by Blake Pierce
Too early?
Laura spun in the middle of the road, her breath ragged and burning her lungs. There was no sign of the car. Below her, she saw two agents exiting the house, shaking their heads. She’d been wrong. The vision had been false.
Not only had she jeopardized the mission, but she’d been wrong. She was going to get her ass handed to her—and she tasted bile in her mouth as she wondered if she’d maybe given him a chance to slip away… There was no sign of Nathaniel by the side door. Had he followed her? Had he left the side door unguarded?
She heard it first. A thin, reedy kind of noise. The way the land was built here was all wrong for acoustics; the hill gave her little view of the land on the other side, where the road vanished into trees, and everything seemed to absorb sound and bounce it around her. Her pounding head didn’t help. But the sound made her turn, and it almost wasn’t enough notice.
She had barely begun to move when she saw it. The car, cresting the ridge, coming directly into view and driving right for her. She was close enough to see his face through the windshield, to see the moment he spotted the FBI logo on her chest.
She still had a chance. She threw her body forward, ignoring the complaint in her lungs and the sting in her calves, her eyes trained only on the car. She could see him moving, putting the car into reverse, throwing his arm across the back of the seat. It was almost too late—
Laura hit the edge of the wheat field and launched herself through the air in one last-ditch effort to stop him from getting away. She landed solidly on the windshield, spreading her arms and legs in search of a hand- or foothold and managing to cling on desperately to the bodywork as the impact knocked out the last breath in her body. The car was already moving, wind whipping in her ears and sending her hair flying into her eyes as she clung on for life, not having thought her way through to step two of this desperate leap.
The car was speeding up, just as she had seen in her vision. Laura gritted her teeth and clung on, feeling the strain in her cramped fingertips, how she had to use all the strength in her body to hold herself down and not fly off like a paper bag caught in the wind. She could hear him shouting something through the windshield, but the rush of the wind in her ears and the roar of the engine right under her were too loud to make out the words.
She became aware of movement close to her head, to the window of the driver’s side rolling down and an arm coming out of it, and she braced herself for him to hit her. But before he could reach her, a massive, juddering shock pitched her away from the windshield and off the car completely.
Laura slammed down her arms to absorb the impact and rolled across the hard surface of the old road, not breathing again until she managed to lie still. Even then she couldn’t rest—she heard the rev of his engine and instinct threw her to the side, off the concrete, into the wheat. If he came at her and ran her over—
But the revving stopped, and Laura looked up, managing to make out through her spinning and roiling vision that the car was not moving. It was stuck, she realized from this angle, one of the back wheels spinning uselessly in the air while the front was lodged in a low ditch at the side of the road. She’d managed to throw him off course enough to stop him. Which was good, because from all the spinning and the motion on top of her headache, she was pretty sure she was going to throw up.
Laura put her hand out to stabilize herself and came up with a handful of dirt, her fingers sinking into the dry soil. The sound of a door opening made her look up and see the kidnapper jumping out of the car, his face twisted in rage. He was lanky, all sinew, tall enough to eat up the distance between them with long strides. She only had time to register the fact that he was holding something dense and dark in his hand before she dodged out of the way.
He growled at her, an inhuman snarl without words, and swung again, quick and heavy, aiming right for her head. Laura knew she couldn’t keep evading him. She was trapped unless she got to her feet. The only thing she could do was to roll forward instead of away, launching herself at him, a facsimile of her earlier leap for the car.
The kidnapper fell to the road with a cry, his legs tangled around her body as he plunged back, allowing her to trap his feet. She fought her way out and got up, ready to cuff him—but before she could even get her bearings, a sharp blow to her thigh had her crying out and going down, her knee giving way.
“Fucking bitch,” the kidnapper spat, scrambling up and over her. One of his hands pinned her shoulder in place, his weight preventing her from shifting. He lifted the club into the air, and Laura tensed.
There was no way she could pull herself out of the way of the blow.
CHAPTER TWO
Laura’s only hope, she knew, was to use his momentum against him. She grabbed the handcuffs from her belt and in one motion, snapped one side around the wrist that held the club and pulled down hard on his arm as she did it.
She managed to avoid the club smashing into her nose by the thinnest margin. She felt the air move around it, the small spray of dirt fly over her face when it hit the ground.
The kidnapper stumbled and tried to pull back, but she had him now, and she tugged as hard as she could against the cuffs. She used all of her body weight to smash his fist against the hard surface of the concrete until he dropped it. The impacts ran heavy through her arms and shoulders, leaving aches that Laura ignored, adrenaline flashing through her and drowning out the pain.
She had the training, and she didn’t need to think. Laura took advantage of his focus on freeing his right hand to flip him over, grab his left hand, and pull it across. The second cuff snapped into place behind his back, and Laura panted for breath, using her weight to keep his legs down while her arms pushed down on his to stop him from struggling.
She looked up at the car. It had seemed empty in her vision. Now, too.
“Where’s the girl?” she asked, her voice as ragged and hoarse as her breaths. Arresting him, reading him his rights—that could wait. She needed to find the girl.
He was still trying to struggle against the cuffs and throw her off. Silently, Laura prayed that Nate had followed her, that he was coming over the hill even now to help her keep him restrained.
“The girl!” Laura shouted, the effort cracking her throat. “Where is she?”
The kidnapper looked at her sideways, his head twisted to one side and forced against the dirt. She could see the whites of his eyes, rolling with the effort of trying to get free. A sneer came over his face, an imitation of a grin. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “She won’t be alive much longer.”
Laura felt her heart plummet like a stone.
Her vision had shown her the wrong thing. The girl wasn’t here.
And Laura had no idea how to save her.
“Laura!”
She looked up to see Nate jogging toward her, breaking into a faster sprint as he took in the scene.
“Radio it in,” she called out to him; it was unnecessary. He was already pulling the radio off his belt as he approached, his gun still drawn and pointed steadily at the kidnapper’s head as he pressed the call button.
“Sir, we have the suspect,” he reported, rattling off a quick description of their location. He turned briefly to wave until the figures down near the farmhouse waved in response, and Laura saw them bursting into motion. They were on their way to help.
“How did you know he was here?” Nate asked, putting both gun and radio away as he knelt beside her. He grabbed hold of the kidnapper’s cuffed wrists, allowing her to get up and move away as she caught her breath.
“I saw the trail of dust,” she lied breathlessly, gesturing off to the side. Now that she had stopped moving, she felt it: the blow of her body against the windshield, the jolts through her arms as she forced the club out of his hands, every point of contact she’d made against the ground each time she fell. Above it all, the headache, throbbing so violently she felt sick.
Nate looked at her sharply. “You okay?”
“Had a few
knocks,” Laura said, gulping in the fresh air as fast as her body would take it. Water. She needed water to hydrate herself, stop the headache getting worse. “I’m fine. Focus on him.”
“Lavoie?” That was another agent, coming up the hill toward them and then jogging up the road.
“I’ve got him here,” Lavoie said, nodding at Laura. “Agent Frost took him down. We should take him for questioning.”
“Urgently,” Laura cut in, seeing the special agent in charge coming into hearing range—along with the others who had been gathered around the farmhouse. “He said something about the girl—that she won’t be alive much longer.”
“Where is she, you scumbag? Huh?” Nate demanded, giving the man a shake, but he seemed to have gone off somewhere inside his own mind. He only wheezed slightly in response, his mouth hanging open and his eyes hooded. Nothing changed when Nate hauled him to his feet, handing him over to a pair of cops who quickly began the interrogation.
It all washed over Laura like the light breeze that was still making the wheat whisper below. She was finding it hard to think through the throb of her headache, the burn of the pain points all over her body. She felt tiredness come, tried to battle it. Something wasn’t right. The girl.
“Hey.” It was Nate again, standing in front of her, one arm hovering just beside her elbow as if ready to catch her. “You doing okay? Really?”
“I just—this isn’t right,” Laura said, looking up at him. He was something she could focus on against the too-bright sky, the loudness of the voices around her. “She’s in danger.”
Nate glanced behind him; as he twisted, Laura saw past him to the police car that had pulled up. The suspect was being pushed into the back seat, ready to be taken off. Questioned, probably for hours. The girl didn’t have that kind of time. From what he’d said, the way he’d said it, Laura knew. He’d been serious. She was dying, right now, and Laura had no idea what that meant.
“Good work, Frost,” their boss said, nodding at her as he got into the front seat. The car started. Laura didn’t even have time to formulate a reply. They were gone. Around her and Nate, the other agents and police officers were heading back to the house or checking the car over. Wrapping things up.
“I need to see,” she said, half to herself. Another vision. That was what she needed now. If she could somehow force it to come—but there was no way. She had never been able to trigger them exactly—she could only create the right circumstances and hope. They came unbidden and unasked for, like a bolt out of the blue. Laura saw the girl’s face behind her eyes, but it was only a fake, the memory of the picture she’d seen in the briefing. If only she could have another vision, now, right now—
“See what?” Nate asked, ducking his head down to her level, shadowing over her with concern. “Laura?”
Laura made an effort to center herself, to think through the mud and jagged rocks at her temples. She was acting suspiciously. She needed to try to be normal.
“The farmhouse,” Laura said, managing to make a connection at last. Yes. The farmhouse. Maybe if she went down there and walked around, it would trigger something. Right now, she was removed from the scene—done with it, maybe. She could easily get in a car with Nate and drive out of the area, and the scene would be dealt with by someone else. She wasn’t involved enough.
She had to put herself right down there, in the middle of it. The kidnapper’s lair. Maybe then it would come. She had to try.
“It’s already been checked over,” Nate said, reaching for her arm. “Boss wants us back at the precinct with everyone else. Come on. We’ve got to head out.”
“No,” Laura said, loud enough that Nate quickly turned, blocking her from the line of view of the other agents who were still around them.
“It’s an order, Laura,” he hissed under his breath. “He wants us to go debrief. Come on.”
Laura had to ignore him. Even if it meant more explaining later. Even if it made him angry with her. She pushed past Nate and started down the road, even though she was bone-weary in all of her limbs. The vision followed by the chase and the fight had hit her harder than usual. But there wasn’t any time to rest and recover right now. Not when the girl was in danger. Not when her life could be ticking away, minute by minute.
Nate caught up with her halfway down the hill. Laura walked down the road this time, taking the easier path, still walking as fast as she could. Frustratingly slow. She forced her body to move, to carry her there, keeping her gaze focused on the farmhouse ahead. Everyone had left in favor of checking out the car and the arrest. Someone would come back, keep the scene secure, search for evidence, but it would be too late.
Laura was the only one who could act now. She could feel it in her gut. If the kidnapper didn’t talk, and she didn’t think he would, then Laura was the girl’s last hope.
“What are you hoping to see?” Nate asked, falling in with an easy lope beside her.
The road flattened out as they reached the bottom of the hill, heading on in a straight line for the farmhouse. “A clue,” Laura told him, keeping it vague. She had never told him anything about her visions; she didn’t expect him, or anyone, to understand. They had been partners for a few years, and she would trust him with literally anything else, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was she needed him to trust her, and not to start thinking she’d lost her mind. He had always trusted her before, since their first assignment together when her hunches proved right. She only hoped he would do so again now.
She forced herself into a jog, almost at the door now.
“You think she’s somewhere around here, is that it?” Nate asked.
“He was coming back here,” Laura said, wrenching the door open and bounding through it, into the interior of the building. “There must have been a reason for that.”
Heading inside the farmhouse was like having a candle pinched out. The bright sunshine of the outside world was gone, barely filtering in through cracks around the shuttered windows, places where the boards of the exterior walls had shifted and left gaps. Rays of light burst through the gloom like shards of glass, brilliantly illuminating the dust that hung in the air.
Laura’s eyes adjusted to the gloom quickly as she glanced around, her head stabbing with pain every time she encountered one of the rays. From the front door, a set of stairs led upward, two doors led to the left and right, and one final door was ahead at the end of the hall.
“This place is about ready to fall down,” Nate observed, following close behind her. “I’ll take a look up there real quick. Maybe he kept her in one of the bedrooms, might find a clue up there.”
Laura nodded distantly. “I’ll check down here,” she said, more out of habit than any real meaning.
She heard Nate’s booted footsteps thud on every stair on his way up to the second floor. She closed her eyes to drown them out, trying to think. Nothing was happening. The only thing she could feel was the pain in her head from earlier, not the new pain she wanted to bring on. Wanted desperately. No matter what it would cost her, it could save the girl’s life.
Laura reached for the nearest door and shuffled inside the room, closing the door behind her. She shut out the sounds of the outside, the bright light from the doorway, the fresh air. Everything. She took a deep breath of the musty-smelling atmosphere inside the room, closing her eyes and letting her senses take over. One, smell: the decay of a place that has been left abandoned for too long. The scent of the outside fields.
Laura reached out another sense, acknowledging it, then letting it envelop her. Listening. Not to the sounds in the distance, or even Nate’s heavy footsteps above her head. The room itself. The settling of floorboards. The soft silence of a place out in the middle of nowhere. Laura breathed deep, then held her breath to listen for a beat.
She was building a cocoon around herself, a shell of sensory input. One that centered her in the moment, pushed her into deeper awareness of her surroundings. And with it, sometimes, the v
isions. If she could trigger it like this, she might still have a chance…
Laura wrenched her brain back from the possibilities, focusing again. Musty air. Almost-silent room. She reached out without opening her eyes, until her hand landed on the surface of the wall nearest to her. A hollow feeling. A thin wall. Dry, peeling wallpaper that threatened to crumble under her touch. A texture that spoke of repeated damp in the winters, drying out over the summers, over and over again. Years.
Laura breathed deep, listened, and felt—the stab of pain between her eyes—a short, sharp rush—
The girl was gasping for breath. Laura was inside the space with her, a tiny space and so tight, hovering just inches away from the girl’s face. She was streaked with both tears and dust, dry and yellow, caking her skin and hair. She took another rasping inhale now, ending on a shudder, a whimper.
She was so alone. Laura wanted to reach out, but she couldn’t—she was only an observer here, devoid of form. Of corporeal touch. The girl’s face was screwed up with fear and sadness and pain, pain in her little chest as she struggled to breathe, pain in her hands where she’d tried to scratch her way out…
Laura’s eyes drifted to those hands. They were coated with dust, caked under the fingernails. Somewhere above them, Laura heard the sound of a man’s voice. Nate’s voice. Calling out Laura’s name. It made her look up, and she saw the girl’s face. The blonde hair streaked with dust, just like Lacey’s hair. Blue eyes like Lacey’s, bright and vivid in the darkness.
Her blue eyes were closing. Slowly, gently. The little chest was pumping up and down one last time, but there was no oxygen for it to take in. Her chest deflated like a slow balloon, and Laura hovered helplessly over her, and it did not rise again.
Laura gasped out loud, her eyes flying open. She was dripping with sweat, and it felt as though a bucket of ice had been poured over her. The thudding pain in her head drove her to her knees as she cried out, then dizzily reached for the floor to push herself up again. The color of the dirt on the girl’s face, under her fingernails. It matched the color of the dirt out there, around the house. But she wasn’t outside. If she had been outside, they all would have seen the disturbed ground already.
