With shaking hands, Laura reached down and grabbed the flashlight she had stashed in her pocket. She lifted it again to place it along the barrel of the gun, to hold them both steady together in case she still needed to fire.
She turned on the flashlight.
And the beam of light hit the man swinging from the rafters of the barn, tied completely with ropes around the whole of his torso, a clock timer on his chest showing a countdown to zero.
No.
Laura froze, staring up at the body in dismay. She was supposed to have another hour. There was supposed to be more time.
How could she be late, when it wasn’t midnight yet?
Laura jumped, turning around with her gun outstretched at the sound of a noise behind her. When she realized it was a car, she immediately ducked inside the barn, hiding to one side of the doors. Using them as cover. If she needed to, she could fire from here. Maybe get a good shot off before he even saw her…
She aimed her gun at the silhouette emerging from the car, ready to pull the trigger.
***
Nate got out of the car and began to move towards the barn, keeping the headlights on to illuminate the interior of the building. There was no one framed in the doorway, but…
Then someone stepped out, and Nate’s hand went to his gun immediately.
“It’s me,” Laura said, heavily, sounding like she was relieved – but also dismayed at the same time.
“Laura?” Nate called out, his voice louder than hers, breaking what felt like a sacred silence around the farm. “You alright?”
“Yes,” she said, but her shoulders slumped as she said it. “The victim is inside. We’re too late.”
Nate turned to the cops who had given him a ride, the two of them only just now filing out of the car behind him. “Get around the perimeter and look for the suspect,” he said. “He might still be out here. Keep your wits about you.”
They both nodded, setting off at a rapid pace. Nate walked forward instead, towards his partner. She had turned away from him, looking back and up at something on the inside of the barn. As Nate stepped closer, he saw what it was.
The man hanging from the ceiling, still swaying slightly from side to side like a macabre pendulum.
“A man,” he said, out loud, because the surprise was almost too much.
“Yeah.” Laura’s voice was low, down. Dejected.
“He’s changed his MO,” Nate said, rubbing the back of his head with one hand. This was shaping up to be a real headache of a case. “Targeting a man and changing the timings. That’s… is it a change, or an escalation?”
“I don’t know,” Laura sighed.
“But killers don’t just change their MO,” Nate said, as if saying it out loud would make the universe go back on what it had done and make things simpler again. He was almost pleading. “We already have a victim profile.”
“Looks like we were wrong,” Laura said. She glanced at him with a humorless smile. “Third victim proves the rules. And we don’t know most of them, it turns out.”
Nate hesitated, looking at her. For as hard as he was taking this, she seemed to be doing worse.
She’d sounded so sure that this was the place where the killer would be, on the phone. On the radio, too, she had described it exactly. Nate glanced around from his position in the doorway, taking it in. The white-painted barn. The tree with the large tractor tire hanging on a rope swing. It was like she had described. She got it spot on. But how had she known?
When she called him, she had sounded so urgent and frantic that he hadn't taken the time to ask. He just trusted her, like he always did. It always seemed to be that way, with the two of them. Laura telling him things she had discovered, but never how. He'd thought that they were finally getting to the bottom of things, given that she'd said she was seeing to righting things and he had been able to offer her support. But now it was occurring to him, more strongly than ever, that she still knew things. Things he couldn't explain.
And if the visions weren’t real, then he was still missing the true answer.
“How did you know to come here?” he asked, keeping his voice pitched low. The two cops weren't back yet, still completing their circuit around the large barn. Still, he didn't want them to overhear this. “Was there a picture, or something?”
Laura shot him an odd look. “What? No. What do you mean?”
“I heard you on the radio,” Nate said. “You described this place exactly. How did you know to come here?”