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“Sure thing,” Dean said. “Don’t forget my burger!”
“Thanks, Dean!” Laura said, ending the call. “He’s found it!”
“Just like that,” Nate said drily.
“Yes, he -” Laura stopped as she realized he was making fun of her. “Well, I didn’t expect him to get it that fast.”
“I heard,” Nate said. “I also heard you being such a bad liar; I don’t know how I ever actually believed your excuses for your visions.”
“Well, you didn’t,” Laura pointed out. “That’s why you were suspicious in the first place.”
“Maybe I should start giving the excuses from now on,” Nate said with a smirk. “Before you get us into even deeper trouble.”
“We should call in,” Laura said, looking at the clock on the car’s dashboard.
“You want to report it? We’re not even there yet,” Nate argued. “There’s still a couple of minutes to go on the route.”
“Not callitin,” Laura said. She kept an eye on the GPS and the road ahead at the same time. It was a straight path from here to the destination, but she wanted to stay alert in case it was off. “I mean call in and tell them we won’t be in the office today.”
“Good shout.” Nate paused with his hand on his cell phone. “What should I tell them as an excuse?”
“We’re following a lead from an informant,” Laura said. “Why not? They don’t have to know what it is yet. If it comes to nothing, that’s what we’ll say. It was nothing.”
“Which case?”
“I don’t know,” Laura shrugged. “We always get the confession or the evidence required for an easy conviction. Say it’s for one of the most wanted, or something.”
“Then we’d have to hand the information over,” Nate said with exasperation. “You know what – I should follow my own advice from earlier and make sure that I’m the one telling the lie.”
“Well, do it quick,” Laura said. “We’re here.”
The looming shape of the building up ahead was so familiar to her that it felt like she was looking at something half-remembered from her childhood. She had that terrible prickly feeling of knowing she knew this place, but not really being able to grasp any memories that placed her there. She’d only seen it through the eyes of another – and that woman had been very familiar with the view. Laura knew that. She’d sensed that this was a route the victim often walked.
Not that familiarity had done anything for her in the vision Laura had seen.
She parked up outside Mickey’s, in a space right to one side. There was room for perhaps three cars – it was less of a parking lot and more of an incidental gap beside the building. Nate had just started talking on the phone, so she got out of the car to look closer and left him to finish up.
Mickey’s was out of commission, that much was clear. So much so that Laura wasn’t actually sure it would have still shown up on a map search, which was why it was so lucky they had Dean to rely on. The building was half-crumbling, bricks looking beaten down, paint peeling. Even the wooden boards placed over the windows looked like they were rotting away.
Which was strange, because Laura could have sworn in her vision that the windows weren’t boarded up at all. But maybe she was wrong. She’d seen it through the eyes of a panicked victim and in the dark, after all. And all the lights had been off.
She turned and looked the other way, towards the other side of the road. The trees crowded there just as she had remembered them. Unlike the rest of the street, the light of the day didn’t make them look less menacing. They were thickly entwined, some of the branches growing together, and Laura felt a lump in her throat at the thought of how desperate the woman in her vision had felt. How she’d sensed that going deeper into that terrifying mess of trees was the safest option.
Laura glanced over her shoulder and saw Nate getting out of the car, the phone back in his pocket instead of in his hand. “It was over there,” she called out. “On the other side.”
“Let’s go, then,” Nate said. He shrugged his FBI windbreaker closer around himself, folding his arms over his broad chest. “It’s cold out.”
“That’s February for you,” Laura said, eyes up to the sky. There were grayish-white clouds up there. She hoped it wasn’t an indication of snow.
There was no traffic on the road, so it was easy enough to cross. Laura led the way, looking back at Mickey’s until she knew they were about the right distance down the street, and then stepped off the sidewalk and into the darkness of the trees.
Immediately, the day seemed to almost disappear. The branches were so thick overhead that the only light coming in was from the sides, where the rays of the sun reached feebly down through the undergrowth. Laura picked her way carefully in a diagonal direction, trying to remember exactly where the woman had run.
“The man came from over there,” Laura said, turning to point behind herself. Nate looked, but there was nothing to be seen. Just more trees.
“Was he hiding?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “She stepped into the woods and he was just there. I don’t know if he was hiding in the trees watching the road, waiting for someone to go by, or if it was just a coincidence.”
