Out by the car, they paused and lingered, Laura crossing her high heels on the parking lot tarmac and feeling a little bit lost, a teenager again. Chris put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the sky as if to say what a lovely clear night it was, and sighed, and then they looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“I don’t know why I’m being so awkward,” he confessed. “You’ll have a good few days until I see you again, won’t you? And drive safe. Especially with that head injury of yours.”
“You know I’m all better now,” Laura said, pleased to hear that he cared all the same. She only winced when she took out her car keys, grazing the side of her still-bandaged hand on the inside of her coat pocket.
“All the same,” Chris said, then hesitated, and then seemed to come to a decision. He stepped forward, one hand resting on the side of her shoulder, and kissed her on the cheek. “Be careful.”
“I will,” Laura breathed, and he hadn’t stepped back yet, so when their eyes met, they did so across a much shorter space than usual. And when they did meet, it was clear, very clear to both of them that a kiss on the cheek was not going to be enough.
Laura tilted her head up and looked at his mouth, and he didn’t need hinting twice. Chris closed the distance between them a second time, their lips meeting and sending a thrill of heat through her despite the winter cold.
When he pulled back and stepped away again, they smiled and chuckled at each other, and he made a gesture back towards where he’d parked his own car. “Well, I’ll…”
“Sunday,” Laura said, rescuing him with a word they could both agree on.
“Sunday,” he agreed, grinning at her one last time before moving away.
Laura got into the car and sat for a moment, smiling stupidly out at the windscreen – or rather, not really at anything at all. She giggled to herself, then covered her mouth in a kind of pleased shock at the sound she’d made.
Was this really her? A year ago, she’d been so broken. She’d been divorced, unable to see her own daughter, and only really friendly with the inside of a bottle. She’d dragged herself home every night only to lose herself in oblivion so she could forget, and then in the day she’d had to drag herself hungover to work and try to make a difference even though she felt like she was the most useless woman in the entire world. And the visions would come, and then she’d want a drink again before midday, and Nate had to put up with her being snappy and slow until she did.
It had almost put an end to their partnership back then, she remembered. Before she’d managed to start pulling herself up out of the gutter, one lost sobriety chip at a time. He’d stuck by her, though.
But apparently, this time was different.
Laura reached inside her purse to dig out her cell phone, more out of habit that anything else. She knew by now that she wasn’t going to see a message or a missed call from Nate. If he was going to call, it would have been when she was recovering from her head injury. But he hadn’t even messaged to wish her well. That was how she knew just how completely serious he still was about never working together again.
Never being friends again.
The thought put a bit of a dampener on the elation that kiss had produced.
She scrolled through the messages on her phone to the last one she’d sent him, before she’d even gone on the last case. It was still unanswered, even though it was marked as read.
And a spike of pain in her head for a moment had her panicking, thinking that she must have triggered her concussion again – but then she realized it was in her temple, not in the back of her skull – the same place that her visions always –
She was watching him fall again. Again. Nate’s face was contorted in fear, in absolute horror, and she knew that it was because he was looking down at the ground and how far away it was and knowing he was about to die. His arms and legs flailed for purchase against the air. Against nothing. The vision behind him was black, empty, a swirling void of nothing, giving her no clues.
Not the where. Not the when. Not the who or the why.
Only Nate, falling, and every detail of it was so clear she found herself holding her breath, even though she didn’t need to breathe here in this vision space, even though she was a nothing presence herself, an incorporeal form. He was falling, and she could hear the sound of the wind whistling through his clothes as he passed, and a desperate scream ripping from his mouth, and all she wanted to do was reach out and catch him.
All she wanted was for him to be safe. But he was falling, falling, falling…
Laura blinked her eyes open on the cell phone, on the message that he hadn’t replied to. It was so clear. It was stronger again than the last time. The sound she’d heard, the way he had cried out – even though she’d gained no detail, it had been so strong.
And her head – her head was pounding.
The stronger the headache, the more immediately the vision was going to come true, at least in all of her experience so far. But the concussion – that was new. What if it was skewing the pain? Making it worse?
Was Nate in danger now – like right now?
Or was she getting a false signal?
There was no point in trying to answer the question. It didn’t matter. Laura put the car into drive and pulled out of the parking lot, checking the GPS for the route. She had to go to him. She had no choice. If there was even the slightest chance he was in danger, she couldn’t leave him to deal with it on his own.
She had no idea where the place she had seen him falling from was, but if she could get to his house, there was a chance he was still there. That she could stop him before he went to whatever location would hold all that danger for him. And in the meantime, she hit dial on Rondelle’s number, waiting for it to connect, needing desperately to ask him if Nate was somewhere on a case.
She’d thought that the ebb and wane of the shadow of death over him every time she thought of telling him about her visions meant that the knowledge of them would keep him safe. But it wasn’t true. He was in more danger now than he ever had been before.
There was only one way she could interpret that. Every time she’d thought about telling him the truth, she’d thought about healing the growing rift between them. But she’d left it so late, and then he hadn’t been able to deal with it. And the rift had widened all the same.
What the visions were telling her was clear.
Nate was in mortal danger – so long as she was not with him.
Even if he didn’t want to see her now, even if he never wanted to see her again, she wasn’t going to let this happen. She was going to go to him. She had to.
Even if he hated her for the rest of his life, she had to be with him right now – so that he would have a rest of his life to live.