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Laura slumped against the back of the seat with her eyes closed. She could see it all happening. Being called into Rondelle’s office. Nate, of course, would vouch for her ability. Whether that meant Rondelle would believe her, or simply throw him out as well, Laura had no idea.
“Okay, done,” Nate said, starting up the car’s engine again.
“Wait, what?” Laura asked, her eyes snapping open. “What did you tell him?”
Nate smirked. “It’s better if you don’t know,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” he said. He chuckled.
Laura did not like the way he had chuckled. And the fact he’d had to make up a lie to fit the situation after it had already taken place didn’t sit well with her, especially if she didn’t know how well he’d managed it. She mentally braced herself to have to come up with something even better later – and God forbid that Dean mention the lie Nate had told before she was aware of it.
She felt her own phone buzz in her hand and looked down at it, expecting to see some kind of message from Dean that she would have to interpret to avoid contradicting whatever Nate had told him. Instead, it was Chris’s name flashing up on the screen that had her heart stuttering a beat.
Are you at home today? I was thinking of dropping by.
Laura grinned, knowing full well she probably looked like an idiot and not caring, and fired off a response about being back in an hour or so.
“Hey, step on it, will you?” she asked, checking the time on the GPS.
“Why?” Nate asked, then glanced at her face. “Oh. You have a hot date to get back for. So, I guess we’re not going back to the office.”
“Probably for the best anyway,” Laura said with a grimace, the specter of the daymare she’d had of Rondelle still looming large in her imagination.
Now all she wanted to do was get back home and see Chris – because she finally had another person she could speak to about what she could do. And because, ever since he had accepted her abilities and embraced her for who she was in full, she looked forward to seeing him more than anyone else. Except, of course, for her daughter – but Lacey was only allowed to visit Laura on her designated weekends.
“Fine,” Nate said. “But tomorrow, we sit down and take a serious look at this cold case – and whether there’s any way we can use your vision to solve it without alerting anyone about where we got the lead. And figure out why you’re getting cold case visions now – because from what I’ve seen so far, your visions only warn us about present danger.”
He was right, of course. Even when Laura had seen things from the past before, they had helped her to learn the identity of killers that were striking in the present time.
So the question remained, and needed to be answered: Why now? And what was the danger she needed to be aware of?
CHAPTER SIX
At the sound of a knock on her door, Laura shot to her feet and rushed over to it. Only at the last minute did she remember to take a breath, smooth down her hair, and actually smile – so she didn’t completely terrify Chris and Amy with how eager she was to see them.
“Hey!” Chris said, beaming at her when she opened the door. Amy rushed forward and hugged Laura around the legs without a word, then rushed inside – perhaps looking for her playmate.
“Hi,” Laura said, stepping forward lightly to kiss Chris and then aside so that he could come in. She glanced behind her at where the blonde-haired little girl was standing in the middle of the sparse living room, looking confused. “No Lacey here today, Ames. Sorry. She’s with her Daddy today.”
Amy’s shoulders slumped a little. “That’s okay,” she said, unconvincingly.
“Someone had something they wanted to show you,” Chris said, in an over-loud singsong voice, clearly directed at Amy rather than its ostensible target of Laura.
“Right!” Amy exclaimed. She spun around, taking off her tiny pink backpack, and rummaged inside it before bringing out a piece of paper – which got crumpled on the way out. She ran back to Laura excitedly and thrust it towards her.
“What’s this?” Laura asked, taking the paper and glancing at Chris. He was smiling.
“Amy had to draw her family in class,” he said. He sounded… Laura couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but maybe it was something close to pride.
She looked at the paper, the drawing, and felt her heart nearly burst in her chest. The drawing was annotated, which was helpful, since Amy’s artwork looked very similar to that of any six-year-old. But the four round, lumpy figures, each of which was drawn in a different colored crayon, did have names written above them – albeit names with backwards letters and misspellings.
Me, Unkul Chris, Lara, Lasy.
The translation was easy. When asked to draw her family, Amy hadn’t just drawn her now-guardian, her Uncle Chris – but she’d included Laura and Lacey in the picture as well.
Laura suddenly found herself having to blink very hard to hold back tears.
