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Laura followed his instructions mechanically, recognizing their value. They’d had the same training, after all. She breathed with him until her mind started to clear, the fog dissipating slowly like mist coming off a river when hit by the sun.
“Are you back with me?” Nate asked, when she was able to meet his eyes without feeling her own glazed over.
“Yes,” Laura said, finding her mouth dry. She swallowed hard.
“What was that?” he asked, the inevitable follow-up. The one she didn’t want to answer.
Laura paused, thinking about how she was supposed to answer him. What she was supposed to say. How could she explain something that she didn’t even understand herself?
“I saw something,” she said, at length, then looked back at him to see his reaction. Better to start small, with something like this. Something non-specific.
“What?” Nate asked. He looked back at the house. “Something in the living room?”
“No, Nate,” Laura said, holding up a hand to bring his attention back to her. “I mean, I saw something. Like we talked about.”
Nate paused, looking at her. She didn’t look up to meet his eyes again. Suddenly, she was feeling incredibly tired. So tired she wasn’t even sure how much of this she could manage.
“Laura…” he said, trailing off like he was struggling to think of how to put his words together. Then: “How did you know where to go last night? The barn?”
Laura nodded slowly, meeting his eyes again. “You already know. I’ve told you.”
“No,” Nate said, shaking his head. “I mean it, Laura. How did you know which barn you had to go to? Did you see a photograph or something? Did someone give you a description?”
“I was alone,” Laura said. “You know I wouldn’t hold back evidence if I’d seen a photograph or some kind of physical proof. I saw it in a vision. I was at the site the killer had set up for the future, in that grocery store, and I touched something he had touched, and I had a vision of the barn.”
Nate’s eyes flicked down to her wrist, the spot where he had just touched her. He must have been thinking about how she’d reacted. Like she’d been burned.
“But, you didn’t really, did you?” Nate said. His tone was becoming uncertain, almost pleading. “That’s not what really happened. You just don’t want to tell me the truth. Maybe you don’t want to admit the truth. I thought I knew you, but… maybe you would do this. Maybe you would hide evidence and claim you had a vision just to get… What? Attention?”
“I’ve been hiding this from you for three years,” Laura said, her jaw tightening. “Do you really think I’m telling you this for attention?”
“But you do get attention,” Nate said. He was talking faster, like he was figuring something out. Like he was having a revelation. “Back at HQ, they talk about you having this intuition. Like you’ve got some kind of sixth sense. People say that about you all the time. They call you a natural detective. You must love that. And I can see how you’d want to keep that going, even if it meant hiding things now and then.”
“No, Nate,” Laura said, feeling a painful squeeze in her chest. “I hate it when they say that. I’ve told you that before. It just makes me self-conscious. I’m only trying to do my job. I wouldn’t cheat like that, not when anything we find could make the difference in court.”
Nate was looking at her strangely, slowly shaking his head backwards and forwards. “It’s like you’re a stranger to me,” he said. “And just now, this whole panic attack thing. It’s an act, isn’t it? Now that you’ve got me on the hook, you’re just trying to string me along and get my attention.”
“No,” Laura said again, but Nate was shaking his head more rapidly now, holding up his hands.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said. “I’m not going to keep encouraging you by giving you this attention. You know what? I’m going to call the precinct, get them to send out someone in a car for me. I’m going back to the clock store, going through the records they’ve been downloading. At least there we might find a concrete lead. You… you do whatever you have to do.”
Laura’s mouth was drier than she could ever remember it being as he got out of the car, leaving the door open and striding away a few paces down the street. She watched him get his cell phone out of his pocket, heard him speaking quietly into it as he’d promised.
Laura got out of the car, but she didn’t go and get in the driver’s seat immediately. She walked over to him instead.
And he saw her coming and turned and walked further away.
“Nate,” Laura said, desperately now. She ran a few paces to catch up, then reached out to catch at his arm. Even though she knew it was stupid. Even though…
The shadow of death was on him, on her, so strong she could barely breathe. So dark and deep and intense, so much more than it had been a moment ago.
“Don’t,” Nate said, shaking her off. “I need some time. Let’s just get this case solved before someone else dies.”
Before someone else dies. His words were almost prophetic. Laura shivered, but he was turning away from her again, deliberately, shoving his hands into his pockets and squaring his shoulders. He wasn’t going to listen.
She turned and went back to the car, getting behind the wheel because she didn’t know what else to do. He was determined, apparently, and his pickup was already on the way. She started the engine and set off in the direction of the precinct, but she didn’t go far. As soon as she was out of sight of Nate, she turned down a side street and parked a little way down it, resting her head in her hands.
She needed to process this. The shadow of death that she had seen hanging over him all of this time had fluctuated during the months that she had been seeing it. There were times when it had seemed stronger than ever. There were even times when it had seemed to go away completely. Looking back over all of those times,
