And why?
She concentrated, putting it together piece by piece in her mind. Her
visions showed her the future, but not always the future she was interested in. Not always murder or terrible things. But there was always some kind of connection, some trigger.
The nail had set off the vision. So, what was she seeing? The place where the nail would end up? That seemed unlikely. The head was rusted already, and it had been dropped on the ground. How likely was it, really, that someone was going to gather it up and go use it to board up another place?
Then it had to be something to do with the person who had pried the nail off the board. And if that person was the killer…
Laura stood up, filled with new resolve. The entire time she’d been here, she hadn’t heard any movement from inside. Nor had she seen anyone skulking around the place, watching her or it. It seemed as abandoned as it was supposed to be.
She was going to have to take the risk that her assumption was correct.
Laura reached out and grabbed the edge of the lowest board, finding it loose enough to swing out past the edge of the window frame and down. She lowered it until it hit the ground, watching the other boards follow suit without it propping them up. The window was wide enough and high enough up that the boards left an opening behind – an opening big enough for someone to climb through.
There was no glass behind it. The window itself was long since gone, not even a single shard of glass intact.
Laura leaned forward, shining her flashlight into the hole. She swept the narrow beam of light across shelving units, caked with dust and cobwebs, some of them still containing the odd abandoned can of something. A few of them had been tipped over, maybe moved back purposefully.
She swung the beam of light up from that spot –
And then she saw it.
A platform, set up high above the cashiers’ lines, rigged in position. There was a rope hanging from the beams of the roof, dangling ominously with nothing inside it. There was no one here.
But she was on his track.
And she knew where he must be now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Laura sat back inside the warmth and comfort of the car, away from the potential exposure of the store. She pulled the radio off her belt and spoke into it urgently.
“Unit required to the abandoned property marked with key A152 on the map,” she said. “We have a hit on a future location setup.”
There was a flurry of crackling over the radio in response, as though several people had all pushed their buttons at once in knee-jerk surprise.
“Unit seventeen, please respond,” the operator at HQ came back.
“Unit seventeen, en route.”
“Agent Frost?” that was Blackford.
“Go ahead,” Laura told him.
“You have a platform setup?”
“Affirmative,” Laura replied. “No sign of suspect or victim. The property is at this moment empty.”
“Unit seventeen, stay alert,” Captain Blackford said. “You too, Agent Frost. No telling when this guy will show up.”
“Agreed.” Laura paused, wondering if she should say it, and then gave into her instincts. They needed to track this new place down, the one she had seen, in case it was where he was now. Yes, she was probably going to sound crazy if anyone asked her how she knew what she was looking for. Yes, if Nate heard, he was going to think she was hallucinating or something. But there was a life on the line, and none of that mattered if she could save it. “Can I get local assistance identifying a locale? I’m looking for a white-painted barn. Abandoned.”
There was a short pause. Then, “Ma’am, there are a lot of abandoned barns around the outskirts of the city. Might need to have more data on that one.”
Laura thought for a moment. “There’s a big tree outside, looks like it got struck by lightning or something. Huge tire on a rope swing, like a tractor tire.”
There was another pause, longer this time. Silence. Laura was about to repeat her request, wondering whether no one knew what she was describing or whether the message simply hadn’t been clear enough, when the radio crackled to life once again.