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

haverecords of which identifiers went to which customers. Then we can talk to thestore—maybe they have detailed enough sales records that we can see who boughtthem.”

“Unless he paid in cash,” Laura said. “Butstill. This is great, right?”

“It’s a start,” Nate said, jumping toaction. “I’ll call it in, see if the Chief can get a warrant for us, just incase. Then I’ll jump on the line with the manufacturer.”

“It could take a few hours,” Laura said,and then shrugged. “But it’s all we’ve got to go on right now.”

Nate nodded, putting the phone to hisear as he waited for it to connect.

Laura tuned out his conversation, rubbingher face as she looked over at their investigation board. The faces of the twowomen who had died stared back at her. Laura and Caroline. No one had movedfast enough to save them. If they didn’t get this information before the end ofthe night, there could be another face going up on the board.

Laura reached for her purse while Natewas distracted, and quickly pulled out a blister pack of painkillers. She tookone straight down, without water. When you were on the move a lot and sufferedwith near-constant headaches, you got used to being able to take whatever painrelief you needed without waiting for convenient facilities.

She sat back in her chair then, waitingfor the painkiller to take hold. Having the throbbing in her temple out of theway would certainly make investigating a bit easier. But right now, she wasn’tsure there was anywhere else they could go. The phones were a good lead. Ifthey were really lucky, this would clear the whole thing up. They’d be able toget a name, go arrest the guy, and it would be over.

But it was getting late, and Lauracouldn’t help but feel they were racing against time. The vision she had seen—thepain had been bad, which meant it was probably happening in the next few hoursat most. If they didn’t get the information before then—or if they got it whenthe killer had already left home to go after his next victim…

Laura didn’t want to think about thegirl she had seen, or half-seen, in her vision. That girl was on the cusp ofdeath. She probably didn’t even know it yet, but her life was in grave danger.And what was Laura doing? Kicking her heels at the local precinct, resting in achair and waiting for her painkillers to kick in.

She picked up her cell phone, needing todo something to distract herself. Something to keep her mind away from theurgency. Sitting on her hands had never been her favorite thing to do, andright now, it amounted to torture. Besides, she needed to check whether she hadany messages or updates from home. An invitation to go visit Lacey would benice, though she didn’t hold out hope for that anymore.

She just braced herself in case one dayshe would receive word from Lacey’s father that there was an emergency.

Laura checked her emails online,skimming through a load of junk mails from Nigerian princes and supposedpurveyors of magic pills. Down below them, though, there was at least onemessage she actually wanted to read: a reply from a forum she was signed up toabout psychics.

She’d joined as a bit of a last-ditcheffort to find someone who was like her. After years of just reading the forumsand remaining a passive bystander, Laura had come to realize that she wasn’tgetting anywhere at all. And she figured it was possible that anyone who waslike her, might be just like her. Meaning that they, too, would hang silentlyaround on the outside, watching and waiting.

And if they all did that, well, theywould never find one another at all.

So, she’d taken the plunge. Signed upwith a fake email address and a fake name, initially from a library computer sothat it wouldn’t even register the account to her IP address. She was fairlycertain there was no way the account would be connected back to her or the FBI.She wasn’t as good with the tech stuff as Nate was, but she’d learned a thingor two from him over their time working together. VPNs, for example.

She’d created a post a while back on afew of the various sites that existed for discussion of the psychic gift, andshe’d had a few replies over time, too. She’d asked for people who genuinelyhad psychic gifts, and who saw snatches of the future, to contact her. She’donly found charlatans so far. The same story as any other method she tried tofigure out if she was not alone in this.

This post intrigued her. It was from auser who had only just created a brand new account, presumably just to be ableto reply to her thread. And it was free of the usual bragging or links towebsites where she could “test” their skills for a price.

It read: “Hi AnnaSmith8932. I thinkwe may share the same gift. I don’t talk about it a lot, but I see thingshappening around me all the time. To my friends and family. And after I see it,I get the chance to try to fix it or stop it from happening.

I would love to know if we areexperiencing the same thing. I’m living in Virginia, so I don’t think we’re toofar apart. We should meet up and compare notes.”

Laura bit her lip, reading it throughagain. Did they seem genuine? It was altogether possible this was one of thefrighteningly lonely people who seemed to stalk these kinds of sites and try toget dates out of them. But then again, the message hadn’t seemed flirtatious.In fact, the tone of it was serious enough that it gave Laura real pause.

She shot a glance behind her. Nate wasstill on the phone, on hold. Laura guessed he was waiting to be patched in on acall, or else to be transferred to another department. She couldn’t hear thehold music, but she could see him bobbing his head just slightly from side toside, almost unconsciously. She smiled in spite of herself and turned backbefore he could feel her watching him and look up.

She took a single deep breath