Tracker (15 page)

THIRTY

Alice

After speaking to Sam, I sent the others in to see him. I snagged Tony as he moved to follow them. “Call if you notice anything out of place,” I said. “Mason has already killed one child and ordered another killed. He isn’t afraid to strike at the police either. I'll try to get a few more officers on a guard rotation, but we’re already pushing it with the captain. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back.”

The young officer gave a brisk nod. “I will do what I can,” he agreed. “I’ll call you if I notice anything.”

His face was set, and his eyes showed how serious he was about the task I’d set for him. “Don’t worry, Detective, I’ll keep them safe.”

After thanking Tony, I headed to the station to meet Dan. He was looking over files and notes when I got there. “Dan,” I said as I reached his desk. He looked away from the paperwork gratefully. I took a breath and jumped right in. “Sam said Mason ordered one of his men to kill him, but he didn’t. Whoever it was warned Sam to keep quiet, and then he shot into the ground.”

Dan looked at me with shock written all over his face his, eyes wide and mouth open slightly. “We have a possible way in,” he said after a moment. He’d caught on quickly to my theory that the shooter was not truly one of Mason’s men or at the very least that there was someone within his ranks that we could turn—if we could find out who it was.

I nodded and continued, “I figure we should try to find out if someone has an undercover OP going in Mason’s group. If so, we need to set up a meet. And if not, we should have Sam look through the mug-shot books to see if the guy is in there. If Mason has Jason, we need to find him quickly. Sam said that he overheard one of his men say that he's planning to force Jason to use his ability to help him. Jason won’t do that willingly.”

Dan nodded, rubbing his hand over his chin thoughtfully. “You’re right. But that also gives us some time. If Mason wants to use him like that, he’s not going to kill him. At least not yet.”

“He’s going to torture him, Dan!” I exclaimed. “We don’t have time. Jason is strong, but he shouldn’t be put through that. The sooner we find him, the better… For everyone.” Dan looked at me curiously.

“Can you imagine what he could do with Jason’s powers at his disposal? No one would be safe, and he’d be able to track down anyone he wanted. You saw the house he destroyed, do you really want Trevor Mason to control when and where he uses those powers? We can’t leave Jason in his hands to be broken!” Without meaning to, my voice had risen to an almost yell by the time I’d finished, and Dan raised his hands to pacify me.

“All right then,” Dan said in an attempt to appease my sudden anger. “Let’s find out if we have a contact.”

Before we started looking, I talked the captain into letting us use two other officers to rotate with Dimartino. Dan and I would probably work almost straight through until we were able to find Jason, so I called Tony and asked him to bring my sister and Jason’s kids back to my house. One of the other officers would go to the hospital to guard Sam.

Dimartino called back about fifteen minutes later saying that Paul was refusing to leave. “Let him stay. Take care of Hannah, Ginny, and Jeffrey. Mendez can bring him home once Howard relieves him at the hospital. I’ll try to get home sometime this evening. You, Mendez, and Howard can set up a rotation that works for all of you. Make sure you let me know what the schedule is.”

“No problem. We’ll take care of them,” Tony said confidently. “You and Dan get Mason off the streets and I hope you find your friend quickly.”

“Thanks, Tony. I’ll see you later.”

That job finished, we spent the rest of the afternoon calling various law enforcement agencies. Most wouldn’t even tell us if they had any kind of investigation into Mason. The FBI at least admitted knowing about his illegal activities, but they gave us the runaround, making us call several different people and wasting hours. When we hit a dead end with our own contacts, Dan suggested that we ask the captain for help.

“He would probably have better sources than we can dig up,” Dan shrugged. “We’re out of options. If we want help from the FBI, we need to have the captain call in some favors.”

“Fine,” I agreed wearily. “But just in case this falls through, we should send someone to the hospital with the mug books for Sam to look through. I don’t want to have wasted all this time looking for an undercover agent that doesn’t exist if all it takes is Sam looking at a photo.”

Dan stood. “I’ll go. You talk to the captain.”

I wanted to disagree, but it would be easier for Sam to accept Dan’s arrival than a stranger. He waited for my nod, and then went to get the books.

After waiting a few seconds, rubbing my eyes with a sigh, I headed to the captain’s office. “Sir?” I asked, knocking on the doorframe of the open door.

He waved me in. “Detective Farrow. How’s the search for your consultant going?” he asked.

“Actually, sir, that’s what I need to talk to you about. Dan and I have run into a dead end. The FBI admits investigating Mason, but our contacts cannot confirm whether they have anyone undercover in his gang. I was wondering…” I hesitated. Would he call in favors for a consultant he didn’t even know?

“If I could call some of my own contacts?” he finished for me. “Of course. Just give me a few minutes alone. I’ll call you in when I have an answer for you so don’t go anywhere, Detective.”

While waiting for any answer, I called Dan to see if he’d reached Sam yet. He hadn’t, so I hung up to wait for word from either Dan or the captain. After waiting several minutes, I decided to go to the vending machine for a snack. Anything was better than waiting around doing nothing, and at that time I couldn’t think of anything I could do to help find Jason.

“Detective,” the captain called as I returned to my desk. I almost ran to his office. He spoke as soon as I entered. “The FBI has an agent undercover, but he’s being watched carefully. He’s still pretty new to the organization, so his contact insisted there was no safe way to see him until the scheduled check in two days from now.” I almost shook with rage, but I kept my mouth shut.

The captain handed me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “See if you can convince them otherwise,” he said with a smile.

“You realize I have a civilian consultant being held hostage by Mason right now?” I nearly shouted into the phone a few minutes later. “Mason plans to torture him. Your man could get him out of there with minimal injuries if you’d let us talk to him!”

“I apologize, Detective,” the agent replied. “But my man’s position is tenuous at best. If he gets caught doing anything suspicious, Mason’s men will kill him. If he’s able to protect your guy from being tortured, he will. In the meantime, you’re going to have to pursue other leads. You might even find them before you need to meet my agent.”

I rubbed my temples wearily. “You’re sure he hasn’t mentioned anything that could help us?” I asked again.

“All I know is that Mason owns several properties outside the city. He uses them as bolt holes when the police get too close to one of his organizations.”

“You sure that’s what he uses them for? Because he hasn’t shown much sign of fear and we’ve come extremely close to him during this investigation,” I said doubtfully.

I could almost hear his shrug over the phone. “That’s what we’ve guessed. My agent hasn’t been able to figure out why else he’d have them.”

I nearly pounded the desk in frustration. “Mason runs a child prostitution ring. The man who was abducted found one of his houses and shut it down. He deals drugs—we’ve stopped his people on our streets. He’s a fence for stolen property. With all that, you couldn’t think of
any
other possibility! We need your list to stop him from harming another person, and we
know
Mason has him.” I stretched the truth but didn't care.

We strongly suspected, to the point where we were sure, but we had no proof. I had to keep the agent on the defensive to keep him from thinking too hard. “What kind of operation are you running?” I asked angrily.

He tried to stammer a response, but I interrupted. “I need a list of all known properties NOW. Fax them to me, or so help me I will find some way to have your badge!” I threatened before I slammed down the phone.

Dan gave a low whistle as he walked up to my desk, mug-shot books in hand; the look on his face telling me he’d gotten nowhere. “Remind me not to get on your bad side,” he said with a small smile.

“They’ve been running an undercover OP for the last six months and all they can come up with for country properties is ‘they’re bolt-holes’. We’ve been on this case for what, two months? We’ve found out more about Mason’s activities than they have!”

“To be fair, we had Jason on our side,” Dan said calmly. “He dug up a good portion of what we know.”

His words made me pause my ranting. He was right. With Jason’s abilities allowing him to follow Mason’s men back to their ‘businesses’, we had an advantage. “I’m sorry. I forgot that they didn’t have that benefit.” I grimaced. “I suppose I’m going to have to apologize to that agent,” I mumbled.

Dan shrugged. “Nah. It was good incentive for them to start pushing a little harder. Besides,” he added with a grin as the fax machine buzzed. “It got us our list that much faster.”

THIRTY-ONE

Jason

Mason left the shed after doing nothing but using a large knife to remove my shirt, and no one else came in for several minutes. I could hear the low murmuring of voices outside the door, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I sent a small amount of power through the floor and out the door, trying to figure out what was coming. Several feet away from the shed I found a couple people gathered around a small area. Both the Bulldog and the Boxer were among them. Mason’s steps came back toward the shed and I pulled my power back, deciding to conserve energy for the moment. I heard some popping and smelled smoke, like someone was burning wood.

The sun shone in as the door was opened, blinding me for a moment as my tormenter entered once again. He was carrying what looked like a cattle brand. “Let’s get started, shall we?” he said.

“I don’t suppose I have a choice,” I muttered, eyeing the metal pole that glowed red-hot on one end. It was a circle with an ‘M’ in the middle, and I backed away as much as I could when he held it up in front of me.

He pursed his lips as if considering then shook his head. “No. You don’t have a choice, but this particular item will be used only once. You see,” he said leaning in close as if telling me a secret. “This brand will show everyone that you belong to me. The Earthshaker is mine, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“That’s kind of premature, isn’t it?” I ignored the name. He obviously didn’t know or care that I was a Tracker, first and foremost. I did not want to admit that my powers of destruction had been rising, even to myself. “You haven’t broken me, and you’re not going to.” I spoke as steadily as I could, but I could feel the fear gripping me as my adrenaline rush caused the power to begin to take control.

My captor shrugged as if my proclamation didn’t matter. “I’m confident. You don’t yet know what I’m capable of.” He circled me slowly as he tried to decide where to place the brand. I tried to brace myself, but was unprepared when he finally chose a spot. I screamed at the sudden searing pain, my arm feeling like it was on fire even after the hot metal had been removed.

The pain was enough to make me lose control, and my power released, sending up a wall of dirt through the thin wooden floor of the shed between him and I. He jumped back with a curse and I tried to solidify the wall but before I could, my control was blocked as my body bucked from the sudden electric current coming from the collar that now felt like it was choking me.

I tried to scream, but my body was starved of oxygen so only a strangled gargle escaped as my wall of earth tumbled down harmlessly. I saw Mason standing in front of me, his finger holding down the control button for a second after the wall collapsed. My vision was going black when the electricity stopped and I sagged against the bonds holding me up. Panting for breath, I glared at him, almost daring him to try something else.

“Naughty, Jason,” he said mildly. “I didn’t say you could use your power.”

I continued glaring at him as I tried to gain control enough to get my feet back under me and take the pressure off my arms. The current from the collar was much stronger than I had anticipated. Someone had revved it up to be extremely effective in cutting off my connection to my power. Mason turned away, ignoring my gasping breaths as he picked up the knife he’d used to cut off my shirt.

“I’m going to be causing you some pain, Jason,” he said. “But if you use your abilities, the extra pain is your own fault. I will only use electricity on you for that reason; you have my word. The next time, I will be turning up the power in the collar. Each time you misbehave I will do the same. Eventually, you will become a machine that I can turn on and off at will. The power you hold will become mine to use as I see fit.”

The monster turned back to me, his eyes seeming to glow with madness as he continued to speak softly to me. “Is that understood?”

I couldn’t speak; fear was gripping every inch of my body. I simply stared at him in horror as he once again approached me with the large knife. My shoulder throbbed and burned, and I could still smell my flesh burning. He casually swiped the knife across my belly, and I hissed at the stinging pain as he repeated, “Is that understood?”

I nodded, still unable to form words, and he gave a small nod of approval. “Good, then we can get started.”

The next several hours passed in a haze of smoke and pain as Mason was rejoined by Bulldog and Boxer to torture me. I attempted several times to use my power for escape, but each time the devil sent fire coursing through my body. I could no longer keep my feet under me and simply sagged against the now bloody handcuffs, the pain in my wrists barely noticeable against the pain in the rest of my body.

After an undetermined amount of time, he and Bulldog finally stopped. Boxer had left what felt like several hours earlier, and I hadn’t seen or felt him since. Once Bulldog left the shed, Mason leaned over me. “Use your power now. Make this shed shake, and the pain will be done for the day.”

My body shook and I tried to gather the energy to use my power, but I shook my head wearily. “C… can’t,” I said weakly, my voice hoarse from screaming.

“Try again, or there will be more pain,” he threatened, holding up the control box. Fear once again rose up and I was able to send enough energy into the ground to make it rumble. I saw him smile as the world faded to black. “Good boy,” he praised as I lost my grip on consciousness.