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

city where peoplewere probably all watching that show at the same time? How would they even getthat information to track down who was watching?

No, they had to do it with the phonebook. It was the only way.

“Nate,” Laura hissed urgently, callinghis attention before he picked up the phone to dial a new number. He hesitated,his hand hovering over the receiver. “We’re doing this wrong. We need to belooking for a man.”

“What?” Nate glanced around the room andlowered his voice, trying not to disturb the other officers who were still oncalls. “Did you find something?”

“No,” Laura said, cursing the fact thatshe couldn’t tell him what she’d seen. “But I’m sure of it. The next victimwill be a man, not a woman. Thirty-five or younger, listed in the phone book,and probably living alone. Called Alex. We have to—”

“Wait a second,” Nate interrupted,shaking his head. He was leaning out across the desk toward her, stretched out,giving her the impression of a resting panther. “Where is this coming from?”

Laura bit her tongue. What was shesupposed to say? “It makes sense,” she said. “Alex—my dad was a man. Why wouldthe target not be a man?”

Nate shook his head again, rubbing onehand over his eye. “Laura, we talked about this. We already agreed. The killerhas been going after women all this time. Why would he suddenly change his MOand go after a man? It doesn’t make sense. We agreed.”

“I know we did,” Laura said, hesitating.“But… Nate, I just know. This isn’t right. We’re never going to find him likethis. He’s going to die. We have to switch over to men.”

Nate narrowed his eyes, sighing. “Laura…I know you’re anxious about letting another one slip through the cracks. But we’realready up against it on time trying to reach all of these women. If we add meninto the mix as well, we’ll never get through everyone, not with a hundredvolunteers. Even if we only focus on men—it’s not getting any earlier. We’vecome this far. We have to push on.”

“Not all men,” Laura protested. “Theparameters are much more precise. We’ll be able to get through them quicker.Nate, I can’t explain it, but I have this feeling—”

“And what if that feeling is wrong?”Nate paused and cast a glance around the room before continuing, as if to makesure no one had overheard how irrational she was being. “We made this choicebased on data. All of the signs we have currently point to the killer goingafter another woman. We’ve asked all of these people to work long and hard atthese calls, tracking down the next victim, and they’re doing it on faith thatis already stretched thin. Now you want to change that when we’re not evenhalfway through. I’m sorry, but… unless you can give me evidence or even somekind of hint that a man could be at risk, we have to carry on focusing onwomen.”

Laura stared at him, her mouth hangingopen. What was she supposed to say?

She didn’t have any evidence. Not even ahint. All she had was her vision, and even if she could come clean about thatto Nate and expect him to believe her, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t exactlyadmissible in court. Nor would it convince the sheriff—and Nate was right. Theywere asking him to take a lot of this on faith already.

He had never doubted her before. She’dnever given him a reason to. But she knew what he was saying made sense.Without proof, there was no reason to change their methods.

He’d trusted her this far. Gone alongwith everything she said. It stung deep in her chest that he couldn’t do thesame now, but she couldn’t argue.

He was right.

Laura closed her mouth and turned backto her phone book, as though she was accepting what Nate had said and gettingback to work. She heard more than saw him turn away and do the same, starting anew call. But her mind was racing. She couldn’t just carry on pretending tomake the calls. There was no point. She knew now that they wouldn’t reach theone person they needed to. And there was no way she could get through enoughnames in the phone book on her own to have any shot at warning him herself.

She was going to have to do this alone—andshe wasn’t going to achieve anything sitting at a desk with a phone in herhand.

She got up, grabbing her coat from theback of her chair, putting her cell into her pocket. “I need a break,” shemuttered into the general air above Nate’s head, making him glance up at her.He couldn’t do anything else. He was midway through a call.

He couldn’t stop her as she walked rightout of the precinct toward the parking lot, car keys in hand.

***

Laura was driving through the streets ofAlbany, taking random turns and exits, covering whole blocks just to take acorner or two and go right back in the opposite direction. It was a kind ofgrid search, except without a fully logical plan, letting her foot on the gasand her hands on the wheel lead her by instinct.

Somewhere out there, Ed Bronston was movingcloser and closer to his victim. Somewhere, a victim sitting in his house, ormaybe still making his way back home. If she could somehow get onto the righttrack, start moving in the same direction so that she was on a collision coursewith one of them, maybe she could force a vision to come.

Laura rested her head against her hand,one elbow propped on the side door, as she pulled up toward a red light. Shewas getting nowhere. On the one night that she desperately needed to getsomewhere, she felt like she was just driving around in circles.

She looked up, the red of the trafficlight seeming to burn right into her brain. It was so bright. So bright that itseemed to be making her head pulse with pain. No wonder, after she had had somany visions, forced herself to see so many things. But this pain seemed soinsistent, so harsh—

Laura found herself looking down at thesame head she had seen before, the same cap of hair. The man,