Tracks In Shadow: Shadowed Steps, #2

TRACKS IN SHADOW

Shadowed Steps – Book Two

Ken Hughes

Windward Road Press

LOS ANGELES, CA

Copyright © 2020 by Ken Hughes

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Windward Road Press

11923 NE Sumner St Ste 879426

Portland, OR 97250-9601

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

Cover © 2020 by Sleepy Fox Studio

ISBN paperback: 978-1-3934736-5-7

ISBN ebook: 978-1-7350002-0-6

Tracks In Shadow/ Ken Hughes—1st ed.

To Robin

— your move

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: GHOSTS

CHAPTER TWO: ON THE MAP

CHAPTER THREE: THE DOCTOR

CHAPTER FOUR: MISCHIEF

CHAPTER FIVE: WHERE THERE’S SMOKE

CHAPTER SIX: GROUNDS

CHAPTER SEVEN: BLOODLINES

CHAPTER EIGHT: WHISPERS

CHAPTER NINE: TO REMAIN SILENT

CHAPTER TEN: OPENING

CHAPTER ELEVEN: SECRETS

CHAPTER TWELVE: AUTHORITIES

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: UNTRACEABLE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CHOOSE YOUR ENEMIES

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE ROAD TAKEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: ONE WAY IN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: NO WAY OUT

CHAPTER NINETEEN: ANYWHERE BUT HERE

PREVIEW from SHADOW SIGHT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER ONE: GHOSTS

He didn’t have to look. Paul Schuman could simply sit quietly on the bus seat... that silent man across from him might not be a cop.

No matter what Paul had seen in his mind.

But he’d heard it. He knew he had, in that moment getting on when the driver had stopped and taken that brief second look at Paul’s fake ID: the man in the line behind him had grunted in interest. And then he’d taken the seat right across the aisle from him.

Paul flexed his fingers, huddled under his coat, trying to shake off the creeping helplessness. A moment’s interest didn’t mean the man suspected. More of the snowy highway rolled by outside the window with every second, more distance from the city of his home, and any alerts that might have gone out.

I was trying to keep my family out of danger!

But now the police knew his face, and some of the places he’d crept into. Now there’d be no more maneuvering and blending in around the streets he knew. Only sitting here, trapped and hoping he was reading the man wrong. Gambling he could slip away and still find some answers about his power.

Or, he could try to be sure.

Paul turned his head to bring the silent, grim-faced man in the pale coat into the edge of his vision, and Opened to his thoughts.

The face shifted before Paul’s eyes. The features grew more sunken, sullen, revealing the scowling frustration a person’s real face might try to hide. The eyes held themselves forward, only glancing around now and then at some cue around him—as best Paul could see through the corner of his own vision. Not watching Paul and not wanting to watch him, or anyone, unless physically missing some faint glance meant missing the thought too... Stare harder, be sure...

The cold eyes turned toward him, and settled.

Paul ripped himself out of the trance—stupid!—and looked away from that flesh-and-blood gaze. The seat’s vinyl creaked with his move’s suddenness.

If the stranger wasn’t aware of him before, he was now. With the shabby, sweaty coat and the signs of lost sleep in Paul’s face. All the marks of the last few days. Paul huddled still inside his coat, with more and more warmth slipping away.

Why’d I have to try that? He’d barely learned he could Open to thoughts at all. Heightening one of his five real senses would have been safer—simply listen to the man’s breathing, or find a glint in the window that angled to work as a mirror onto his face. Paul could still see where he was looking without any betraying glance toward him...

He sighed. His control was too frayed already. And the two of them were just tired, solitary people on a cross-country bus with too much time to worry. Even if Paul was simply trapped with him for hours now.

No, it’s not the lack of hiding places that worries me. It’s having anyone watching for me at all, and that I brought it on myself.

He drew himself in tighter. After all the secrets he’d listened in at and the lies he’d dug up... it felt half-unreal, somehow, that he’d finally gotten noticed. That he’d brought real danger down on himself, and the father and brother he’d meant to leave behind.

Sounds and voices prickled around him. Clear tones from a couple in front of him and a phone playing at his rear, and a pool of softer mutters and rustles from so many seats half-full of different people crammed together, all underscored by the sound of the motor carrying them.

Just last night, on another leg of his zigzagging bus route, he’d been able to read how one passenger had been on the verge of pulling a gun. He’d stepped in, he’d bet on the right words making a difference.

But what did it change? A chill squeezed through him, no matter how tightly he huddled.

Two years. Two years living in back alleys learning to find fake IDs or the places that didn’t ask for any... He gritted his teeth. All to keep his power secret from anyone who might have wanted control of it, and to run down every trace about where it came from and the hole in his memory.

And the liars. Secrets, corruption, all the petty schemes and hypocrisy that a former reporter with heightened senses came across. A new case of bribery or cover-up every week. God, it had been so easy to move from the hopeless search for his own secrets to exposing everyone else’s.

I needed it. Now that his memory had returned... with a hiss of breath, he felt that moment again: when he’d first Opened his senses. They’d Opened then because he’d needed to know what people said, the same need he still carried with pride.

Now one sweep of focus with his hearing could search what the passengers were whispering. Odds were, nobody would be on the edge of disaster like last night, but he could begin to know.

Except, where would that lead this time? Did I really think I could just stay clear of the dangerous cases—and not end up getting people shot?

He stared at the front of the bus, but his too-sharp sight wouldn’t release the memory of how it had all ended:

His father on the floor. The pool of blood. The sharp whoosh of the silenced gunshot before that.

But they’d been in time. Paul tried to cling to the sight of the stretcher lifting his father up. The doctors in the hospital saying he was stable... though Paul had to overhear it from the next floor, instead of facing his father or his brother Greg ever again.

If he had a phone, one phone and some idea about security for it, he could at least check on his father.

Dad had to kill that bastard Quinn, to save us from the schemes I exposed us to. But the police would never leave the Schuman family alone now, and that was after only a few hints about how many other skeletons Paul had dug up in those years.

Or Lorraine.

And I never knew. Greg’s own wife, that Paul had somehow shared his power with and tried to teach...

It had always been her power. All this time, his senses had come from her, the sweet, clever, gracious woman who’d married into their family and fooled them all.

And I kissed her.

She was running too, somewhere. Whoever she really was.

Paul closed his eyes. At least he knew himself now. He was still the investigator who’d claimed that power and brought so many back-room dealings into the light. Even one tip to a reporter like Sarah could change lives...

Sure, keep telling yourself that, and don’t think about the blood. If I wanted to hide my power I should have laid low for real. And if I only wanted the truth about it, well, I have that now.

Part of the truth, anyway. He looked at the window, where stark brown-against-white trees slid steadily by, mile after mile. Bringing him closer.

He’d found the power when he overheard Lorraine bending people’s minds. Trying to help her dying mentor, Curtis Thiessen.

Curtis and Lorraine had come from the same town, Cedar Springs. Paul had even met her brother at the wedding, Drew Morris.

Another twist or two on different bus routes, and he’d be at Cedar Springs. Lorraine might not be there, but answers could be.

*   *   *

All Paul had to do—all he could do, as hours wound by—was stay in the seat not looking at the stranger. Not thinking about what he’d done, not able to sleep, only watching the sun sink and fill the white landscape with orange before abandoning it to deep grays and indigo.

The night had fully swallowed the snow when the bus turned. The engine’s steady hum swelled to push back against their momentum, and sank into the lower rumblings of bringing it in to a broad black parking lot.

Forty minutes! One chance to grab a bite, the driver called.

Riders rose and shuffled out in a herd. Paul played at sleep until he saw the cop stand and join them without a glance at him. Then he fell in among the last of the passengers to leave.

His legs prickled from sitting still, and flurries of snow twisted around the open pavement. Paul hung back in the rear as the crowd started toward the diner’s neon, not sure if he should try finding the cop—if he was that at all—between the shifting currents of figures.

Then he glimpsed him through the thick of it, standing off to the side, phone at his ear.

Edging along in the crowd, Paul Opened to reach past them and pick out the voice on the other end.

—says it’s from a Detective Reid. For questioning about a killing and a mix of other charges.

Silence. Total stillness at that spot, no matter the wind and voices around it.

Detective Reid. With the huge eyebrows and the stubborn questions.

Then the cop’s Thanks. Paul Schuman... I’ll see if it’s him.

Then nothing but the background, and a slow footstep moving away among the other feet... step by step by step...

The lack of voices cut through the trance. Reflex dropped Paul back into himself, and the cold.

Murder. Dad. It’s not true...

The cold wheezed in his lungs. Some part of him felt the people around pulling ahead of him, leaving him exposed, but he couldn’t move. A murder. But Dad was recovering...

No, they said a killing, not a murder, not someone innocent. And a killing. So it was still only Quinn dead—it had to be.

The thought kicked his feet into motion. The cop was heading off with the crowd, but he could look back at any moment. Paul turned to move around the bus, on numb legs.

And if he had gotten his father killed? Or it could have been Greg, or Lorraine, or else Sarah Gomez or one of the other lives he’d played with. So now he was scrambling to get away as if anything he learned up ahead would change the wreckage he’d left behind?

It could still mean answers. Or making the choice himself, as long as he stayed free.

He slid behind the broad hulk of the bus. The last sounds of the crowd were fading inside the truck stop, and he risked one sweep of his hearing to search for any footsteps of the cop heading after him instead. Nothing, for now.

Deep twilight hung over the pavement, except for isolated lights that towered high over it. Half the space was bare, with scattered vehicles around it.

What, I could steal one of those? I cross the line into theft and I really don’t deserve to run loose.

The taller outlines in the night were trucks. Paul moved toward the next one, using what shelter it offered from the diner behind him. From there...

The open highway looked like a river of black, even though it must be as snow-gray as the fields around it. He could simply keep walking—no, not in this cold. Not out here where it might be miles between shelter.

A distant slam of metal drew his gaze. At the far end of the lot, a pudgy figure turned away from his truck’s immense cab and staggered toward the diner.

Opening to sight picked out the trucker’s weary features, his slow, worn-out tread. He looked tired enough to miss any signs around him—that had to give Paul better odds than crossing mile after mile of emptiness.

Paul started toward the truck, fighting the urge to run while the driver bumbled past him. The lading sign on the truck had it headed in about the right direction. Now he just needed the cop to stay inside a bit longer...

The semi’s rear had only a huge, classic padlock securing the door. Paul climbed up to crouch by it, and pulled out his lockpicks—he had his set of actual picks on him, not only the pieces of scavenged metal he could have explained away if he were searched. One more reason not to get caught tonight, but it should make this part easier.

If only his fingers weren’t shivering. The metal of the tailgate leeched more heat out of him.

He Opened to touch.

The finger-muscles swelled in his mind. Grip here, stretch out there, press in among the tiny, stubborn metal teeth for just the place to make the first stir, and the second—

—Swaying where he crouched, but holding on, don’t think about if someone were watching at the rear—

Flesh cringing in the cold, with only warm blood and muscle holding it on its purpose. Simple, familiar shapes within the metal, but so thick he had to strain...

He felt the click down to his bones.

The lock slid off, and the door rattled up—a shock of noise in the open lot, but lasting just long enough for him to slide between the metal. He caught one glimpse of heavy plastic crates before he squeezed in among them, and brought the door down.

No sound outside. He curled up in the dark, searching for a position that would let him hold onto some warmth, in among the smooth plastic corners and the web of cords tying them all in place.

Long minutes later the truck ground into motion.

Unnoticed, uninterrupted, he should be moving closer to his destination. All he needed now was to be awake when the trucker pulled over, to slip out and disappear.

That part was almost easy.

CHAPTER TWO: ON THE MAP

Reaching Cedar Springs was like finding the open highways and snowy fields had rolled back to offer him a smile. After days of shifting between buses, walking from one bus line’s station across a city to another, and stowing away when he could, it felt strange to be walking in a quiet, oversized town like this. Or it might be more of a small city, and couldn’t make up its mind.

It was city enough that Paul could pick out a cheap hotel near the bus station. A minute’s glancing around the outside showed it clear enough of trash and damage to suggest it was safe enough. Unless everything here was cleaner.

So the last of Paul’s fake IDs, and too much of his remaining money, let him close a door and settle him into a tiny room.

Brown paint, brown blankets on the bed—all shades not quite dark enough to cover dirt, but not holding so much of that either. The heat hissed away in the corner, not enough to swallow the tiny drafts he felt here and there.

Sagging down on the bed would let his mind finally rest... and yet his muscles rebelled after so much of the last days sitting deathly still.

Instead he moved to the bathroom and went to work on his clothes. First the coat, then each layer of shirt he wore or kept stuffed in a pocket, he laid them out in the sink. As he’d done many times, he dabbed drops from his pocket bottle of cleanser, and worked them into the fabric with his fingers in search of the stains and smells. Slowly, lemony suds began enveloping the fabric.

Habit pushed him through the work. No scrubbing would make the clothes fresh, but they’d look less like he’d spent days fighting through sweat and crawling over grime.

He was down to one shirt when shivering from the drafts became too much. He laid the clothes out to dry next to the heat, and lay back wrapping the sheets into a warm cocoon around him.

Pipes groaned, here and there around the building. Music played somewhere beyond the walls—too far to make out without Opening to it. The quiet of a morning, in a safe place.

In the town Lorraine and Curtis had come from. So when he began digging into that and searching for their power...

It was a new feeling, he realized. With his memories of that night, knowing part of his power had come from his own need to break through to what Lorraine had done... For the first time in two years, he knew enough to have a choice.

If he pried into any more secrets, it would be because he couldn't walk away and trust what he already knew. Even after getting his father shot.

There was still too much to know, to turn away from. But still, the feathery thought rustled inside him. My choice.

After he got some rest.

*   *   *

Late morning gave the air a chill that let Paul walk outside with his hoodie down low over his features, one of many on the streets. The town stretched out around him: wider sidewalks that had more room for grass and trees beside them, buildings rarely as high and never as cramped together as the places he’d prowled back home. Whenever the roofs dipped lower, he’d see a steady rising of hills and woods to the west.

First stop would be a library and its computer, to search for Lorraine’s brother—and settle the lingering fear about his father’s condition. That thought dug at his stomach, the worst case of the damage he’d done... but, he wanted to rip that out with one pull. Before he tried searching for a breakfast he couldn’t afford.

The streets sloped faintly downward to the north, and he followed them, searching for traces of older design that might lead to the heart of the town. Best to get as close as he could before he risked asking anyone where it was.

But the blocks... shop after shop looked too much alike at first glance, many variations on the same single-story height and brick and steel construction. Each spot had its differences, but he couldn’t spot the patterns to lead him through them.

His stomach rumbled and drove him faster. He glanced up the streets he passed, at the people moving from cars to sidewalks to doors or back. Even pausing to sweep for moments of conversation only fed the feeling.

He didn’t know this town. The now-leafless trees and iron streetlights planted along the sidewalk made everything look the same, where the older city he knew would be a patchwork of designs and eras trying to grow together. Just finding his way back to the hotel would be a challenge, and none of the voices around him would help him learn where to get food or shelter that wouldn’t take the last of his coins. And yet he had just dived into it.

Or it’s Lorraine, maybe.

He locked his focus on the words—the other side of the block, but the woman had said it. But there was nothing more.

No, no! He bolted down the street, shoes scrabbling in slush. The corner to the right was long seconds away... then the next corner, please, please, let me get my eyes on those people in time...

He skidded onto the proper sidewalk and stared at what people were on it. That woman was too alone to have been speaking aloud, those were men, their voices were wrong, those were too far, no, no...

He ran for the far end of the block, in case they’d turned out of view. Pain knifed at his lungs. It could still be coincidence, but he could go a week without hearing a name like Lorraine at random—

At the corner, the right side had nobody close. The left side had only a man.

A uniformed cop. Turning toward him, drawn to his dashing around.

Don’t stop! Paul spun away to the right and moved on down at a jog, waving an arm in the air. The way any local would, who was just trying to catch up to some friend.

Finally he turned out of sight around another corner—a fourth right turn, back onto the street where he’d begun—and sagged on his feet. Opening his hearing heard no