Already Gone (A Laura Frost FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1)

by Blake Pierce

  “Huh,” Nate said.

  Laura looked around at him; he was studying the business card with a raised eyebrow. It looked tiny in his large hands. “What?”

  He turned it without a word, allowing her to read it for herself. Paul Frost, Realtor.

  Paul Frost.

  “Hey,” Laura said, reaching out to snag the sleeve of a deputy that was just passing by. “What’s the victim’s full name?”

  He stared at her like she’d asked him to name the seventy-nine moons of Jupiter. “Uh… Nadia Frost?”

  Laura let him go, reeling.

  Frost.

  She had a terrible, terrible feeling that she finally understood what was happening here.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Laura turned and strode forward, marching right off the property and out into the road. Behind her, she heard Nate call her name and then run to catch up.

  “Hey, where are you going?” he asked, getting level with her again just as she reached the car.

  “Back to the precinct,” she said. “Come on. Get in.”

  Nate made a confused noise. “Why? We haven’t had a good look at the rest of the house yet.”

  “We don’t need to. Get in, Nate!” These last words were shouted as she ducked her head, already climbing into the driver’s seat.

  “Wh…” Nate gave up arguing and opened the passenger’s side door, to her relief, taking a seat beside her. He hadn’t even closed his door yet when she started the engine, prompting him to throw up his hands in alarm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just where is the fire right now?”

  “For god’s sake, Nate,” Laura said, turning to him. “The first victim’s name was Laura. Now Frost? You don’t see that?”

  “Well, what about Caroline?” Nate said. “I mean, Laura’s a common enough name, and so is Frost. This can’t be your first time dealing with someone with either of those.”

  “It’s not,” Laura said, gesturing impatiently for him to put his seatbelt on. One moment longer, and she was going to reach over and do it for him. “But Caroline’s nickname was Carrie.”

  The second his seatbelt clicked into place, Laura nudged the car forward, heading out into the road again. She checked her mirrors and then peeled out, putting her foot down as much as she dared in this urban setting.

  “I’m not getting it,” Nate said. “What? Is that your middle name or something?”

  “It’s my mother’s name,” Laura said grimly. “Laura, Carrie, and now Frost. There’s no way that’s just a coincidence. Which is why we need to get back to the precinct—right now.”

  ***

  “We have to find out who the next victim is,” Laura said, half-running through the precinct to their office. She almost knocked over a hapless deputy who was going back to his desk with a cup of coffee, obviously left behind to man the phones. “We have to figure out the name.”

  Nate trailed behind her, only just managing to keep up. “Laura, I don’t know…”

  “Please,” Laura said, throwing the word over her shoulder along with a desperate glance. “We need to think about this.” She reached their makeshift office and threw the door open, heading right for the board. She grabbed a pen and circled two things: Laura, for Laura Carlisle, and Caroline, for Carrie Birchtree. Underneath, she added Nadia Frost, circling Frost.

  “Do you even have any more women in your family?” Nate asked, closing the door behind him with a sigh and folding his arms across his wide chest. “I didn’t think you had a sister.”

  “I don’t, except for Lacey. But I don’t know if she counts. She’s a child, and the other names have been adults. She doesn’t live with me. Everyone else has been older. I don’t think it fits the pattern.” Laura tapped the end of the pen against her chin for a moment, thinking. “It has to be my father. Me, then my mother, then our family name—my dad has to be next.”

  “What was his name?” Nate asked, sounding as though he was only playing along because he knew what she was like. That she was too far down this rabbit hole to listen to reason—and that sometimes she came out the other side of the hole with an answer that made sense. It was far from the first time she’d worked a whole case on what she told him was just gut instinct—but they always got an arrest.

  “Alex,” she said, writing it on the board in block capitals. “Alexander, but he went by Alex.”

  “There are probably hundreds of men called Alex in Albany,” Nate said, unfolding his arms and throwing them wide in an exasperated gesture. “That doesn’t help us at all, Laura. We don’t have any way to use this information.”

  Laura felt her heart quickening its already rapid pace in her chest. Nate was right. How were they ever going to narrow it down?

  They had to figure this out fast. If they didn’t…

  “Someone’s going to die,” she said, out loud. She heard her own voice shaking. “We only have twenty-four hours, maybe less. We have to figure this out, or we’re not going to be able to save them!”

  “All right, whoa,” Nate said, holding up his hands and stepping forward. He stopped just shy of touching her as she flinched away. “Laura, I need you to take a breath and slow down a minute.”

  She dropped her shoulders, closing her eyes for a brief moment. He was right. She was on the verge of some kind of panic attack, and—

  She wrenched herself backward with a cry. Nate had reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. The cold feeling of death washed over her in a wave, almost bringing her to her knees with despair.

  “Jesus, Laura…” Nate stepped back and gave her space, shaking his head. “Sit down. Please. You need to rest for a minute, get your breath back. You’re on edge.”

  Laura did as she was told, trying to swallow on her dry throat. She was, but he didn’t know why. She couldn’t tell him all the things that were flying around in her head. The killer. His death. Amy. Her own daughter. The burning need for a drink. The killer. Round and round in a circle, over and over again. All of them needed her attention right now. None of them could wait.

  “All right, just take a deep breath in,” Nate said, drawing in his own breath with an exaggerated noise as he waved a hand encouragingly in her peripheral vision. “That’s it. And now let it out… Good, Laura. Let’s breathe in again, nice and slow.”

  Laura followed his guidance, against her own will. There were tears pricking the backs of her eyelids. She needed this—to calm down, to think, to breathe. But she didn’t have the time. She couldn’t spare it. People were going to die and get hurt if she slowed down. People she cared about. Strangers, too. It didn’t matter. They all deserved to be saved.

  But she followed Nate’s calm and soothing voice, breathing in when he told her to and breathing out only when he commanded it. Slowly, Laura found herself coming back down to earth.

  She blinked and looked up at him, realizing that his face was full of worry and fear. He obviously thought she was losing it. She didn’t blame him.

  “I’m all right,” she said, finding her voice steady and quiet again. “Just… we need to get back to it. Figure out who the next victim is. Alex something, it has to be.”

  “Just wait a minute,” Nate said, shaking his head. “We need to think this through. I get that it’s a big coincidence. It’s really strange. Laura and Carrie is weird, Frost is even weirder. But I just don’t get how the rest of the pieces fit together.”

  “What pieces?” Laura asked, frowning.

  “Well, Albany, for one. Have you ever been to Albany before?” Nate sat up a little straighter, gesturing toward the local map they had pinned up on one wall, red pushpins indicating murder scenes. One more still needed to be added.

  “No,” Laura admitted.

  “So, if someone is targeting you somehow, why would they do it here in upstate New York? Why not closer to home—DC, or where you grew up?”

  Nate’s voice was reasonable. Too reasonable, actually. If he would scream and shout at her, Laura would at least feel justified in arguing back.
“I don’t know,” she said, blowing out a heavy breath. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “And why would someone want to target you like this?” Nate asked, gentle but relentless. “Laura, if someone had a grudge against you, wouldn’t they just want to kill you? To hurt your family directly? Going after random strangers like this—does that make sense to you?”

  “No.” Laura paused, then shook her head fiercely. “But, Nate, I’ve made dozens of arrests. And each of them had family members, people who might bear a grudge for taking them away. There are even family members of victims I didn’t manage to save in time, murders none of us were able to solve. There are probably hundreds of people who have a reason to dislike me.”

  “We’re not talking about dislike,” Nate said, half-laughing on the word, but there was no humor in it. “Laura—killing three strangers. That’s not dislike. The only thing that could motivate that would be pure and unrestrained hatred. Do you really think someone out there feels that strongly about you? I mean, just you. Not a partner of yours or a judge or a local cop who did the groundwork before you arrived. Why would there be anyone out there who would hate just you, and you alone, that much?”

  Laura paused, studying her hands. Everything he was saying made total sense. She couldn’t think of an answer.

  “Look, it’s late,” Nate said. “Or early, maybe. I’m too tired to work it out. And you didn’t even get any rest at all. We need to head back to the motel, get some sleep.”

  Laura opened her mouth to object. “But—”

  “No, please. We aren’t going to get any further on this tonight—especially not sleep-deprived.” Nate only paused for a moment before continuing, not leaving her enough room to argue again. “We have to wait until morning for the forensic report, anyway. What else could we possibly be doing right now? We’ve spoken to the husband, and we can ask the sheriff to carry out all the background checks to make sure there’s no link between the three women. Forcing yourself to stay awake now doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I could be going through my old cases,” Laura said stubbornly. “I could check through all of them and try to see if there’s someone who would hold that kind of grudge. That would be worthwhile.”

  Nate sighed, buried his head in his hand for a moment, and then looked at her again. “Okay, fine. I had a couple of hours’ sleep earlier, so I’ll make a deal with you. You go get some rest, and I’ll start going through your previous case files. I’ll go through them with a fine-toothed comb, look for anyone who had any reason at all to be mad at you and crosscheck it against recent prison releases, see if we can make a shortlist of candidates who it could be.”

  “I’m not going all the way back to the motel,” Laura said immediately. “I want to be here in case something happens.”

  Nate growled under his breath. “Goddammit, woman. Fine. We’ll find you a room with a sofa somewhere, okay? But you are going to go to sleep.”

  Laura hesitated, but at the look on his face, she finally nodded her head. “All right. Just for a few hours.” She didn’t want to agree to it at all, but she knew two things.

  One, that he wasn’t going to take her theory seriously while he thought she was so tired she wasn’t thinking straight. Especially if she refused to take the reasonable course of action and get some rest.

  And two, that she was so exhausted she really did feel like she was going to fall over on the spot. Which meant she was in no real condition to be helping anyone.

  “Just for a few hours,” Laura repeated to herself under her breath, already trying to calculate whether there was some way she could reduce the time even further before she could come back to it and figure out who this killer with a grudge was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Laura was sitting outside the office, holding onto her favorite doll. The seats were wide and covered in a soft gray fabric that she liked running her hands over, but she had stopped doing that. Her mommy and daddy looked sad and angry and she didn’t know why. She didn’t understand why they were here.

  Daddy had said a big long word, something like say—no, not say. Sy. Sy-ky-a-tist? Laura hadn’t heard it before, and she didn’t know what it meant, and everything was so quiet in this room. Like you weren’t supposed to talk here at all. Even though there was only Laura, her mom and dad, and a woman behind a big shiny desk near the door, she felt like she’d be told off if she said anything.

  “Laura Frost?” A big door at the other side of the room opened soundlessly, and Laura stared up at the woman who had opened it. She was beautiful, with long shining dark hair like a princess, and she knew Laura’s name.

  “… Yes?” Laura said, at length, her voice small and quiet, not sure what she was supposed to do. Her mother’s elbow landed in her side, trying to push her forward.

  “Come on in,” the princess said, and Laura got down off the chair, following her with wide eyes.

  Halfway there, she stopped and turned and looked at her parents. They were still sitting on the chairs. Neither of them had moved. Weren’t they coming, too? Her mother nodded encouragingly, but both of them still sat blank-faced, like she had done something wrong.

  They had yelled at her when she told them about the dog. Was that why she was here?

  Laura turned and walked after the woman, into the big office room, unsure what was going to happen to her now.

  Laura gasped, her eyes flying open as she surfaced from the dream. No, a memory, she thought. That had all really happened, when she was just a little girl. No bigger than Amy was now, really. Or Lacey.

  She sighed to herself, sitting up and trying to chase those old ghosts out of her head. After the first time she made predictions that had come true, therapy had become a habit. That was, until she learned to never talk about her visions, to never tell people what she saw. The therapist had declared that there was nothing wrong with her, and deep inside, Laura had known there was.

  She shook her head at her own self, at these memories surfacing just now when she could do without them. She needed to concentrate, not get stuck in the past.

  She stretched her arms above her head, feeling the cricks in her muscles from the tiny sofa she’d managed to find in an abandoned office. It was still dark out, which was lucky. No one had come in to wake her up—or to find an FBI agent unexpectedly curled up on their sofa, which might have been an unpleasant surprise for both of them.

  Why had that memory come up now? It had been five or six years after that when Laura first felt the shadow of death around her father. When she first had a vision of his death, of his body propped up and shrinking in a hospital bed, bald and prickled with wires and tubes all over. She’d been too afraid to say something then. The therapy was still too recent a memory. She hadn’t wanted to cause trouble again, so she’d kept what she saw to herself.

  When he’d been diagnosed at long last, Laura had a vivid memory of the moment the specialist had delivered the news that it wasn’t going to be possible for him to make it out alive. He’d said it in a soft and gentle way, aware of the fact that he was talking to a wife and a teenage daughter. But Laura had never been able to forget the way he had delivered it: the exact words he had said.

  “If we had caught this sooner, we might have been able to do something—but I’m afraid it’s too late.”

  It had been too late because she’d kept it to herself. Stayed silent. She had watched him die a slow and painful death, losing his dignity, every single element of life that might give him pleasure. Swapping it all for just a few more months of chemo-ridden life, with his family forced to sit at his bedside and watch. And now it was happening to Nate, and she still couldn’t say a word. If she did, she risked losing her job, being committed, losing the only people she cared about. Being pushed even further back from the possibility of getting visitation rights with Lacey.

  How many times in her life had Laura been forced to stay silent and watch things unfold, even when she already knew how they would go? How many time
s had she said nothing?

  Yes, there were times she had stepped in. So many times she’d managed to find a way to make an impact. But there were so many other times, too, when she had tried yet failed to change fate.

  Too many failures on both sides. Too many silences. And now it was happening all over again. Nate. Amy. The killer.

  What would she do, Laura wondered, if anything ever happened to Lacey—because she was no longer close enough to her daughter to see it and stop it?

  Laura grabbed her phone and dialed Marcus’s number, needing to hear her daughter. Needing it, with everything she was. Every fiber, every bone. The line rang and rang, until finally Marcus’s voice kicked in, telling her to leave a message.

  Voicemail. Laura ended the call, taking a breath. Of course he wouldn’t be awake yet. That would be too much to expect.

  She only had to wait a moment, lingering in the disappointment, before the phone buzzed. A wild flare of hope spoiled to sickness as she read the text Marcus had sent her.

  What the hell, Laura. It’s five in the morning. Leave us alone.

  Laura bit her lip hard. She’d probably made things worse now. Why was she only ever capable of making mistakes when it came to the people she loved?

  She wiped her hands over her face, rubbing her eyes and trying to force herself out of this funk she was in. The dreams and the text had done nothing for her mood, even if she did feel physically a little better thanks to the sleep. She had to get up, get moving, get back to the case.

  But first, there was someone else whose fate she needed to check up on.

  She dialed another number, seeing dawn just beginning to arrive through the windows and knowing that it was early. Maybe too early. But it was always worth a try.

  “Hello, Fallow residence.” It only took Laura a moment to place the voice: it was Amy’s mother. So she was awake at this time of day, after all.