Kindred by Adrianne Lemke Page B

on the map when I was able to spend a full day without hearing anything from Kindred. Somehow I needed to figure out the extent of his abilities, and by staying away from home, I might get enough of a reaction from him to be able to gauge them.
    Shaking my head, I realized it wasn’t going to work. If he decided to follow me, or got any kind of hint of my location when he’d contacted me, my distances would be off. Not to mention the fact that I wasn’t exactly sure where he was based, so the information was skewed from the beginning. “What should I do?” I asked myself quietly, ignoring the man walking past me on the sidewalk. His footsteps were unfamiliar, so he barely registered as I kept moving toward the gas station.
    I only noticed him when the steps faltered, and he turned around to follow me. “Hey, buddy, you ok?” he asked, coming up behind me.
    My immediate response was to run. I had one good experience with a helpful person last fall, but I had no trust built in me for people who approached me. When the only experiences you have to go on are bad, you tend to lose the desire to try. So run I did. The man bit back a curse and followed, confirming my belief that he was not a Good Samaritan, as he may have seemed at first.
    “STOP! Police!”
    His yell made me hesitate, but I didn’t stop until I’d looked over my shoulder. “Ahh, shit,” I muttered under my breath. Normally I wouldn’t use that language, but I was fed up with my luck lately, and frustration won out. The man I was running from was wearing a uniform, and he did not look at all happy about our little run. “Officer,” I said as I stopped running. “I’m sorry.”
    “What are you running for?” he asked as he held me by the arm, preventing me from taking off again. The story was too long to get into, so I just waved my arm vaguely, not really sure how to respond. “Is it drugs?” he asked, having me lean against the wall of a house we were by and patting me down, looking for contraband.
    “No. I don’t do drugs. I didn’t realize you were a cop.”
    “You don’t?” he asked, as he cuffed me, and one hand went through my duffel bag. “Than what are these?” he pulled out a bottle of prescription medication I still needed once in a while when my shoulder acted up.
    I sighed and leaned my forehead against the cold vinyl siding.
    “My meds. Look, I understand you want to take me in, so go ahead. Just call Detective Alice Farrow when we get there. She’ll vouch for me.”
    The officer had his car parked near the gas station, so we had to walk down the street a ways before he stuffed me into the back and we drove to their little station. It was tiny. Probably only about two or three officers worked in Torsten, and the building showed it. The bushes and flowers were all well-tended; the flowers newly planted this spring. The little brick building was clean of graffiti, and it looked like they spent every minute making sure the windows were spotless.
    The inside was a bit more cluttered, but still neat. The paperwork stacked on the desks was orderly, and there was no dust on anything. “Not much happens around here, huh?” I asked.
    The officer looked at me, but didn’t comment. “What’s your name?”
    “Jason,” I answered truthfully, not wanting to make a big deal about it.
    He smirked at me. “Then why are the meds listed for James McCoy?” the man practically gloated; he was that excited at catching me for something.
    “Because, when I got them, that was my legal name.” I had forgotten they were in that name. And, technically speaking it still was my name, but not for much longer. I was only trying to come up with a last name that wouldn’t connect me to the man who called himself my father. I could practically smell the suspicion and disbelief coming off the officer, so I sighed again. “Look. I’ll tell you the whole story,”—or at least the parts that were relevant—“and then you call Detective Farrow