Tracker by Adrianne Lemke Page B

thoughtfully, and I wondered if my partner was making some connections Jason wouldn’t want him making. It seemed unlikely that Dan would figure out that Jason could control the earth, but Dan was a good detective and could potentially make the correlation between Jason’s extreme reaction and the earth shaking around him. The ripped up floor from the warehouse had not yet been explained to anyone either.
    “Is he okay?” Dan asked as he came over to join me.
    I shrugged helplessly. “I can’t really say,” I admitted, watching Jason climb back into my car. I needed to talk to him to find out if he had felt anything as he’d knelt in the dirt, but I needed to find out what had happened. “He’s obviously going to take some time to recover, but I can’t say how he’ll react short-term. I doubt he’ll sit around waiting for us to find Mason.” Dan simply nodded his agreement and followed as I walked to Erin’s body.
    “How was she killed?” I asked, hoping for her sake that it had been quick. Her hair fanned around her head in a halo of blonde, her blue eyes stared sightlessly at the sunny sky, and she was fully clothed. The clothes were covered in blood, and she had a gaping wound on her neck.
    “The M.E. says the cut on her throat was post-mortem. There wasn’t enough blood to indicate that she was alive when it happened. She has several lacerations on her torso, but he says he’ll have to get her back to autopsy to find out for certain what cause of death was.” Dan spoke matter-of-factly, but his face still showed his sympathy both for the young girl and for Jason.
    “All right,” I said. “I have to get Jason back to my house, but I’ll meet you at the morgue later to hear what the M.E. finds out.”
    Dan agreed and glanced at my car. “Hey,” he said in surprise, “where’s Jason?”
    “Wh—?” I turned and looked at the car. The passenger seat was empty.

FIFTEEN
    Jason
     
     
    The drive out to the park where Erin had been dumped was both too long and too short. I knew I had to see for myself, but I dreaded every second of it. I knew Alice would never tell me one of my kids was… hurt without it being true, but I still couldn’t believe it without seeing it. Our conversation seemed surreal, and when we reached her I fell apart. I couldn’t control my sadness and it allowed the power to escape once again. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the possibility of exposure until Alice grabbed my hands and told me to stop.
    Alice was pale and her eyes had filled with tears, but I couldn’t feel sympathy for anyone else. Erin was my world at the moment and I stared at her unseeing eyes. What was the last thing she’d seen? Had Mason killed her, or had he made one of his goons do it? I sank to my knees again; dimly aware of Alice’s aborted attempt to stop me in case I lost control for a second time. I sank my hands into the dirt and sent streams of power in every direction as far as I could reach to search for echoes of whoever had dumped Erin here like garbage.
    The Bulldog—Mason’s goon; he’d been the one to dump her. There were other echoes there from the same time period so I knew he hadn’t been alone, but he was the only familiar one. I rose and walked back to the car, hoping they would assume I needed some time to myself to gather my thoughts. In fact, I would be leaving shortly. I watched Alice and Dan in my peripheral vision as they moved over to the body and began to talk. When I was sure they were completely occupied, I exited the car. I closed the door as quietly as possible to avoid drawing attention and began to follow the echoes.
    If I was lucky, the footsteps would lead me to Sam, or at least to someone who knew where Sam was being kept. My thoughts drifted to the other kids for a moment, but I shook my head. I needed to focus. Sam was my priority. Erin was already gone and the others were safe. They would understand what I needed to do. Trevor Mason was too much of