“Who?” he asked, as he stepped through the door and found the guard already halfway down the hall.
“Someone higher than me.” The guard was walking so fast Reece nearly had to run to catch up. “And keep your distance. No touching.”
Reece huffed, the aches and bruises protesting as he scrambled forward. “Why do people keep thinking Iwantto read them? You can all keep your prejudice and paranoia to yourselves.”
The guard gasped and moved even faster.
Oh, great. Reece broke into a jog. “I wasn’t reading you!”
“Stay out of my head!”
“If I could get in your head, don’t you think I’d make youslow down?”
Two minutes later, Reece found himself in a small, side conference room with a large mahogany table surrounded by black leather chairs and a flat-screen TV soundlessly playing commercials on the wall. The room also had glass walls, meaning all Reece needed was a sign readingStupid Empathand the monkey-at-the-zoo feeling would be complete.
With a sigh, he dropped into the chair that was farthest away from the TV, wincing as his bruised ribs protested. The guard took a position outside the room.
Reece was just pulling up Jamey’s number on his phone when the conference door was gingerly opened.
He looked up automatically and then slapped his palm over his face. “There’s no way you’re the one who sprung me.”
Gretel Macy was standing in the doorway. “Of course not.” Her phone was in hand but not raised. Maybe she wasn’t recording. For once. “You’re out because someone ordered it, and the rumor is it’s someone even Stone Solutions can’t fight.”
He frowned. “So why do you get a visit?”
She came all the way inside, pulling the door shut behind her. Outside the glass walls, the guard had stepped to the end of the hall, scanning like a lookout. “Your current guard is a fan of the blog.” Her lips thinned. “And my dad.”
“Lucky me,” Reece said, with extra sarcasm. He put an elbow on the table and leaned heavily on his palm. His bare fingers sank into his hair, and he quickly straightened, tucking his gloveless hands out of sight under the table before he freaked her out. “What do you want?”
But her gaze wasn’t on his bare hands. It was on his face, on his cheek where Smith’s baton had been. “Why’d you break in?”
“Does it matter?” he said heavily.
She shrugged, eyes still on his face. “Maybe.”
He sighed. “I thought someone had information that could help a friend.”
“And you thought that justified using your empathy to commit a crime?”
“I didn’t use empathy to get in here! Just a disguise.”
She looked extremely unimpressed by that. “You actually tried to sneak into the nation’s foremost facility for anti-empathy defense by throwing on a pair of glasses?”
Ah. “You saw me.” Reece sat back in the chair. “You must be the one who reported me. So you actually recognized me?”
“Taking off your gloves doesn’t make you invisible,” she said.
“It did to the rest of the building.”
“Well, I’m capable of looking past a pair of gloves,” she said shortly. “I know your face. Which, by the way, you’ve got—” She brushed her own cheek.
He wiped at his cheek, wincing as something stung. He looked down, and saw his fingers had come away bloody. “The guards weren’t happy to see me.”
“About that.” She shifted on her feet. “I didn’t—uh.” She bit her lip. “I did report you. But I didn’t know they were going to get so rough.”
Reece scoffed. “What did you think would happen? That I’d get a medal for my B&E?”
“No, of course not, but you can’t even hit back and I just—never mind, I don’t know why I’m trying to talk to you.”Lie. She started to raise the phone, then dropped it right back down. “No, I do know why I’m talking to you. How did you know I do all the work on the blog myself?”
