Hunter

Earthshaker
Series

—Book
Three—

By Adrianne Lemke

Copyright
©
October 2014 Adrianne Lemke

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Christian Bentulan

Edited by Brittany King

Also By Adrianne Lemke:

Earthshaker
Series:

Tracker

Kindred

Oblivion (coming
soon)

Mystery:

Fear

Anthologies:

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

When Disasters Strike

Secrets of Sacorria
:

Secret Power

ONE

Jason

      
It’s strange how sometimes life seems
to go in circles. Seven years ago—almost to the day—I ran away from my drunk
and abusive father, and today I discovered that my new boss is also a drunk.
One who didn’t mind showing up at the office—whose staff consisted of him and
me—raging drunk because his wife threatened to leave him again.

      
Luckily,
we currently had no cases on the docket. Nobody would want to hire a private
investigator who couldn’t even figure out that his wife had cheated on him with
everyone from the mailman to the dog walker. She told him today which led to a
rather large, angry man storming into the grungy little office I was in the
process of organizing for him.

      
Most
of his yelling was impossible to understand as he stomped around the little
room destroying most of what I already organized. I remained seated at the
chair by his desk until he suddenly turned on me.

      
“You
knew! You were one of them!” he screamed at me, his bulk looming over me; intimidating
only because he was about five inches taller and weighed about sixty pounds
more than I. Much of his weight was muscle, although it was covered by a layer
of fat, not helped by his steady diet of take out.

      
“I-I
didn’t…” I wanted to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about, but my
mind was spinning. What had I done to deserve another abusive figure in my
life? Would I ever find a place I wouldn’t have to be afraid?

      
“Spit
it out, boy!” He yelled. “What have you got to say for yourself?”

      
I
pushed the chair back against the wall, trying to put as much space as possible
between us. It was also an attempt to blend into the background, while silently
waiting out his rage. If he was anything like my father, he would run out of
steam soon. But, if he was anything like my father, I wouldn’t be in very good
shape when he did.

      
My
fear turned to anger when I realized something: I am an adult. I survived the
worst that Trevor Mason, a sadistic criminal, could throw at me. He kidnapped
and tortured me, but I got through it. I beat Kindred, the assassin created by
the same man, who killed an unknown number of people two years ago, in a
misguided attempt to thank me for freeing him from Mason.

      
With
my anger came the stirring of the power I tried to ignore since leaving Crandal
County nearly two years ago. The ground under the office growled lightly, like
a pet left alone too long. “Back off,” I said, my voice quiet, but firm. My
eyes were downcast to avoid looking at the cause of my anger.

      
When
he instead took another step closer and grabbed my arm, I rose, stepping into
his space. “Back off!” I said again, louder this time. It was emphasized by the
building shaking slightly.

      
Joe
took a step back, his angry grumbling stopped for the first time since he
entered the office. I took a deep breath, and the building stopped shaking.
“I’m going to say this once, Joe. I did not know anything about your wife
cheating on you. Nor did I ever have any kind of relationship with her. I think
I’ve met her once in the time I’ve known you. Now, go into the back room, and
sleep it off.”

      
I
don’t know who was more surprised by my outburst, him or me, but the result was
Joe finally stepping back. He went into the little room off the main office,
where he kept a cot for when he worked late. I lowered myself into the chair
with a deep sigh of relief. Angry or not, it was never a good idea to
antagonize a drunk. Something I learned quickly as a child.

      
Thankfully
this confrontation ended with no one getting hurt, and Joe was so drunk he’d
probably forget it ever happened. Or, if he didn’t, with any luck he’d only
remember bits and pieces. Hopefully excluding the office shaking, which had
been unintentional on my part, and I hoped he would completely black it out. If
not, I could always try to blame it on how drunk and unsteady he’d been at the
time.

      
Either
way, it was done for now and I couldn’t see myself trying to do any more work
today. Not with my quick breathing and shaking hands. I needed a break.

      
Sam
would still be in school, so I could go back to our small house and study, or
just relax for a little while. Our house was secluded, out on a few acres of
open land hidden within a wooded area. It was what I was looking for when we
left Alice and Hannah. I never specifically told them where we now lived, but,
as detectives, Dan and Alice would have no trouble figuring it out.

      
I
also suspected Sam was talking to them when I wasn’t around, and he probably
told them our exact location. I’d never told him not to call, but he may have
gotten the wrong impression by my inability to speak to them. If he had spoken
to them, I thought while I walked out of my workplace, then I was glad they
never tried to come and get me. Or tried to convince me it was time to come home.

      
Home.
A concept as foreign to me as a feeling of security, or lack of fear. I hadn’t
had a true home in… ever, I guess. Not the way my family was.

      
Although
if I had to be honest, the closest I ever felt to having a home where I was
cared for and wanted, was with Alice and Hannah. Unfortunately, I lost the
sense of security initially offered by staying with them when my father found
me, and later when Kindred and the rest of Mason’s crew found out my exact
location. Not exactly a comforting thought.

      
“Excuse
me?” A voice sounded behind me, while I locked the door. I didn’t jump. I had
felt the footsteps approaching cautiously, and determining little to no threat.
The heartbeat was quick, but the steps indicated nervousness, which meant they
did not necessarily mean me harm.

      
I
turned to see the woman standing there as I pictured her: hands clasped in
front of her to stop the shaking, her breathing shallow, and face pale. “How
can I help you?” I asked politely, hiding my earlier anger behind a mask of
professionalism.

      
“You’re
a private detective, right?” she asked softly.

      
Of
course, I couldn’t tell her I was just learning the ropes from the man who was
passed out drunk in our back room, so I simply nodded. I fully intended to
share any information she gave me with Joe, once he was sober again.

      
Shining
hazel eyes darted up to meet my own dark brown gaze for a moment before
flicking downward again. “You find people?” Her voice was barely audible, and
she struggled with the tears that were trying to fall.

      
“We
certainly try,” I said gently. “But the police may be better…”

      
“NO!
They haven’t found anything, and it’s been a week. My boy,” she sobbed. She was
probably in her late thirties or early forties, so her child could be young or
into the late teens. “He disappeared on his way to school last Friday. No one
saw or heard anything. He’s just gone! I need help. The police think he ran
away, but he wouldn’t!”

      
She
was getting agitated, so I held up my hand to calm her. “Do you have a
picture?”

      
With
a nod, she reached into her black leather purse and pulled out several pictures
of a young man. He was probably about seventeen, with blond hair, hazel eyes,
and a broad smile. They were professionally taken photos. “He’s a senior this
year, top of his class. Likely to be valedictorian.” Pride shone through her
sorrow. “Smart as a whip,” she said. “He has a date for prom next week. Does
that sound like someone who would run away? He’s too smart for that. If, for
some reason, he did want to leave, wouldn’t he just wait until graduation?”

      
She
seemed genuine enough, but so had my father any time someone questioned him
about injuries I had as a child. If this boy, this very smart boy, had run
away, was it for reasons similar to my own? Or did he crack under the pressure
of being top of his class and popular?

      
“Will
you help me?” she asked.

      
I
unlocked the door, and stepped back into the office. “I need to leave a note
for my boss. Then I need you to take me on his route to school, so I can see
the area where he disappeared.”

      
Her
teary eyes showed gratitude, and I warned, “I may not be able to find anything
more than the police. But I will try.”

TWO

Sam

      
Life is strange.
My brother and I had finally found people we liked and trusted, and yet he
still felt the need to run. Jason had been on his own for too long to get used
to the idea of depending on others. Of course I couldn’t let him go without me.
Who knew when or if I’d see him again? But I still regretted his decision to
leave.

      
Hannah, I knew,
felt hurt because when Jason left, he didn’t call. Not once. He’d called Dan’s
house, only speaking if Paul, Jeff or Ginny picked up. I couldn’t tell if it
was because he no longer trusted them or if he felt ashamed of running when
there was no longer anything to run from. Those emotions were complex, wrapped
around each other in a tangled mess in my brother’s mind.

      
I, on the other
hand, called weekly to find out how everything was going, and to make sure all
our friends knew we were still okay.

      
School was almost
done for the day, letting out at noon due to teacher’s conventions, and I
planned to call Alice when I got home. My teacher, Mrs. Hodges, was assigning
our homework for the next day when I felt a jolt of fear. My eyes automatically
darted around the room to look for a threat I knew wasn’t there.

      
“Sam,” Jake, one
of the kids in my class whispered, nudging my arm from behind. “You all right,
man?”

      
“Yeah,” I
whispered back, having determined there was nothing to fear in this classroom.
But my voice was still shaky, hidden by the whispering and covered by the fact
that Jake was a typical thirteen-year-old boy who was not very good at reading
people if they lied.

      
Jason’s fear
remained tangible as I was finally released from school, but it was easily
distinguished from my own senses. Until the fear turned to anger. “What’s going
on, Jason?” I muttered to myself as I walked, pretending I didn’t hear the
calls of my friends who wanted me to join them at the park.

      
I walked quickly,
thankful that while our home was pretty well hidden, it was not too far from
the school. Jason’s feelings faded once more, and I was able to call Alice.

      
“Hannah’s worried
about him,” she informed me. “She thinks that if he doesn’t try to work through
his past experiences he’s going to lose control again.”

      
Past experiences
being physical, emotional, and sexual abuse from our father—something he wasn’t
aware that I knew about, by the way—and severe torture by the monster Trevor
Mason, who’d killed my friend Erin, and kidnapped and attempted to kill me.
Thankfully, the man who’d been put in charge of killing me happened to be an
undercover FBI agent named Mark Jones. He’d been able to get me away from Mason
and lead some officers from Alice and Dan’s precinct to find me.

      
Unfortunately for
Jason, it hadn’t been soon enough for me to let them know that Mason had
planned to grab him. So he’d taken my brother, and hurt him. Jason still
wouldn’t talk about it to anyone. He’d tried with Hannah’s friend, Dustin, but
had given that up again sometime during his search for Kindred. “Sam? You still
there?” Alice’s voice held a teasing lilt as she dragged me from my thoughts.

      
“Yeah,” I said,
now feeling a little melancholy. “I wish we could go back, Alice. I really do.
I miss the others.”

      
“They miss you
too. And Paul is… disappointed that Jason hasn’t come back.”

      
Disappointed? Try
furious. Paul had always had a temper, but he’d trusted Jason, and now he
probably felt abandoned by the one person he’d thought he could count on. Phone
calls wouldn’t cut it.

“Is he ready to talk to us yet?”
Alice asked.

      
I shrugged,
despite the knowledge that she couldn’t see me. “I dunno. I imagine he’d call
you when he is. I honestly don’t think he knows why he won’t talk to you. Until
he figures that out…”

      
She sighed
heavily. “All right; just make sure he knows we’re here whenever he’s ready.
But it better be soon. Hannah’s about ready to go out there and drag him home.”

      
My worry and
excitement began to grow in equal measure, and I felt my eyes narrow. Nothing
around me would cause that reaction. Which meant… “I’ve gotta go,” I said.
“Jason needs me.”

      
“Okay. Take care,
Sam.”

      
Without the
distraction of the phone call, I was able to more thoroughly examine the
feelings that were coming through from my brother. It was possible the muted
excitement was due to a new case, or simply finishing something Joe had asked
him to do. The worry was unknown. It was difficult to know the emotions without
the story behind them. Especially when they came through so strongly that I
couldn’t fully decide if they came from me or him.

      
Jason wasn’t
aware that I knew how he was feeling at any given moment. Part of his ability
to remain calm near me stemmed from his belief that I’d been sheltered from the
worst of what he’d gone through. Unfortunately, his assumption was incorrect.

      
My brother’s
emotions faded again to a background hum, and I was once more able to
concentrate on myself. Which was good because I had a pre-algebra test I needed
to study for, and I needed to be able to concentrate. My backpack was in my
room, so I went to grab it, intending to make a snack and work in the living
room.

      
What I did
instead was sit and wish I was with my friends; Paul, Jeffrey, and Ginny. They
were all together at Dan and June’s house, or at school in the same area and
seeing each other every day. They’d been my family for two years, and now I
only communicated through phone calls.

      
It was time. I
needed to convince Jason that we had to go back, at least for a visit. He had
to be missing them too, and I could feel his loneliness every night that only
eased up slightly during the day. Our family was not here. They were in
Crandal, and both of us required some time with them to feel less solitary.

      
I rubbed at the
arm I’d broken nearly three years ago, while I tried to force myself to focus
on the heavy textbook, and avoid thinking about the events that had driven us
away from home. He’d wanted to leave before Kindred, but it was more imperative
once the video got out. The risk of so many people discovering what he could do
scared him. I think it was even worse than the threat Kindred had posed. It
hadn’t been possible for Jason to stay after.

      
Part of him
wanted to. Our friends were there. But while I was willing to risk staying with
them, Jason was not.

      
I had walked away
with fewer scars after Mason and Kindred—both physical and emotional—but the
feeling of helplessness and pain would stick with me forever. They weren’t new
to me by any means, but I’d thought we were safe. Once Jason had taken me away
from our father, I thought I wouldn’t have to be afraid of the abuse or live
with that kind of pain again, but I’d been proven wrong by both Kindred and
Mason.

      
Despite what Mason
had done to both of us, I knew my brother regretted his death. Not because he
thought he hadn’t deserved to die, but because he’d died fast and nearly
painless. After he had caused lasting damage to my already scarred brother, I
agreed. Jason still struggled with the idea that it was so easy to kill with
his abilities, but I wasn’t sure he’d change how he'd escaped if he had to do
it again.

      
Although he
probably would have tried to do it without allowing Kindred to escape; Jeremiah
Mason, the formerly law-abiding cousin of Trevor Mason, had been tortured to
the point of not remembering who he was. It was the same treatment Mason had
been giving my brother, in the attempt to make him use his powers for whatever
Mason wanted. Jeremiah had become an assassin, killing anyone who stood in
Mason’s way.

      
Jason had become
a killer. But he’d only killed Mason and one of the bodyguards. I knew he had
mixed feelings about Jeremiah, because in the end, the man formerly known as
Kindred or the Ghost, had sacrificed himself to save my brother. Was that
enough to make up for several years of forced killings? Who knows? I’m thirteen
years old. Who am I to figure out what constitutes as penance for those kinds
of wrongs. In my mind, I still have a brother because of him. But he’d also
left emotional damage in his wake.

      
I sighed and
rubbed my hand over my eyes. So much for concentrating. Homework was much
easier when Jason’s emotions didn’t flare out of control, causing me to think
about past traumas.

      
The ringing of
our phone shook me out of my thoughts. “Hello?”

      
“Sammy?” Jason’s
voice came in, sounding a little distracted, but otherwise not too stressed or
worried. “I’m gonna be a little late. I caught a case. There should be food in
the freezer you can heat up.”

      
I forced a
light-hearted tone into my voice. “Sure, no problem. Everything going all right?”

      
“Yeah, it’s a
missing person, and I’m following his mother to the scene now. It’s been a
week, I don’t know if there will be any echoes left, but I’ll try.”

      
He sounded
determined, and from what I could tell, his powers had been steadily getting
stronger, including his ability to read people’s footsteps, and the echoes or
vibrations they left behind. I couldn’t pretend to know what it was like having
his ability, and not for the first time I wondered if I was doing the right
thing in not telling him about my own. “Good luck,” I said sincerely, hoping
he’d be successful.

Anyone with caring parents deserved
to get back to them.