Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

Staying low, we sneak over to their sedan. While I attach a tracker to the undercarriage, Jar takes a picture of the license plate. We then cross over to the strip of land the others are on and follow them. To reduce the chances of being seen, we keep as close to the trees as possible, our silhouettes mixing with the shadowy trunks. The bigger problem is noise. The breeze is moving toward Evan’s group, and will carry any extraneous sounds toward them.

About every five steps, I raise the binoculars to check on the others’ progress. The fourth time I do so, they are gone.

I hold out a hand, stopping Jar, then sweep my gaze through the area ahead.

There they are. They’ve walked into the field and are moving away from the trees.

I shift the glasses ahead of them to see if I can figure out where they’re headed.

About seventy meters in front of them are more trees, though much fewer than those in the grove beside us. They are scattered around an unplowed area that appears to be where a house should be. Only there is no house.

But something is there. It’s low to the ground, and hard to make out through the trees and a wide line of brush. It might be a structure, or it might be a pile of fertilizer. No way to tell from our angle.

We continue on along the woods, taking even more care as it’s a lot easier now for Evan and his friends to glance back our way. Thankfully, their attention remains focused on their destination. As they near the tree-dotted area, they crouch and continue forward at a much slower pace, like they’re worried they might be seen by someone ahead.

This idea is reinforced when, instead of going straight onto the unplowed land, two of them go left toward the back of the farm, and two go right toward the main road. They are circling the area, in what I can only assume is an attempt to make sure no one else is around.

The duo on the front side of the property arcs around to the roadway that runs to the main road where the sedan is parked, and stops.

The other two have halted also. They are about thirty meters closer to the back of the property than from where they started.

I switch back and forth between the pairs, waiting for something to happen. At around the ninety-second mark, a dull light appears in the hand of one of the teens at the front and is raised to his or her ear. A phone.

I sweep the binoculars back to the others. Though I don’t see a similar light, I can see one of them holding a hand to his or her ear.

Fifteen seconds later, all four of them start walking toward the spot they were surveilling, which I take to mean they believe the area is deserted.

Jar and I kneel down next to the trees, then take turns watching the teens through the binoculars for the next twenty minutes. More like try to watch them, as most of the time they’re hidden from view by bushes or trees or both. One thing we have no problem seeing are several camera flashes. Again, we are talking teenagers here, so they’re probably taking selfies.

When they finally leave, they head down the driveway back to the county road.

While I know Jar and I could return to our truck without the others being the wiser, we’ve bugged their sedan so we don’t need to keep them in sight to follow them anymore. Besides, I really want to get a look at whatever it is that drew them out here.

We remain where we are until Evan and his friends are in their sedan and headed back to Mercy—or wherever their next stop is—then we take the same route across the field that they took earlier.

We’re not even halfway to our destination when the breeze lets up for a few seconds—and the air becomes tinged with a smoky, ashy odor.

My first thought is of the Mercy Arsonist and that it’s actually the kids and they’ve started a fire. I begin to run, hoping we can put the blaze out before the flames can do much damage. The closer I get, the more overwhelming the smell becomes. Oddly, the area ahead remains dark. Not a flicker of flames in sight.

That doesn’t make any sense.

“Slow down,” Jar says from not far behind me. “No reason to run.”

I continue on for a few more steps before I realize she’s right.

There’s no fire for us to put out. No wrongheaded deed Evan and his friends have done that I need to rectify.

Whatever happened here happened before any of us arrived.

We reach the end of the field and step onto a wide area of fresh grass.

The something I glimpsed earlier that was hidden behind trees and bushes, that I thought might be a building? It’s the charred debris of the home that once stood here. The wreckage is not from an old fire, though. It isn’t even the remains of a fire that happened earlier in the week. This fire happened today, and if I had to guess, no more than six hours ago.

Tire tracks made by large vehicles are everywhere, and the ground around the foundation is soaked with water, leading me to the obvious conclusion that this house received the same emergency response as the house fire we were at on Monday night.

Someone has wound caution tape around the blackened pile of wood, with the words ACTIVE INVESTIGATION DO NOT CROSS printed on it.

If I had to guess, I’d say the emergency vehicles left at most two hours ago.

About eighty meters behind the house are the burnt remains of a barn. That location, too, has caution tape strung around it.

While I take a closer look at the house, Jar sits on the ground and pulls the laptop out of her backpack.

I’ve had more