Free Tracker by Adrianne Lemke

the sooner my partner and I can go out looking for them.”
    I paused, waiting for a response from the angry teen. I received none so I continued, keeping my voice calm as I tried to prevent my previous frustration from coming through. Paul was scared, worried, and lashing out. I was the adult and I needed to remember that Paul was just a kid who needed help. “Please come with me, and we’ll go to Jason and tell him what happened. Chances are he’ll have the same opinion as you.”
    “Fine. We’ll come with you,” he said grudgingly. Ginny looked relieved as the older boy agreed to come. She must have been afraid that he would say no and she wouldn’t be able to go to Jason.
    “Jeffrey, are you okay?” I asked. He hadn’t said a word, just continued to stare at the ground. The thirteen-year-old seemed willing to let the older boy deal with everything. I suspected the boy had some kind of learning disability, but I hadn’t spent much time with him. He always seemed to speak and act like a young child rather than a teen, but he clearly loved his street family.
    “Scared,” he mumbled. “Erin and Sam are scared.” He looked up at me, trust in his eyes. “You’ll find them?” he asked. “You’ll get them back and keep Jason safe, right?”
    I nodded, trying to hide the fear I felt for the missing children. “I will certainly do my best, Jeffrey.”
    “We need to get to Jason now,” Ginny took Jeffrey’s hand leading him toward the car. “Officer Alice needs to get back to work and Jason needs to know what happened.” The young girl sounded like Erin, and the look she gave Paul was a mix of Erin’s glare and Jason’s ‘listen to me now’ frown. She had clearly been paying attention to the leaders of her little group.
    Paul still looked rebellious, but after a pause when I thought he was going to refuse to come, he said, “We’ll come. We need to know what Jase wants us to do while he’s healing.” The teen glared at me. “Whatever he wants to do is what we’ll do. If he wants to be done with you, we’re out. We’ll find Erin and Sam on our own.”
    “You have police help regardless,” I tried not to snap at him. The open hostility was getting hard for me to deal with, but pushing him too hard wasn’t the way to get his cooperation. “We’re already involved, and if Jason is going to search for them, he’ll need whatever backup we can provide.” I left it unsaid that I knew Jason would demand police backup even if it had to be covert. Paul wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say, but he would come with me now to see Jason. Their unwavering loyalty to Jason never failed to impress me.
    My phone rang as we were getting into my car. “Dan? What’s going on?”
    “You need to get back here ASAP,” he said urgently. “Mason left a message for Jason.”

THIRTEEN
    Jason
     
     
    My day started out uneventfully. I had woken up when Alice left for work. Despite her attempt to be silent, I had heard her moving around the house as she made coffee and used the bathroom. The click of the door was enough to wake me completely, but I had no desire to get out of bed. The basement room was cool, and the blankets made a warm nest where I could hide from the chill. I fingered the fabric of the top blanket; it was a quilt, handmade. Possibly a grandmother or great-grandmother had made this quilt, lovingly and painstakingly piecing it together as a memento for future generations.
    The room was like the quilt; slightly old-fashioned in its design. There was an antique roll-top desk in one corner, closed so I could only guess at the contents. On the walls were old photographs that were difficult to make out in the dim light that filtered in through the small window. A record player sat on an old dresser against the wall near the door, the records kept on a shelf next to it.
    I wondered who had set up this room. It was unlike the rest of the house, which was more modern. Neither Alice nor Hannah had