The vision pulled out slightly, and she thought – this was it – she was going to see him, see his face. All he had to do was turn. Even to the side – even to give her a profile would be enough. She just needed more data. Was his nose long? Did he have a moustache or beard? What color were his eyes? Anything – anything to help her track him down…
He stopped moving, she thought, and then there was some sound, muffled as if from underwater and far away. She couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then there was some kind of grunt, a curse – something going wrong? What was she seeing? What was going wrong for him?
The vision pulled out further, started to solidify a little more around the edges, getting brighter. Laura tried to take in as much as she could, tried to understand what she was seeing. A dim room, maybe – a gray room – the blue shirt in more detail, with epaulettes on either shoulder, with a badge just visible further down on the sleeve –
Laura came back to herself furious and aching, her head pounding for no good reason. Who cared what was going to happen in this interview room to another police officer sitting in this chair? Why would she need to see a vision about that? Even if it had related to their case, she couldn’t see the officer’s face or make out anything about what was happening! It had probably been a case of him stubbing his toe on a doorframe, and she couldn’t even warn him about being careful!
She stood straight and turned to the door, only to find Nate standing in the way with a troubled look on his face.
“What did you see?” he asked. His eyes were wide, his mouth open like he was ready to cheer with excitement. Like he thought she was about to give him the answer to the whole case and they could go wrap it up right now.
Oh, how utterly bizarre it was now that he knew about the visions. How strange to have him asking her what she’d seen, when for so long she had been trying to hide that she had seen anything at all. Sometimes Laura didn’t think she liked this new reality. It had been easier to stomach these kinds of useless distractions when she was the only one who knew about them.
Laura shook her head. She didn’t want to go into it. “It was nothing,” she said. What was she supposed to do – admit to him that she had failed yet again?
“Wait,” Nate said, moving to block her exit as she tried to leave the room. He held out his hands, his voice still fast and excited. “It wasn’t nothing. You had a vision, didn’t you?”
Laura wanted to lie so badly. She wanted to pretend she’d just been spaced out thinking about going on a date with Chris over the weekend, but it was the stupid kind of lie that would create more questions than it answered.
“I did,” she said. “But it was nothing. I have those sometimes. It didn’t help.”
Nate sighed heavily, dropping his arms back down by his sides. “Damnit, Laura, you’re not supposed to be keeping this stuff from me anymore,” he said. “You can tell me now. It’s not like I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “It was nothing you need to know about.”
“Need to know about?” Nate repeated incredulously. He shook his head. “Wasn’t the whole point of the dance we’ve been doing over the past couple of months that you were going to be honest with me from now on? Why did you even tell me about your visions if you’re just going to keep shutting me out and hiding them?”
Laura looked at his face and almost balked. He was angry with her. Again. All those frustrations from the last few months, all the times he had repeated that he couldn’t work with her anymore if she wasn’t open and honest. It was all bubbling right back to the surface now that the issue had come up again. He was furious with her, not just for avoiding his questions this time but for all the other times as well.
And in that moment, something inside Laura cowered away rather than facing up to it. Something inside her was kneeling in front of Marcus, begging him not to take Lacey away from her, even though she was so drunk she could barely say her own daughter’s name right. Something inside her was sitting alone in her car, having received the news that Nate had put in a transfer and was never going to work with her again. Something inside of her was seeing the look on her mother’s face when she realized that Laura had seen her father’s death ahead of time and never said a word about it.
She brushed past Nate and out into the corridor, her mouth clamped firmly shut, and half-walked, half-ran out of the precinct into the cold air and the escape that their hired car offered.