by Blake Pierce
She was trying not to let them. Not this time.
There had been a time, a couple of years ago, when something like this would have sent her into a destructive spiral without end. She would have drunk herself into a stupor for weeks on the back of this, maybe even months. Even half a year ago, she might have fallen off the wagon with such speed and violence that it would have shocked even herself. But now, things were better. She was getting better.
At least, forty-five days’ worth of better.
Laura still wasn’t perfect. She knew that. But this case was so close to her own heart. When she looked at Amy, what she was really seeing was Lacey. And more than anything, she wanted to be with her daughter.
Spurred on by that thought, Laura opened up her laptop and tapped out her password, opening it up to a full-screen image that she used as her background. Herself with Lacey, when Lacey was about three years old. She was so tiny then. Laura remembered that day, when they’d gone to the beach to show Lacey the sea for the first time. They’d had ice creams and built a sandcastle, and laughed. And then Laura had snuck away to get herself a drink, and Marcus had caught her, and they’d had a screaming match that ended with a silent and sullen drive back home.
Laura opened up her browser and logged into Facebook, typing “Marcus Amargo” into the search bar. He came up as the first result, and she clicked on his profile, ready to send him a message.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t sent him hundreds of messages before, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up. She could just tell him that she was almost at sixty days again. She knew he’d said so many times he wouldn’t let her so much as see Lacey from a distance until she got to the ninety-day mark, but maybe he would soften up when he saw that she was trying.
Laura frowned at the screen. Where was the message button? Actually, where was half of Marcus’s profile? She couldn’t see anything. Not even recent posts or pictures. She’d been hoping he had posted something about Lacey recently.
She clicked around, her heart rate steadily speeding up as she search for anything she could grasp onto. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be true. He’d…
He’d blocked her.
Laura stood up, throwing her hands to her head, spinning in a circle as she panicked, her breathing coming short and fast. Marcus had blocked her. How was she supposed to talk to him now? How was she supposed to get Lacey back?
She knew she was never going to be granted full custody of Lacey after all of the problems she’d had. Her alcoholism was a matter of court record, and she had to accept that. But she’d hoped that at least visitation might be possible one day—that she might at least be able to see her!
Tears welled up behind her eyes and streamed down her cheeks as Laura buried her face in her hands. No. She was so close. A few more weeks, and she would be there. She would reach the goal that Marcus had set after he’d taken custody of Lacey.
Behind her eyelids, the last time she’d seen her daughter replayed in Laura’s mind. The way Lacey had looked so confused, so upset at her mother’s tears. The way Marcus had lifted her and carried her away, their daughter looking back over his shoulder. That had been the last time she’d been allowed to speak to her daughter.
The last memory that Lacey had of her was of a woman streaked with mascara and tears, crying great sobs that brought her to her knees, her hair a mess, her clothes stained with vomit, an empty vodka bottle still in her hand.
Laura couldn’t let it be that way. She had to fix it. She reached for her phone, intending to call Marcus right away, but she paused and then put it down again. No. If she contacted him some other way, it would only prompt him to block her there, too. She needed to be smart about this. She needed to stay strong. If she proved herself, Marcus might come around. And if he didn’t, the court system would.
Marcus didn’t understand any of this. He didn’t know about her visions; she’d never found the courage to tell him. And when she’d had the vision of him breaking it off with her and taking their daughter away, she’d only been able to drink herself to unconsciousness to block it out. That hadn’t stopped it from becoming reality.
She had never been able to give him an excuse for her behavior. He didn’t know the burdens she was carrying. The only thing she could do was prove to him that she was fighting them—and that would only be achieved by bringing him that ninety-day chip.
Laura needed to distract herself with something else, stay busy. Prevent the devil from getting to her idle hands.
She sat down on the uncomfortable, lumpy sofa and opened up her laptop again, lifting it from the coffee table. She fired up the tabs she’d last opened in her browser, trying to get her head back into the game.
She needed to do something about Amy. Lacey was out of her reach just now, and that hurt like hell, but there was nothing she could do except wait. She might be able to help Amy today. If she could, she was going to have to.
Laura brought up a search on the governor, looking for as much information on him as she could find. He’d been in various political offices for a few years, rising through the ranks. There were plenty of news stories about him, even some vague whiffs of scandal involving a previous secretary of his. But nothing about violence or abuse, no hint of an out-of-control temper.
Laura tucked her blonde hair back behind her ears, trying to think. She worried her long, slim fingers together, twisting and turning them. If she didn’t figure this out, Amy was in for a horrific existence. She needed to do something.
Impulsively, she picked up the phone even though it was late in the evening. Those who worked for the FBI quickly got used to never really being off duty. That was part of the job. The tech department was no different.
“Yeah?”
Laura half-smiled to herself, in spite of the seriousness of the situation. Dean Marsters always answered the phone in the same way. “It’s me. Just wanted to pick your brain on something, if you’re not busy?”
“For Christ’s sake, Frost, it’s nearly midnight.” Dean paused, then sighed. “Yeah, I’m not busy. What do you need?”
“I’m looking into someone,” Laura said, trying to keep it sounding as casual as possible. Maybe she would be able to slide the bombshell of the person in question’s identity under the radar. “I wanted to know if there’s any dirt on him.”
“Dirt?” Dean sighed. “Okay. What scumbag are we dealing with this time?”
“His name’s John Fallow,” she said, inwardly bracing. “I’m a little concerned about his behavior behind closed doors.”
“John Fal—wait. Governor John Fallow?” Dean repeated, almost blasting her ear off. “You must be kidding. Frost, this is so far above my pay grade!”
“Please?” Laura asked. “Look, the safety of a little girl might be at stake, okay? And, you know—I have my sources, but I need something that will stand up in a court of law.”
“I know, I know,” Dean replied, sighing heavily down the line again. “You should tell your sources to bring you real, legal evidence instead of having to come to me for it all the time.”
“I do tell them,” Laura lied. “It’s just not always possible.” It was a convenient cover story. Dean believed she had some kind of underground network of informants. He never talked to Nate, and she never told Nate who her contact in the tech department was either, and everything worked smoothly. She was able to follow up on her visions from time to time without alerting anyone that she knew things she shouldn’t. This one, she knew, was a big risk. There was no source that would have been able to tell her what she’d seen; the family was alone in her vision. But she had to take the risk. Amy needed her.
“All right, leave it with me,” Dean agreed. Even though he always sounded grudging, like he was doing her a huge favor—which he was, considering he was putting himself on the line for her—he always came through in the end. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have something.”
“Thank you,” Laura said. “I owe
you a coffee at lunch tomorrow.”
“You owe me a coffee and a muffin,” Dean corrected, before ending the call.
Laura closed her eyes for a moment, leaning her head back on the sofa cushions. She’d set the wheels in motion for Amy. She’d tried, and failed, to contact Marcus, and she knew what she had to do now. Still, she wasn’t calm enough for sleep. She felt everything still buzzing around in her head, all the fears and worries and the desperate impulse that told her she needed to do something. Maybe going back to her usual search would help to quiet her brain for a while.
The search was something that Laura had been undertaking for a long time now. It had come hand in hand with AA; realizing that she needed to fix herself, needed to get herself back on the straight and narrow. In order to do that, she first had to understand what was going on in her head. What the reasons were behind her slip-ups. Or so they said, at the meetings.
Lauren knew what was behind her slipping up. Every single relapse could be traced back to a particular vision, or to the repercussions of one of her previous slip-ups that was caused by a vision. She knew what it was that she had to deal with.
What she didn’t know, what she had never known, was where the visions came from. Why they happened to her and not to anyone else. How she could trigger them, how she could make them more effective. She had learned a few tricks over time—like isolating herself from others, or making sure she was well rested and fed, and putting herself into physical contact with people who could be at the center of them. She had also learned, mostly through trial and error, that the visions only told her about futures that she was personally involved in. She knew, too, that she could affect their outcome—that she could stop the futures she saw from happening.
The only way that she could think of to get to the bottom of all of this was to find someone else who had also been through the same thing. A support group. A mentor. Someone who could give her the answers she so badly needed.
That was why she spent most of her spare time searching online and looking into other people who claimed to be psychic. People who worked as clairvoyants, or claimed to have a big lead that could help a police investigation. Almost all of the time, what she found was someone who was desperate for fame and money, not someone with a real gift like she had. Or curse, as she preferred to think of it.
Every now and then, there was someone who didn’t quite fit the pattern. They would be content with working a small-town job, doing psychic readings for a few customers a week. Making hardly any money from it. But even in those cases, Laura had invariably found that the reason behind their perceived reticence was that they just wanted to help a few people. Or they just wanted a little pocket money. Whatever it was, it was never the real thing. It was just cold reading, a whole bunch of fakes deceiving people over and over again.
Laura stared hopelessly at the forum she had found, featuring a thread where people discussed what they thought might have been psychic dreams. It wasn’t even a real lead, as far as leads went. Even if she thought any of these people really were psychic like her, she would have to spend hours, if not days, tracking down IP addresses and trying to figure out who they really were. There were ways to figure it all out, but she wasn’t in the tech department of the FBI. This kind of thing took her a long time.
And for what? She wasn’t going to get anywhere with this. She sighed with frustration, slamming the lid of her laptop closed. A glass of wine looked really good right about now.
And yet. With a growl of frustration, Laura wrenched the lid open again, looking at the results that still had not cleared away from her screen. She had to do this. Even if she knew it was hopeless, she had to keep digging. Keep looking. For the sake of her daughter, particularly tonight but also for the long run, she had to keep searching.
The only other option was to lose herself completely at the bottom of the glass, and Laura didn’t want to let that happen again anytime soon. She searched Governor Fallow’s name instead, looking for the address for the governor’s mansion. As soon as she got the chance, even if Dean didn’t find anything, she would go to the governor’s house and ring the bell, try to check up on Amy in person. Tomorrow, if she could sneak out of the office early.
She wasn’t going to let Amy fall by the wayside. She wasn’t going to let her down, the way she had with Lacey.
Laura was going to stop this—and no one was getting in her way, not even the governor of the state.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carrie put her key to the door and slipped, fumbling it. She muttered a quick curse under her breath as she fought her tired fingers to grasp the key again and make it into the lock, almost falling through the door as it opened.
She sighed, pulling off her coat and dumping it on the peg by the entrance as she kicked off her shoes. She had the vague feeling she should put them away, but then again, it could wait until the morning. She just wanted to eat something and get into bed. Anything else could wait, and she didn’t particularly care what it was. After the shift she’d had, she couldn’t imagine anything less than fire or flood that could convince her to put her shoes back on or care about a little mess.
Carrie charged through to the kitchenette and grabbed something down from one of the cupboards. As she did so, she hit her elbow on the side of the fridge, like she had done a million times before.
“Goddamn Albany rent!” she cursed, because that was the cause of the bruised elbow. If she had been able to afford a nicer place, at a lower rent, she wouldn’t have been stuck in this tiny little place with its too-close cupboards and its utter lack of space.
She managed to get the packet of mac and cheese down without further incident and shoved it into the microwave. She jabbed the few buttons on the front that still worked until she managed to get something approximating the right time, and set it going, leaning back against the counter with her head in her hands.
Mentally, she was calculating how much time she had left. Just a couple of minutes of microwaving time, then maybe ten or fifteen minutes to eat it with her phone in her hand, looking over social media. Another ten minutes to get changed for bed and brush her teeth, and she could be asleep. But no, wait—she had an early shift in the morning, so she would be better off showering right now to save time. So, another fifteen minutes on top of that. Then she could fall into bed, at last.
A ringing noise rose above the sound of the microwave beside her, making Cassie lift her head. Her eyes instinctively darted to the cell phone sitting on the counter beside her, but it wasn’t that. This was a different tone. It was the landline; it had come with the apartment, but she’d never really had cause to use it. No one even had the number, apart from her sister. It was probably either a crank call or a scam.
Carrie let it ring out, ignoring it. There was no point in answering it, and she couldn’t suffer any fools with how exhausted she was. They would be getting a real piece of her mind, so she was doing them a favor by not answering. She waited for the microwave to finish, then pulled the hot plastic tray out and dropped it on the counter, wincing and moving fast to avoid burning her fingers.
The phone went silent, and Carrie sighed as she fished for a fork out of her cutlery drawer. Blessed peace. Now she could just eat this as quick as possible, get a quick lukewarm shower, and climb into her lumpy single bed and shut the rest of the world out.
She was lifting the tray over to the table when the phone rang out again, almost making her drop the whole thing.
“Dammit!” she shouted, dumping the tray onto the table and rubbing her forehead. If she’d lost her dinner as well as everything else today, she would have probably lost her mind on top of it. She tried to stay cool for a single second, then gave up and marched through to the hall and the ringing phone.
She wrenched it off the wall and put it to her ear. “Hello?” she demanded, half-shouting already.
“Hello.” It was a male voice, unexpectedly calm. “Am I speaking to Carrie Adeline Birchtree?”
Carri
e resisted the urge to confirm right away, even though the guy knew who she was. Even her middle name. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Debt collection agencies would be able to get hold of her full name, right?
“Who’s calling?” she asked. It was late, too. Why would a debt collection agency be calling this late?
“Miss Birchtree, I’m with the IRS,” he said, his voice low and controlled. “I need to confirm a few details of your latest tax return with you. It seems you may have overpaid your taxes.”
Carrie hesitated. No, this wasn’t right. It was probably a scam. Debt collectors didn’t need to tell the truth, did they? They could straight-up lie to get you to tell you who you were. She didn’t yet want to confirm who she was. But then again, if she was going to get a bigger tax refund…
“Do you know what time it is?” she asked, putting off the decision until later. “It’s a ridiculous time of night. What are you doing calling people at this time?”
“Ma’am, we tried calling you earlier and your phone wasn’t answered,” he said. “That’s why it’s been left to me on the late shift.”
Carrie hesitated. A late shift. That made sense. There were probably enough people who needed calling about this kind of thing. Why wouldn’t they have a call center working around the clock? She couldn’t hear anyone behind him—but then, maybe it was quieter there at night. She wandered back through to the kitchen, the cord on the phone stretching behind her as she stirred her mac and cheese to cool it down.
“Well, please call back again tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll be able to answer in the early afternoon after I get off work.”
“Before I confirm that, can you just confirm for me that you are Carrie Adeline Birchtree?” he asked. “If you’re not, there’s no point in scheduling a call back.”
