Chapter 9

Author's Note: From now on my chapters will not be one per day. I will most likely be able to update this every couple of days or once a week.

As John was walking to the entrance to the subway base a payphone rang next to him. He glanced at it for a second and smirked. John smiled as he heard a new number coming from The Machine. When he arrived at the new base Shaw and Root were already there talking while waiting for him.

"We got a new number," John said as he smiled a little.

They found out that the new number was a cafe waitress named Phoebe Loxwell. After further research they found out that when she was eight years old her mom disappeared and was never seen again.

John left to track down Phoebe while Root did some more research. He found her working a shift at the cafe and everything seemed fine. Shaw broke into Phoebe's apartment to try to figure out the source of the threat. After going through every room she looked into a closet and found something completely unexpected. Phoebe had tons of photos, newspaper clippings, and other pieces of evidence related to her mom's disappearance. Among the pictures and articles of missing people was a picture of Brandon, the man that they had just saved from Decima.

~POI~

"I think that Phoebe stumbled onto something that is going to get her killed. It looks like her mom's disappearance is connected to multiple other disappearances."

"The only thing suspicious that I can find is that she recently purchased a firearm," Root replied.

"She probably wants to kill the person responsible for her mother's disappearance," Shaw assumed from the evidence.

After a day of following her around without any sign of a threat they started to think the threat had neutralized. However, that night John saw Phoebe's plan start to be put into action. Phoebe grabbed her gun out of her safe and loaded it. John followed Phoebe until she stopped at a dark alley behind a bar. A man matching one of the pictures in her closet exited the bar and walked down the alley.

"Do you know who I am?" Phoebe asked the man.

"Look, I didn't kill her! I... I can prove it!" the man said frantically.

"Why, did you kill all of those people?" Phoebe asked the man as she pointed the gun at him.

"I didn't. Let me get my phone and prove it to you," the man said as he started to panic.

The man got out his phone and dialed a phone number.

"It's time to tell her," the man said to the person on the other end of the phone.

"Marco, are you sure?" the woman on the other end of the phone asked.

"She won't stop until she knows the truth, and you are the one that should tell her."

Marco handed the phone to Phoebe while she started to lower her gun.

"Hello, Phoebe," the woman said over the phone.

"How do you know my name?" Phoebe asked suspiciously.

"Phoebe, I am your mother."

~POI~

"How…? But… she is dead!"

"No, Marco helped me disappear and start a new life."

"Why… would you leave us?" Phoebe asked.

"Some very bad people were after me and they would have killed me."

"What about the other missing people?" Phoebe questioned her mom.

"Marco's job is to make people appear dead so they can start a new life somewhere else."

As the team listened into the conversation in the alley below they discovered that Phoebe wasn't the only threat. There was a black van approaching the alley and John believed that they were going to kill or kidnap Phoebe and Marco. John ran into the alleyway to help them escape before the assailants arrived.

"Hurry, come with me! They are after you!" John shouted as he approached Phoebe and Marco.

They quickly followed him down a few blocks when another van sped up from behind them. Four men jumped out with two shooting at John and Phoebe while the other two grabbed Marco.

The team tried to track down the van but they couldn't find it. After searching for information about Marco and coming up with nothing they only had one way to find him. The team would need to work with Phoebe and use her research to figure out how he was able to disappear his customers and who assisted him.

~POI~