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

“What pieces?” Laura asked, frowning.

“Well, Albany, for one. Have you everbeen to Albany before?” Nate sat up a little straighter, gesturing toward thelocal map they had pinned up on one wall, red pushpins indicating murderscenes. One more still needed to be added.

“No,” Laura admitted.

“So, if someone is targeting yousomehow, why would they do it here in upstate New York? Why not closer to home—DC,or where you grew up?”

Nate’s voice was reasonable. Tooreasonable, actually. If he would scream and shout at her, Laura would at leastfeel justified in arguing back. “I don’t know,” she said, blowing out a heavybreath. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“And why would someone want to targetyou like this?” Nate asked, gentle but relentless. “Laura, if someone had agrudge against you, wouldn’t they just want to kill you? To hurt your familydirectly? Going after random strangers like this—does that make sense to you?”

“No.” Laura paused, then shook her headfiercely. “But, Nate, I’ve made dozens of arrests. And each of them had familymembers, people who might bear a grudge for taking them away. There are evenfamily members of victims I didn’t manage to save in time, murders none of uswere able to solve. There are probably hundreds of people who have a reason todislike me.”

“We’re not talking about dislike,” Natesaid, half-laughing on the word, but there was no humor in it. “Laura—killingthree strangers. That’s not dislike. The only thing that could motivate thatwould be pure and unrestrained hatred. Do you really think someone out therefeels that strongly about you? I mean, just you. Not a partner of yours or ajudge or a local cop who did the groundwork before you arrived. Why would therebe anyone out there who would hate just you, and you alone, that much?”

Laura paused, studying her hands.Everything he was saying made total sense. She couldn’t think of an answer.

“Look, it’s late,” Nate said. “Or early,maybe. I’m too tired to work it out. And you didn’t even get any rest at all.We need to head back to the motel, get some sleep.”

Laura opened her mouth to object. “But—”

“No, please. We aren’t going to get anyfurther on this tonight—especially not sleep-deprived.” Nate only paused for amoment before continuing, not leaving her enough room to argue again. “We haveto wait until morning for the forensic report, anyway. What else could wepossibly be doing right now? We’ve spoken to the husband, and we can ask the sheriffto carry out all the background checks to make sure there’s no link between thethree women. Forcing yourself to stay awake now doesn’t make any sense.”

“I could be going through my old cases,”Laura said stubbornly. “I could check through all of them and try to see ifthere’s someone who would hold that kind of grudge. That would be worthwhile.”

Nate sighed, buried his head in his handfor a moment, and then looked at her again. “Okay, fine. I had a couple ofhours’ sleep earlier, so I’ll make a deal with you. You go get some rest, and I’llstart going through your previous case files. I’ll go through them with afine-toothed comb, look for anyone who had any reason at all to be mad at youand crosscheck it against recent prison releases, see if we can make ashortlist of candidates who it could be.”

“I’m not going all the way back to themotel,” Laura said immediately. “I want to be here in case something happens.”

Nate growled under his breath. “Goddammit,woman. Fine. We’ll find you a room with a sofa somewhere, okay? But youare going to go to sleep.”

Laura hesitated, but at the look on hisface, she finally nodded her head. “All right. Just for a few hours.” She didn’twant to agree to it at all, but she knew two things.

One, that he wasn’t going to take hertheory seriously while he thought she was so tired she wasn’t thinkingstraight. Especially if she refused to take the reasonable course of action andget some rest.

And two, that she was so exhausted shereally did feel like she was going to fall over on the spot. Which meant shewas in no real condition to be helping anyone.

“Just for a few hours,” Laura repeatedto herself under her breath, already trying to calculate whether there was someway she could reduce the time even further before she could come back to it andfigure out who this killer with a grudge was.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Laura was sitting outside the office,holding onto her favorite doll. The seats were wide and covered in a soft grayfabric that she liked running her hands over, but she had stopped doing that.Her mommy and daddy looked sad and angry and she didn’t know why. She didn’tunderstand why they were here.

Daddy had said a big long word,something like say—no, not say. Sy. Sy-ky-a-tist? Laura hadn’t heard it before,and she didn’t know what it meant, and everything was so quiet in this room.Like you weren’t supposed to talk here at all. Even though there was onlyLaura, her mom and dad, and a woman behind a big shiny desk near the door, shefelt like she’d be told off if she said anything.

“Laura Frost?” A big door at the otherside of the room opened soundlessly, and Laura stared up at the woman who hadopened it. She was beautiful, with long shining dark hair like a princess, andshe knew Laura’s name.

“… Yes?” Laura said, at length, hervoice small and quiet, not sure what she was supposed to do. Her mother’s elbowlanded in her side, trying to push her forward.

“Come on in,” the princess said, andLaura got down off the chair, following her with wide eyes.

Halfway there, she stopped and turnedand looked at her parents. They were still sitting on the chairs. Neither ofthem had moved. Weren’t they coming, too? Her mother nodded encouragingly, butboth of them still sat blank-faced, like she had done something wrong.

They had yelled at her when she toldthem about the dog. Was that why she was here?

Laura turned and walked after the woman,into the big office room, unsure what