“I’d say so,” Zach said. “Why? Are you getting an idea?”
“Maybe,” Laura said, turning away on purpose to pretend she was looking at her cell phone. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it some more. I should probably get going, anyway.” She was getting a very clear idea, and it was that they should try not having any contact with one another for a while, like they’d suggested before Zach’s heart attack. She didn’t know if he even remembered that, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t want to stick to it now that he was sick. And she didn’t really want to lose contact with him—not after looking for someone who had powers like she did for so long. So long needing to know she wasn’t alone. But what else were they supposed to do?
“Are you with your daughter this afternoon?” Zach asked, sounding like it was polite curiosity.
“No,” Laura said automatically, without thinking.
“Oh. Then you’re back in the office? Already? I thought you only just got back from your last case.”
“Well, no, I’m not,” Laura said. “I’ve got a…”
She fumbled for a way to end the sentence. Hair salon appointment? He would probably be able to tell that there was nothing at all different about her hair the next time he saw her. Dentist? No matter what she said, she was going to have to keep up the lie later. Stack of paperwork? That sounded more plausible at least, though she’d already admitted that she wasn’t going into the office…
Her cell phone started ringing in her hand, and Laura stared at it in total relief.
“Sorry!” she said, walking toward the door as she answered it. “Looks like work. They must be wondering why I haven’t turned in my paperwork yet!”
And she escaped into the hall, relieved beyond measure.
“Agent Frost?”
“Yes, sorry, I’m here,” Laura said, keeping her voice hushed and avoiding the dirty look she was being given by a nurse as she hurried toward the exit. “I was visiting someone in hospital. I just need to get outside, and I can talk freely.”
“Alright,” Chief Rondelle grunted in reply. Her boss didn’t sound to be in any better of a mood than he had been the last time they’d spoken, when he had more or less snapped her head off. She still had no idea why, either. “Well, you can listen. We have a new case that I’m sending you and Nate on. It’s in Jones Harbor up in Maine. Even I don’t know what to make of this one, but it seems to have some kind of historic tie, and you two have been good with those cases.”
Laura thought back. There was that case recently with the killer who was hunting down the surviving family members of a man who committed a massacre generations before. Alright, so maybe she was good at those cases.
“We’ve only just got back from the last case,” she said, her throat dry. In most circumstances, she relished being sent on a new challenge as soon as possible. It had been that way for years. But things had changed recently. She was sober, and she was getting to spend time at home with her daughter. It would have been nice to get some time to improve her apartment and make it cleaner and nicer for Lacey. She had all this going on with Chris and Zach, too, and now that Chris was definitely not a killer, she wanted to take some time to repair their relationship somehow.
Even spending time with Nate in a non-work context would have been fun. Getting some downtime with the people she cared about. And if she was going to go down the line to her lower priorities, there was also the fact that she was carrying a prior concussion and a still-healing burn on her hand. With Christmas coming up…
But even with all that, breaking the habit of a lifetime was hard to do. Laura had always put the work first. She’d always been available whenever she was assigned a case, and she’d always gone wherever she was sent. The only thing she didn’t listen to was when Rondelle told her to back off in cases like that of Amy Fallow, and even that was because her sense of justice was stronger than her sense of preservation of self.
“Even so,” Rondelle said, firmly closing the door on the possibility of handing the case off to someone else. Laura had no choice but to relent.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” she sighed, checking her watch before walking out of the hospital doors in the direction of the parking lot, shading her eyes against the rising sun.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Hey,” Laura said, tipping her head up at Nate as she joined him breathlessly in Rondelle’s office. She’d rushed there, but somehow not managed to get there quick enough for their boss’s taste. She turned to him with a more formal nod, trying to avoid meeting his glowering gaze. “Sir.”
“About time,” Rondelle grumbled from behind the desk. He looked older than she remembered from barely a week ago, like he was finally starting to look his age. He was one of the fittest men pushing sixty she had ever seen, but there seemed to be a few more flecks of grey in his dark hair today. “Right, here are your briefing documents. Your flight to Maine leaves in a couple of hours, so get yourself acquainted.”
Laura checked her watch and sighed.
“Are we keeping you from something, Agent Frost?” Rondelle snapped.
“N…no,” Laura stammered, taken aback. “I was just—”
“You haven’t even bothered to turn up in uniform,” Rondelle added.
Laura glanced down at her own body, clothed in jeans and a t-shirt. “Like I said, I was visiting someone in the hospital when—”
“Just take the briefing documents and go get ready,” Rondelle said, dismissing her and Nate both with an angry gesture of his hand. “I wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.”
Laura swallowed and then nodded. “Yes, Sir,” she said, stalking right out of the room before she had a chance to get mad and say something that would get her into serious trouble. If Rondelle was this stressed out about the case, it was probably a sign that something really serious was going on. Maybe he’d been put under a lot of pressure to get it solved and didn’t appreciate even a moment of delay.
She carried on to the elevators at the end of the hall, letting momentum carry her. Nate kept pace with her, and there was no point in stopping to talk—they both knew Rondelle might be able to hear them until those elevator doors closed in front of them.