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

Laura reached out another sense,acknowledging it, then letting it envelop her. Listening. Not to the sounds inthe distance, or even Nate’s heavy footsteps above her head. The room itself.The settling of floorboards. The soft silence of a place out in the middle ofnowhere. Laura breathed deep, then held her breath to listen for a beat.

She was building a cocoon aroundherself, a shell of sensory input. One that centered her in the moment, pushedher into deeper awareness of her surroundings. And with it, sometimes, thevisions. If she could trigger it like this, she might still have a chance…

Laura wrenched her brain back from thepossibilities, focusing again. Musty air. Almost-silent room. She reached outwithout opening her eyes, until her hand landed on the surface of the wallnearest to her. A hollow feeling. A thin wall. Dry, peeling wallpaper thatthreatened to crumble under her touch. A texture that spoke of repeated damp inthe winters, drying out over the summers, over and over again. Years.

Laura breathed deep, listened, and felt—thestab of pain between her eyes—a short, sharp rush—

The girl was gasping for breath. Laurawas inside the space with her, a tiny space and so tight, hovering just inchesaway from the girl’s face. She was streaked with both tears and dust, dry andyellow, caking her skin and hair. She took another rasping inhale now, endingon a shudder, a whimper.

She was so alone. Laura wanted to reachout, but she couldn’t—she was only an observer here, devoid of form. Ofcorporeal touch. The girl’s face was screwed up with fear and sadness and pain,pain in her little chest as she struggled to breathe, pain in her hands where she’dtried to scratch her way out…

Laura’s eyes drifted to those hands.They were coated with dust, caked under the fingernails. Somewhere above them,Laura heard the sound of a man’s voice. Nate’s voice. Calling out Laura’s name.It made her look up, and she saw the girl’s face. The blonde hair streaked withdust, just like Lacey’s hair. Blue eyes like Lacey’s, bright and vivid in thedarkness.

Her blue eyes were closing. Slowly,gently. The little chest was pumping up and down one last time, but there wasno oxygen for it to take in. Her chest deflated like a slow balloon, and Laurahovered helplessly over her, and it did not rise again.

Laura gasped out loud, her eyes flyingopen. She was dripping with sweat, and it felt as though a bucket of ice hadbeen poured over her. The thudding pain in her head drove her to her knees asshe cried out, then dizzily reached for the floor to push herself up again. Thecolor of the dirt on the girl’s face, under her fingernails. It matched thecolor of the dirt out there, around the house. But she wasn’t outside. If shehad been outside, they all would have seen the disturbed ground already.

The vision was prescient, but not alwaysby much. And Nate had spoken in the vision—had said her name. That meant thegirl wasn’t far away.

And it meant she didn’t have much timeat all. Maybe thirty seconds. Maybe less.

The little girl was running out of air.

CHAPTER THREE

The door beside her opened, and lightfrom the hall poured in, momentarily blinding her. The stab of pain into herhead at the light was almost too much to bear. “I heard you call out,” Natesaid, but Laura was already turning away from him.

“She’s here,” she said, leaning down,hurriedly moving forward with shaking hands and legs, looking for any sign ofdisturbance, any mark on the floor. There was a caved-in sofa, no mark in thedust beside it. It hadn’t been moved. Neither had the armchair, the seat fallenin on a lopsided angle. Laura stumbled behind it, looking for a sign at theback of the room.

“What? Where?”

“I don’t know—under the ground,” Laurasaid, continuing her frantic search of the room. She kicked up the corner of abedraggled old rug, and a clump of the fabric came apart from the whole. It wasrotting. No way it had been moved any time recently. She felt sick to herstomach, the pain in her head was so bad. She had to keep going.

“Under the ground, like, buried?” Nateasked. He didn’t ask her how she knew. He never did. That was the blessing ofhaving Nathaniel Lavoie as a partner: he never asked. He just trusted her. Anyother partner would have forced her to either confess or lie her way out ofthings by now. But Nate trusted her “gut instinct,” and even as he asked thequestion, he, too, was turning to search the rest of the room.

“Buried in a—a box,” Laura told him,turning frantically and racing for the door. There was nothing here. The livingroom was empty. Somewhere, somewhere in the house, she was there… Laura crossedthe hall, almost tripping and then using the momentum to fall to her knees,tracing her hands over the floor in every direction as she moved.

“Like a coffin?” Nate raced after her,yelling as he took off for the door at the end of the hall. The kitchen,probably. The door Laura had chosen led to a dining room, at least judging bythe table and the single chair, and one or two pieces of rotting wood thathinted at other pieces of furniture long since gone.

Laura’s eyes traced patterns in thedust. Footsteps, all over the room. Maybe he’d taken the chairs elsewhere, orused them as firewood in the night. He’d been in here, a lot. Was that adisturbance in the dirt floor? Laura scrambled toward it. No—it was packedtight here, tight like the passage of time and many feet had done it. There wasonly a scuff where some old chair had been driven into the ground as it wasbroken up. God, why couldn’t she think? Her head was throbbing—if she couldjust think—

“Hey? Do you hear me?”

Laura’s back stiffened. Nate. He waswaiting for her response. In a moment, if she didn’t give him one, he wouldcall out her name.

She stood and bolted for the kitchen, pureadrenaline and fear driving her legs forward, crashing toward where she’d heardhis voice. This was it, she