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

by Blake Pierce

  “I learned it,” he said, with just the tiniest inflection of pride. “I didn’t have a clue how to do it, so I spent a lot of time online working it out. I had to make a lot of test runs before I knew they worked. I even set one up at home for a bit, not far off the ground, to see if it would work with my weight.”

  “What about the supplies?” Nate asked. “We’ve had a chance to look over your bank records briefly, but I didn’t see any mention of a building supply company.”

  “I used false names,” he said. “Paid in cash at the sites. I went to different places each time, gave them different fake IDs if they asked for them. I just picked up a bit here and there. Nothing to raise anyone’s suspicion.”

  He’d been so careful, Laura thought. And he’d been caught anyway. She was proud of that herself, proud that they’d managed to put all of the pieces together and bring him in. It was good work.

  But there was something nagging at her. He’d been so careful, and now he was just spilling everything like it was nothing to him. He was emotional, yes, but he wasn’t even trying to hide any of it. It was pouring out of him so easily, without them having to force it.

  Laura said nothing for a moment. She picked up a piece of paper and wrote something quickly on it: stay quiet. Passing it across to Nate without setting it at an angle where Paul would be able to read it, she then glanced at her watch and pretended to be studying the files she had set in front of herself before flipping the folder closed.

  It was all for show. A test. She wanted to know if her theory was correct.

  Nate did as he was told, even following her lead. He closed the file he had in front of him as well, placing the medical record back inside it. Then he glanced at her, not moving or saying anything else, like he was waiting for her to be finished.

  And it worked.

  “I had to be careful with buying the clocks, too,” Paul said, unprompted. “I knew they were on sale here, but after I bought the first one in person, I found out they sold them online as well. Then I just had to use the fake IDs, put in different names and delivery addresses. I even had one delivered to the hospital.”

  “You’re stalling us,” Laura said, immediately.

  Paul stared at her, his eyes blinking and his mouth moving in a kind of unspoken stutter before he found his voice again. “What?”

  “You’re stalling us.” It was a clear statement, not a question. She already knew that she was right. “You have another victim on a platform somewhere right now, don’t you?”

  Paul continued to only stare at her, as if he was somehow shocked by what she was saying. Laura wasn’t buying a single second of it. He was only trying to keep the delay going. Keep them in the room, so they weren’t out there, investigating. Stopping his final victim from falling to their death.

  “Where?” Laura snapped, leaning across the table towards him, her words harsh as a slap. “Where are they?”

  Slowly, so slowly at first, she thought she might be imagining it, Paul’s expression changed.

  He wasn’t crying any longer.

  He was smiling.

  “I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you to do me or what you threaten me with. Or what kind of deal you tell me I can get with a judge. I won’t tell you where they are now.”

  “How much time do they have left?” Laura asked, even though she knew there was little hope he was going to answer it straight.

  “I won’t tell you,” Paul said again, still smiling that odd smile, that little look of victory that he was still going to get one more of his ‘mistakes’ crossed off his list.

  Laura slammed her hand on the table and stood, making a dash for the door of the interview room.

  He wasn’t going to tell them a thing – and if she didn’t figure this out fast, one more person was going to die in spite of all their success.

  She shouted out as she ran down the hall, calling for any detective available to follow her before it was too late.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  Laura rummaged through the evidence boxes on Paul Payne’s kitchen counter frantically, trying to find something, anything, that would trigger a vision. She needed something pivotal – something that would be strong enough to tell her what she needed to know. It was as though the local cops going through Paul Payne’s apartment had started just bagging up every single thing in sight without discrimination.

  “Laura?” Nate asked, approaching her with a worried tone. She didn’t look up to catch his expression. She had a feeling she knew what it would look like, anyway. Like she was being crazy. “What are you doing?”

  “I need something,” Laura said. She glanced across the room. The two locals who had been resting near the doorframe, watching her with equally concerned looks, suddenly realized they had something important to do in another room and disappeared, leaving her alone with Nate. “I told you. If I touch something, it can make the vision come on. I need to see.”

  “Are you still doing this?” Nate asked. He sighed. “Laura, we really need to figure this out. Maybe instead of just touching things we should actually be looking at them. You know, for clues.”

  “Here!” Laura said triumphantly, pulling out a slim laptop from the bottom of the box. The cops had evidently put it in to be taken to the lab and analyzed by their own techs. They didn’t have time for that. By the time anyone even got access to it, it would probably be several days too late.

  She opened the evidence bag, pulling the top seal apart with a flourish.

  “Wait!” Nate said, reaching out and catching hold of her arm. Laura tensed, but it was fine. He’d grabbed the sleeve of her jacket. The aura of death didn’t come out to choke her. “Don’t touch that! You’re not wearing gloves!”

  “I know,” Laura said. And it probably didn’t make any difference anyway. Procedure was procedure, but she doubted they would need fingerprints to prove who this laptop belonged to or who had used it. Paul’s login details, his own personal files, would be all over it.

  She pulled her arm out of Nate’s grasp and grabbed hold of the laptop, the one he must have used to make online purchases and perform searches and do so much related to his plans, and she felt a sickening but reassuring stab of pain in her head at the same time.

  “Laura, what are-!”

  Laura was looking at a woman, looking at her straight on. They were in a basement, she thought immediately. There was something about it. The bare wall behind her, the concrete floor underneath. The lightbulb that was unlit nearby, hanging from the ceiling without any kind of shade. And the darkness. It was dark there, so dim Laura could only just make out enough of the details to name them.

  She was bound and gagged, just like the others. Her arms as well as her hands, like Lincoln Ware, so she couldn’t struggle at all. She was weeping, eyes blackened by mascara. The timer on her chest was counting down.

  Laura did the math quickly, taking in the time shown on the clock and how long was left on the timer. This woman was going to die at eight in the evening. She was heaving for breath, panicking, her eyes constantly moving like she was searching for some kind of hope.

  There was none.

  “You doing? You know you’re breaking protocol! Come on!”

  Laura looked at Nate, his words oddly disjointed in her memory now even though he must have said the whole sentence without pause. She fought to breathe for a moment, feeling it was over: she’d done it. At last, she’d managed to trigger a vision that actually helped.

  But how much had it helped?

  “I saw it,” she said, dropping the laptop back into the evidence bag on the kitchen counter, almost stammering in her rush to get the words out. “I saw where she is.”

  “What?” Nate said, his eyes wide, huge. “Where?”

  “A basement, I think,” Laura said. She pressed her hand against her forehead. “Definitely a basement. Underground. It had that feeling to it. Bare brick walls and concrete floors. Maybe a bit of an older propert
y, the kind that hasn’t been refurbished and made pretty. And it was big, I think.”

  “A big, old basement,” Nate said, looking at her like she was talking in tongues. Maybe, as far as he was concerned, she was.

  “Just let me think,” Laura said. She hesitated, then called out. “Hey! Local guys – are you still there?”

  There was a few moments’ pause before the two cops she had seen earlier reappeared in the doorway. They were both wearing gloves, and one of them was still putting a framed photograph into an evidence bag. They really were bagging up everything. They were young, maybe inexperienced.

  “Ma’am?” one of them asked.

  “How good is your local knowledge?” Laura asked.

  “I don’t know,” the one who had already spoken said, glancing at his colleague. “Pretty good?”

  “What about when it comes to real estate?”

  They both shrugged. “There’s a guy on our team whose brother is in real estate.”

  “Good,” Laura said. “Call him, now, and hand the phone to me.”

  She said the words with such a snap to them that they both immediately complied, digging out their cell phones. The one who got there first quickly stretched out his hand, and Laura grabbed it as the dial tone rang out.

  “Hey, Tony.”

  “Not Tony,” Laura replied. The voice sounded somewhat familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. “This is FBI Agent Laura Frost. Your colleague just dialed you up for me. I need to speak to a real estate expert, and I’m told you’re related to one.”

  “Yeah, my brother,” the officer replied. “Do you want me to bring him to the precinct? He should be just finishing up at work, he’s usually there late.”

  Laura checked her watch. It was almost seven. Damnit. All that time they’d spent on Paul – bringing him in, getting his history and details sent through, preparing an interview strategy. They’d been playing into his hands the whole time. They had hardly any time left to find her.

  “We’ll go to him,” Laura said. “Wait – your voice. You were the one who knew where to find the barn, on the radio?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then get to thinking while I’m driving over to your brother’s office. Call him and tell him to stay there, and to look up any properties he knows of either on the market or abandoned that would have a large basement space. Unfurnished, bare walls and concrete floor. Got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Laura hung up the phone, throwing it at the officer who had dialed for her, and cocked her head at Nate to indicate he should follow her as she dashed back outside to the car.

  ***

  “We haven’t got a choice,” Laura said, grabbing one of the three pieces of paper off the table. “We have to go, and we have to go now.”

  “I still don’t like splitting up,” Nate growled, but his words were falling on deaf ears. He took one of the other pages reluctantly, which left just one behind.

  “You’ll have to cover the other one,” Laura said, looking at the officer whose help had brought them this far. His nametag read McCoy. “Your partner is still in the car?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, taking the last sheet smartly. “We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

  “Make sure you do,” Laura said, but then thought better of her brash instruction. “And be careful. We have the guy in custody, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be danger around – especially if this is an abandoned property. Who knows what kind of repair it might be in?”

  “Right,” he said, and then all three of them were heading for the door, leaving McCoy’s brother to watch them go with a bemused look on his face.

  The man had come through in a big way. He’d found them a list of properties by the time they arrived, and Laura had been able to use the photographs to narrow it down. But it wasn’t clear enough. Basements with brick walls and concrete floors – they weren’t exactly uncommon.

  She thought she’d picked out the right one. But she wasn’t sure enough to risk a woman’s life. That was why she was getting into the car alone, speeding off towards the property she thought fit best while Nate requisitioned the realtor’s car and McCoy went off in the other direction.

  Three locations. Only three. And she had to hope to God that the realtor actually had the details of all the properties in Atlanta that did fit the bill, because if he didn’t, they were probably on a wild goose chase.

  It felt like an absolute lifetime and also no time at all before her heart-racing drive through the darkening streets had her pulling up at the address her GPS indicated. She didn’t bother parking properly, simply slamming on the brakes and jumping out of the car. She saw the time on the car’s display before she shut it off. There were only a handful of minutes before eight. She didn’t have any time to lose.

  She threw herself into the front door, hearing a groan of complaint from the wood. She didn’t have the keys. The realtor hadn’t been selling the property himself, just knew where to find the details online. They didn’t have time to wait for the keys. It was now or never.

  Laura stepped back from the door, nursing an aching shoulder already, and drew her gun. She fired at the lock, then again until the force of the blow coupled with the location made it move on its hinges, telling her she’d done it.

  She pushed through, leaving this door open in her wake as well as she ran into the house.

  It was old, and big, and very dark. There were no streetlights shining in further than the two front rooms of the house, and the rest was plunged into blackness. Laura fumbled to grab her flashlight, remembering the floor plan she’d seen on the records. She finally got it turned on just as she reached the basement door, down the hall where she’d expected, and wrenched it open.

  She clattered down the stairs, then stopped. It was huge down here. There were two doors leading down, she remembered – one from outside, one from inside. And the whole footprint was bigger than her entire apartment plus room for another. There were stone columns spaced throughout, holding everything up, and old storage racks, and sheets hanging where someone had started renovating but never finished...

  Laura could hear her own breath panting, her own blood pounding in her ears. She could only see where the beam of light from her flashlight hit. Where was she? Was Laura in the wrong place?

  She darted around a storage rack only to see nothing promising ahead. To the left, though, a sheet hung. Laura caught her breath. She hated this. Hated the way this felt like a horror movie. Like something was about to jump out at her.

  She heard something and froze.

  It came again.

  A sob. A woman’s sob.

  Laura ran in the direction of the sound, pushing the sheet out of her way. There, at the far end of the basement – there she was! She was standing on the platform, attached to the wall itself beside a stepladder, and the timer on her chest –

  Sixty seconds.

  Laura dropped her gun in her panic, knowing she needed a hand free. Nothing else mattered, not for the next minute – she had to get up there – she grabbed the stepladder, found it unstable, the legs not set out properly, not balanced.

  Fifty seconds until the platform gave way. It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get up there. Laura thought fast, dragging the stepladder away from the wall and moving it, repositioning it at the end of the platform. There was clearance between them.

  Forty seconds. Laura kicked out the legs desperately, getting them to lock into place. There wasn’t even time to test that it was set up properly. She climbed onto the first step, and it held her weight. Thirty seconds. The woman was sobbing desperately, making high-pitched sounds behind the gag, like she was trying to scream. Laura climbed the rest of the way to the top.

  Twenty seconds. She was shorter than Paul Payne, couldn’t reach as far as he could. The end of the platform was right in front of her body, the woman standing just a little way beyond. Fifteen. The platform would drop, and even though it would drop ont
o the stepladder, Laura didn’t know if it was enough. There would still be a fall. Not enough to break her neck. Maybe enough to choke her.

  Ten seconds. Laura had no more time to think. She lunged, throwing her body weight forward. She grabbed her by the legs, getting her own feet balanced on the wooden platform, standing –

  The timer hit zero and there was a sickening lurch as the platform gave way –

  Then another one as it hit the ladder, making Laura struggle to retain her balance, holding onto the woman desperately, and then…

  She steadied herself and took a breath.

  “Okay,” she said. She didn’t know whether she was trying to calm down the sobs of the woman she was holding in her arms, or trying to reassure herself, counteract the adrenaline making her feel like she was on fire. “Okay. Just hold still a moment. I’m going to cut the ropes, and we can climb down together.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Laura looked up, as if she’d sensed him coming somehow, just at the moment that Nate stepped into the basement. He had to duck his head to get through the doorway and hunched all the way down the stairs as if he was afraid of hitting his head. It was only when he joined her, standing next to the seat she had found on an upturned crate, that he straightened up.

  And he said nothing.

  Laura looked at him, watched his face as he took it all in. The basement. The ropes. The platform, which was still supported on the ladder, everything preserved as much as possible for scene of crime photography.

  “It’s…” he said. Then he stopped. There were only a few other people down here: the photographers had to finish their job before the other professionals could move in and start interacting with the environment, dusting things for prints, bagging up evidence, and all the rest. They were isolated enough in the space within the large basement that they could talk freely – but it seemed that he didn’t want to.