Laura nodded slowly even though he couldn’t see her. “So, I just have to wait,” she said, and sighed. “I feel like I would be a lot more patient if I wasn’t sitting here waiting for a clue in a case that feels unsolvable so far.”
“You’ll get there,” Zach said encouragingly. “Just keep at it?”
“How do you know that?” Laura asked. “Did you see it in another vision of me?”
“No,” Zach said with a chuckle. “I just know from what I’ve seen of you already that you’re a good agent. You’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Laura took another breath for what felt like the fifteenth time she’d had to, telling herself to calm down. She wasn’t good to anyone like this. She was just panicking, going from one thing to another. She had to slow down. Rest. Keep her brain in good shape.
That was the only way she was going to get to the bottom of this – and he was right. She was a good enough detective in her own right. She didn’t need the visions. She and Nate could do this the old-fashioned way.
“Thanks,” she said. “Sorry again for calling.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Zach said, his voice taking on a slightly more authoritative tone – Laura remembered he’d been a teacher. “You must call me whenever you have questions like these. I’d be more upset if you didn’t call, no matter what you interrupt.”
Laura nodded, rubbing a hand over her head. “Thanks,” she said again. “Bye, then.”
“Goodnight, Laura,” Zach said, and she ended the call, throwing her cell phone back onto the bedside table where it belonged.
She let her head hit the pillow next, trying to let go of everything that had been keeping her up. If she could just move past all of this, accept that it might not work this time, she would be able to stop worrying about the visions and instead focus on the case.
With the intention of doing exactly that as soon as the sun rose, she closed her eyes, letting herself drift away at last.
She was in a dark space, unable to see anything at first, simply staring out into the blackness. She had this feeling, though, that she wasn’t staring out into a void or an empty space: there was something out there, an impression of boundaries, something with walls and a ceiling.
Even if those walls and ceiling were so vast she couldn’t see the sides at all.
It wasn’t completely dark. It was like the thought she’d had before: standing in the darkness with only a small light. It wasn’t a light that was helping her see, though, but a kind of soft glow, like from the moon on a quiet night without clouds but when the moon wasn’t full. Enough light to begin to see the vague shapes of things.
Not enough light to really see the details or understand what was going on around you.
Laura strained her eyes, trying to figure out what she was looking at. There was a vague paleness in front of her, a smooth shape, something just out of sight and out of reach…
Her breath caught in her throat when she realized what she was looking at.
A person.
Someone standing right in front of her, so close she felt like she could reach out and touch them. Or they could reach out and touch her. But instead of moving towards her, looking at her, or speaking, this person stayed stock still. Expressionless and unmoving, staring right ahead as though Laura wasn’t even there.
As Laura’s initial fear began to subside, replaced with a different, chilling kind of feeling about the way she was being ignored, she glanced behind the figure in front of her. That was when she realized they were not alone.
The person in front of her was not the only one standing there, staring straight ahead, as though they were all waiting for something. Like soldiers waiting for a speech from a general, all of them in neat formation, all of them standing the same way and staring in the same direction.
The further her eyes allowed her to see, the more Laura’s heart began to race.
There had to be hundreds of them. Maybe even more. Her view of the back of the room was blocked by those in front, and she had no idea about where the space ended. It could stretch on as far as the moon, for all she knew.
Hundreds of them. All standing there silently, waiting for something to happen. Ignoring her.
But all of them facing in her direction, all of them pitted against her – and there were so many that she knew she would be overpowered in a second if they decided to take her down.
She kept staring ahead, up and up and across the hall, all of these bodies just standing there in every direction, making her heart beat so loud in her ears that she thought all of them must be able to hear it, making her sweat, her breath coming faster and faster.
And as she looked down one of the rows of people –
One of them was not in line with the others.
He was not facing forward, without expression, towards some unseen thing behind her.