Without even looking at Terk, she confirmed, “The guy isn’t in the truck.”
“They’re looking for answers. He needs to check again,” Terk said in an odd voice.
Frowning, she wondered about that but snatched up her phone and quickly sent Damon a text, giving them Terk’s message. She knew it wouldn’t make much sense. She could see the location of the trackers on her screen, but she couldn’t necessarily see exactly what was going on, and that was frustrating. She leaned forward and tried to watch, and then what even made her feel worse was a sudden jerk in her camera feed. She gasped.
“It’s okay,” Terk stated, “neither were hit.”
“Neither were hit, but they’re being fired at,” she snapped.
“They are, indeed,” he murmured, his eyes closed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She turned and looked at him, not sure what he even meant by that. She’d always been fascinated to know that some supernatural element was involved with what they were doing, but she never really understood what it was. He’d always just explained it was cold-war training and that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. And, honest to God, most times she thought it didn’t work, compared to good old-fashioned fieldwork.
But she didn’t know for sure what worked and what didn’t. Nobody ever talked about it. None of the admins even gave voice to all the questions in their heads, except Wilson. He had asked her a couple times just what these guys could really do, but she hadn’t been able to answer him. They had mused privately over it all, but nobody had come up with any direct techniques that could have been utilized. It fascinated her but, at the same time, had also frustrated her to no end.
Now, for the first time, she wondered if Wilson had a reason for the questions. She tried to remember everything that had been asked, but it was hard because Mera had had questions too. On that note Tasha contacted Mera, sending a text. Hey, do you remember ever being asked odd questions about the team? Like, what we did, what we didn’t do, or anything that would trigger some suspicion on your part? Obviously I’m still pondering what the hell is going on with this mess.
When she didn’t get an answer, she frowned. Of course there was no reason for Mera to answer, but there was also no reason for her not to, unless she really was serious about having nothing to do with them anymore. Tasha sent a question mark and then asked if Mera were okay.
When Tasha still got no answer, she really started to get worried. Mera had been doing the same kind of work for three years with them now. But, as Tasha stared at the shadow on the screen that was Damon, she realized that, for the first time, her heart really was involved, and the stakes were higher than ever before. She could only hope that whatever the hell was going on in that strange online pantomime she was watching was something Damon and Merk could handle.
She didn’t think she could deal with much more of this bullshit.
*
As they approached the truck for the second time, Damon checked under the tarp. They’d already looked once, but they hadn’t realized that the tarp half hid a box in the front. He hopped up into the truck bed, not caring if they were seen or not. He pulled the tarp free, walked over to the box, and noted it was locked. He kicked it hard with his boot, shattering the hinge on it, and, as soon as he lifted the lid, he knew. With a hard expression on his face, he looked over at Merk. “Is this the guy?”
Merk hopped up beside him, swore, then pulled out his phone and nodded. “Yeah, that’s him.” He took a picture and sent it off immediately, presumably to Ice.
Damon looked back at Merk. “We need to get out of here.”
“Yeah, we do.”
They jumped over either side and immediately ran out of the parking lot. Damon went left; Merk went right. They were trying to split up, and, if any tails were nearby or if any cameras were watching them, they needed to find a way to disappear—and fast. They had left their two vehicles inside the car park, but any other vehicles left there now would be very suspect.
Damon kept going left, following any exiting vehicles, then running through the bush, trying to find a place to get out of the potential camera zone. With satellites and drones these days, just no way to know, so you always had to assume that you were being tracked.
And he was being tracked, of course; he had his own tracker. And, with that thought, he winced. He pulled out his phone and called Tasha. “Can you see me?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell if anybody else is tracking me?”
He heard her suck back her breath. “No, that’s not something that I can tell.”
“Can you shut down my tracker?”
“I can, but I won’t,” she stated in a hard voice. “That’s the only way we have to know that you’re safe.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” he snapped. “Shut it down, or I’m ripping it out. Do it now.”
“Terk?” she asked, wanting a second opinion.
“He has been tracked, so knock it down.”
Damon heard her cursing in the background, and he called out through the phone, “Thanks. Terk. If you got anything to give me a hand, I could sure use it.”
“On it,” Terk said.
Damon stepped through a hedge to the other side, then looked around and felt an odd sensation coming down over him. He stopped, closed his eyes, and recognized Terk’s signature. He sent back a message to Terk, hoping that he would receive it. Damon wasn’t the best at this stuff, but he could communicate. I’m safe. Keep her safe. I’ll call when I can. Then Damon sent one last message. See if you can track this energy. And, with that, he shut things down.
Then he shifted into what looked like a series of office buildings. He moved silently through them, keeping his awareness at half-mast, knowing that a mistake at this point in time would be critical. It was good to be a transmitter, but, if you didn’t have anybody who could receive, it was no good. But he was a receiver and a transmitter, though at half power, it didn’t seem to matter. He would suffer no matter what.
He stayed on the move, slipping from vehicle to vehicle, store to store, office building to office building, weaving through and back, in and out of exits, as he skirted his way around a huge ten-block radius from where he’d left his vehicle. By the time he made it into the car park again, six hours had lapsed. He knew he hadn’t been seen coming in because he had actually broken into an office and gone through the underground tunnel made of thick concrete.
As he sat here in his truck, he sent a message to Terk. At vehicle. Looked for obvious tracker. Found none. How about you?
When nothing came back, he fired up the engine, slowly backed out, and hit the road, then turned and headed back home again. Damon saw no apparent sign of anybody following him. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have somebody at a distance who could lock on his location via satellite or drone or energy work or whatever and see what Damon was doing. That was always the part that got him.
Terk was good at that; he could lock on somebody forty miles away, actually see him just sitting in a room somewhere, building a bomb or whatever. They had had success with Terk tracking down that same person, when he went out in a vehicle again. That’s the part that got Damon right now because, if stuff like that was happening, where the bad guys could follow Terk’s team’s energy signatures …