Secrets have a price . . .

and his power can see them all.

Or so he thought.

Paul’s years of exposing cover-ups with his paranormal senses are over. Now on the run from the police, he tracks the one person who knows the secret of his powers to a peaceful little town, where mysterious fires erupt the day he arrives.

Paul thought he would do anything to find the truth. But who will pay the price this time?

Tracks In Shadow continues the paranormal adventure from Shadowed, opening up the secrets of a legacy of power, and the lives it has transformed.

Secrets have a price. And some people will pay any to destroy them.

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Sample

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.

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