Brute Justice (Justice Series) (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

He’d thought about it over and over, wondering what he should do about the tracking devices he found. Thanks to Neal’s help, another had been located, embedded into the handle of his laptop case.

Neal had proven himself very useful in the past few years. Though now he was a private detective, it was his ballistics expertise and investigative training with the police force that were equally as valuable as the technology he packed. After he found the devices, he ran a check for fingerprints on them and found two – one belonging to Clint McKay, the other to Lexi Dixon.

“So they are working together,” he mused out loud, reading the report. “Yet they’ve made no attempt to contact me. Curious…”

After weeks of trying to locate Charlie, his former assistant who suddenly disappeared, he figured the kids were helping protect his location. He wondered if Charlie was still feeding them information about his experiments, and if so, how much he had divulged.

“If I ever get my hands on that no-good piece of shit, I’ll kill him myself. It will be my pleasure.” He had no sympathy for people who betrayed his confidence.

As for the kids, well they were still a mystery to him. He knew they probably had a good idea of his whereabouts, for now. He could change his residence – it might throw them off his trail – but his office was another story. It wouldn’t be easy to change the location of his already-established family planning clinic. He put a lot of thought and effort into creating this business – one which counseled pregnant teenagers against abortion and paired them with parents who yearned to adopt.

It was perfect, really. He delivered the babies in his own office, with just a very small staff. They were never around when he injected his experimental mixtures into the babies…

The novel part of the operation is he was able to gather all the necessary information on the parents who took the babies home. He created a new alias and his own secret laboratory. There was no one in his present who knew about his past – that was all dead and buried – and no one on his staff knew what he was doing now. It couldn’t have been planned any better.

That is, until he figured out the kids were tracking him. Who knows how long they had been following him. But if they were keeping any diary of his travel, surely they knew his apartment location and his office. Oh, and possibly Sara’s house. Sara… What to do about Sara?

The more he thought about it, the more he realized how dangerous it was to have them tracking him. They were a connection to his past, and he could not let them catch up to him. He made a mental note to change his address – easy enough to do.

He picked up the phone to call his realtor. “Hi, Jane? This is Donald. I was thinking about expanding my practice. Can you help me locate a larger office – something similar to my current set up, but with more delivery rooms? Oh, and while you’re at it, since business is going so well, I’m thinking about buying instead of renting – maybe a condo? Or a small house in the outskirts? Something private.”

He listened to the excited chatter of his real estate agent on the other end. She would make a hefty commission on this piece of work, so of course she was thrilled.

“That’s great, Jane. Yes, the sooner the better. If I’m going to be moving, it makes sense to do it all at once. Thank you so much. Looking forward to hearing back from you soon.”

He hung up the phone, knowing he was doing the right thing. As for Sara, well he wasn’t ready to be done with her just yet. She was quite useful in a number of ways, but he didn’t want to ask her to move in with him. Sometimes a man just needed his own space. He’d think about it some more, figure out what to do with her later.

For now, he was done being tracked by a bunch of teenagers. He wouldn’t allow these kids to be a step ahead of him any longer. He took the two black devices from their resting places, dropped them to the floor, and with a resounding stomp from the heel of his wing tip, they were rendered useless.

“Let’s see what they think of that,” he muttered.

Chapter Twelve

He’s off the grid. Holy crap.

“Sam!” Clint yelled louder than necessary, as Sam was in the same room. Not to mention his extremely sensitive ears.

“What?”

“He’s found the devices.”

“How do you know?” Sam’s legs took just three strides to cross the room. Looking over Clint’s shoulder, he could see instantly the “blips” of activity they had tracked for weeks now had vanished from the radar. “Did you expand the search? Could he be traveling in another state?”

“I tried that already.”

“Out of the country?”

“He’s nowhere. He’s found them, most likely destroyed them, which is why they’re not traceable anymore.”

“So we can’t track him by computer any longer?”

“Nope.”

“We need to get the map out and get over to those three locations – now – to see if we can find him, locate his car. Man, I wish we’d have tagged his car before now!”

Great. Just when we finally got everyone calmed down and civil again. Now we have to rush off on this emergency… Dad’s gonna blow.

“Clint?”

“Yes. Yeah, of course you’re right,” he agreed reluctantly. “I just wish we didn’t have to do it right now. We finally got everyone chilled again.”

They sat in Sam’s room, alone for the moment. Everyone else was downstairs cleaning up the kitchen and visiting.

“Okay,” Sam said. “I don’t see why everyone needs to know about this. You and I can go over and handle it ourselves – we’ll let the girls stay here and work with Jade.”

“Good, that’s good. Should we take our dads with us?”

“Probably a good idea. I want my dad to know what’s going on, and we should probably tell yours, too.
Mom’ll
freak. Let’s split up – guys and girls.”

“Right.”

“I’ll fill Lexi and Leesha in on the development.” Sam projected to the girls, who agreed to keep Marcy and Jade busy while the guys took their field trip across town.

While in route, Sam and Clint filled in their fathers on the latest discovery.

“So you’ve been tracking his activity since you got back from
Arizona
?” Hank’s head was still spinning from the information overload. “What are all the green dots on the map?”

“It’s where we know he has been multiple times over the weeks, and for any length of time.” Clint answered from the passenger side of the SUV. “This area here we think is his home. He spends most of his nights here, except for this area here, which we figure may be a girlfriend’s house. This one here might be his place of work.”

“Tell me again,” Sam said from behind the wheel, “why we don’t have exact addresses for these locations?”

“The map on the computer doesn’t work directly with mailing addresses. But I’ve got GPS coordinates, so we should be able to narrow it down fairly closely based on what we’ve logged.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Dan asked.

Clint smiled. “Then we have Superman look through the walls to find him.”

“You can do that?” Hank’s mouth opened in shock.

“Yes, sir,” Sam replied proudly. “And since I’m the only one who has seen him, I’m going to have to identify him myself. But the good news is we shouldn’t have to get too close. He’ll never have to see us watching him.”

“Do you think he’s dangerous?” Hank asked, his voice raised slightly at the turn of this conversation. “Is he a threat to you kids?”

Oh crap. Here we go.
“We don’t know. He’s never made contact with us, so we don’t know how he would react to seeing us.”

“But we do know he’s a danger to anyone who crosses him,” Sam added, retelling the story of the kidnappers to Hank. “So if he thinks we’re working against him, he’s more than likely not going to take it well.”

Sam pulled into a neighborhood with a couple of housing developments and a large apartment complex – the first stop on their trip. “Now what?”

“According to these GPS numbers,” Clint surveyed the neighborhood, “I think he lives in the apartment complex.”

“Where do I start?”

His eyes scanned the packed parking lot and the array of buildings holding six units each. Punching the coordinates into his laptop, he pointed Sam in the right direction. “Should be one of those three buildings along the back.”

Maneuvering the vehicle into a space adjacent to the block they were focusing on, Sam put it in park. The car was silent, allowing Sam to focus on scanning the inside of each unit. After about two and a half minutes, he shook his head. “He’s not in there.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep.”

“Okay… Is there a central bank of mailboxes in the front door?”

“Um, yes! Hang on… Last names only… No Blevins. Do you think I should check the other buildings?”

“I guess we’ve come this far, we probably should at least look. Can you scan the rest of the mailboxes at least?”

“Sure.” After a few more minutes, Sam shook his head again. “Nope. No Blevins anywhere on the mailboxes.”

“So, what now? Do you want to head to the place we think his office is?”

Sam sat for a minute, thinking. Turning around, he looked at his dad. “Do you have a pad of paper in here? A pen?”

“Sure – look in the console. Why?”

“I’m at least going to jot down the last names of the people in these three buildings.”

“Why?” Hank was still not up to speed.

“Because I believe he’s spent a lot of time changing his image. He looks completely different from his old hospital photo from seventeen years ago. He’s had a nose job, probably Lasik to correct his vision – no more glasses – contacts at least.”

“You think he’s changed his name?” Clint asked.

“That’s what I’m figuring. We can always come back here again to see if we can see him. But for now, let’s cross reference these names with the office area.”

“Great idea.” Clint agreed as Sam wrote down the eighteen names.

That’s a lot of names…

“It’s a start, at least,” Sam said as he handed the list to Clint.

Chapter Thirteen

Their next stop was a business development, filled with offices of all shapes and sizes. Since it was Saturday, most of the parking lots were deserted.

After Clint punched in the GPS coordinates, he pointed to a grouping of three small office units – separate in structure, but they shared the same parking lot which circled the complex. The surface lot had six cars along the front of the middle building; there were two cars in the back.

“It’s one of these three.” Clint said definitively, pointing at the complex. “What’s inside the buildings?”

“
Lemme
see… The one on the left is an orthodontics office. According to the door, there are two doctors – the building is empty – they’re closed today. The middle building is a pharmacy – privately run. They’re open, and there is a pharmacist and tech behind the counter, plus customers inside the store.”

“Blevins?”

“Nope. He’s not in there.”

“What about the third?”

“Empty. Looks like a doctor’s office – there are patient rooms and a lobby in the front. The name on the door says Donald Crain, M.D. – Family Planning Center.”

“Family Planning?” Clint asked. “What’s that?”

“It’s a counseling center for pregnant women,” Dan said from the back seat. “Most of them perform abortions.”

“Pregnant women?” Sam swiveled around to look at his dad, then at Clint. “We may be on to something here.”

“Is Crain on your list of names?” Hank asked.

Clint scanned the list with his finger. About halfway down, he stopped. “Yep. Right here.”

“Coincidence?” Sam said sarcastically.

I think not.

“Well, there’s not much more we can do here, is there?” Hank asked, wanting to help, but not sure how.

“I don’t think there is, Dad. But if this is him, we know where he works, and where he lives. We can keep an eye on the situation.”

“Eventually we’ll have to catch up with him,” Sam pointed out. “We can get a tracer on his car.”

“Do you suppose he’s at this location?” Clint pointed to the third array of green dots on the map. “It’s Saturday, and if this is his girlfriend’s place…”

“We may as well go and see,” Dan agreed. “It would be nice if we could take care of this when all four of us are together. I don’t want the two of you going out alone to handle this.”

“Dad!”

“I know, Sam. You think you’re invincible. But humor me, please. If not me, think about your mother. She’d have a heart attack if she knew we were stalking this man.”

“I know, I know.”

They didn’t see any activity at the third location either. It was a small housing development in a start-up neighborhood – where all the houses stacked together and looked like every other along the row. Small yards, compact cars, kids’ bicycles all over the sidewalks.

Clint looked around at the tightly packed subdivision. “I can’t tell for sure, the houses are so close, but I would think it’s either one of these four, or the four on the next street that share the same backyard space. Can you see any activity in the houses? Blevins? I mean, Crain?”

Holy cow this is going to get confusing…

Sam concentrated on the four houses as they slowly drove towards the end of the cul-de-sac. “I don’t see him in any of them. The first one is empty, the second one has a mother and two small toddlers, third is empty, and the fourth one just has one person – a woman – sitting on her couch watching television. Nothing much of interest here.”

“Let’s turn around and try the next street, then.”

There wasn’t much different. Three of the four houses were empty. The one exception – the second in the string of four – had a couple and their baby sitting down at the kitchen table. “No Blevins.”

“Well, at least we tried. We know how to come back if we need to,” Clint shrugged. “For now, I think we should get back and do some research on Dr. Donald Crain and see what we can find out on his practice.”

“At least we’ve got somewhere to start,” Sam agreed. “I wonder if the girls have made any headway with Jade.”

“I don’t know. What a mess that is… How can she not know if she’s got a power?”

“No telling. It makes no sense to me.”

Back at the house, the guys piled out of the car and headed in to catch up with the girls. They were all in the living room – Lexi and Leesha displaying their skills for an amazed Jade.

“Hey guys,” Marcy looked up when the door opened. “Where have you been?”

“Nowhere important,” Dan said to his wife. “We just took Hank for a ride. Filled him in, you know – guy time.”

Smoooooth
.

“Have you ladies made any progress here?” Sam asked Leesha, an obvious question she understood immediately.

“Not really. We did fill Jade in on our experiences, so hopefully she knows more about what to look for, how to experiment with her brain’s capacity.”

“You don’t have any ideas?”
Sheesh
. This is crazy.

“Not yet,” Leesha answered Clint. “But since her flashes were concentrated only in her brain, I have to believe her ability is mental – like mine – rather than physical, like the rest of you.”

He turned to Jade. “Have you tried to move things with your mind?”

“Yes… I haven’t had any luck. Leesha tried to teach me, but I can’t do it.”

“Is there anything special about your ears? Your sight?” Sam tried to prod.

“No.”

“What about your mind? Have you seen flashes of the future?” Clint narrowed his eyes at her.

“No…”

“What about the past?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Can you read minds?” Sam tried again.

“No! I can’t do anything!” She was almost in tears with frustration. “Get off my back… We’ve tried all afternoon. It’s obvious I don’t have a power. Just leave me alone about it!”

Sam and Clint looked at each other and both shrugged. “Okay. We’ve got some research to do anyway,” Sam turned toward the stairs.

“Yeah. Let us know if you come up with anything.” Clint added, following.

Women…