Tracker

Tracker

Earthshaker Series

—Book One—

By: Adrianne Lemke

Copyright
©
August 2013 Adrianne Lemke

All rights reserved

Cover design by Christian Bentulan

Formatted and Proofread by Terri King

Also Available:

Kindred: Earthshaker Series Book Two

Hunter: Earthshaker Series Book Three

Fear

Anthologies:

Bite-Sized Offerings: Tales and Legends of the Zombie Apocalypse

When Disasters Strike

Coming Soon:

Secret Power (First of a Fantasy Series)

Oblivion: Earthshaker Series Book Four

ONE

Jason

I am a Tracker. Although there may be more, I’m the only one I'm aware of. When I touch earth—and to a slightly lesser degree cement—I am able to feel where any one person’s footprints lead. This ability makes it easier to avoid certain people as well. I try to always have a part of me touching the ground so I can feel people approaching, even when I’m asleep.

My ability to differentiate between different people led me to the knowledge that the men who’d attacked me were unfamiliar. I hadn’t recognized the steps, and their intent was not clear until they had surrounded me. I had rushed to send out an SOS to Alice Farrow. The precinct where she works, Crandal County Station 117, is only a couple blocks from the alley where I’d been grabbed, and I’d been able to feel her steps moving toward the building. Her partner was with her as well, but I had no time to worry about that as I was hit hard enough that the garbage-strewn alley faded to black.

I woke slowly. My eyelids felt heavy, as if they were glued together. Prying them open led to a spike of pain that shot through my head and I slammed my eyes shut again. My attempt to stretch led to the realization that I couldn’t move my arms, and there was an uncomfortable pinching around my wrists. As I became more aware, I recognized the feel of metal digging into my back, and my head was resting at an odd angle, increasing my discomfort. A groan escaped as I once again attempted to stretch into a more comfortable position.

I peeled my eyes open gradually, knowing I needed to see where I was and how bad the situation was. The light still hurt, but it wasn’t quite as bad as the first time. I looked around carefully, hoping to see anything that would expedite my freedom, and my heart sank. I was in a storage cage of some kind. There was cement to my right and behind me and chain link fence to my left and in front of me. My hands were cuffed to a steel pipe attached to the wall. The light came from a single light bulb hanging from the middle of the cage. The door was part of the chain link fence and was locked with a padlock. It seemed a little excessive considering I was handcuffed to the wall, but whatever.

Outside of the cage was dark. Either there were no windows or they were covered with something to keep the light out. I didn’t think I’d been out long enough for it to get dark. There was a sliver of light across the room from the space at the bottom of the door. The building was silent, but I could hear traffic moving outside. People going about their lives, unaware there was someone trapped in this warehouse, just drove by without a care in the world.

I glanced once more at the concrete walls and ceiling and accepted the idea that I was stuck. Any attempt I made to free myself would likely end up with me being crushed under a ton of concrete. My ability to move the ground through the concrete was dangerous, and one I had not practiced. I would have to bide my time and hope an opportunity for escape presented itself. I rattled the cuffs on the pole, and wished I knew how to pick the locks so I could escape. It was something I might want to learn in the future.

My memory of being grabbed was slightly fuzzy, so I had to search it to figure out if I’d been able to get a message out to Alice. It wasn’t easy to do through the massive headache, but I needed to figure it out before I could do anything to help myself. I also needed to figure out exactly who’d grabbed me, and why.

It couldn’t be for a ransom; as a runaway, I have no family to pay it. The other options weren’t as appealing. I work as an informant to the police, so anyone I’d ratted on could hold a grudge. If that were the case, they’d have to know that I had spoken to Alice. Detective Alice Farrow is the one authority figure I trust with most of my biggest secrets. She is the only police officer who knows about my abilities, and trusts me when I tell her something I found out because of them. It was usually up to her to figure out how to explain the tips I gave without implicating me in any crimes.

Most of the cases I’d helped her with involved finding missing people. That is my specialty. It's made simpler if I’ve been in contact with them at some point; previous contact makes following their footsteps much easier. I have a mental catalog of the people I’ve come into contact with and the pattern of their footsteps. Once I feel those steps, I’m able to follow them with little to no difficulty. Most of the time, I instinctively know about how tall and how heavy the people are based on the way they walk.

Another option was the possibility that my father had located me finally—I’d run away five years earlier. Before my sudden exodus, he’d threatened to kill me if I tried to get away again. I’d made certain to run fast and far; he was about four counties over. I’d also been going by a different name for the last five years, and no one in my new life knew it wasn’t my real name.

The memory of sending the SOS to Alice came back. I’d been able to reach down and send the message through a crack in the cement just before someone had hit me from behind. I can’t be sure she saw the message, but I was definitely hoping she did. She wouldn’t know where I was taken, but based on the fact that I was able to send the message at all, she’d have a distance to start with. From previous attempts, we had discovered that I could send messages through the earth up to about two and a half miles. It did take a few minutes to travel, but once I sent it at my end it would reach wherever I told it to. I had been able to feel Alice moving outside her precinct, so that's where I sent the message. It would give her both a distance and a timeframe to work with.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to send messages through cement. I would have to raise the ground under the cement to crack it, giving me direct access to the earth beneath it. I could do that, but it is an inexact power. It would be the same as if I’d tried to escape by using my destructive ability; the whole building would be likely to fall in on me. It would be suicide by idiocy. If I were able to accomplish it without any death or extreme destruction, the attempt would allow my captors to view some of what I could do. If they didn’t already know, there was no way I was showing them.

I tensed as I felt footsteps coming toward me. It was time to find out who had grabbed me. The steps were unfamiliar and slightly muffled by the concrete. I was in a warehouse or storage facility somewhere; Alice wouldn’t find me before they had time to do whatever they wanted. My breath hitched as I realized how much trouble I could be in right now. One question plagued me—when I go missing, who tracks the Tracker?

TWO

Alice

My partner, senior detective Dan Carstens, was walking ahead of me as I approached the precinct where we worked. I caught up with him and we stood talking about the paperwork we had to do on a case we’d just finished up. It was a beautiful day, and we were both hesitant to go indoors to write up reports. We had a couple minutes before we had to be at our desks, so we took advantage of it.

As it turned out, it was a good thing. I looked past Dan when I noticed something moving on the ground in one of the flower-beds. When I looked closer, I realized the dirt was actually forming into letters. I managed to mask my reaction of surprise and worry enough to finish talking to Dan before he headed into the building. I told him I’d be in shortly. “Cover me for the first couple minutes?” I asked him sweetly.

He grunted, narrowing his eyes at me. “What’s in it for me, partner?”

“I’ll get you a donut on our lunch break,” I said with a straight face.

Dan growled. “Dang it! You know the wife won’t let me eat those any more. Says they’re bad for me.”

“I won’t tell your wife. One donut won’t hurt; we’ll just have to make it a small one.”

His blue eyes rolled, the motion exaggerated. “Fine. I’ll cover ya. Don’t be too long. I know you’re just trying to get out of that paperwork.”

I laughed. “Right. That’s what I do. See you in a bit,” I said, waving him away.

He finally went to the building, but I guessed that he suspected there was more to my request than just spending a couple minutes in the sunshine. My partner had about ten years on me when it came to being a detective, so I glanced around before heading back to where I’d seen the message. No one else reacted to it, so I assumed that the dirt suddenly coming alive had not been noticed. Jason was usually more careful, and he’d never sent me a message this close to work before. He was paranoid about his powers being discovered and him being captured for scientific study. That he had risked it today scared me.

The fact that his message had reached me meant he was within about a two mile radius of the station and it could have taken anywhere from less than a minute to about fifteen minutes to get to me. I bent down, pretending to smell one of the flowers.

“Oh, no,” I said, my hand coming up to my mouth in dismay as I read what he’d been able to send. I suspected immediately that something had happened to him because of the case he was helping me on.

Jason was trying to help me catch a man who had his finger in nearly every major crime that happened in this city—including murder and kidnapping. We’d had no luck pinning anything on him, so I had asked Jason to attempt to find and memorize the footsteps and people involved with some of the activities. I had hoped that with Jason’s ability to blend in, and the fact that most people ignore street kids, that he’d be safe. But the message he’d sent had dashed that hope. It was a very short message that simply read: SOS.

I chewed on my lower lip, a nervous habit I’d had since childhood when I’d had to give my first oral report in school, as I tried to figure out how to get backup to help my informant when there was no logical way for me to know he was in trouble. My indecision was brief as I realized I could claim the knowledge had come from one of the street kids.

With my plan in place, I rushed into the building to grab my partner. “Dan!” I called as I neared his desk, passing other officers without a glance as I hurried through the building.

“What’s up, Alice?” he asked, sounding confused. I hadn’t been worked up outside, so he was probably wondering what could have happened in the one minute since he’d left to upset me.

“One of Jason’s kids just contacted me,” I said. “He’s in trouble.” Dan knew Jason’s kids wouldn’t contact a police officer unless he was in serious trouble, so I hoped that would give him more motivation to help.

Dan had mixed feelings about Jason. On one hand, the kid had helped us locate several people over the years. On the other hand, he looked at most cops as if they were the enemy—and Dan was among the worst. When I’d tried to introduce the two, Jason had taken one look at the older man and took off. He still refused to talk to me if Dan was with me.

Despite his mixed feelings, Dan was my partner and knew that I cared about Jason. He would help me and hope that Jason would look at him with less suspicion if he helped to rescue the kid. Dan had a soft spot for street kids—at least the ones with legitimate reasons for being on the streets. Jason had never been into drugs or theft, so Dan wanted to be able to help him.

“What kind of trouble?” he asked as he grabbed his gun and badge from the drawer where he’d just finished putting them.

I shrugged. “The kid didn’t know, he just said we needed to help him.”

Dan nodded and followed me as I walked back out onto the parking lot. “We’ll start at his normal alley,” I said. “We might be better able to follow his tracks from there.” The irony of that statement struck me and I realized that without more help from Jason, we might not find him. Not knowing anything about Jason’s abilities, Dan simply followed me to the car, the irony lost on him.

The trip to Jason’s alley was short and I immediately saw two of the kids Jason watched over sitting on an old mattress at the back of the dead end alley; a second mattress was leaned against the brick wall, making it more comfortable for sitting. Both seemed upset.

“Erin, Ginny, what happened?” I asked, rushing to them. Dan stayed near the car, but we were parked close enough that he could hear everything.

“Sam’s gone!” Ginny exclaimed, tears streaming down her face.

“So is Jason,” Erin said more calmly than her friend. Erin, at fourteen, was older than Ginny by about a year and sometimes took on the role of big sister. Both were
too young for life on the street.

My partner approached slowly, crouching down a few feet away from the two frightened girls. “Do you have any idea where they are?” Dan asked gently. He was aware that the girls, like Jason, distrusted most authority figures. Only Jason’s trust in me allowed them to come to me for help.

The two exchanged a glance then looked at me. “I think it’s something to do with whatever Jase is helping you with,” Erin said, her brown eyes narrowing.

I accepted the mild rebuke and tried to hide my anxiety. “Mason?” I asked quietly, afraid to know the answer.

Both girls nodded, clinging to each other tightly. Erin’s light brown hair mingling with Ginny’s blond as they leaned their heads together. Their hair was long and dirty, but kept combed. “Jase told us all to stick together, but Sammy wandered off. The other boys went to look for him. Paul sent Jeffrey back to tell us that they saw Sam get grabbed.”

“Where are the boys now?” I asked, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.

“I told Jeff to get them and come back here
,
” Erin said, sounding like more of a mother than any fourteen-year-old had the right to. She and Paul were the oldest of the children Jason protected. All had horror stories from home, and Jason helped to keep them away from the bad stuff that often plagued kids on the street. Paul was a couple months older than Erin, and the two of them helped Jason look after the younger kids. Sam was the youngest and all of them were very protective of him.

“He left a little while before you got here,” Ginny piped up, her blue eyes shining with tears. “They should be back soon.”

“All right. Thank you, Ginny.” I turned to my partner. “Dan, we should wait here and see if the boys can add anything helpful.”

“No problem
,
” he answered. His expression showed his concern. Trevor Mason was a dangerous man, and now it seemed he had both Jason and Sam in his grasp.