Free Sweet Mercy by Naomi Stone Page B

Including the woman he’s got tailing you, that makes three at once—that we know of—under his control.”
    “Mabel. The woman tailing me is Mabel.” He glanced over to see her sprinting toward her own car—in surprisingly good shape for a woman her age. Probably telling herself she forgot to turn off a faucet at home or something. She’d never admit to pursuing him.
    “Can Beth trace them? Find out where they took Rachel?” Fluke put the Porsche in gear and navigated the parking lot at unsafe speeds.
    “She followed the trail as far as the back porch—where Tom teleported them out, one by one.” David’s voice caught in a moment’s crack. “We haven’t got a clue where they went from here.”
    Someone broke in on another channel. In the seconds before David got back to him, Fluke hit the main road back to the highway.
    “I just got a report that two of the Capital Finance board members have been taken.”
    “Taking any bets our puppet master hasn’t gotten himself a teleporter?”
    “If you can find someone who’ll take that bet, more power to you. Obviously, Johnson used Tom to get to the board members. Alice is sending out an alert right now, letting the other members of the board know they’re at risk, to stay behind locked doors, go nowhere alone.” David spoke again. “Alice, contact the available Team members and patch them into this channel as you can. We need more input.”
    Fluke checked his rearview mirror. Mabel’s car appeared as expected, hanging well back. Not enough cars drove the highway this late for her to keep any between them.
    “Do we have any notion what Johnson’s limits are? How many people he can influence at one time?”
    “The only literature on the subject suggests there is a limit, but our
    info comes from only one subject.” David’s voice kept him company on the road. “She reported having trouble controlling any more than four or five ‘puppets’ at one time, but that varied depending on how complex the instructions, and whether she had determined opposition from any of them—and we can’t know whether she represented a norm or an outlier of either extreme on the spectrum for her talent.”
    Fluke let that sink in. “Swell. We do know teleporters have limits. Tom can only carry about as much mass as he can lift– he’s a strong guy, so that’s about twice his mass, but it tires him accordingly. In the last hour he’s moved Rachel, Tamara, and Johnson from the ashram, and he’s moved those two board members…”
    “Hmm.” David fell silent for a moment.
    Fluke passed one car after another, foot heavy on the accelerator. Despite his habit of exceeding speed limits, he’d been lucky enough to’ve never been caught, and he counted on that luck now.
    Alice cut in. “I’ve got personal stats on the missing board members. Both adult males. Graham Hanson is fifty-four, six foot two, two hundred thirty pounds. Joel Rosso is forty-nine, five foot eight, two-seventy.”
    “Hefty guys. Tom’s got to be exhausted…”
    “Hopefully that’ll buy us some time to figure out where he’s stashing these people.”
    “Can we hope they’re all still alive?” The question came from Stacy Peterson, the telekinetic, who’d just signed in along with several other Talents.
    David jumped in again. “Reports from Johnson’s previous killings suggest he plays out some elaborate scenarios with his victims before killing them. That’s what led police to believe his ex and her new husband performed a murder-suicide. Johnson doesn’t just want to kill his targets, he wants to make them suffer.”
    The thought of Rachel in this guy’s power sent a chill through Fluke. “What does he want with Rachel? He used her to get to Tom Stanton; isn’t that enough? He doesn’t have anything personal against her. Any chance we can bargain with Johnson, get him to release her?”
    “We'll have to find him, first.”

Five

    Rachel turned at the sound of a thump. A door