He turned in a small circle again, looking for something that might help him, tears spilling over his cheeks as he saw the same nothing again and again with each rotation.
He only had a handful of hours left before it was all going to be over.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Nothing yet?” Laura asked, searching Nate’s face for signs of an answer.
He shook his head grimly, making her shoulders sag.
It had been hours of searching, and they were still no closer to finding the location of the killer’s next victim. “How many spots do we still have left to search?”
Nate took the map from her, spreading it out across the dashboard of their parked car. It was already littered with rings and marks and lines, the first of them drawn on hastily during the briefing Captain Blackford had put together and the rest updated throughout the night. Whole areas of the outskirts of Atlanta, plus some central spots, were shaded out. Marked as checked.
And nothing had been found.
“We’re here,” Nate said, finding the old church they were standing in front of and marking it off with a wide-tipped blue pen. It was burnt out, almost completely. There was nowhere for a platform to even attach, and even if there had been, it wouldn’t have been easy for the killer to hide what he was doing. “The latest updates have crossed off everything marked in the east. Those teams are going to move up, split up through the city and cover any properties that we aren’t yet aware of, doing a grid pattern search through the city blocks.”
Laura looked over the map again, feeling the frustration mounting. All she wanted to do was slam her hand down on the dashboard and swear loudly, but she didn’t. Both because it wouldn’t help, and because she didn’t want to inadvertently set off any airbags. Or stress Nate out any further, which he didn’t need either.
“Where are we going next?” she asked.
Nate pointed to a larger circle on the map. “Here,” he said. “I think it’s probably time we split up. It’s already past ten, and we only have a couple of hours left. We need to cover more ground.”
“We only have one car,” Laura pointed out.
“I know that,” Nate said, giving her a look in the harsh yellow glow of the car’s overhead light. “This here is a whole industrial complex that fell out of use. According to t
he map, it’s a factory and a bunch of warehouses. Probably some smaller outbuildings as well. I’m thinking you drop me off there and head on to the next site. It’ll take me long enough to get through them all. If I need to, I can call you to swing back and pick me up, or I can get a cab or something. Anything to speed this up.”
“What if the killer’s there?” Laura asked, a fear seizing her. She hadn’t touched Nate in a long time, deliberately so. She knew that if she did, even for a brief moment, that shadow of death would be waiting for her. Waiting for him. Waiting to claim him.
What if this was the moment? He went off alone, and the killer found him and attacked him before he could raise the alarm?
“I’ll be careful,” Nate promised. “I’ve got my cell phone, and I’ve got your number on speed dial alongside Captain Blackford’s. I’ve got my radio. I’ll stay quiet and cautious. What else am I supposed to do?”
“You’re supposed to stick with your partner so you’re at less of a risk,” Laura argued.
“If he can ambush me and take me down, then he can ambush both of us pretty easily anyway,” Nate said. It sounded like he was trying to be reasonable, but he was actually only making Laura more nervous for his safety. “And what else are we going to do? Let him get away with it? Let someone else die? We only have two hours left, and even with all the other teams searching right now, Atlanta is a big city.”
Laura took a breath. He was right, of course. If it was the other way around, she wouldn’t hesitate to put her own life at risk in order to save the life of a potential murder victim.
That was part of the job.
She sighed out that breath heavily, starting the engine of the car. “Fine,” she said. Not because she was definitely agreeing, but because she figured the drive would give her more time to think of objections. And because Nate’s point still stood. The night wasn’t getting any younger.
Laura watched Atlanta flash by outside the window. Not a great neighborhood. There was more graffiti and broken glass than there were open businesses, by what she could see. Leaving him alone here was even more of a concern, not that he would listen. She just had to think of something. But then they were pulling up outside a security fence bolted with a heavy chain, and Laura still hadn’t thought of anything.
“There’s a number on the sign,” Nate said, nodding ahead. “I’ll see if I can get hold of the guy with the keys. If I can’t, I’ll just hop the fence. I’m sure the security service will either see me doing it and come to try and arrest me, or they won’t see me at all. Either way, I’ll get in. You’re heading out to this one next, right? The closed-up grocery store.”
“Right,” Laura said. She was still hesitant. She felt like she was about to lose him, and she was letting the opportunity to stop that from happening slip through her fingers.
Her fingers…
And she did it, without letting herself think. She reached out and put her hand on Nate’s wrist, felt the bare skin under hers. He was surprisingly warm, given the cold of the night.
But Laura barely even registered that, because swirling all around her was that death. That blackness. So hard to quantify, but there, hovering around her like sickness, making her want to throw up. To get away.
The feeling that he was going to die.