The blood wasn't there.
Nora Okafor knew this with the same certainty she knew her own name, knew the weight of her Nikon D850 in her weathered hands, knew the way morning light broke over Whitefish Lake in November. Yet there it was, spreading across the pristine snow like spilled wine, dark and viscous, pooling around something that looked disturbingly like a child's mitten.
She blinked hard, once, twice. The blood vanished.
The shoreline returned to its postcard perfection: untouched powder, lodgepole pines heavy with fresh snowfall, the lake's surface mirror-smooth in the windless dawn. Her breath came out in shaky clouds. Sixty-seven years old and finally losing it. All those crime scenes, all those years documenting death's handiwork in Chicago, had finally caught up to her brain like accumulated radiation.
Pascal would be waiting for breakfast. That thought anchored her. Her ancient tabby cat was real, solid, a creature of predictable demands and rumbling purrs. She lowered her camera, noticed her hands trembling slightly, and began the trek back to her cabin.
The vision—hallucination, whatever the hell it was—had felt different from a memory. Memories had soft edges, like photographs left too long in developer. This had been sharp as broken glass, immediate as a punch to the gut. She could smell it, that copper-penny stench of blood mixed with snow's clean coldness.
"Getting old, Okafor," she muttered to herself, her Nigerian accent still coloring certain vowels despite forty-five years in America. "Brain's finally giving up the ghost."
The two-mile walk back to her cabin usually soothed her. She'd moved to Montana fifteen years ago for the silence, the absence of sirens, the way she could go days without seeing another human face if she chose. This morning, though, the forest felt watchful. Shadows between trees seemed to shift and breathe. Twice she stopped, certain she heard footsteps matching hers, but there was nothing. Just her own paranoia, her own guilty conscience that never quite learned to shut up.
Pascal greeted her with his usual disdain, sitting by his empty food bowl like a fuzzy orange judge. She opened a can of his prescription kidney diet food—even the cat was falling apart these days—and tried to shake off the morning's weirdness. Maybe she needed to adjust her medications. Dr. Patterson had warned her about interactions between her blood pressure pills and the anxiety medication she'd started after—
No. She wouldn't think about Chicago. Not today.
She spent the rest of the morning editing yesterday's photos. Nature photography was supposed to be therapeutic, her therapist had said. Capture life instead of death. Beauty instead of brutality. But even in the innocent images of frost patterns and winter birds, she found herself looking for signs of violence. That cardinal against snow looked like blood spatter. That broken branch resembled a compound fracture.
At noon, she drove into town for groceries. Whitefish in November was quiet, ski season not quite started, summer tourists long gone. She parked outside Harvey's Market and made her mental list: coffee, eggs, that expensive cat food Pascal demanded, maybe some of that good Nigerian pepper soup mix if Harvey had ordered it like he'd promised.
The automatic doors whooshed open, and she stepped into fluorescent brightness. Then stopped.
The linoleum floor was covered in blood. Not drops or spatters but lakes of it, impossible amounts, and in the middle of it all lay Marcus Chen, the kid who worked at the computer repair shop. His throat had been opened in a second smile, and his eyes stared at nothing. His University of Montana sweatshirt was soaked black-red.
Nora's photographer instincts kicked in before her rational mind could object. She noted the arterial spray pattern on the cereal boxes, the defensive wounds on Marcus's hands, the way his phone had skittered under the magazine rack. She'd seen enough crime scenes to know this was fresh, maybe minutes old, the blood still wet and spreading.
"Ma'am? You okay?"
She jerked back to reality. Harvey himself stood there, red vest and concerned expression, completely free of blood. The floor was clean. Marcus Chen was not dead; she could see him through the window, very much alive, walking toward the diner across the street.
"I'm—" Her voice cracked. "I'm fine. Just felt dizzy for a second."
Harvey, bless him, didn't push. He knew her reputation as the weird hermit lady who used to work with dead bodies. He probably figured she was having some kind of flashback. If only it were that simple.
She grabbed her items quickly, barely registering what she threw in her basket. The vision—because what else could she call it?—had been so vivid she could still smell the blood under the sharp scent of floor cleaner. Three days, something whispered in her mind. Three days.
Where had that come from?
Back home, she tried to convince herself it was stress. Isolation. Maybe early-onset dementia, though her last cognitive tests had been perfect. She made strongly spiced jollof rice, comfort food from her childhood, and tried to lose herself in a documentary about Arctic foxes.
But she couldn't stop thinking about Marcus Chen's dead eyes.
That night, she dreamed of Chicago. Of the Riverside Hotel, where maintenance worker Dwayne Morse had allegedly murdered three sex workers. She'd photographed those scenes, testified about blood spatter patterns that seemed to confirm Morse's guilt. The jury had believed her expert testimony. Morse got life without parole.
Six months later, the real killer confessed. By then, Morse had already been stabbed to death in prison.
She woke at 3 AM, Pascal's weight on her chest, his purr vibrating against her racing heart. The cat always knew when the nightmares came. She stroked his fur and stared at the ceiling, wondering if the visions were punishment. Maybe God or the universe or her own brain had decided she needed to pay for that mistake.
"Stupid thought," she told Pascal. "Universe doesn't work like that."
But she couldn't go back to sleep.
Three days later, she was sitting in the Whitefish Diner, trying to convince herself to eat the Greek omelet she'd ordered, when Marcus Chen walked in. He took a booth in the back corner, ordered coffee, pulled out his laptop. Normal Tuesday afternoon. Nothing unusual except the way Nora's hands started shaking.
She wanted to warn him. Walk over and say what? "Hey, kid, I had a vision of you dead in Harvey's Market, so maybe stay away from there?" They'd call Sheriff Brennan, and she'd end up in a psychiatric hold. She knew how these things worked.
Instead, she watched. Marcus typed intently, occasionally checking his phone. A few other customers came and went. The waitress, Dolly, refilled coffee cups and gossiped about the upcoming winter festival. Everything was normal, mundane, safe.
Then Marcus's phone buzzed. He read something, and his expression changed. Fear, maybe, or recognition. He packed up quickly, left money on the table, headed for the door.
Nora followed.
She felt like a stalker, trailing him at a distance as he walked quickly down Central Avenue. Not toward Harvey's Market, though. Toward the alley behind the computer repair shop. She hung back, watched him disappear around the corner. Counted to ten. Followed.
The alley was empty.
But on the ground, fresh drops of blood led toward the dumpster.
No. No, no, no.
She ran, her sixty-seven-year-old knees protesting. Behind the dumpster, Marcus Chen lay twisted on the grimy snow. His throat was opened exactly as she'd seen, that second smile gaping. His phone was in his hand, screen cracked but still showing a text: "You know too much. Meet me or I release everything."
Nora knelt beside him, checking for a pulse she knew wouldn't be there. The blood was still warm. His eyes were still surprised. She'd seen death often enough to know he'd been gone less than a minute.
She should call 911. Should step back, preserve the scene. Instead, she found herself photographing it with her phone, documenting angles and evidence with the same detached professionalism that had carried her through thirty years of crime scenes. Only when she heard sirens—someone else must have called—did she realize what she was doing.
"Jesus," she whispered. "Jesus Christ."
Sheriff Jake Brennan arrived with the intensity of a man who took every crime in his town personally. She'd seen him around, knew his story the way everyone knew everyone's story in a small town. Lost his daughter to suicide, threw himself into his work, lived alone in a cabin not unlike hers. He was younger than her, maybe mid-forties, with the kind of tired eyes that came from seeing too much.
"Ms. Okafor," he said, and she was surprised he knew her name. "You found him?"
"I was in the diner. Saw him leave in a hurry. Something felt wrong." Not a lie, exactly.
Brennan studied her with those tired eyes. "You used to be a forensic photographer. Chicago PD, right?"
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
"What do you see here?"
The question surprised her. She looked at Marcus again, professional instincts overriding shock. "Single cut, left to right, suggests a right-handed attacker. No hesitation marks. Either the killer knew what they were doing or got lucky. The angle suggests someone roughly the same height. Marcus was what, five-ten? The blood spatter..."
She trailed off, realizing she was doing it again. Analyzing. Documenting. As if her expertise meant anything anymore, as if it hadn't sent an innocent man to his death.
"Go on," Brennan said.
"The blood spatter's concentrated on the east wall. He was facing his attacker when it happened. Probably knew them. The phone in his hand, the text—this was a meeting gone wrong."
Brennan nodded slowly. "That's more than my deputies would have caught. You mind coming to the station? I'd like to get a formal statement."
She wanted to refuse. Wanted to go home to Pascal and her silence and pretend none of this was happening. But Marcus Chen deserved better than her cowardice.
At the station, a squat building that looked more like a large house than a police facility, Brennan made her coffee and asked careful questions. She told him about seeing Marcus in the diner, following him, finding the body. All true, if incomplete.
"What made you follow him?" Brennan asked. "You said something felt wrong."
This was the moment. She could tell him about the vision, sound like a lunatic, probably end up sedated in the hospital. Or she could lie.
"I've seen that look before," she said finally. "On victims' faces, right before something bad happens. Call it instinct."
Brennan accepted this, but his eyes lingered on her face. He was a good cop; he knew there was more. But he also knew when not to push.
"Marcus was a good kid," he said. "Computer genius, full scholarship to UM. Why would anyone..."
"The text mentioned him knowing too much. Was he involved in anything?"
"Not that I know of. But kids these days, with the internet..." Brennan rubbed his face. "My daughter, before she died, she was being harassed online. Took me months to figure out how bad it was. These kids live whole lives we don't know about."
The pain in his voice was raw, even after five years. Nora wanted to offer comfort but didn't know how. She'd never had children, had always been married to the job. Now, in her cabin with just Pascal for company, she sometimes wondered if she'd chosen wrong.
"I'll look into his online activity," Brennan said. "Maybe he stumbled onto something he shouldn't have."
Nora left the station as the sun was setting, painting the mountains blood-red. She drove home on autopilot, mind spinning. The vision had been real. Somehow, she'd seen Marcus Chen's death three days before it happened. Which meant...
Which meant what? That she was psychic? That she'd finally cracked completely? That the universe had decided to give her the worst possible gift as punishment for her sins?
Pascal greeted her with unusual affection, winding around her legs and purring. She picked him up, burying her face in his fur. He smelled like home, like safety, like the simple life she'd tried to build here.
That night, she didn't sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Marcus's throat opening, blood spreading like spilled secrets. But worse were the other visions that came creeping in. Quick flashes, like a slideshow from hell:
A woman hanging from a tree behind the high school, face purple and swollen.
An old man beaten to death in his living room, CNN still playing on the television.
A child—God, a child—floating face-down in the lake.
And behind them all, growing clearer with each vision, the winter festival. Main Street packed with people, the traditional bonfire, the craft booths and food trucks. Then explosion, fire, screaming. Bodies scattered like dropped dolls. So many bodies.
She jerked awake—when had she fallen asleep?—gasping. Pascal complained and relocated to his cat tree. The clock read 4:17 AM. The winter festival was in nine days.
The next morning, she tried to convince herself the visions were just anxiety, her brain creating disasters from news stories and old crime scenes. But as she made coffee, she saw it again: the woman hanging from the tree. This time, she could see the woman's face clearly. Dolly. The waitress from the diner.
Without thinking, she grabbed her phone and called the diner. It rang six times before someone picked up.
"Whitefish Diner, this is Frank."
"Is Dolly working today?"
"Who's asking?"
"I'm... a friend. I just wanted to make sure she's okay."
Frank's voice softened. "She called in sick. Sounded pretty rough. Probably that flu that's going around."
Nora hung up without saying goodbye. Dolly was alive. Still alive. But for how long?
She drove to Dolly's apartment, a run-down complex on the edge of town. She didn't have a plan, just a desperate need to prevent what she'd seen. Dolly's car was in the parking lot. Nora knocked on the door, once, twice, then harder.
"Dolly? It's Nora Okafor. From the diner?"
No answer. But she could hear something inside. Music, maybe, or television. She tried the doorknob. Locked.
"Dolly, please. I'm worried about you."
Still nothing. She was about to call 911 when the door opened a crack. Dolly peered out, eyes red and puffy from crying.
"Ms. Okafor? What are you doing here?"
"I heard you were sick. I brought soup." A lie, but Nora had learned that sometimes lies were necessary. "Can I come in?"
Dolly hesitated, then opened the door wider. The apartment was small and cluttered but clean. On the coffee table sat an empty bottle of wine and a full bottle of sleeping pills.
"Rough night?" Nora asked carefully.
Dolly laughed bitterly. "Rough life. My ex is getting remarried. To my sister. They're having the wedding at the winter festival. Isn't that perfect?"
Nora sat down uninvited. "Tell me about it."
For the next two hours, she listened. Dolly talked about the divorce, the betrayal, the loneliness that ate at her like acid. The plan she'd been making to end it all behind the high school, where she and her ex had shared their first kiss.
"That's stupid, right?" Dolly said. "Dramatic and stupid."
"It's not stupid. It's pain. But it's also permanent, and your ex isn't worth that."
They talked until Dolly's tears dried up, until she agreed to call her therapist, to flush the pills, to try another day. When Nora finally left, Dolly hugged her.
"I don't know why you came by, but thank you."
Nora drove home feeling unmoored. She'd changed something. Prevented a death she'd foreseen. Which meant the visions weren't fixed, weren't inevitable. They were warnings.
But warnings from what? From whom?
That afternoon, Sheriff Brennan called. "We found something on Marcus's computer. He was investigating drug trafficking through cryptocurrency. Had files on several dealers, including someone using the handle 'ChiTownJustice.' Ring any bells?"
Chicago. Of course it came back to Chicago.
"No," she lied. "Doesn't sound familiar."
But she knew. Somehow, she knew. Dwayne Morse had had a brother. Anthony. He'd stood in the courtroom gallery every day of the trial, staring at her as she testified. After Dwayne's death, he'd disappeared.
That night, the visions came in a flood. She saw the old man again—Harold something, lived alone on Maple Street. The child in the lake was a boy, maybe six, wearing a red jacket. And the winter festival... God, the winter festival was a massacre. She could see the bomb now, hidden in one of the vendor trucks. Could see the timer counting down.
She wrote it all down, every detail she could remember. Times, places, faces. Her hand cramped and her head pounded, but she kept writing. When she finally stopped, she had twelve pages of death.
The next morning, she went back to the sheriff's station.
"I need to talk to you," she told Brennan. "Privately."
He led her to his office, closed the door. The walls were covered with maps of the county, photos from community events, a picture of his daughter. Pretty girl, bright smile, whole life ahead of her until the internet trolls drove her to eat a bottle of pills.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
She took a breath. This was it. Either he'd believe her or he'd have her committed.
"I know this sounds insane, but I've been having visions. Of crimes that haven't happened yet. I saw Marcus Chen's death three days before it occurred. I'm seeing others. Deaths that will happen during the winter festival."
Brennan's expression didn't change. "Go on."
She told him everything. The visions, saving Dolly, the coming deaths. She showed him her notes, detailed and specific. When she finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"My daughter," he said finally, "used to say she could feel things. Knew when people were lying, when something bad was about to happen. I didn't believe her. Told her she was being dramatic." His voice cracked. "Maybe if I'd listened..."
"This isn't the same thing."
"Isn't it? You saw Marcus's death. You saved Dolly. That's not mental illness, Ms. Okafor. That's something else."
"You believe me?"
"I believe in patterns. You show up in my town fifteen years ago, right after the Dwayne Morse trial. You live like a hermit, taking pictures of trees instead of corpses. Now people start dying, and you're having visions about it. That's not coincidence."
She felt the blood drain from her face. "You know about Chicago."
"I'm a cop. I research everyone who moves to my town. I know you testified. I know Morse was innocent. I know his brother blamed you for his death."
"Anthony Morse. He's ChiTownJustice."
Brennan nodded. "Figured as much. We've been tracking him. He's been in Montana for three weeks, probably planning something. Your visions, they're all connected to him?"
"I don't know. Maybe. The winter festival..."
"Is in six days. We'll increase security, search every vendor, every vehicle. Can you remember any other details about the bomb?"
She closed her eyes, tried to recall the vision. "Blue truck. Montana plates, starts with 4. There's a logo on the side, something about catering. The bomb's in a cooler, red Coleman brand."
Brennan wrote it down. "What else?"
"Harold Fitzgerald, lives on Maple Street. He's supposed to die tonight. Beaten to death in his living room around 8 PM. A boy, maybe six years old, red jacket, drowns in the lake tomorrow afternoon. The killer... I can't see faces clearly, but I think it's the same person. Anthony."
"We'll put protection on Harold, patrol the lake. What about you? If Anthony knows you're here, if he's doing this because of you..."
"Then I'm the real target. The others are just... what? Practice? Torture?"
"Both, probably. Making you watch people die, knowing you can't save them all. It's psychological warfare."
She thought about that. Anthony Morse, spending fifteen years planning his revenge. Not just killing her, but breaking her first. Making her relive her failure over and over until she begged for death.
"I need to leave town," she said. "Draw him away from here."
"No. Running won't solve this. He'll just follow you, hurt people wherever you go. We end this here."
That night, they staked out Harold Fitzgerald's house. Nora waited in Brennan's unmarked car while deputies hid in the shadows. 8 PM came and went. Nothing. Then, at 8:47, a figure in dark clothing approached the back door.
"Move in," Brennan said into his radio.
The arrest was quick, anticlimactic. The would-be killer was a teenager, strung out on meth, looking for easy money. Not Anthony Morse. But in his pocket was a note: "Kill the old man or your sister dies."
"He's using proxies," Brennan said. "Forcing others to do his dirty work."
They saved the boy at the lake the next day, pulling him out just as he fell through thin ice. His mother hadn't even realized he'd wandered off. Again, they found evidence of manipulation—someone had left a trail of candy leading to the dangerous section of ice.
"He's watching," Nora said. "He knows we're stopping them."
"Let him watch. We'll get him."
But as the winter festival approached, the visions got worse. She saw bodies everywhere, heard screaming that woke her from what little sleep she managed. Pascal stopped eating, sensing her distress. She found herself looking at her photography equipment and remembering Chicago, remembering how certain she'd been about those blood patterns.
Two days before the festival, she had the worst vision yet. Not of the festival, but of Brennan. She saw him in his cabin, looking at his service weapon. Saw him put it to his temple. Saw him pull the trigger.
She drove to his cabin at midnight, pounding on the door until he answered in sweatpants and a t-shirt, gun in hand but pointed down.
"What's wrong?"
"Can I come in?"
He let her in. His cabin was spartan but clean, dominated by photos of his daughter. On the coffee table sat a bottle of whiskey, mostly empty, and beside it, a note.
"You were going to do it," she said.
He didn't deny it. "Anniversary of Amy's death. Gets harder every year."
"That's what he's counting on. Anthony. He's not just trying to hurt me. He's trying to destroy everyone around me."
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just a drunk cop who can't let go of his dead kid."
She sat down across from him. "Tell me about her."
He did. Amy had been brilliant, funny, kind. Loved computers, wanted to be a programmer. The bullying started over nothing—a boy she'd rejected. It escalated online, anonymous accounts posting her photos, her address, death threats. By the time Jake found out, it was too late.
"I failed her," he said. "My job is to protect people, and I couldn't protect my own daughter."
"I failed Dwayne Morse. My testimony sent him to prison for crimes he didn't commit. He died there, shanked in the shower, because I was so sure about blood spatter patterns that I didn't consider alternatives."
They sat in silence, two broken people carrying unbearable weight.
"The festival's tomorrow," Brennan said finally. "We've checked every vendor, every vehicle. No blue truck, no red cooler. Maybe the vision was wrong."
"They haven't been wrong yet."
"Then we're missing something."
She closed her eyes, tried to recall every detail of the vision. The blue truck, the cooler, the explosion. But there was something else, something she'd overlooked. Music. Right before the explosion, there had been music. A specific song.
"The band," she said. "There's going to be a band playing when it happens. 'Sweet Home Alabama.'"
Brennan grabbed his phone, pulled up the festival schedule. "The Whitefish Wranglers. They go on at 3 PM."
"That's when it happens. 3 PM."
They spent the rest of the night planning. By dawn, they had a strategy. Extra security, bomb-sniffing dogs, plainclothes officers everywhere. They couldn't cancel the festival—that would cause panic and might drive Anthony to do something worse. But they could be ready.
The morning of the festival, Nora woke to find Pascal dead. The old cat had passed peacefully in his sleep, curled in his favorite spot by the window. She sat with him for a long time, stroking his still-warm fur, crying for the first time in years. Even in this, Anthony had probably played a part. The stress, the lack of sleep, the constant fear—it had been too much for Pascal's ancient heart.
She buried him in the backyard, in the spot where he liked to watch birds. Then she got dressed and drove to the festival.
Main Street was packed despite the cold. Families with children, teenagers in groups, elderly couples holding hands. All potential victims. She spotted Brennan near the stage, scanning the crowd. Deputies were everywhere, trying to look casual.
1 PM passed. Then 2. No blue truck. No red cooler.
At 2:45, the Whitefish Wranglers began setting up. Nora's heart pounded. She moved closer to the stage, looking for anything out of place.
That's when she saw him.
Anthony Morse stood at the back of the crowd, older and grayer but unmistakable. He was watching her, smiling. In his hand was a phone.
She started pushing through the crowd toward him, but he shook his head and pointed to the stage. The lead singer was adjusting his microphone. On his guitar case sat a red Coleman cooler.
"Brennan!" she shouted, but the crowd was too loud. The band started their first song. Not "Sweet Home Alabama" but "Free Bird."
She ran toward the stage, shoving people aside. Anthony was walking away, unhurried. The singer reached for the cooler, probably for a beer.
"Don't touch it!" she screamed.
The singer looked at her, confused, hand on the cooler's lid.
That's when Brennan appeared, tackling the singer off the stage. The cooler fell, lid popping open. Inside, visible to everyone, was a mess of wires and what looked like plastic explosive.
Panic. Screaming. People running in every direction. Nora stood frozen as chaos erupted around her. In the distance, she saw Anthony getting into a car—not a blue truck but a white sedan.
"Get everybody back!" Brennan was shouting. "Bomb squad, now!"
It took three hours to clear the area and defuse the bomb. It had been real, sophisticated, powerful enough to kill dozens. The singer, it turned out, had no idea how it got there. Someone had switched his regular cooler when he wasn't looking.
They found Anthony at a motel on the edge of town, didn't even try to run. Sat there smiling as they arrested him.
"Hello, Nora," he said as they led him past her. "Did you enjoy the show?"
"Why?" she asked. "All those innocent people..."
"There are no innocent people. You taught me that. My brother was innocent, and you all killed him anyway."
"I was wrong. I made a mistake."
"Yes. You did. And mistakes have consequences."
They took him away. Brennan found her later, sitting on the curb, shaking.
"You saved them," he said. "Hundreds of people are alive because of you."
"The visions... I don't understand why I had them."
"Maybe you don't need to understand. Maybe it's enough that you did."
She thought about that. About gifts and curses, about redemption and punishment. About Pascal, dead in his favorite spot. About Dwayne Morse, dead in a prison shower. About all the death she'd documented over the years, and the deaths she'd prevented these past few days.
"I'm going to keep having them," she said. "The visions. I can feel it."
"Then we'll deal with them. Together."
She looked at him, this broken man who'd chosen to live another day. "Together?"
"You saved my life too. The least I can do is help you save others."
They sat there as the sun set over the mountains, painting the sky red as blood, red as redemption. Tomorrow there would be paperwork, trials, media attention. Tomorrow the visions would probably come again, showing her new horrors, new deaths to prevent.
But tonight, she'd saved a town. She'd faced her past and survived. And somewhere, maybe, Dwayne Morse could rest a little easier.
Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: "Thank you for saving my mom. - Amy"
She showed it to Brennan, whose face went white.
"That's impossible. Amy's dead."
But they both knew, after everything that had happened, that impossible was just another word for unexplained. The universe worked in mysterious ways, offering punishment and redemption in equal measure, giving gifts that felt like curses until you learned how to use them.
Nora stood up, bones creaking. "I need to go home. Figure out what to do about Pascal."
"I'll come by tomorrow. Help you bury him properly."
She nodded, grateful. As she walked to her car, she felt something shift inside her. The weight she'd carried for fifteen years hadn't disappeared, but it had changed shape. Become something she could bear, maybe even something she could use.
The visions would come again. She was certain of that. But now she knew what they were for. Not punishment, but purpose. Not a curse, but a chance to make things right.
One saved life at a time.
That night, she dreamed of Pascal, young and healthy, chasing birds in an endless field. And of Dwayne Morse, free and whole, nodding at her with something like forgiveness in his eyes. And of the future, uncertain but no longer dark, stretching out before her like a road she was finally ready to travel.
The darkroom of her mind, where she'd developed so many images of death, had become something else. A place where she could see tomorrow's tragedies today, and maybe, just maybe, stop them from happening.
It wasn't redemption, not quite. But it was a start.