How could her visions match up perfectly to everything, and yet the theory was wrong?

  She hadn’t had a vision for Brooke yet. Hadn’t seen a single death, let alone two. Unless Bree had brought something that belonged to her sister without being asked, there was little chance of it happening right now, either – and Laura needed answers to make sense of this.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” Nate asked with a frown. He shifted slightly, and Laura knew he felt the same tension about this. Only not quite the same – because she was the one who had seen the visions and come up with the theory, and if she was wrong, this was all her fault for sending them on a wild goose chase.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Bree said, making Laura’s heart sink even further. “She even – oh, God. Is that what this is all about?”

  “What?” Laura asked, sitting up straight.

  “The book?” Bree asked, looking between Nate and Laura.

  The two agents looked at each other, too.

  “What book?” Nate asked, though Laura knew he must be feeling the same racing hope that she had, the same heartbeat turned up to eleven at the thought that maybe their theory was back on.

  Bree groaned and covered her eyes. “It’s so embarrassing,” she said. “A few years ago, Brooke did this – I don’t know, like a prank I guess. She was interviewed for this book about people who had nearly died and lived to talk about it. It never happened to her, though. She just made it all up. She had a real laugh about it.”

  Laura blinked. A fake near death experience?

  But that would mean…

  “This book,” Laura said. “Was it written by a man called Sean Jardine?”

  “Yes, that’s right!” Bree replied. “How did you know that? Is it all linked to the book somehow? Did something happen with it?”

  “We don’t know just yet,” Laura said, not wanting to get ahead of herself. “What I can tell you is that the suspect you spoke to us about yesterday has been cleared, so we are looking at different avenues now.” That was vague enough, she felt, but at least would stop the remaining Wares from going after the stalker themselves and doing something stupid.

  “Well, who do you think did it now?” Bree asked. Her eyes widened. “Not… Sean Jardine?”

  Laura managed to stop a growl of frustration from ripping out of her throat. She was already worried about the reaction the Wares would have to the first suspect given their anger yesterday. Giving them another one to focus on instead had not been her intention.

  “We don’t have a specific suspect we can talk about at this time,” Laura said. “We’ve only just heard about the book, so it’s too early to say whether it’s relevant to the case or not.” Again, her word choice was careful: she didn’t want to admit to Bree that she wasn’t the first person to mention the book, or that it was connected to the other victims as well.

  “Thank you for coming in,” Nate said hastily. “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything new to add since our conversation before?”

  “I haven’t,” Bree said, shaking her head and deflating again. “It still just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Try not to hang all your hopes on it making sense,” Nate said, though his voice was soft. “When we’re dealing with killers, often, their motives and reasoning are pretty different from what we would think of as normal. If it makes you feel better, you can focus on getting justice – but if it was me losing a loved one, I’d try to think more about the good times we did have together than the reason or the story for why they were killed.”

  Bree looked at him hard. “But you haven’t ever lost a loved one, have you?” she asked, her tone flat.

  Nate swallowed hard.

  “Thank you, Miss Ware,” Laura said, this time jumping in to save Nate. She stood up and her head did not feel like a steel ball was ricocheting around inside of it, which she took to mean the painkillers were working. “We’ll be in touch as soon as we have any new updates to pass on.”

  “Right,” Bree said, standing up to join her. She went towards the door without much resistance, though Laura could feel something running through her – like a current. Anger. It was still there, right under the surface. Maybe it just wasn’t aimed at law enforcement anymore.

  Laura closed the door behind her, and made a mental note to ask Cortez to have their assigned family detective watch them extremely closely.

  “This is it,” Nate said, now they were alone again. He had pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and was tapping the screen. “Isn’t it? The book. It has to be the link. Jessika Granger and Brooke Ware were both interviewed for it – it’s the only link between them. So, if our killer is going after people who had near death experiences, then he must be using a copy of this book to identify them.”

  “We need to get our hands on a copy and find out if Haydn Townsend is in it,” Laura said. “The way I see it, if he isn’t, then he has to be the victim with the personal connection to the killer. And if he is included inside the book, then we know that everyone else featured is under threat.”

  Nate was scrolling through something on his cell phone. He frowned, biting his lip for a moment. “I can’t find anything online by Sean Jardine,” he said, then his face lit up. “Oh! I have it… wait, hang on. It says there’s none in stock.”

  “It’s out of print after only a few years,” Laura said. “It must not have been very popular. Which narrows the field of potential killers, but on the other hand, might make it harder for us to find a copy.”

  “Well, there’s one way I can think of to get a copy of that book as fast as possible,” Nate said, looking up at her. He grinned. “Let’s go meet Sean Jardine.”

  Laura opened her hand to show him the car keys. “Way ahead of you,” she said, opening the interview room door again to lead the way out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Laura parked the car and looked up. The sun was fully up now, people already moving around and leaving their homes to go to work. They were going to have to cross their fingers that Sean Jardine was home, because they had no information about his potential current employers – only an address.

  “Are you sure this is it?” Laura asked. The property was almost on the verge of being dilapidated. It might have been a nice home once, but now it was in dire need of repairs: paint peeling on the door, weeds growing in the front yard, a broken window patched up with cardboard. It was dirty, covered in a gray sheen as if someone had sprayed the whole place with something disgusting. There was even mail spilling out of the mailbox, which was crumpled and half-broken off its perch.

  “This is the address we were given,” Nate said, double-checking the GPS and the details he had written down. “Doesn’t exactly look like the home of a successful writer.”

  “Then maybe he wasn’t successful,” Laura guessed, taking a breath, and then getting out of the car to find out.

  The two of them walked in what suddenly felt like strange silence to the door. The whole neighborhood was quiet, like it was holding its breath. Laura felt like she was being watched, glancing up quickly to try to justify the sensation. She was sure she saw a curtain twitch in one of the upstairs windows, as though someone had jerked away quickly.

  There was a faded, dirty sign on the door, printed on plain paper, telling callers not to bother the homeowner unless they had been invited. Laura ignored it and knocked loudly, defying Jardine not to come to the door. He didn’t have to. They could come inside to him, if they really needed to.

  “This is creepy,” Nate muttered as quietly as he could.

  Laura resisted the urge to smirk at him – largely because she was finding it a little creepy, too.

  There was a long pause and then the door opened – by a crack. Just the tiniest amount, enough for them to see…

  Nothing. The house was so dark inside, despite the bright morning, that Laura couldn’t even make out more than the vague shape of a person behind the door.

  “Sean Jardine?” she guessed, anyway.

  “What do you want?” he asked, his voice a dark mutter. Laura wasn’t even convinced she had heard it after the sound faded away.

  “We need to talk to you about your book,” she said.

  There was a long pause. The door opened a tiny fraction more. “Are you publishers?” he asked.

  “No,” Laura said. “We’re agents.”

  The door opened fully, revealing Sean Jardine for the first time. He was tall and of a medium to strong build, as though he looked after his own body far better than he did the house – though his clothing was stained and even ripped in a couple of places. There were dark shadows smudged under his eyes and his dark hair was unruly, as though he hadn’t combed or neatened it in a while.

  “Okay,” he said, stepping aside.

  Nate moved forward, lifting up his badge as he did so. “FBI agents,” he clarified.

  Jardine swore and tried to slam the door shut, but Nate’s foot – in a black, heavy boot that could handle the stress – was already in the way. With a wide and determined grin, Nate pushed the door back open all the way.

  “I think it’s best we come inside for a chat,” he said, and there was enough menace in his voice that Jardine actually stepped back and led the way.

  He took them into a room that, like the outside of the house, had seen better days. The once-cream carpet was dotted with all manner of stains in a range of different colors, from what looked like red wine to black patches to even a singed area. At least, Laura hoped the deep red was wine.

  There were empty beer cans crushed all over the coffee table and under it, as well as empty takeout containers, and a blanket on the sofa hinted that Jardine had taken to passing out down there. Laura eyed the empty cans and then made herself look away. Now was not the time to be getting tempted.

  “I don’t need to speak to you,” Jardine declared, crossing his arms over his chest. He didn’t sit, instead remaining standing and facing Nate, as if expecting a confrontation. Laura glanced at the stained and dirty sofa and chair and decided that standing was probably the right decision all round. “You can’t make me speak to you. I’m not giving away anything. I know about these cases, where someone comes and gets all the ideas and then produces it quicker. I’m not giving you my IP.”

  “Your IP?” Laura said blankly.

  “Don’t play dumb,” Jardine snapped. “You’re here to steal my new book idea.”

  “We really are FBI agents, not book agents,” Laura said, taking her own badge out this time to show him. She stepped closer so he could examine it, then further away to give him his space once he seemed to be done.

  “I still don’t need to speak to you,” Jardine said. One of his eyes seemed to twitch.

  “You don’t have to,” Laura said. “But we’d like to rule you out as a suspect in a murder inquiry, so I would really advise that you do.”

  Like everything else, it was a test. If he was innocent, he would likely talk with them, realizing that the accusation was a serious one. If he was guilty, then he would know that talking with him wouldn’t rule him out. He would either get extremely nervous and try to lie – or he would still refuse to talk to them outright.

  “It’s a free country,” Jardine snapped. “I can do what I like.”

  Laura sighed. This was going to go like that, was it? At least this was all increasing the likelihood that he was the man they wanted, after all. And if he was the killer, then she would take any amount of hassle to take him off the streets.

  “You interviewed some local people for your book about near death experiences,” Laura said. “Do you remember their names?”

  Jardine wrinkled up his face. “I spoke to them personally and spent long hours transcribing their interviews, and then I spent time publicizing the book… of course I remember what their names are.”

  “Okay,” Laura said. “So?”

  Jardine stared at her.

  “Let’s see,” Laura continued. “Do you remember talking to a Jessika Granger?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yeah, the lightning girl. Why?”

  “Do you watch the news, Mr. Jardine?” Nate asked, gesturing with a thumb back towards the TV in the corner.

  “It doesn’t work,” Jardine muttered. “What? What’s going on?”

  “You really don’t know what might have happened to Jessika to put her in the news this week?” Laura asked. She was finding it a little hard to believe. By this point, everyone they’d spoken to had heard about Brooke Ware, and now that time had passed, they were aware of Granger as well.

  Jardine sighed in annoyance. “Just tell me so you can get the hell out of my home,” he said.

  Laura raised her eyebrows at the way he’d spoken to them, but she complied. “She’s dead, Mr. Jardine.”

  There was a pause in which he seemed to consider it. Then he shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “So?”

  “That doesn’t distress you at all?” Nate asked. “Or even surprise you?”

  “Of course, it’s sad,” he said. “I didn’t really know her. She’s not the first person I interviewed to die, either.”

  “No?” Laura asked. He was talking too much, incriminating himself. That was good. She wasn’t going to interrupt him if he was working his way towards a confession.

  “Some of them were older,” he said. He scratched the back of his neck like it was nothing. Casual. “There was one guy who just died of old age. And Brooke.”

  Laura stared at him. He hadn’t heard about Jessika, but he knew about Brooke?

  “Brooke?” Nate prompted, taking the thought right out of Laura’s head.

  “Brooke Ware,” he elaborated, confirming her suspicions entirely.

  “I thought you said your TV wasn’t working and you hadn’t seen the news lately,” Laura said.

  Jardine looked at her blankly. “Did I?”

  Laura exchanged a look with Nate. He nodded. This conversation was getting dangerous already. If he said something really important and he hadn’t already been read his rights, the lawyers would have a field day in court. And by the way Jardine was talking, lying, and then proving himself a liar one sentence later, it would be essential to have a tape recording to play in court if he didn’t confess. Something that showed how he was already tying himself into knots trying to hide the truth. They needed to do this right.

  “Sean Jardine,” Laura said. “I’m placing you under arrest for murder.” She stepped forward with handcuffs and began to recite his rights, but she barely got another word out before Sean moved quick as a flash out of her way, leaping over the back of the sofa.

  “No! I didn’t do anything!” he yelled, but Nate quickly stepped out into the hall – between Jardine and the front door. There was a moment in which Laura clearly saw Jardine hesitate, searching for an answer. Then he dashed forward again, moving in a strange way from a complete stop to complete motion – towards the stairs.

  Laura admitted that, given the lack of a back door in the house, it was the only option – but it didn’t seem a particularly smart one.

  He was already close by, so Nate was the first one to start leaping up the stairs after him. Laura wasn’t far behind, the two of them both charging after Jardine’s mad run. The carpet was worn threadbare in some places on the stairs and Laura nearly tripped on a loose flap of the fabric, but she recovered and kept close on Nate’s heels. From their position they could easily see Jardine rush to one side, enter a room, and slam the door shut – and then they heard the click of a lock sliding into place.

  “Great.” Laura threw her hands up in the air. “Is that the bathroom?”

  Nate glanced around, checking out the other rooms. “I think so.”

  “Then he probably has razors in there,” she said, mouthing the word ‘razors’ instead of saying it out loud just in case she would have given Jardine an idea. “We need to get inside fast.”

  “Okay, probable cause,” Nate said, shrugging. “Move away from the door.”

  Laura did as she was told, stepping to the side. “Jardine!” she shouted, making sure he wouldn’t be able to say he couldn’t hear their warnings. “Get away from the door, now!”

  Nate squared his shoulders, sized up the door, and then leaned back to give himself some momentum. With a grunt of effort, he kicked his leg at full power directly into the part of the door right below the handle, where the lock was located.

  The second kick did the trick. The wood splintered and burst inwards, collapsing under the force Nate threw into it, and the door swung open. On the other side, Jardine was there, turning towards them with a look of surprise and shock – and most of all, frustration that he hadn’t managed to get away. He had been in the process, apparently, of trying to force a tiny, half-blocked bathroom window open wide enough to fit his body through it. Only his leg had made it through so far, and even that looked like a tight fit.

  “Get down,” Laura said, done with the nonsense he was trying to pull off.

  “You can’t take me in,” Jardine said, his eyes wide, as he scrabbled at the window again. There was paint over the edges, and it didn’t budge an inch.

  “Yeah, I think we can,” Laura said, handing her cuffs to Nate as he walked forward to grab their suspect and literally pull him back from the edge.

  The fight seemed to go out of him as soon as the cuffs were on. Laura turned away to lead the way downstairs – but as she did, a bedroom caught her eye. Why not check it out, she thought, while they were here anyway, to see if there was any evidence?

  One thing stood out as soon as she stepped inside, one ear on the slow progress of Nate and Jardine down the stairs as Nate repeatedly had to order him to take each individual step.

  The book. It was sitting on a small display stand near his bed, one of the only things in the whole house that wasn’t grimy or broken or neglected in some other way. Laura walked over and picked it up, tapping it against her other hand thoughtfully. They had a copy now.

  Time to find out just what about this book was so groundbreaking that someone had ended up dead.

 

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