Laura rummaged through the evidence boxes on Paul Payne’s kitchen counter frantically, trying to find something, anything, that would trigger a vision. She needed something pivotal – something that would be strong enough to tell her what she needed to know. It was as though the local cops going through Paul Payne’s apartment had started just bagging up every single thing in sight without discrimination.
“Laura?” Nate asked, approaching her with a worried tone. She didn’t look up to catch his expression. She had a feeling she knew what it would look like, anyway. Like she was being crazy. “What are you doing?”
“I need something,” Laura said. She glanced across the room. The two locals who had been resting near the doorframe, watching her with equally concerned looks, suddenly realized they had something important to do in another room and disappeared, leaving her alone with Nate. “I told you. If I touch something, it can make the vision come on. I need to see.”
“Are you still doing this?” Nate asked. He sighed. “Laura, we really need to figure this out. Maybe instead of just touching things we should actually be looking at them. You know, for clues.”
“Here!” Laura said triumphantly, pulling out a slim laptop from the bottom of the box. The cops had evidently put it in to be taken to the lab and analyzed by their own techs. They didn’t have time for that. By the time anyone even got access to it, it would probably be several days too late.
She opened the evidence bag, pulling the top seal apart with a flourish.
“Wait!” Nate said, reaching out and catching hold of her arm. Laura tensed, but it was fine. He’d grabbed the sleeve of her jacket. The aura of death didn’t come out to choke her. “Don’t touch that! You’re not wearing gloves!”
“I know,” Laura said. And it probably didn’t make any difference anyway. Procedure was procedure, but she doubted they would need fingerprints to prove who this laptop belonged to or who had used it. Paul’s login details, his own personal files, would be all over it.
She pulled her arm out of Nate’s grasp and grabbed hold of the laptop, the one he must have used to make online purchases and perform searches and do so much related to his plans, and she felt a sickening but reassuring stab of pain in her head at the same time.
“Laura, what are-!”
Laura was looking at a woman, looking at her straight on. They were in a basement, she thought immediately. There was something about it. The bare wall behind her, the concrete floor underneath. The lightbulb that was unlit nearby, hanging from the ceiling without any kind of shade. And the darkness. It was dark there, so dim Laura could only just make out enough of the details to name them.
She was bound and gagged, just like the others. Her arms as well as her hands, like Lincoln Ware, so she couldn’t struggle at all. She was weeping, eyes blackened by mascara. The timer on her chest was counting down.
Laura did the math quickly, taking in the time shown on the clock and how long was left on the timer. This woman was going to die at eight in the evening. She was heaving for breath, panicking, her eyes constantly moving like she was searching for some kind of hope.
There was none.
“You doing? You know you’re breaking protocol! Come on!”
Laura looked at Nate, his words oddly disjointed in her memory now even though he must have said the whole sentence without pause. She fought to breathe for a moment, feeling it was over: she’d done it. At last, she’d managed to trigger a vision that actually helped.
But how much had it helped?
“I saw it,” she said, dropping the laptop back into the evidence bag on the kitchen counter, almost stammering in her rush to get the words out. “I saw where she is.”
“What?” Nate said, his eyes wide, huge. “Where?”
“A basement, I think,” Laura said. She pressed her hand against her forehead. “Definitely a basement. Underground. It had that feeling to it. Bare brick walls and concrete floors. Maybe a bit of an older propert
y, the kind that hasn’t been refurbished and made pretty. And it was big, I think.”
“A big, old basement,” Nate said, looking at her like she was talking in tongues. Maybe, as far as he was concerned, she was.
“Just let me think,” Laura said. She hesitated, then called out. “Hey! Local guys – are you still there?”
There was a few moments’ pause before the two cops she had seen earlier reappeared in the doorway. They were both wearing gloves, and one of them was still putting a framed photograph into an evidence bag. They really were bagging up everything. They were young, maybe inexperienced.
“Ma’am?” one of them asked.
“How good is your local knowledge?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know,” the one who had already spoken said, glancing at his colleague. “Pretty good?”
“What about when it comes to real estate?”
They both shrugged. “There’s a guy on our team whose brother is in real estate.”
“Good,” Laura said. “Call him, now, and hand the phone to me.”