and then it was simple to say that you were visiting a neighbor. Not that anyone had ever actually asked. He just held the excuse ready, in case it ever came up.

  But it was the fact that he was parked down the road that had saved him in this case. When he had his tools with him, he would park a little closer, because he didn't want anyone to see him carrying the duffel bag. When he had the wood for the platform, or the bound victim, he would park as close as possible and then immediately move the car right afterwards to make sure that he was as far away as he could be. There were degrees of risk involved in each position, of course.

  On this occasion,
he had neither tools nor victim to carry, so he'd parked a good distance down the street. He just wanted to check on things, make sure that everything was working. He liked to carry out a test run of the platforms before actually bringing someone in, making sure that they were set up correctly. This was all very DIY, and even though he had managed to master most of the techniques involved, it wasn't like he had any real training in this area.

  So, he had parked down the street and walked with his hands in his pockets, strolling like he was just enjoying a walk in the neighborhood. That’s how he was able to stop some distance away, taking in what was happening while remaining in the shadows himself. That's how he was able to get away without being seen.

  He had not expected anyone to find this place. It had been boarded up for long enough, and no one in the local neighborhood even seemed to look at it anymore. It was just one more eyesore, one more failed business that had gone the way of history. People didn't notice it anymore.

  But someone had found it. He wasn't sure how. There were any number of ways it could have happened, he supposed. Perhaps it was just a case of a group of teenagers trying to break into a place in order to find somewhere to drink, and then discovering the platform. By now, there were a few details of the deaths that were just starting to leak out to the press. He had read a few of the articles himself. This thing about the platforms, it had been mentioned. They didn't have pictures yet, but they could write about their construction in a little detail.

  So, anyone who went into the abandoned grocery store and looked around and saw the platform might think to call the police. That could have been it.

  But it was only one possibility.

  The other possibility, the one that he didn't really want to think about as he watched the police milling around the front of the store, was that they were somehow on to him. That they had worked out what he was doing, where he was going.

  Maybe it was pure luck. If he was a cop, and he'd found two people hanging by the necks in abandoned locations, he supposed that he would start searching in abandoned locations as well. He'd known full well that as soon as he started doing this, the pressure would ramp up very quickly. They would be hunting for him. That was why he had spent so much time beforehand preparing everything.

  He had already picked out the victim for this place. He knew who should have been hanging from the ceiling in that grocery store tomorrow night. He was going to have to change his plans, go for one of his backup locations. After putting in some of the preparation already it was a real shame - but what could he do, except accept it? This place was burned. The police knew about it, they were here. They weren't going to let him back in. Even if he tried it, he would inevitably be caught. They were bound to keep this place under surveillance even if it looked like they had moved on.

  He turned, his hands still in his pockets, and continued that casual stroll back towards his car. He could be just another local in the neighborhood, someone out to clear his mind at night. On the way somewhere, perhaps. And once he was in the car, he was just one more traveler on the road, one more person driving past the grocery store without so much as glancing at it. He didn't need to look again. He had seen enough. The presence of the marked police car around the front had told him everything he needed to know.

  He went over what he had left inside in his head, thinking about it carefully. The wood, which he had constructed into the platform. The mechanism. He didn't think he had left any tools, and when he got home, he would check very carefully to be sure that he hadn't. If it was only the platform itself, he didn't think they would be able to trace it back to him. Oh, and the rope, of course. But he handled everything with gloves even when he was putting it together, for safety’s sake. He should still be able to continue going on a little longer.

  Now though, he was going to have to get a bit more creative. Worse than that, he was going to have to do it fast. He needed to find somewhere that they weren't going to look, where they wouldn't think to track him down. And he would have to take his time about it, even though he was in a rush. Maybe he should set something up, then circle back and check on it right afterwards, see if the police were looking into it. That might be the best way to do things. Surveillance might have to be a full-time job for him, too, until he was confident that he could set the next person up without risking getting caught.

  If he got caught, he would have to stop. He had already prepared so much in advance; it would be such a shame to stop now. He already had the schedule of his next target down, etched into his mind with laser precision. He knew where she was going to be, where he would grab her. But now he needed to know where he was going to take her.

  He drove on into the dark streets of Atlanta, his mind working fast. The night was still young, at least for someone like him who was used to roaming the city in the dark. He would find somewhere else. This didn't have to be the end.

  He wasn't going to let them stop him - not until he had completed his mission.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I don't need to get any sleep,” Laura said stubbornly, even though she knew deep inside it wasn't true.

  Nate just looked at her for a moment. “We're going to check into the motel,” he said firmly, taking no arguments. “Maybe you don't think you need the rest, but I definitely do.”

  He put the key in the ignition and switched on the car's engine, starting it up and rolling out. Laura sighed, looking out of the window. She had given up control of the vehicle to him given that she had been driving for most of the evening, but now she saw that that was a bad decision. It meant he had the power to drive her wherever he wanted to, and she couldn't just take herself back to the precinct. At least, not until after they had gone to the motel.

  Truth be told, she was tired. It had been a long day. The flight had not been very forgiving, and she still had all of those worries in the back of her mind about Amy and her new guardian. Not to mention the nerves she was already feeling about having Lacey over on the weekend. Getting back in time to be there was her primary concern but, behind that, she could still feel all of the other little worries building up. Things like whether she would be able to entertain Lacey for a full weekend, what kind of foods Lacey liked to eat, how she had changed since Laura had last been able to have her at home overnight. It was a lot to think about.

  All of that, with a case on top of it? A case in which the bodies seemed to already be racking up? It was no wonder she was tired.

  But still, solving this case was her responsibility.

  Right then, she wished it wasn’t. She didn’t want to have to have been the one who found this body. The one who failed to save a life. Yet again. It felt like all she ever did was arrive at crime scenes too late.

  Somewhere deep in her head, she knew it wasn’t true. She knew she saved lives, too, and that she and Nate caught and put killers away all the time. It was what they did.

  But the ones who didn’t survive, even after they’d managed to get to the scene and take over from the local cops – those were the ones that always haunted her the most.

  “We're going to figure this out,” Nate said. “It seems kind of impossible right now, but with some good rest and a new perspective in the morning, will be able to do more. Besides, we need to wait for forensics to do their reports and run their tests. We're not going to have anything back from the coroner until the morning at the very earliest. If we go back to the precinct now and continue trying to investigate, we're not going to get anywhere; and by the time we do end up having to go and get some rest, we won't be able to.”

  “I know,” Laura said, sighing again. “You are right. I just hate feeling like I’m taking a break when people are dying.”

  “Yeah,” Nate said, in a tone of dark sympathy, an indication that he understood and felt it too. But that was all.

  Laura glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, trying not to make it too obvious. Since she'd said what she had said outside the barn, he hadn't spoken much to her. Not i
n the way that really mattered. He had discussed the case, talked about next steps, and now here he was convincing her to get some sleep for procedural reasons. But he hadn't addressed what she had said. He’d clammed up tightly, going quiet as soon as her words hit home, and he hadn't brought it up again.

  Did it mean that he believed her and didn't want to address the fact that what she had said could be real? Or was he secretly plotting ways to get her into therapy, or maybe even have her committed, when they got back?

  They pulled up outside a cheap motel not far from the precinct, set up in that old familiar way that motels always seemed to be. The parking lot, the rows of individual apartment rooms with their numbered doors visible from balconies. Sometimes Laura thought that she could walk into any motel anywhere in the entire country and reliably be able to find any given amenity. If they even had any amenities. It seemed like they were always the same, as if the universe was playing a cosmic joke on them and it was only the furniture and the wallpaper that changed, not the actual location.

  And if the universe was playing a trick on her, it wasn't the only one. It felt like the killer was messing with her deliberately, moving the goal posts. Laura understood the rules. Twelve hours, from twelve noon to twelve midnight. Why change them, why change them exactly at the moment that she was getting closer?

  Did he somehow know?

  No, that was only paranoia speaking. In all of her years of searching, Laura had never managed to find another psychic like herself, so it was hideously unlikely that the killer was one. Still, it didn't seem fair. The job was like this: you figured out what was happening, you learned the rules that applied to each killer, and you used those rules to either catch him or track him down via one of his victims. The rules didn't change. That wasn't how the game was supposed to be played.

  “Alright,” Laura said, unbuckling her seatbelt as Nate parked. “Let’s get checked in and get to sleep. I want to be up early and on it right away.”