“Look at the map,” Jamey said impatiently.
Grayson raised his eyebrows, but looked down. “He’s going north, and he’s made it—” He stared at his phone. “Far.”
“Don’t let his bitching fool you.” Jamey ducked into the driver’s seat as Grayson dropped into the passenger seat. “He decided at sixteen that safe driving required good driving. He can drift off-road without crushing a single flower.”
She turned the engine over. She wasn’t a detective anymore; using the lights and siren was a crime. She turned them on without hesitation.
“Huh,” said Grayson. “Sodrive like an empath—”
“Doesn’t mean what he lets people think.”
And she hit the gas to chase after Reece.
Nolan could hear a crowd stampeding down the stairs above him, terrified shouts layered over the pounding of feet. Grayson had said he was sending him back to the McFeely’s place, then Easterby had slipped him something. Nolan had woken up handcuffed to a rolling chair in a small, windowless room with a cheerful rug, a couch, and a pair of old armchairs. A poster on the wall had a list of ideas for self-care.
He tried to yell through the duct tape covering his mouth, but there was no way he’d be heard over that ruckus.
Then the doorknob to his room began to rattle. It rattled again, and again, and then the door was thrown open, revealing not Grayson, or St. James, or even the giant bouncer who’d checked on him once, but a shorter guy with complicated hair and keys held in his empath-gloved hands.
He saw Nolan and drew up in surprise. “Who the hell are you?”
“FBI,” Nolan tried to say, but it didn’t escape the tape.
The new guy huffed and stepped forward, ripping off the tape.
Nolan yelped at the sudden pain.“Fuck.”He licked his sore lips. “FBI.”
“Yeah, and I’m a real empath. Get out.”
“My badge is—”
“I don’t want to see your fake badge! I was trying to be a good friend and cheer up a grumpy empath and instead I found adead body.”
“Abody? What—”
But he’d grabbed Nolan’s rolling chair. “This is the staff’s wellness room,” he said, as he yanked the chair along the wood floor and into a tiny hall, “and I’m not sharing it with some creepy lying stranger in handcuffs!”
He left Nolan in the hall and slammed the door.
Nolan blinked. People were still coming down the stairs like water down a waterfall. “FBI,” he tried. Nobody seemed to hear. He took a deep breath. “FBI!”
He thought he might have heard a pause in the crowd’s steps. Then a short, hairy man poked his head around the stairs.
“Oh my goodness,” said the man. “Who are you?”
“FBI,” Nolan grit out. “Badge is in my pocket.”
The little man pursed his lips. “This is a judgment-free zone of acceptance and we allow fantasies of all sorts. But we’ve been ordered to evacuate and now is really not the time—”
“Get me the hell out of this chair,” Nolan gritted out, “before I have you locked up for obstruction and kidnapping and anything else I can think of.”
The little man bristled. “There’s no need to be rude.” But he left the stairs and came over to Nolan.Finally. “How do I—”
“The keys are on my belt.”
The little man had Nolan out of the chair just a few minutes later. He stood, shaking out the pins and needles in his arms as the blood returned. He pulled his badge out and shoved it in the man’s face. “Why are you evacuating?”
The man’s face crumpled. “The dead man, the computer one.” He put a hand over his mouth but not in time to hide his trembling lip. “So shocking.”
