Caleb looked at the ground bashfully and then up. “I am disappointed,” he said, with a smile that twisted up one side of his mouth in the most appealing way. “Just not about you being well.”
Laura nodded. All of a sudden, she couldn’t quite work out what to do with her hands. “I guess the universe doesn’t want me to stay,” she said, even though it was the most new-age, wishy-washy crap she’d ever heard, and she would never normally have said it. It was her nerves, that was all.
“It just wasn’t meant to be,” Caleb agreed, which made her feel better about sounding like an idiot. “This time, anyway.”
“What do you mean, this time?” Laura asked.
Caleb shrugged. “I’m a great believer in things happening if they’re meant to happen,” he said. “Like me breaking into Hollywood. Everyone always tells me I have the talent, that I should be making it big already, but I’m not. And I’m not stressed out about it. I just think if I keep putting myself in the way of opportunities, it will happen when it’s meant to.”
Laura caught on to the drift of what he was saying. “Are you planning to put yourself in my way again sometime soon?”
Caleb chuckled lightly, running his hand back over his hair. It flopped back into perfect place. “I don’t know. But if I’m ever in your neck of the woods, I might just use that number I have stored in my phone.”
“I guess I can say I’ll do the same,” Laura said. It was true that she never knew where she was going to be sent next. Sometimes she would find herself visiting the same states, even the same cities. Murders didn’t happen in nice, evenly distributed geographical locations. Lightning could, in this sense, strike twice. Maybe she would find herself in Seattle again.
“Laura!”
She turned to see Nate greeting her from across the other side of the waiting room, raising a hand as he moved towards her, dodging an old woman on a walker who seemed oblivious of where she was going.
“I guess that’s my cue,” Caleb said, smiling that smile of his again. The one that made Laura almost wish she had really been injured, so she could get to know it better. But only almost, because she had far more important things to think about. “I’ll see you around. Take care of yourself, Special Agent Laura Frost.”
“You too, Caleb Rowntree,” Laura said, watching as he raised a hand in farewell and then turned to slip back into the stream of people moving
towards the door.
“You ready to go?” Nate asked, pitching up beside her. He looked tired, too. They both needed rest. They could get it on the plane; Laura would rather get home tonight than have to wake up in the morning in the unfamiliar motel room and have to drag herself to the airport.
“Yeah,” she said, not needing to take a last look around at the hospital or the case they had prepared well enough to leave in the hands of Captain Mills. “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Laura was almost lulled into a false sense of security. Nate was safe. The case was over. She could relax, at least, until the plane landed, and she could get back to dealing with everything else.
“Laura,” Nate said, as they walked out of the hospital and towards their waiting car, and Laura knew from the tone of his voice that she wasn’t getting away from this one scot-free.
“I’m tired, Nate,” Laura said, hoping that would be enough.
She should have known it wouldn’t have been enough.
“Just wait,” Nate said, reaching out a hand to stop her. He pulled her towards him in the parking lot – and like the sky crashing down around her, there it was. The shadow of death, emanating from his touch, surrounding him so tightly she could hardly see him anymore. The darkness threatening to swallow him whole, making her sick to her stomach.
No.
This couldn’t be.
The encounter with the killer – it hadn’t been the moment Laura had been waiting for. The moment when Nate should have died. Whatever it was that threatened to end him still lingered, still surrounded him like a cloud. It was still part of his future.
Laura shook off his hand after a single second, but it felt like hours. She blinked back tears from her eyes.
He was still going to die, and she still had no idea how to stop it.
“Laura, how did you know that something was going to happen at the theater?” Nate asked.
“I didn’t,” Laura lied. She turned away from him so that he couldn’t see her face, but when she saw his hand reach out in the corner of her eye again, she panicked. She couldn’t let him touch her again. She took a step away and turned around, facing him as if she had only been shuffling her position. His hand dropped back to his side. “Caleb thought the audition might be a good place to find a lot of local actors and maybe ask about their coaches, and when the director told me they had an even bigger audition later, I thought I’d stick around.”
“So you’re telling me that by coincidence, you just happened to show up in the one place we could catch the killer? Again?” Nate said. “Alright, here’s one. How did you know that the Genevieve Piper would be the victim?”
“I didn’t,” Laura insisted. “It was just luck.”