Already Gone (A Laura Frost FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1) Page 3

  The vision was prescient, but not always by much. And Nate had spoken in the vision—had said her name. That meant the girl wasn’t far away.

  And it meant she didn’t have much time at all. Maybe thirty seconds. Maybe less.

  The little girl was running out of air.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The door beside her opened, and light from the hall poured in, momentarily blinding her. The stab of pain into her head at the light was almost too much to bear. “I heard you call out,” Nate said, but Laura was already turning away from him.

  “She’s here,” she said, leaning down, hurriedly moving forward with shaking hands and legs, looking for any sign of disturbance, any mark on the floor. There was a caved-in sofa, no mark in the dust beside it. It hadn’t been moved. Neither had the armchair, the seat fallen in on a lopsided angle. Laura stumbled behind it, looking for a sign at the back of the room.

  “What? Where?”

  “I don’t know—under the ground,” Laura said, continuing her frantic search of the room. She kicked up the corner of a bedraggled old rug, and a clump of the fabric came apart from the whole. It was rotting. No way it had been moved any time recently. She felt sick to her stomach, the pain in her head was so bad. She had to keep going.

  “Under the ground, like, buried?” Nate asked. He didn’t ask her how she knew. He never did. That was the blessing of having Nathaniel Lavoie as a partner: he never asked. He just trusted her. Any other partner would have forced her to either confess or lie her way out of things by now. But Nate trusted her “gut instinct,” and even as he asked the question, he, too, was turning to search the rest of the room.

  “Buried in a—a box,” Laura told him, turning frantically and racing for the door. There was nothing here. The living room was empty. Somewhere, somewhere in the house, she was there… Laura crossed the hall, almost tripping and then using the momentum to fall to her knees, tracing her hands over the floor in every direction as she moved.

  “Like a coffin?” Nate raced after her, yelling as he took off for the door at the end of the hall. The kitchen, probably. The door Laura had chosen led to a dining room, at least judging by the table and the single chair, and one or two pieces of rotting wood that hinted at other pieces of furniture long since gone.

  Laura’s eyes traced patterns in the dust. Footsteps, all over the room. Maybe he’d taken the chairs elsewhere, or used them as firewood in the night. He’d been in here, a lot. Was that a disturbance in the dirt floor? Laura scrambled toward it. No—it was packed tight here, tight like the passage of time and many feet had done it. There was only a scuff where some old chair had been driven into the ground as it was broken up. God, why couldn’t she think? Her head was throbbing—if she could just think—

  “Hey? Do you hear me?”

  Laura’s back stiffened. Nate. He was waiting for her response. In a moment, if she didn’t give him one, he would call out her name.

  She stood and bolted for the kitchen, pure adrenaline and fear driving her legs forward, crashing toward where she’d heard his voice. This was it, she knew. This was the moment she had heard in the vision. It had to be. If they didn’t get to her now—

  Laura burst down the hall. Nate was standing by a group of rotting wooden cupboards down around a rusted oven, surrounded by discarded trash and bits of broken furniture. The second she saw it, she knew. There was a whole row of busted cupboard doors, and then one that just so happened to be intact, carefully closed while all the others hung off their hinges. Not only that, but the area around it was a little less dusty and cluttered, the door just a little more clean. Laura didn’t have the time to examine it for other signs, but she knew they would be there.

  She dove forward, falling to her knees on the floor. She slid a short distance closer to the intact cupboard, completely out of control. She yanked the door open as fast as she could, looking inside for exactly what she knew she would find. The dirt here was less tightly packed, a slightly different color. It had been disturbed recently.

  “She’s here!” Laura half-screamed, frantic, seizing hold of the first thing her hands fell on. A section of corrugated iron that looked like it had once been the roof of a chicken coop or something similar. The whole roof was lying in shattered pieces on the floor, close by the oven, but this piece was the right size to scoop dirt out of the way.

  Laura set the piece of iron to the ground and dug a deep gouge through the earth, throwing a clump of soil behind her. Nate barely dodged out of the way with a grunt, then set to his own knees, tearing at the remaining corrugated sheet to fashion his own digging implement.

  Laura scrambled to the side to let him in, shouldering her way in through the other broken cabinets and tearing a rotted wooden board out of the way. It came away soft in her hands, leaving another opening into the space where Nate had started to dig. She scooped another mound of earth from her new position inside the ruined cabinets, still seeing nothing below the dirt.

  On his second frantic dig through the earth, the iron glanced off something that made a dull thunk.

  “Laura!” he called, drawing her attention to the discovery—but it only made her blood go cold. That was the sound she had been waiting for. The sound that meant the girl’s time was almost up. Even now, she was breathing her last struggling breath.

  Laura cast aside the corrugated iron and began to work with her hands, scribbling at chunks of loose dirt and flinging it out of the way. The object in the earth was some kind of metal lid. Laura hoped and prayed there was no lock, invisible under the rest of the dirt. As Nate dug another shovelful that exposed even more of the metal object, she dug her fingers through the earth at its sides, scrambling for the edge. Finding it, she pulled with all her might, lifting both dirt and lid until there was a thin space beneath it.

  Space for precious air to flow inside.

  She heard a faint cough from inside and gasped with relief, struggling to lift the lid further. It was jammed under more earth at the far end, where they hadn’t yet managed to clear it. Nate pushed more of the dirt out of the way, his thick arms bulging as he strained to lever the lid up.

  It wasn’t coming.

  He swore out loud as his fingers unearthed a lock, attached to the far end of the metal box—the coffin, Laura’s mind recognized with horror. This would be a coffin if they didn’t get her free.

  “Hold on,” Laura said, hoping the girl would hear her. “Just hold on! We’re getting you out!” Her fingers were aching from the strain of holding up the lid, the sharp metal edge biting into her skin. Laura didn’t care. She would endure the pain for as long as it took. She wasn’t going to let the girl’s only source of air disappear.

  Nate pulled his gun out of the holster at his hip and used all of his strength to bring the grip down against the lock, yelling with effort as he did it. Reverberations shuddered through the metal, making Laura bite down on her own lip against the pain in her hands. She tasted blood. The lock budged, just slightly. It was probably the only thing in the kitchen that wasn’t falling apart with rust. Nate hit it again, another scream of effort ripping out of his throat.

  The lock came away. Laura wasted no time. She pushed upward firmly, using all of her strength to lift the lid on the box.

  As it opened in front of her, Laura could finally see the girl. She was lying there on her back, just like in Laura’s vision. She was dirty and dusty, crying and gasping for air. Laura swallowed back a sob herself. Nate took the strain of the lid as she reached down, spreading out her arms to either side, enveloping the girl in an embrace as she lifted her out of the metal box and into her arms.

  “You’re okay now,” Laura said, cradling the girl against her chest as she half-tumbled out of the cabinets and back into the more open space of the kitchen. “It’s okay now. You’re safe. You’re safe.” She panted for breath even as the girl did, screwing her eyes tight shut while the kid couldn’t see her face. Tears streaked down across her cheeks, relief and horror and the delaye
d force of the pain in her head. Above them, she heard Nate taking out his radio, standing a few steps away to bark out the news to the rest of the team and request an ambulance.

  And it should have been a happy moment. A moment in which Laura felt she had won. She had saved the girl’s life, right as she was on the brink of losing it. She had used her vision to stop a death. The death of a little girl, just like her own daughter.

  But that wasn’t what she felt. Instead of the growing relief and joy she had felt when she first saw the girl, something else took over. As Laura cradled her to her chest, she felt the encroaching chill of something dark. Something that she couldn’t name, but she could feel it running icy fingers down her spine. The girl—there was something wrong with the girl. There was something wrong with her future. The darkness wasn’t over.

  Laura could feel it as real as if the entire room had been plunged into darkness. There was more night to come.

  But, exhausted as she was, there was no vision. Only the feeling of a chill running through every one of her bones, plunging her into icy water. It was a…darkness around this girl.

  Laura had no idea what that meant. She was safe now, for today. She could see that clearly.

  But not for long. Somehow, inexplicably, a darkness was still before her.

  The girl was still in danger.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Laura hugged her arms across her chest, tapping the empty polystyrene cup against her upper arm. Instead of the hospital’s sickly overhead lighting and the faint smell of antiseptic, all she could think about was the feeling of darkness that had rolled over her when she’d held Amy. The fear that even now was still making her heart race.

  “You want another coffee?” Nate asked, making her look around. Laura hadn’t even realized he was there. There was still a little dust in his dark coiled hair, buzzed neatly across the top of his forehead.

  “Probably best not to,” Laura said, giving him a wry look. She was already wired, energy thrumming under her skin. It didn’t sit well against the bone-weary exhaustion she otherwise felt, or the headache still pounding away so strongly in her temple she couldn’t see straight.

  “I would agree,” Nate laughed. Laura couldn’t find it in herself to laugh back.

  The hall of the ward behind them was buzzing with activity, as was the small waiting area just a few steps away. Other feds were milling around, both the personnel from the scene and those who had been brought in to assist after the fact. They were all waiting for news, and for the call to leave. This investigation was just about wrapped up; they wouldn’t all be needed to stay and interrogate the kidnapper or search the grounds of the farmhouse. The local cops could handle that.

  “She’s going to be all right, you know,” Nate said.

  Laura looked at him. “What?”

  “Amy. You saved her life,” Nate said, nodding his head forward at the window they were standing in front of. The blinds were drawn across it. Behind it, they both knew, the girl was being checked over by the doctor.

  “Yeah,” Laura said, trying to sound convincing. “I know.”

  She hadn’t been able to shake the chill that had fallen over her at the farmhouse. She knew that something was wrong, but until she had a clear vision that actually told her something, she didn’t know what to do. What could she do? There was no clue in her mind as to the nature of the darkness that awaited the little girl.

  Perhaps there was a medical emergency about to happen. Something untreated, undetected, that would risk her life. If so, there was nothing Laura could do that the doctors wouldn’t be able to. Or maybe the kidnappers had planned a raid on the hospital, if there was more than one accomplice, and she was about to be put in jeopardy once again. Maybe they were going to target her father, the governor, directly this time, and Amy would be caught in the crossfire. But there was not much Laura could do about that either, since she didn’t know what quarter it would come from or if that threat was even real.

  Or maybe it was something else entirely, something she couldn’t even think of, and that was where the problem lay. When her visions—or in this case, feelings—were so vague, she had no direction to go in.

  Only continual frustration, and the horrible feeling that something bad was going to happen that she couldn’t stop.

  And that was even if she was right. She had been so exhausted, so stressed out. The fear over this little girl’s life, just like her own Lacey’s, had been so strong. What if it had only been her own worry and fear creating a sensation that wasn’t really there? That would explain everything, and allow her to at last relax. But she couldn’t relax. Not while there was any chance that the girl was not out of harm’s way.

  She needed to get close to Amy again—to see her and touch her. That was the only way she could get another vision to trigger, the only way she could hope for more details.

  “Agent Frost!” the familiar voice called from behind her, prompting Laura to turn away from the blank window. “And Agent Lavoie. Congratulations, both of you.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Laura dipped her head in acknowledgment of the special agent in charge’s words. He wasn’t a man she had worked with before; multiple agents had been pulled in from the field for this urgent case, and she didn’t know most of them. He was balding and had obviously begun to put on weight since being promoted to a less fieldwork-oriented position.

  “How did you do it?” he asked, leaning in conspiratorially close even as he kept his voice raised. Laura caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke wafting from his tailored black suit. “Did he give you a little hint before we took him away?”

  “No,” Laura said, then cast her eyes down to the pale beige tiles of the hospital floor. “He just said the girl was going to die before we got to her. We thought it best to check the farmhouse out, and we found her by chance.”

  “Hmm,” their boss said, looking them both over with a too-wide smile. His teeth were yellow and brown, stained from years of smoking. “That’s good. Because keeping evidence to yourself just so you can get the glory of the case—well, that’s the kind of thing I don’t like to see at all.”

  Laura looked up sharply. “No, sir,” she agreed. “Neither do I.”

  Although, she thought, it wasn’t as though she had a leg to stand on. Sure, she hadn’t been given a clue by the kidnapper and kept that to herself. But she had been given a pretty big clue by the universe, or whatever it was that controlled her visions. And that, she certainly hadn’t shared with anyone.

  He must have seen the doubt in her face, the small tinge of guilt. His faced twisted just a little, until his smile was no longer a smile but a sneer. Then he turned and swept over to the others, congratulating them on the finished case.

  The door to Amy’s room opened, and Laura turned with her heart leaping into her mouth. Her skull also lurched with the movement, but she ignored it in favor of concentrating hard on the figures leaving the room for news.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” the man in the gray suit was saying. He looked frazzled, his white shirt crumpled and creased, his hair disheveled. Laura couldn’t judge him for that. He was the governor, and it was his daughter who had been missing for the last three days.

  “Don’t mention it. Just don’t tire her out too much today. If she gets enough rest, we’ll be able to let her come home tomorrow,” an older man in a white coat said, nodding politely to everyone before hastening on his way to see another patient.

  Laura read the signs, her eyes tracking urgently from face to face. The mother’s eyes were red from crying, but she was sniffling now and the sides of her mouth were turned up just fractionally. The governor seemed tired, yes, but relieved. As if they were through the worst of it.

  Amy was going to be okay.

  Laura felt her shoulders ratchet down a level, the tension and apprehension flooding out of them just slightly. She was out of the woods. Although there was still the question of that dark cloud, at least she was safe right now.

  �
�You’re the man who found her, isn’t that right?” the governor was saying, pointing at Nate.

  “Oh—well, it was myself and my partner, Agent Frost,” Nate replied, pasting his customer-friendly smile on his face as he turned to gesture toward Laura. A smile he only dragged out when having to deal with important people connected to cases. She wished he wasn’t using it right now, and especially not turning it toward her. “Actually, she did all of the work. I was just backup, really.”

  “Oh, thank you,” the governor’s wife said, her voice halfway to a sob again, as she stepped forward. She clutched Laura’s hand between her own, despite the fact that one of them was also holding a decidedly damp handkerchief. “Thank you for saving our baby.”

  Laura flashed a weak smile up at the woman and her husband. It was the most she could manage with the threat of danger still hanging over Amy, and the opportunity to talk to her again so close but so far. “Just doing our jobs.”

  “And some,” the governor replied, giving her a look with raised eyebrows. He was the kind of man who always seemed more than slightly impressed with his own words. “You gave us our daughter back, Agent Frost. I’m going to keep my eye out for you, and that’s a promise. There’s a promotion coming your way.”

  Laura nodded gratefully, though she didn’t believe a word of it. People always made big, slick promises when they were in that first flush of relief. Everything would be back to normal soon enough. “Thank you, sir.”

  The governor nodded and made to step past her, but Laura saw her chance and couldn’t miss it. Hardly knowing what she was about to say, she turned after him and raised a hand, preventing the couple from moving past her. “Actually,” she said, “I was wondering if it would be all right for me to talk with Amy.”