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“It’s an order, Laura,” he hissed under his breath. “He wants us to go debrief. Come on.”
Laura had to ignore him. Even if it meant more explaining later. Even if it made him angry with her. She pushed past Nate and started down the road, even though she was bone-weary in all of her limbs. The vision followed by the chase and the fight had hit her harder than usual. But there wasn’t any time to rest and recover right now. Not when the girl was in danger. Not when her life could be ticking away, minute by minute.
Nate caught up with her halfway down the hill. Laura walked down the road this time, taking the easier path, still walking as fast as she could. Frustratingly slow. She forced her body to move, to carry her there, keeping her gaze focused on the farmhouse ahead. Everyone had left in favor of checking out the car and the arrest. Someone would come back, keep the scene secure, search for evidence, but it would be too late.
Laura was the only one who could act now. She could feel it in her gut. If the kidnapper didn’t talk, and she didn’t think he would, then Laura was the girl’s last hope.
“What are you hoping to see?” Nate asked, falling in with an easy lope beside her.
The road flattened out as they reached the bottom of the hill, heading on in a straight line for the farmhouse. “A clue,” Laura told him, keeping it vague. She had never told him anything about her visions; she didn’t expect him, or anyone, to understand. They had been partners for a few years, and she would trust him with literally anything else, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was she needed him to trust her, and not to start thinking she’d lost her mind. He had always trusted her before, since their first assignment together when her hunches proved right. She only hoped he would do so again now.
She forced herself into a jog, almost at the door now.
“You think she’s somewhere around here, is that it?” Nate asked.
“He was coming back here,” Laura said, wrenching the door open and bounding through it, into the interior of the building. “There must have been a reason for that.”
Heading inside the farmhouse was like having a candle pinched out. The bright sunshine of the outside world was gone, barely filtering in through cracks around the shuttered windows, places where the boards of the exterior walls had shifted and left gaps. Rays of light burst through the gloom like shards of glass, brilliantly illuminating the dust that hung in the air.
Laura’s eyes adjusted to the gloom quickly as she glanced around, her head stabbing with pain every time she encountered one of the rays. From the front door, a set of stairs led upward, two doors led to the left and right, and one final door was ahead at the end of the hall.
“This place is about ready to fall down,” Nate observed, following close behind her. “I’ll take a look up there real quick. Maybe he kept her in one of the bedrooms, might find a clue up there.”
Laura nodded distantly. “I’ll check down here,” she said, more out of habit than any real meaning.
She heard Nate’s booted footsteps thud on every stair on his way up to the second floor. She closed her eyes to drown them out, trying to think. Nothing was happening. The only thing she could feel was the pain in her head from earlier, not the new pain she wanted to bring on. Wanted desperately. No matter what it would cost her, it could save the girl’s life.
Laura reached for the nearest door and shuffled inside the room, closing the door behind her. She shut out the sounds of the outside, the bright light from the doorway, the fresh air. Everything. She took a deep breath of the musty-smelling atmosphere inside the room, closing her eyes and letting her senses take over. One, smell: the decay of a place that has been left abandoned for too long. The scent of the outside fields.
Laura reached out another sense, acknowledging it, then letting it envelop her. Listening. Not to the sounds in the 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 of nowhere. Laura breathed deep, then held her breath to listen for a beat.
She was building a cocoon around herself, a shell of sensory input. One that centered her in the moment, pushed her into deeper awareness of her surroundings. And with it, sometimes, the v
isions. If she could trigger it like this, she might still have a chance…
Laura wrenched her brain back from the possibilities, focusing again. Musty air. Almost-silent room. She reached out without opening her eyes, until her hand landed on the surface of the wall nearest to her. A hollow feeling. A thin wall. Dry, peeling wallpaper that threatened to crumble under her touch. A texture that spoke of repeated damp in the winters, drying out over the summers, over and over again. Years.
Laura breathed deep, listened, and felt—the stab of pain between her eyes—a short, sharp rush—
The girl was gasping for breath. Laura was inside the space with her, a tiny space and so tight, hovering just inches away from the girl’s face. She was streaked with both tears and dust, dry and yellow, caking her skin and hair. She took another rasping inhale now, ending on a shudder, a whimper.
She was so alone. Laura wanted to reach out, but she couldn’t—she was only an observer here, devoid of form. Of corporeal 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’d tried 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 with dust, just like Lacey’s hair. Blue eyes like Lacey’s, bright and vivid in the darkness.
Her blue eyes were closing. Slowly, gently. The little chest was pumping up and down one last time, but there was no oxygen for it to take in. Her chest deflated like a slow balloon, and Laura hovered helplessly over her, and it did not rise again.
Laura gasped out loud, her eyes flying open. She was dripping with sweat, and it felt as though a bucket of ice had been poured over her. The thudding pain in her head drove her to her knees as she cried out, then dizzily reached for the floor to push herself up again. The color of the dirt on the girl’s face, under her fingernails. It matched the color of the dirt out there, around the house. But she wasn’t outside. If she had been outside, they all would have seen the disturbed ground already.
The vision was prescient, but not always by much. And Nate had spoken in the vision—had said her name. That meant the girl wasn’t far away.
And it meant she didn’t have much time at all. Maybe thirty seconds. Maybe less.
The little girl was running out of air.
CHAPTER THREE
