Reece blew out a very long breath. Maybe Grayson could help. Or maybe he’d just lock Reece up next to Cora and throw away the key.
“No, nothing to tell you,” Reece said, not meeting Grayson’s eyes. He made himself ask a question he didn’t actually want an answer to. “You said insight wasn’t a good thing. Is that because corrupted empaths have it?”
Grayson nodded. “And they can wield it like a weapon.”
Reece screwed his eyes shut.
“But,” said Grayson, making Reece crack an eye, “on occasion, it can manifest in an uncorrupted empath, if you put them under enough stress.”
Reece let out a breath. “Me, stressed?Today?No way.”
“Sarcasm is not an actual art. Practice doesn’t make perfect.”
Reece turned his gaze back to the clouds, gray against the night sky, trying not to see Egner’s unpleasant face. He thought instead of his earlier insights: Adams’ secret; Whitman’s password. Of a power that Grayson had warned him never to use on purpose, that could be wielded like a weapon. “Does insight let me see what I want to know?”
“I don’t think you need the answer to that question.”
So yes.
Grayson was studying his face. Reece didn’t want to know what he might be looking for. “What’d you see?” Grayson asked.
“Egner. That bigoted computer guy back at the McFeely’s club.” Reece shook his head. “I don’t want to know anything about him. I want to know aboutCora.”
Grayson stilled. Then he was upright again. “We have to go.”
Reece groaned. “Give me two minutes—”
“I can’t.”
He thudded his head against the grass. His legs felt like jelly. “No gloves means no hand up from you, I suppose.”
“You wouldn’t want it.”
Whatever that meant. He watched through heavy lids as Grayson strode toward the truck, phone out. Reece made a face. “Do we really have to get to the safe house right this second?”
“Not the safe house. McFeely’s.” Grayson opened the truck door. “And yes: we have to gonow.”
The street outside the fake empath club, McFeely’s, was a study in contrasts: a full line of cars jammed in along every inch of curb, but no people to be seen. Jamey parked along a stretch of yellow curb a block away. She’d been by the club before, of course; she kept an eye on the place, in case anyone ever got any funny ideas that might ripple out to Reece.
But no one ever caused trouble and she’d yet to see a real empath within one hundred yards of the club, so until now she’d never had a reason to go in.
As she walked up the street toward the green awning, she could pick up distant thumping bass coming from the warehouse’s second story. Under the awning, she rang a bell next to the metal double doors.
A moment later, one of the doors opened, the music suddenly louder. A good-looking brother stepped out, even taller than Grayson with muscles filling out his T-shirt. Without question, thesmoking hot bouncerEasterby had told her to look for.
“Agent Grayson said Stone Solutions tech is still here, working on the security footage,” she said, without preamble. “He was supposed to tell you to expect me.”
The bouncer blinked. “You’re Detective St. James?”
“I was,” she said. “I’m just Jamey now.”
“Jamey, then.” He didn’t press, just pointed at himself, causing his enormous bicep to flex. “Diesel.” He gave her another look, assessing, like she was a puzzle and he couldn’t quite see how the pieces fit. “So the little empath who came by here earlier—he’s your brother?”
“Why?” she said pointedly.
Diesel held up his hands. “Just wondering how he’s holding up,” he said. “Everyone’s hard on empaths today. Well,” he amended, with a wry smile. “Not here, obviously.”
“Obviously,” she said dryly. “Let’s get this over with. I don’t actually need to linger in a club that caters to people with a kink for my brother.”
