Page 3 of Already Lost

Laura took the knifeshe’d used to slice the cheese and deftly sliced off the crusts on all foursides of Lacey’s sandwich, adding them to her own plate since there was noreason to waste good food. Using the knife made her hand tremble for a momentas she put it down. Was that what Chris had been using in her vision? Was it aknife?

She took a deep breath,trying to think more clearly. It seemed like everything she did, said, saw, orheard was enough to take her back to that moment. She’d been sitting in a caféwith Zach, the only other psychic she’d ever met in her life, and both of themwere trying to work out why their powers were acting up. She’d touched his handto reassure him, and then she’d seen it.

Chris, her boyfriend ofnot too many months – if she could still call him a boyfriend at her age, sinceit sounded like something you said in your twenties – crouching over Zach.Plunging a hand down and stabbing him in the chest. And the way Zach looked –prone, like he was out cold, only there was a look of terrible pain and fear onhis face.

It had only been a visionof a moment’s length, but she hadn’t been able to get it out of her head.

Laura grabbed the twoplates she had prepared and carried them over to the sofa, handing one to Laceyand keeping the other on her own lap. “What are we watching?” she asked.

“This is my favoriteshow,” Lacey declared – just one more thing to squeeze Laura’s heart painfully.If she’d had full-time custody of her daughter, she would have known thingslike this. Only getting to see her on the weekends was tough, and she knewthere was so much she was missing. After Marcus, Lacey’s father, banned Laurafrom seeing her at all for so long, she’d already missed so much. The thoughtof missing a single second more was so painful to her.

Almost as painful as thethought that she’d been wrong about Christopher Fallow when she’d finallydecided to trust him.

It hadn’t been athoughtless moment or a whim. She’d taken time to get to know him, to make surehe wasn’t anything like his violent and abusive brother. To be sure that he wasgoing to be a good guardian for his niece now that she had neither of herbiological parents to turn to anymore. Falling for him, well, that had happenedsomewhere along the way, by accident.

But that was Chris. Itwas hard not to adore him. He was a doctor – a cardiologist – who had spentyears of his life doing aid work overseas in communities that couldn’t affordproper care. When his own brother had been jailed for killing his wife, hehadn’t hesitated for a moment – he’d given up his charity work, come back home,and taken his niece in. He was wonderful with Amy, and even more adorable washow badly he wanted to be wonderful for her.

And yet…

What Laura had seen inthat moment wasn’t a kind, gentle, giving soul. It had been an act of stunningviolence, perpetrated on a helpless old man.

Laura put her arm aroundLacey and held her a little tighter, fervently hoping she was wrong.

Her visions had neverfailed her before. They were always right, one way or another. But lately…lately, things had been going in a different direction. Her visions had beenunpredictable. She’d started seeing the past as well as the future. And on herlast case, she’d thought she’d fulfilled the vision and caught their killer,only for the same scene to happen to her in real life, effectively twice. Withall of this going on, it was hard not to hope that the vision wasn’ttrustworthy at all.

That maybe, somehow,Chris wasn’t about to turn into a violent psychopath and kill a man that Laurahad only just met – but needed badly, because he was the only one she had everknown who could provide insight into her gift.

“Are we going to see Amytoday, Mommy?” Lacey asked.

Laura bit her lip. It wasonly natural for Lacey to assume, really. They had settled into a nice routineof going over to Chris’s house on Saturdays so the girls could have a playdate.This week, though, Laura hadn’t confirmed with Chris. Instead, she’d made up anexcuse about appointments and put him off. When they hadn’t gone aroundyesterday, Lacey must have thought they would be going today, Sunday, instead.

“Not this time, sweetie,”Laura said. “I thought we could have a Mommy and Lacey day, just the two of us.What do you think?”

Lacey pouted slightly.

“And some ice cream?”Laura added, knowing it was a bribe but preferring to keep her daughter happythan to think about that too much.

“Okay,” Lacey chirpedhappily, swinging her legs against the sofa seat as she turned her attentionback to the screen.

Laura hugged her again,pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Lacey endured it rather thanresponding, keeping her focus on the screen and then giggling at the antics ofone of the cartoon characters.

Laura sighed quietly toherself, taking a bite of her neglected sandwich. She’d had to field threerequests to meet from Chris and one from Zach already, and it had only been aweek. She was starting to run out of valid-sounding excuses for why she couldn’tsee them. But the more she kept them apart, the less likely it was that eitherof them would be in danger – and the less she saw of them, the less likely itwas that she would get hurt so much when her vision came true.

Which was nonsense, ofcourse. She was going to hurt if it came true. She was going to hurt badly. Shehad invested so much in the idea of Chris, and Zach was the help she had beenwaiting on for decades.

How was she going to copeif she lost both of them in the same moment?

Her eyes strayed to thedrawer in the kitchen where she used to keep bottles of wine, and she knew whatthe answer was. She would cope the only way she knew how, if she wasn’t strongenough to resist. For Lacey’s sake, she’d been sober for a long time now.Longer than she’d ever managed it before. She had to keep it up.

If she didn’t, she’d loseLacey again. And that couldn’t happen. Losing all three of them one after theother – no, she wouldn’t be able to cope with that in any universe, under anycircumstances.

Laura hugged Laceytighter again.

“Mommy,” Lacey said,squirming. “I’m watching my show.”

“Oh, sorry.” Lauraconsciously loosened her grip. “Don’t forget your sandwich.”

It was probably a goodthing, for Lacey’s sake, that Laura’s cell phone started to ring on the coffeetable. As she reached for it, she thought maybe she was about to get adistraction that would help her to stop obsessing over the vision.

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