The Formidable

11

It wasn't a bug, like Sam had said in his text, it was a tracking transmitter. It was on the desk in the garage office, no bigger than Jase's fingernail and you wouldn't know what it was if you'd never seen one before. Kieran was the one that identified it when he pulled it from behind the rearview mirror, cutting the wires in the device first.

"And neither of you put it there?" Jase asked, looking from Chris to Paul and back again. They shook their heads.

"Do you reckon there's more?" Sam asked, Kieran shook his head.

"Nah, I swept the car top to bottom."

Jase's brows twitched towards his hairline.

"Why would they track her car if they already knew where she worked?" Sam said, swivelling around in the chair to face Chris and Paul.

"Depends how long ago they installed it," Kieran said. "That could be how they found out where she worked."

"But they'd have to know where she lived or something to install it in the first place, no?" Chris questioned.

"Or it wasn't her they were trying to track," Jase mumbled, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets. Everyone looked at him, each trying to connect the dots.

"What are you getting at?" Sam asked, sitting up straight and taking out his cigarettes, offering them to everyone but Jase.

"Were you two told to slash her tyres?" Jase looked at Chris and Paul. Again, they shook their heads.

"No, we just wanted to make sure she couldn't get away," Paul said. Jase looked at the oil-stained floor of the garage, thinking. It was a reach to assume whoever planted the tracker did so in the hopes they would take the car as well as her, but as Madison had stated, they couldn't rule anything out whilst they remained so deep in the dark. And they had taken the car, technically.

"Madison said something about this Casper guy planning this," Jase said.

"Planning what?" Sam asked.

"Putting me and her together. If they did, they would know that eventually," he nodded at the vehicle, "that car would come into contact with us. What if they're not tracking her, they're tracking us."

"How can someone plan something like this? She's been gone for three years," Kieran said.

"Three and a half," Jase corrected, "and that's a long time for someone to straighten out the kinks. Mitch planned for longer and look at the evidence. You two were told to go grab a girl by someone you've never met and it happens to be Madison?" He shook his head. "It's a little too perfect to be a coincidence." He'd dismissed the thought originally but the more it simmered in the back of his mind, the more it seemed like the only thing in all of this to make sense. If this Casper person had the time and opportunity to install a tracker, which Kieran explained was a job the car would have had to be broken into or unlocked with its own key, they had enough contact with her to not need to track her movements. Unless it wasn't her movements they were tracking.

"What makes you so sure this isn't some sort of setup?" Sam asked, everyone's attention turned to him now.

"Why would Madison set something like this up when it was all over and done with a long time ago? And with a kid too?" he questioned, irritated. He expected something like this from Sam and doubted it would be the last snide comment he made.

"All I'm saying is look at what we do know. Madison caught us off guard last time and several people died because of it. Then suddenly, three years later she rocks up with a kid and is somehow put in the palm of your hands knowing you won't be able to resist playing hero again. She could have set this up because she has a kid, she might have entered into some sort of plea deal with this Casper guy and came to the agreement that it's you or her. Let's face it, a lot of people want you both dead, and as far as most of them are concerned, she already is," Sam finished, folding his arms. Jase rolled his eyes and Sam mimicked him. "Seriously man, we don't want to go underestimating her again."

Jase couldn't even dignify his argument with a response. Deciding he'd heard enough of Sam's conspiracies against Madison for the day, he turned and left the garage without another word.

After an uneasy silence among them, Kieran tentatively asked, "Do you actually think she could be in on it?"

Sam thought for a second before shrugging.

"Fuck knows, but I wouldn't put anything past her. She's been the cause of his near-death too many times for me to lap up the shit she sells." Sam looked at Chris and Paul. "Have you two not got shots to drop or something?" he snapped. They both slunk out of the office and Kieran sat on the edge of one of the large red steel toolboxes.

"I don't think she's in on it," he said. Sam side-eyed him.

"What makes you say that?"

Kieran tilted his head at Sam like he was a child testing his patience.

"Because for all her flaws, you have to admit, Madison isn't your average bird that comes looking for help. And if she did need help, I imagine that dodgy dad of hers would be her first port of call, not Jase."

Sam grumbled. He didn't want Kieran poking holes in the picture Madison portrayed in his head. He blamed her for a lot of things and he had no qualms about adding to that list even if the accusations sounded outrageous to his own ears. He didn't like her and never had, even less so since she'd left the house and he and Janine had to piece together the destruction of her wake.

The mention of her dad was another thing Sam bent to favour his view of her. What if he was Casper and this was all a rouse to get Jase to lower his defenses so he could get his revenge? How in love with Jase had Madison actually been? He bet that once the Stockholm syndrome had worn off, she went running to Daddy to tell him all about the bad men that kept her locked up in a room and forced her to do cocaine. Kieran's voice interrupted Sam's bitter stream of consciousness.

"Also, given how everything ended, it would be more dangerous for her to come back on the scene and be around Jase when she could have just told whoever this Caspar guy is where to find him if there was such thing as a deal between them. And you know that."

Sam did know that however, there was still something missing and he couldn't put his finger on what. This just made him more resentful of Madison.