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Now though, he was going to have to get a bit more creative. Worse than that, he was going to have to do it fast. He needed to find somewhere that they weren't going to look, where they wouldn't think to track him down. And he would have to take his time about it, even though he was in a rush. Maybe he should set something up, then circle back and check on it right afterwards, see if the police were looking into it. That might be the best way to do things. Surveillance might have to be a full-time job for him, too, until he was confident that he could set the next person up without risking getting caught.
If he got caught, he would have to stop. He had already prepared so much in advance; it would be such a shame to stop now. He already had the schedule of his next target down, etched into his mind with laser precision. He knew where she was going to be, where he would grab her. But now he needed to know where he was going to take her.
He drove on into the dark streets of Atlanta, his mind working fast. The night was still young, at least for someone like him who was used to roaming the city in the dark. He would find somewhere else. This didn't have to be the end.
He wasn't going to let them stop him - not until he had completed his mission.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I don't need to get any sleep,” Laura said stubbornly, even though she knew deep inside it wasn't true.
Nate just looked at her for a moment. “We're going to check into the motel,” he said firmly, taking no arguments. “Maybe you don't think you need the rest, but I definitely do.”
He put the key in the ignition and switched on the car's engine, starting it up and rolling out. Laura sighed, looking out of the window. She had given up control of the vehicle to him given that she had been driving for most of the evening, but now she saw that that was a bad decision. It meant he had the power to drive her wherever he wanted to, and she couldn't just take herself back to the precinct. At least, not until after they had gone to the motel.
Truth be told, she was tired. It had been a long day. The flight had not been very forgiving, and she still had all of those worries in the back of her mind about Amy and her new guardian. Not to mention the nerves she was already feeling about having Lacey over on the weekend. Getting back in time to be there was her primary concern but, behind that, she could still feel all of the other little worries building up. Things like whether she would be able to entertain Lacey for a full weekend, what kind of foods Lacey liked to eat, how she had changed since Laura had last been able to have her at home overnight. It was a lot to think about.
All of that, with a case on top of it? A case in which the bodies seemed to already be racking up? It was no wonder she was tired.
But still, solving this case was her responsibility.
Right then, she wished it wasn’t. She didn’t want to have to have been the one who found this body. The one who failed to save a life. Yet again. It felt like all she ever did was arrive at crime scenes too late.
Somewhere deep in her head, she knew it wasn’t true. She knew she saved lives, too, and that she and Nate caught and put killers away all the time. It was what they did.
But the ones who didn’t survive, even after they’d managed to get to the scene and take over from the local cops – those were the ones that always haunted her the most.
“We're going to figure this out,” Nate said. “It seems kind of impossible right now, but with some good rest and a new perspective in the morning, will be able to do more. Besides, we need to wait for forensics to do their reports and run their tests. We're not going to have anything back from the coroner until the morning at the very earliest. If we go back to the precinct now and continue trying to investigate, we're not going to get anywhere; and by the time we do end up having to go and get some rest, we won't be able to.”
“I know,” Laura said, sighing again. “You are right. I just hate feeling like I’m taking a break when people are dying.”
“Yeah,” Nate said, in a tone of dark sympathy, an indication that he understood and felt it too. But that was all.
Laura glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, trying not to make it too obvious. Since she'd said what she had said outside the barn, he hadn't spoken much to her. Not i
n the way that really mattered. He had discussed the case, talked about next steps, and now here he was convincing her to get some sleep for procedural reasons. But he hadn't addressed what she had said. He’d clammed up tightly, going quiet as soon as her words hit home, and he hadn't brought it up again.
Did it mean that he believed her and didn't want to address the fact that what she had said could be real? Or was he secretly plotting ways to get her into therapy, or maybe even have her committed, when they got back?
They pulled up outside a cheap motel not far from the precinct, set up in that old familiar way that motels always seemed to be. The parking lot, the rows of individual apartment rooms with their numbered doors visible from balconies. Sometimes Laura thought that she could walk into any motel anywhere in the entire country and reliably be able to find any given amenity. If they even had any amenities. It seemed like they were always the same, as if the universe was playing a cosmic joke on them and it was only the furniture and the wallpaper that changed, not the actual location.
And if the universe was playing a trick on her, it wasn't the only one. It felt like the killer was messing with her deliberately, moving the goal posts. Laura understood the rules. Twelve hours, from twelve noon to twelve midnight. Why change them, why change them exactly at the moment that she was getting closer?
Did he somehow know?
No, that was only paranoia speaking. In all of her years of searching, Laura had never managed to find another psychic like herself, so it was hideously unlikely that the killer was one. Still, it didn't seem fair. The job was like this: you figured out what was happening, you learned the rules that applied to each killer, and you used those rules to either catch him or track him down via one of his victims. The rules didn't change. That wasn't how the game was supposed to be played.
“Alright,” Laura said, unbuckling her seatbelt as Nate parked. “Let’s get checked in and get to sleep. I want to be up early and on it right away.”
“Agreed,” Nate said. “I’ll get the bags from the trunk; you go speak to the guy. I’ll meet you out here with the keys.”
She got out of the car to do what he’d asked, feeling like every step was far too heavy. She had the weight of another dead man on her shoulders.
And if tomorrow didn’t go well, she might soon be adding another – something that she could hardly bear to think about.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Laura shrugged on her jacket, pausing for a moment by the cracked mirror in the bathroom to look at herself. There were dark circles under her eyes, a consequence of another night of barely any sleep.
