Already Trapped (A Laura Frost FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 3) Read online

  They turned a corner into a wide, open sitting room, and Laura nearly dropped her gun at the sight of what it had been transformed into.

  The comfortable, plush sofa was spattered with blood spray. There were gluts of it on the floor, and a fine mist across a glass coffee table in the center of the room. But the sight that really arrested Laura’s attention was the woman at the center of all the blood.

  Mrs. Fallow.

  She was lying there, her face a bloody mess, her clothes torn and stained with so much blood it seemed impossible. One arm was flung out, the hand stretched across the once-beige carpet as if she were still trying to get away.

  A noise caught Laura’s attention and she swung the gun up in front of herself, her heart pounding in her ears. But in the next instant, she realized that the sound had come from Mrs. Fallow herself. A gurgle. A kind of rattling breath.

  She wasn’t yet dead.

  “Nate,” Laura said, her voice quiet but urgent, prompting her partner forward. He fell to his knees beside Mrs. Fallow, disregarding the blood, while Laura stood watch. She kept her gun up, her eyes darting in all directions. Where was he? Was he upstairs already, or still down here? Was he waiting for them?

  “Mrs. Fallow,” she heard Nate say, as she turned in a full circle to check all directions. “Can you hear me?”

  “I tr…”

  Laura’s attention snapped back to Mrs. Fallow as she spoke. The words died in her throat. Even the movement of her mouth seemed to cause her so much pain.

  “What is it?” Nate asked, leaning down closer.

  “I tried,” Mrs. Fallow said again, loud enough for Laura to hear, and then something else that Laura was too far away to catch.

  Nate looked up, catching her eye. “She said she tried to stop him. Amy. He was going after Amy!”

  “Upstairs,” Laura shot back, immediately on the move again. She shouldn’t have delayed. She shouldn’t have waited. She knew what was going to happen. Why had she held back?

  She took the stairs two at a time, a pounding in her ears that threatened to drown out everything else. Up there, as she got closer, she could hear him.

  “Amy,” he said, his voice half muffled by the distance. “Amy, come here.”

  She knew what would happen next. She knew.

  Nate’s feet were hammering up the stairs after her, and Laura was diving down the corridor, making for the room where she knew Amy slept. The room she had already barged into to rescue her once before. She had to do it again. She couldn’t hesitate. Not even for her own safety.

  The door was open. Laura hit the doorframe with her shoulder, pain radiating from that spot, but she still managed to get her gun up. She pointed it at his broad back, his hands still dripping red from what he had done to his wife. Amy was curled up on the bed, behind her toys.

  “Freeze!” Laura yelled, a desperation in her voice. He had to stop. He had to stop now. “FBI!”

  Nate was behind her—she felt him there. Amy in front. Laura’s eyes darted between her shaking form and the Governor, watching him turn around slowly. She watched him register who she was. He was swaying slightly, his face red underneath the blood, with anger or with something else. Black eyes fixed on her, eyes so full of hate it made her shiver.

  “You,” he snarled.

  “Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” Nate ordered him. Laura was glad. She was having a hard time finding her voice. “Do it! Now!”

  The Governor stood there, his hands curled into fists, his wife’s blood soaking through his shirt. He stared at her with so much hatred and fury that Laura felt herself shriveling inside, as though he had the power to reduce her to nothing. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to kill them all.

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” he sneered. “You won’t risk it. Not with her behind me.”

  Laura froze, her hands shaking on the gun. He was right. Amy was right there. She could get hurt, caught in the crossfire. Even if she wasn’t, the sight of her father being shot to death right in front of her would be awful. The kind of thing you didn’t recover from. And she’d already seen so many things that would take so much recovery.

  Laura couldn’t shoot.

  Nate holstered his gun, a strangely violent movement that was more of a threat than holding it was. He flexed his muscles, bringing his arms up into a fighting stance.

  “Get down!” Nate yelled again, and something got through the Governor’s single-minded focus. He fixed on Nate then and his lips opened up into a snarl, and before Laura could think of what to do or how to react he was rushing forward.

  He tackled Nate, slamming into him with full force. Laura could only stand there helplessly, trying to point her gun but not knowing exactly where, as they fell to the floor together and began to grapple. She could barely keep track of what was happening, who was on top, Nate’s strength a good match for Fallow’s rage and recklessness. They were both snarling, making animal noises of pain and effort as they fought to get a punch in, to get the other one subdued. Laura’s heart pounded painfully in her chest, her hands shaking. If the Governor got his hands on Nate’s gun…

  Could this be the moment he lost his life? The moment the aura of death she’d seen hanging over him came true?

  But Nate was strong, so strong, and he hadn’t already beaten anyone to death. He was fresh in the fight. He grappled the Governor, got himself arranged a different way on the floor, and even as the Governor fought back Laura saw what he’d done. How he’d put the Governor on his knees. Put himself to the side. How he’d given her what she needed.

  “Stop!” Laura yelled, and the shouted word gave her enough of Governor Fallow’s attention for him to notice.

  To notice the fact that she had her gun pointed right at his head, and there was no one behind him now, not at this angle. Nate and Amy were both safely out of line. If she pulled the trigger, only he would die.

  “Stop,” Laura said, the words coming out breathy and strained. “I have a clean shot.”

  Governor Fallow stared at her with so much hate, it felt like he was trying to kill her with a stare.

  But her words did the job. He froze on his knees, lifting his hands loosely out to the sides like that was a compromise, instead of putting them all the way in the air. He didn’t take his eyes off Laura.

  Nate rolled to his own knees behind Fallow, pulled his handcuffs off his belt, grabbed Fallow’s hands, forced them behind his back. Fallow didn’t take his eyes away from Laura as Nate cuffed him. He didn’t take his eyes off her as Nate read him his rights, told him he was under arrest for murder. And if he carried on watching her when she stepped into the room at last, Laura no longer saw.

  Because she was holstering her gun, rushing over to the bed, and taking Amy in her arms—holding the crying little girl and breathing hard in relief, clasping her so tightly, because she knew now she was safe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Laura got up at the sound of the knock at the dining room door. It was the only place she had been able to think of to take Amy. The front of the house was impossible, because she would have to go past her mother—and out there, Laura knew from experience, the press would gather quickly. The back of the house, the open land of the backyard, was not an option because the helicopters would soon be flying over.

  The only place Laura could keep her safe, and away from the press, and stop her from seeing more than she needed to, was the dining room. So she’d hidden the two of them away in there, leaving everything else to Nate.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she told Amy, when the little girl grasped tight hold of her hand to try to stop her from walking away. “I’ll just see who it is, and what they want. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  She crossed to the door and opened it, holding it only a crack to her shoulder so that Amy couldn’t see out. Nate was there, but behind him the house was already a hive of activity. Cops were swarming the place, dodging white-suited forensics experts who were already analyzi
ng the scene. A pair of EMTs were standing near the door, which made Laura’s eyes dart toward the door of the lounge. It was open, and she could see law enforcement going in and out—but not the EMTs. They were chatting with a cop as though they had all the time in the world.

  “Mrs. Fallow?” Laura asked softly, trying to pitch her voice so that it wouldn’t carry through to Amy.

  Nate only shook his head.

  Laura’s voice caught in her throat. They had saved Amy’s life, but what now? Her father was a violent killer. Her mother was dead. Functionally, she was an orphan. Both of her parents taken away from her in the space of one traumatic morning. That meant she would need somewhere to go. She couldn’t stay here alone.

  Laura’s hand flew to her chest, covering her aching heart as she considered the possibilities. If there was another relative, Amy could be taken in. But there was no way of knowing how that relative would treat her. They might be just as bad as the governor was, or even worse. They might blame the girl for what had happened here.

  And the other option was for her to be taken in by strangers, put into the foster care system and hopefully adopted. That, too, had its pitfalls. Even though there was so much time and attention taken to avoid any harm coming to children within the care system, it happened. Laura knew it happened. She had been an agent for too long to have any misconceptions about that.

  And even if Amy found a loving home with a family who supported her and looked after her, the trauma of what had happened here today, the treatment she had endured at the hands of her father, the way she had been rescued once and then abandoned again... It would be a whole lifetime of psychological damage. Amy would need therapy, specialist care, love, and attention to get through this. Would she get that in the care system? Would she get that from the adoption of a relative? Would she ever find her way to being a normal child, a balanced adult?

  At that moment, Laura would have given anything to have a vision of Amy as a young adult, safe and happy and well. But her visions didn’t work like that. They didn’t come to reassure her, or even to scare her. They came when they came, following their own rules, and she had no way to trigger them if they did not want to come. She could touch Amy, touch her belongings, try to take deep breaths and meditate, use all of her potential triggers—but in the end it did not necessarily mean anything. The vision might not come, and if it did, she might only see some inconsequential thing that really told her nothing of what was happening in Amy’s future.

  “Rondelle is asking for you,” Nate said, breaking Laura’s spiraling thoughts. She was grateful for the interruption, even though it did not make her doubts any less real.

  “Will you stay with Amy?” Laura asked. “I can’t leave her on her own.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Nate said, flashing her what was probably supposed to have been a reassuring smile. Instead, it only showed how strained, tense, and anxious he was himself.

  Laura allowed him into the room, opening the door wide enough to let him through but no wider, and then closed it so that she could turn to Amy. She squatted down in front of the little girl, who was sitting propped up on one of the dining room chairs, hugging her rabbit tightly to her chest. Laura found herself wishing she had brought the one from home, the gift she had been thinking of giving her. It might have been some kind of comfort right now.

  “Amy,” she said, keeping her voice gentle and soft. “I have to go and talk to someone outside. But Nate is here, and he will look after you. Do you remember Nate?”

  Amy nodded silently, her eyes wide in her tear-streaked face. She looked at Nate with a combination of awe and wonder, no doubt because of how huge he was. She must have remembered how he had pulled her out of what should have been her coffin, buried under the house of her kidnapper back when this had all begun. How they had seen her at the hospital, making sure she was alright. Still, she was nowhere near as comfortable with him as she was with Laura. Or even Agent Jones, who had been able to sit with her the last time Laura had pulled her out of this house.

  “I’m going to look after you while Laura is outside,” he said. “But don’t worry, she’ll be right back in.”

  Amy nodded silently again, which both of them took to be a sign of agreement. She looked back at her rabbit, using her small hands to push back the fur on his forehead as if tidying it. Laura straightened, standing up, and nodded at Nate. He nodded back, telling her it was all right to leave.

  Every bone in her body wanted her to stay, but Laura walked to the door again with reluctance. If Rondelle wanted to speak to her, she had to comply. She couldn’t have him coming into the room where Amy was sitting, upsetting her. She needed quiet and stability right now, the attention of only the people she knew she could trust. Laura trusted Nate, too, but no one else here.

  Even if leaving Amy felt like a betrayal, she had to do it. She told herself it wasn’t as big a deal as she was making it out to be. She turned for one last look as she put her hand on the door handle, taking a deep breath. Amy would be fine without her.

  She just had to keep telling herself that.

  ***

  Laura slipped outside, into the hubbub of the house. So much of it was shielded by the door of the dining room, but out here, it was chaos. Laura found herself ducked into a side room by a group of agents who gestured her out of the way, so they could clear a path. Laura was opening her mouth to ask what was going on when the answer appeared before her: the Governor, handcuffed and closely guarded by a group of agents and local law enforcement, who were leading him down the hall and out of the house.

  He caught sight of Laura and snarled again, a kind of morbid smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. He had recovered enough of himself, it seemed, to not let it last for long. Instead of fixating on her like he had before, he let her know she’d been seen and then looked away, plastering on a more respectable expression as they approached the door.

  Outside, Laura heard a scrambling, the sound of several voices reacting to the Governor’s appearance. The tell-tale clattering of camera lenses opening and shutting. When the convoy had passed her by she stepped back out into the hall, looking down through the open front doors to watch him passing. The press was gathered outside, reporters and cameramen yelling out questions at the Governor, trying to get his attention for a good shot. Some of his media training seemed to kick in, making him lift his head and look in the direction of the camera when they shouted his name.

  Laura realized that the live camera feed would show her framed in the doorway and stepped aside, self-consciously ducking back into the kitchen. Where was Rondelle? In here? Out there? She would have to wait for the media circus to clear a little before she went out there. She hated being caught on camera. The scrutiny that came with it. Especially with her custody case coming up, she didn’t want to make waves of any kind.

  Laura looked toward the hall again, hearing the sound of footsteps. When a familiar figure rushed past, she lunged for the doorway after him, leaning out to catch his attention. “Chief Rondelle?”

  “Ah, Laura,” he said, turning on his heel. The chief, a small and wiry man with plenty of gray hair in amongst the dark strands, beckoned her closer. “I was looking for you.”

  “Nate told me,” Laura replied. “Do you need me to debrief?”

  “Not yet.” Rondelle paused, his mouth moving slightly as if trying to dislodge the taste of what he had to say next. “The social workers are here.”

  Laura looked at him without understanding for a moment, before it clicked in. “Oh.”

  “Yes.” Rondelle clasped both hands in front of him. “I know you’ve taken on a kind of personal responsibility for this young girl, Laura, but we have to follow the correct protocol. She’s going to have to be taken away.”

  “Until when?” Laura asked, her heart in her mouth. Her words arrested Rondelle’s movement—he looked as though he wanted to walk away.

  “Well, at this stage that isn’t clear,” Rondelle said. His tone was apol
ogetic, but still direct. He looked her in the eye, making sure she was understanding every word. “I don’t believe they have yet been able to figure out the next of kin. Once they do, someone will contact that person and ask them to care for her, or find an alternative.”

  “What if that person refuses?” Laura asked. A dozen questions seemed suddenly ready to spring out of her. “What if no one can be found to take her in?”

  Rondelle raised a hand to ward her off, as if sensing that this was only the tip of the iceberg. “I can’t answer those questions, Laura. First things first. We need to hand her over to the social worker and then let them handle the case. They’ll do all their due diligence and update us when they can.”

  “I’ll take her in,” Laura said, desperately. “I can do it. I know how to care for a little girl. I can take her home, at least until they find her something permanent.”

  “You know you can’t,” Rondelle said. His tone was not unkind, but it was firm. “That would be a conflict of interest, and illegal. We need to do this by the book, Laura. No loopholes. No way for him to get his hands back on her later. We weren’t thorough enough last time. This time, we have to be. The media are watching. Even if I wanted to let you, you know I can’t.”

  Laura set her jaw. She wanted very badly to cry, but she knew what was expected of her. What was needed of her. She had to be an FBI agent now, not a mother. Not a woman who cared about a child and wanted to keep her safe. She had to follow the rules.

  That didn’t make it any easier to do, but at least she could put on a show.

  She squared her shoulders. “Where’s the social worker?” she asked.

  Rondelle nodded, acknowledging the fact that she was pulling it together. “Just outside. I’ll bring her in now.”