CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Laura dove out of the car as soon as she was able to stop, racing toward the front door of the house and reaching for her weapon as she did so. She was growing more and more concerned with every moment that the sun dipped lower and lower toward the horizon. Even though the moon was set to be bright tonight, it only played on her nerves more.
The killer didn’t wait until dark to strike. He did it whenever it pleased him. Could she really have managed to get here in time?
Wasn’t it more likely that the woman she was here to save was already dead?
She knocked on the door too loud, too fast, casting glances around at the darkening scenery as she did so. She had a bad feeling, a terrible unease that was settling over her like a veil. She was beginning to be sure that she was going to have to go around the back and find a body.
Then the door opened, leaving Laura standing there in surprise, one hand still lifted to carry on knocking.
“Hello?” she said, blinking.
“Hannah Martinez?” Laura asked, glancing behind her into the corridor to see if she could spot anything unusual that might give the game away. Maybe the killer was here. Maybe he was somewhere in the backyard already, waiting to lure her outside.
“Yes,” the woman at the door said, looking Laura up and down with utter confusion. “Sorry, what’s this about?”
Laura got out her badge and showed it to her, glancing around the fields and the road behind them nervously. “I need to come inside,” she said. “I’m sure you were called by the Sheriff’s department recently and warned to stay inside your home or with a friend at all times?”
“Yes,” Hannah said again, stepping to the side to let Laura in. “Yes, my sister’s here. We decided to stick together for a few days until this is over.”
Laura moved into the house, walking down the hall in search of this sister. She emerged into a cozy living room by instinct; on the sofa, a woman with an obvious family resemblance was staring up at Laura with an expression of confusion that matched her sister’s.
“Good, you’re both here,” Laura said, noting to herself that the sister appeared younger, as expected. Out of the killer’s age range. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to get two for one, though. “Have you seen or heard anything unusual today? Any noise out in the yard that you were tempted to check out?”
“No, nothing like that,” Hannah answered, following her into the room. “Have we, Millie? Nothing has happened here. We were just wondering whether anything was going to happen.”
Laura turned to her rapidly. “It’s of the utmost importance that you continue to shelter together and stay inside,” she said, her words coming out like a spray of automatic bullets. “I mean it—don’t go outside under any circumstances. You really haven’t seen or heard anything?”
“Nothing,” the sister confirmed, dropping the cell phone she was holding onto her lap. “Do you think we’re at risk?”
“Yes,” Laura said, bluntly. She turned in a circle, trying to think. This didn’t seem right. Something was off. Her instincts, which after all had been honed by years of FBI work as well as the very real clues from her visions, were telling her that something was wrong here.
Like maybe she was in the wrong place.
“Let me just think,” she said, tapping her own phone against her chin. She’d gotten it right, hadn’t she? She’d found the woman in her forties who fit the bill of what the killer was looking for. That was what she needed, wasn’t it? What the killer needed?
But… there was one thing she hadn’t really considered. She hadn’t continued her search after finding Hannah. She’d allowed herself to get too excited and rushed out to save her, knowing the clock had to be ticking down.
But Hannah was safe. Protected by her sister. Not a good target. Difficult for the killer to get her alone, and if he had to kill the sister too, that might force him to move out of the correct order and ruin his carefully constructed plan.
Laura paced back and forth for a moment, racking her brain for an answer. She turned on her phone screen, flipped through her emails to read the PDF files Alice had sent again. She scanned the pages, trying to make them make sense.
“Hannah,” she said. “I just want to check. Your parents are Joaquin Martinez and Beverley Martinez, born Beverley Brown?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, then frowned slightly. “Well, I mean, they’re our real parents. The people who raised us.”
Laura froze and looked at her. “Why did you phrase it like that?” she asked.
“Because we were adopted,” Hannah said, glancing at her sister. “Me and Millie. We were in care from when I was six, and our parents took us in to foster us at first. They ended up legally adopting us.”
A growing sense of horror bore down on Laura. The killer, who knew enough to know the precise order in which to kill his victims to mimic the massacre… he wouldn’t have missed a detail like this. He wouldn’t have got it wrong.
There was nothing on Alice’s pages about this. But then, she guessed there wouldn’t have been any need to put it down on paper. Legally, Hannah and Millie were the daughters of the Martinez couple. That made them related, even if not by blood.
But it also made them no longer viable targets.
Laura wrenched her eyes back to her phone, poring over the pages to try and find another woman who fit the bill. There was no one. Everyone else was older or younger. They just didn’t fit the age requirements.
Except—
Except Maria Bluton, currently forty-one years old, six years her husband’s senior. But then, it all made sense, didn’t it? She’d lived a whole different life before him, been married to someone else before they met. That abusive husband of hers who had ended up dead.
Forty-one. The same age as the woman who had died in the massacre. Laura had overlooked her completely before, knowing that her husband had already been targeted. Somehow, she’d crossed off their family in her mind. She’d seen Maria as a spouse only.
But now she remembered. Alice had pointed it out, hadn’t she? They were distant cousins. Distant enough for it not to matter that they ended up married. They probably weren’t even aware of the link themselves.
But the killer would be.
“I have to go,” Laura blurted out, racing toward the door. “Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be fine!” She saw no sense in letting them relax, just in case she’d got their ancestry wrong as well, just in case it turned out that their natural parents were, after all, descendants of the same line. Because she’d gotten it wrong already once, hadn’t she?
She’d gotten it so wrong that maybe she had just sentenced Maria Bluton to die.
Laura dialed her phone furiously as she slammed the front door of Hannah’s home behind herself and jumped into the car, waiting impatiently for it to connect. It did so as she turned her key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life before she’d even put her seatbelt on.
“Agent Frost?”
“Agent Moore!” Laura called out. “No time to discuss—just listen. I need you to head over to the Bluton farmhouse right now. Get a deputy to drive you and bring back-up. Right now!”
“I’m on my way!” To her credit, Agent Moore was already ending the call before Laura threw the phone down. Then all that was left was for Laura to punch the accelerator pedal to the floor, paying no heed to the darkness or the uneven country roads as she sped as fast as she dared toward Maria Bluton.