Already Gone (A Laura Frost FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 1) by Blake Pierce (notion reading list .txt) 📗

it. ChildProtective Services wouldn’t take Amy away before the abuse happened. Laura’smind raced for a way to get the child out of that environment, but she couldthink of nothing.

“Are you sure?” the governor asked,making Laura look up sharply in spite of herself.

He was studying her closely, sherealized. She must not have been controlling her voice, or her face, as well asshe thought.

“Quite sure,” she said, then forcedherself to take a deep breath and put on an even bigger fake smile. “Thank you,Governor. I hope you’re able to bring Amy home as soon as possible.”

“No, thank you,” he said, with a slightnarrow angle to his eyes that told her he still wasn’t convinced she wastelling the truth. With his arm on his wife’s lower back, he turned back to goinside, leaving Laura to clench her fists in the corridor and use all of herwillpower to avoid running after him and tearing Amy out of his arms.

She would do it—but first, she had tofigure out how.

***

Laura stared at the empty wine glass onher kitchen counter, trying to find the strength in herself to put it away.

If she didn’t put it away, it was goingto sit there waiting to be filled. And if she kept looking at it, wishing itwas filled, she would go out. She would walk or drive to a store somewhereoutside of the radius of those she had asked not to serve her. She would pickup a bottle—maybe three bottles—and bring it home, and she would fill theglass.

And she would drain it. And she wouldfill it again. And she wouldn’t stop until she was so drunk she missed a fewdays of work and a few days of memories, and she knew deep inside it stillwouldn’t be enough to stop herself from remembering what she’d seen in thathospital.

Laura let out a long, low sigh, thenforced herself to get up right when she’d exhaled every last gasp from herlungs. She drew in another hasty breath as she snatched the wine glass up andshoved it back into the cupboard it came from, so hard it almost smashed. Sheslammed the door closed and leaned on the kitchen counter for a long momentbefore turning to walk out into the hall.

Laura headed for her cramped, ramshackleliving room, needing to be as far away from the kitchen as her small apartmentwould allow. The apartment was always supposed to have been temporary; Lauracouldn’t bring herself to upgrade it to something more careful, because thatwould have meant admitting defeat.

Besides, getting a decent apartment on asingle wage in this city wasn’t easy. Not even for an FBI agent. Given the waythe alcoholism had ravaged through her savings, Laura counted herself lucky tohave been able to scrape together the deposit for this place, furnished withcast-offs and donations as it was.

She glanced out the window, taking inthe skyline, thinking of all those people out there. All of them managing tohave a single drink and then stop. They were crowding in bars and restaurantsnow, she knew, somewhere out there in the DC evening. She envied them. Shewished she could be one of them.

Laura reached into her pocket and pulledout the forty-five-day chip she had received almost two weeks ago. One and ahalf weeks, to be precise. Just a few more days, and she would be back at thesixty-day mark of her sobriety. Visions like these, like the abuse of Amy atthe hands of her own father, always threatened to drag her back under. To drownher. Especially when she couldn’t do anything about them. So many times she hadbeaten her demons, or thought she had, only to fall back into old habits.

She was trying not to let them. Not thistime.

There had been a time, a couple of yearsago, when something like this would have sent her into a destructive spiralwithout end. She would have drunk herself into a stupor for weeks on the backof this, maybe even months. Even half a year ago, she might have fallen off thewagon with such speed and violence that it would have shocked even herself. Butnow, things were better. She was getting better.

At least, forty-five days’ worth ofbetter.

Laura still wasn’t perfect. She knewthat. But this case was so close to her own heart. When she looked at Amy, whatshe was really seeing was Lacey. And more than anything, she wanted to be withher daughter.

Spurred on by that thought, Laura openedup her laptop and tapped out her password, opening it up to a full-screen imagethat she used as her background. Herself with Lacey, when Lacey was about threeyears old. She was so tiny then. Laura remembered that day, when they’d gone tothe beach to show Lacey the sea for the first time. They’d had ice creams andbuilt a sandcastle, and laughed. And then Laura had snuck away to get herself adrink, and Marcus had caught her, and they’d had a screaming match that endedwith a silent and sullen drive back home.

Laura opened up her browser and loggedinto Facebook, typing “Marcus Amargo” into the search bar. He came up as thefirst result, and she clicked on his profile, ready to send him a message.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t sent himhundreds of messages before, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up. Shecould just tell him that she was almost at sixty days again. She knew he’d saidso many times he wouldn’t let her so much as see Lacey from a distance untilshe got to the ninety-day mark, but maybe he would soften up when he saw thatshe was trying.

Laura frowned at the screen. Where wasthe message button? Actually, where was half of Marcus’s profile? She couldn’tsee anything. Not even recent posts or pictures. She’d been hoping he hadposted something about Lacey recently.

She clicked around, her heart ratesteadily 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 toher head, spinning in a circle as she panicked, her breathing coming short andfast. Marcus had blocked her. How was she supposed