Already Missing (A Laura Frost FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 4)

by Blake Pierce

  “No, I am,” Laura replied. She took a breath. “I have to. Look, Nate, I saw something. Okay? And I don’t exactly know what it means or anything specific. It’s just… I don’t tend to see the same thing twice if we’ve made a difference. I shouldn’t be seeing it again, do you understand? It means we’re on the wrong track.”

  “And what did you see?” Nate asked. If he didn’t already have his arms crossed tightly over his chest, Laura had the feeling he would do it now.

  She swallowed. “Veronica Rowse,” she said. “Coming back to life.”

  Nate narrowed his eyes. “I thought you said you saw the future,” he pointed out. “That’s not accurate, is it? She’s dead. Very dead. We both saw that.”

  “I know, and it’s confusing the hell out of me too,” Laura said. She wished she had a better explanation for him. Maybe it was too much, throwing this information out there as well as everything else. Maybe she should have fudged the truth, just told him enough to make him see that it wasn’t normal. When the rules were changing and she didn’t even understand it herself, how was she supposed to convince him that they existed in the first place?

  “Laura, I can’t…” Nate paused, sighing and shaking his head before continuing in a softer tone. “We’ve been here before. And I can’t keep doing this. Putting up with this… this investigational whiplash. First, you’re absolutely sure one thing is right, and then you’re absolutely sure the same thing is wrong. It’s not normal, the way you make these leaps and jumps. There’s no logic behind it.”

  “There is,” Laura said, her voice quiet. “It’s just that you can’t see it. If you had the visions, you’d understand how it can be. How one thing leads you in a certain direction, and then you see something else, and you figure out another clue.”

  “But I don’t have visions, Laura,” Nate said, in a tone which very much suggested that maybe she didn’t either. “And I can’t do this. I have to follow the evidence that we actually have. And that evidence shows us that Earl Regis is our most likely suspect. What do you expect me to do? Just drop everything and let him go because you’ve got a hunch? What if your hunch changes with your next ‘vision’ and you realize it was him after all?”

  Laura nodded, keeping her head down. “Okay,” she said. She was blinking, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice and the water out of her eyes. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Nate relaxed very slightly. “So, you’re going to come in with me and do this interview when the lawyer gets here?”

  “No,” Laura said, wishing she could give him an answer that he would like more. It didn’t matter. She knew what she had to do. Her duty was first and foremost to the victims – the ones that had already been, and the ones that were yet to come if they didn’t solve this. “No, I… I’m going to have to follow this lead. I know you can handle the interview on your own. Maybe with Captain Blackford, if you feel you need backup. But I just… I don’t feel like I can let this go.”

  Nate stared at her evenly for a long moment before passing a hand over his eyes. “Fine,” he said, at last. “Fine. So long as it doesn’t get in the way of the investigation, I don’t see why you can’t keep going. I guess it’s a good idea not to be too married to one suspect anyway, just in case. Good investigatory practice.”

  “You’re not mad?” Laura asked.

  Nate sighed, looking away from her. “At this point, I don’t know what I am any longer,” he said. “Mad, worried, afraid, frustrated. Nonplussed. All I can tell you is that I want to solve this case. Like I said, if it doesn’t get in the way and it might help, then… you do what you think you have to do.”

  “Thank you,” Laura said, even though she didn’t quite think he was doing it for her. More like he was trying to preserve his own sanity. But so long as it worked, it worked.

  Laura stepped away, backwards, leaving the file in Nate’s outstretched hand as she went. He took it without looking at her and started flipping through the pages. He didn’t look up when she called the elevator, or when she stepped into it, or when the doors closed in front of her and cut them off from one another.

  Laura had about a thirty-second chance to compose herself in the elevator before it reached the bullpen, and then she had to be right back to it.

  She had no time to feel sorry for herself, not right now. There was a killer on the loose, and she needed to go back to the records to try and find him.

  ***

  Laura sat at the desk, staring at the records on the screen in front of her.

  The hospital administrator had given up. For all her talk of the sanctity of the records, she was clearly beyond frustrated by having to look up something new for Laura every hour of the day. She’d left her sitting at the desk and walked away, muttering something about a meeting, and Laura was on her own with the digitized files.

  The system was easy enough to learn. Once she’d got the hang of it, she could filter by certain factors – one of which being actions taken by medical staff. Searching for people who were resuscitated brought up a huge list, even when she narrowed it down to the last two years. It made sense. A hospital was for people who weren’t exactly in good health, after all.

  But how was she going to narrow this list down from hundreds – thousands – to enough people that she could actually use the data?

  She sighed, rubbing her forehead. Maybe another look at the victims they already knew about would help. She refined the search by Lincoln Ware’s name, and then moved to click on the record for his near-drowning incident.

  And froze.

  There was a second record under his name, also marked with resuscitation. The administrator hadn’t said anything about that before.

  But then, Laura had asked her about the first incident they’d learned about. She hadn’t thought to ask if there were more, and without being able to look at the screen herself, she hadn’t known there were more.

  She’d relied on a woman who clearly resented having to do the work for her, instead of getting a warrant and going through everything herself.

  She’d made a big mistake.

  Laura clicked the link and read the report hurriedly, her eyes skimming down the whole page. Lincoln had been readmitted to the ER just a couple of weeks after his first visit. She saw a diagnosis of untreated pneumonia on the first page – apparently, the tests they’d done in the first place hadn’t picked it up. He’d gone home with the infection, assumed he’d just caught a cold from the water of the pool or that his breathing was affected by the trauma and treatment he’d gone through.

  But it had been pneumonia.

  Even in a young man, untreated pneumonia could be serious. Laura clicked open the EMT report and read it with bated breath – and there, right there in black and white on the screen: he’d called himself, reporting respiratory distress and pains, and the ambulance had responded. They’d started checking him over, but things had worsened rapidly, and he’d ended up having a minor heart attack right there in front of them. Even though they were right there on the scene, the complications of the illness meant it took them approximately fifty seconds to revive him again.

  Fifty.

  Laura knew it before she even looked. She read it in the tone of the report. She let her eyes drift to the bottom of the page, where it was signed off by the EMT who wrote the whole thing.

  Paul Payne.

  It had been him all along.

  He’d been right in front of her, and she’d let him slip away. She’d been fooled by his lies, his innocent act.

  Laura grabbed her jacket and ran towards the doors for the parking lot, knowing she had no time at all to lose.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Paul sat on the steps down into the basement, watching. With the lights off, he was shrouded in shadows. No one could see him here. But it had been important for him to see, this time.

  He’d made a new adjustment to the platform. The idea had been to test it out at the grocery store last night, to check it was wor
king, but since the police had taken over the scene, he’d had to change his approach. This was a live test, instead. He wanted to watch to be sure it worked, because he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out otherwise.

  The news reports never really said how the victims died. They didn’t go into enough detail. But he really did want them to be painless, and the fact that Veronica Rowse had been reported as having sustained ‘other injuries’ in one report he’d read had troubled him. He’d rigged the platform to fall quicker this time, to snap back and away with a little bounce upwards first. The idea was that it would throw the woman standing on it right now up into the air a bit, so when she fell, the rope snapped taut and broke her neck right away. That was all.

  It was a risk, sitting here to watch her. He knew that. But it was an acceptable one. The police knew he liked abandoned places, and so he’d changed something there as well: found a location they wouldn’t think of. Not a barn or a closed-down store or a remote gas station.

  A basement.

  The idea had come to him like divine inspiration, really. And he was almost completely confident there was no way anyone would trace him here – not unless they were literally following him, and he had been careful about that, too. Gone all around the houses, even with an unconscious woman in the back of his trunk. He’d examined every car behind him every time he stopped at lights, and he was pretty sure that this wasn’t going to be the night he was caught. He’d done everything he could to be sure of it.

  The house above his head wasn’t abandoned – just vacant. It had had one elderly owner who’d died recently, and the house was up for sale. Tomorrow evening, there was going to be an open house. Perfect for someone to come in and discover the body. He figured he could set up tomorrow’s platform in another vacant house he’d found, and the police wouldn’t have time to adapt to this new kind of location in time. After that, he’d figure it out. He had reams of research back at home, tons of ideas to use.

  The woman on the platform was making a kind of desperate gasping noise, racking sobs that went through her whole body. Paul straightened slightly, wondering if she was going to end up hanging herself before the platform even went down. But the noose stayed in place, and she remained on the platform, upright. Just sobbing.

  It was harsh, but it was necessary. She needed to die. She should have been grateful for the extra time that she’d had, not sad that it was ending. Some people just couldn’t see what the universe was giving them.

  To get all of that time for free, when she didn’t even deserve it. It was disgusting, really. And now to act like she was having something taken away from her? Some people were so entitled.

  Paul got up, checking his watch. She couldn’t see him exactly, but maybe she sensed movement, because she struggled more wildly and tried to cry out against the gag. He ignored her, opening the door that led up and out of the basement and stepping outside. He’d been in there for long enough already. He had to check his phone, see if he had missed anything while he was down there without any signal.

  He paused in the empty dining room of the property, a room at the back of the house where no one would see him from the windows that faced the street. His phone slowly blossomed back to life as he gained signal strength, up above ground once more: a number of notifications chimed one after the other, appearing on the screen.

  A lot of missed calls from work. Paul swore under his breath. He should have checked earlier. If they needed him and he was just sitting down there waiting, he was letting everyone down.

  There was a voicemail: he listened to it briefly, hearing the voice of his supervisor coming over the line.

  “Paul, I don’t know where you are today, but please come straight to the hospital when you get this. We’ve got an emergency situation, all hands on-deck. Big accident downtown. And please stop turning your phone off when you’re on call. We need you here as soon as possible.”

  Paul ended the call as the voicemail’s electronic voice chimed in, telling him which buttons to press if he wanted to save the message. He swore under his breath again, glancing around. He hadn’t left any sign of himself behind, other than the woman in the basement. He’d been careful about that. If someone came in while he was out, they wouldn’t be able to pin this on him.

  Not unless she was still alive, of course. She’d recognized him. He’d seen it in her eyes as he approached with the needle. Seeing him in connection with medical items must have triggered her memory.

  But, damnit, he was needed. He did take his job very seriously, and there were plenty of people who needed help or could be saved before their hearts stopped. People who weren’t supposed to die today. Those people, he could save. Should save. He could get back here before the timer went off and the platform dropped, just to make sure it was all as fast as he wanted it to be.

  He turned to leave the house through the back door, emerging into the cold but bright sunshine, taking the slightly longer route back to his car to avoid being seen – but walking fast.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Laura sat in the small office reserved for the managers of the hospital’s ambulance service, tapping her walkie talkie against her knee anxiously. She hated waiting like this. Not being able to do anything.

  But she’d done everything she could, at least. All she had left was waiting. Waiting for Paul Payne to arrive for the fake emergency call-out she’d organized with his supervisor.

  “Anything yet?” she said, speaking into the walkie. She could see the main ambulance parking area through the windows of the office, but that was all. She couldn’t see the road, or the employee parking lot. The idea was to wait here, out of sight, until Paul came inside to receive his assignment. He wouldn’t be expecting an ambush. If anything, he’d probably be ready to eat humble pie at this stage and apologize for how late he was.

  She hoped.

  She was beginning to wonder if he was running so late because he’d figured out it was a trap and wasn’t coming at all.

  The radio crackled to life in her hands. “Nothing yet,” came the response. One of the security guards at the employee parking lot entrance, who’d been fully briefed on the situation.

  Laura had called Nate and filled him in already, and he was supposedly on the way with a small group of detectives from the precinct to make sure they would have enough manpower to take him down. She supposed she should be happy that Paul hadn’t showed up yet, that she wasn’t having to tackle him alone.

  But she wasn’t. She was wired instead. Wishing he would get here so that she could do her job and take him down.

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, and Laura checked it to see a message from Nate: ETA five minutes. The supervisor, who was still sitting at her desk and having to actually run the ambulances while also sharing the same nerves Laura felt, glanced at her in alarm. Laura just shook her head, and the woman, an older Hispanic EMT with short-cropped white hair who had done her time on the service already, dropped her tense shoulders by a single notch.

  The radio crackled into life, making those shoulders shoot back up – and Laura’s too. “Okay, I can see his car approaching now.”

  “Great. Let him into the parking lot as normal,” Laura said. “Remember, don’t let on that anything is different than normal.”

  There was no response from the radio – which, she hoped, meant that the security guard was staying quiet and doing what he was told as Paul pulled up to the barrier and showed his staff pass. Laura drummed her fingers on the seat, staying as still as she could otherwise. The inclination was to move forward, to go right and stand in the window and watch for his arrival. But she needed to stay out of sight now. She was right by the door, and as soon as he’d gotten himself inside the office fully, she would be able to move between him and the only exit and ensure he wasn’t going to go anywhere.

  She glanced at the supervisor. The woman seemed to be shaking slightly, her hand wavering as she reached for her mug of coffee and took a sip, perhaps to try a
nd steady her nerves.

  Laura tensed more as each moment passed, trying to imagine his progress. He would be pulling through the barriers, moving into the parking lot. Parking his car. Getting out. Would he spend a moment inside first, or would he race towards the office, thinking he was needed?

  “Hey, Paul!” the voice was muffled by the door, but it made Laura stiffen, her spine going dead straight and her hand moving automatically to rest on her gun in its holster.

  “Oh, hey, man. I just got called in.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “What do you mean? For the big accident downtown.”

  “Big accident?” There was a short laugh. “First I’m hearing of it, if so. We’ve still got three ambulances in the bay waiting for call-outs.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. You sure you got your information right, buddy?”

  Laura closed her eyes for a brief moment, praying that it wouldn’t make a difference. That Paul would come to the office to see what was going on anyway. That he would still fall into their trap.

  “Maybe not,” Paul said. There was a new note in his voice now. Something… something like clarity. “You know what, I probably picked up an old message by mistake. I guess I’ll head to the breakroom instead, get something to eat and then head back home.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  Laura didn’t hesitate to hear the rest of the conversation. She didn’t need to. He was on the move, going in the opposite direction. It was too late. She needed to step out there now, stop him from getting back into his car. She leapt to her feet and threw open the door of the office to the cold air, getting him in her sights immediately.

  He was standing only a few hundred yards away, facing her, talking to another EMT in uniform. Laura opened her mouth to say something, but he met her eyes in that moment and he knew. She saw so clearly that he knew.