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

is it?” Nate asked, instantly onhigh alert. For her part, Laura looked at the kid, not at Fred or the screen.Yes. He was biting his lip now. He knew something about what Fred was about tosay, no question about it.

“Well, both of these are listed asshrink.” Fred checked the screen one more time, then shook his head. “Theyweren’t sold at all.”

“What does shrink mean?” Nate asked.

Laura had once worked a part-time job ina store while she was a student. “It means they aren’t accounted for in thestock take. Either they went missing somehow, or they were stolen. Right?” shesaid.

“Yes, that’s right,” Fred replied. Hegave an apologetic shrug. “This happens from time to time. We review thecameras on a regular basis for thefts, but unfortunately, we don’t always catchthings. These ones aren’t listed alongside a crime identification number, whichmeans we couldn’t find any evidence of the theft on the tapes.”

“Do you at least know when they wentmissing?” Nate asked.

“To the nearest week, yes,” Fred said. “Weonly do stock take on Sundays. They could have gone missing any time within thepast week.”

“So we can’t narrow it down to a day?”Nate sighed. “Then there’s not a lot of hope in going over the security camerafootage again.”

“Afraid not,” Fred said. “We’ve gotseven cameras running twenty-four hours a day, so it would be hours of footageto look through for little reward. As I say, my son and I do check all of thefootage as much as we can, and there’s nothing that was flagged within thetimeframe of these phones going missing.”

Laura was barely listening. She had agood idea of what was going on here. The son was tall and lanky, not aswell-built as she would have expected. But he might have had hidden depths. Itwas altogether possible, she thought while looking at him, that he was capableof strangling someone to death.

“Hey,” she said, getting his attention. “Couldyou pass me that pen over there? I want to make a note of something.” Shegestured to a pen lying on the far end of the counter, next to where he wasstanding.

“Sure,” he said, his voice coming outhigh and cracked; he cleared his throat as he picked up the pen and walked thetwo steps closer to her.

Their fingers brushed as she took itfrom his hand, and Laura felt a pulse of pain in the middle of her forehead,mild but distinct. She lowered her gaze to the pen, feeling the vision takehold of her—

Laura was standing in the same store,behind the same counter. It was later at night, and the place was deserted.Except for Fred’s son, leaning on the counter with a bored expression.

He stood up and ambled out from behindthe counter, heading toward a nearby display rack. It held various electronicitems, phone accessories like headphones and wireless ear buds. He rearranged afew of the cases, putting them back into the correct places. He glanced up atthe security camera in the corner of the room, and as he straightened up, hishand brushed over one of the packets.

He continued rearranging the shelves,moving down the whole of the rack to the center of the room. Laura watched,hearing only the gentle buzz overhead of the lights, as he casually slipped thebox he had picked up into his pocket, below the range of the camera.

He turned and drummed a brief pattern ontop of one of the packets of cereal at the end of the rack, as if he had runout of things to do. He wandered around for a few more minutes, the timeagonizingly long; Laura couldn’t help but wonder when the vision would end. Itwas beginning to feel excruciating.

And then he turned and walked toward theback room, out of range of the cameras, and Laura saw him slip the box out ofhis pocket and into his backpack.

Laura blinked, finding herselfresurfaced back in the real world. It had been minutes in there, but for theothers around her, only a second or two had passed. There was a moment ofsharp, crushing pain in her head that subsided to a dull ache and lingered. Sheguessed from the intensity of the vision that this little setback would put himoff for a while. The pain wasn’t strong enough, despite the repeated visions ofthe day, to suggest that it was going to happen any time soon. He would be tooscared to take another phone, in case the FBI came back. But eventually, hewould get bold again.

Because he was the one who had beenskimming stock out of the store. He was the one who had taken the phones.

Laura didn’t have any time to messaround. If he was the killer, then he could be going off and finding his nextvictim as soon as his shift ended. She needed to move things along, right now.If anyone asked how she guessed it, she could just say that his nervousbehavior had made her suspicious and she’d taken a gamble.

“You took the phones, didn’t you?” shesaid, looking him directly in the eye as she said it.

Behind her, she heard Nate and Fredturning to look. She heard Fred expressing some kind of noise of disbelief, butshe didn’t turn or look away. She held the kid’s gaze, watching as he tried toopen his mouth to deny it. As he saw deep in her eyes that she knew, and shewasn’t going to be misled. As he realized that he was now in trouble with notjust his father, but the FBI.

And she was watching when he turned onhis heels and ran.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Laura set out at a run herself, hamperedby having to go around the side of the counter first. The kid was alreadydashing headlong through the store, his sneakers squeaking on the floor as hehurled himself around the corner toward the door. His father gave a singleshout, but the kid didn’t respond or look back.

Laura swore mentally, hearing Nate reactbehind her as well. The kid was fast. He was tall and lanky, and that went inhis favor. He was already out the door as Laura turned the corner after him,knocking a few bags of chips to the floor as