Reece stared up at Grayson, palms stinging, arms shaking. “What are you doing?”
Grayson didn’t lower the gun. “My job.”
“Jamey needs our help,” Reece snarled, “and you’re wasting time with yourriddles—”
“This is no riddle. My job is keeping the world safe from corrupted empaths.” He gestured at Reece with the gun. “Like this one.”
Oh no. No nono—
“Nice trick,” said Grayson. “Hearing lies. How long’ve you been able to do that?”
Reece stared pleadingly at him. “Evan, my sister—please—”
“Don’t waste your breath begging. It doesn’t work on me.” Grayson said it in the same flat tone he’d said everything since they met.
“But Jamey—”
“The longer you stall, the longer it’ll be before I can go after her—”
“Since March,” Reece blurted.
Grayson stilled. Reece got the sense that wasn’t the answer he expected. “Keep talking,” said Grayson.
“The bad read—the worst.” Reece’s voice cracked. He didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want to relive it, but Jamey needed help.
“Crime scene with the SPD?”
Reece shook his head. “I used to have my own place, a basement studio near downtown.” Because Jamey liked the quiet, with her sensitive ears, but Grayson was right, Reece hated isolation. He’d wanted to live in a busy area where there were always other people about. “The family upstairs was on vacation. I was home alone when I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
Reece swallowed. “Pain,” he said hoarsely.
The memory surfaced, seared into his mind in terrible clarity. “There was a man in the backyard. Cops called him a meth-head, in the report, said he was breaking into the main house upstairs. But I didn’t see him trying to get inside. I saw him lost in the grass, foam on his lips, convulsing.”
“You ran to him,” Grayson said, “and forgot you’d come straight out of your house and weren’t wearing gloves?”
Reece winced again. “Yes. Now please—”
“What happened next?”
Reece shook his head helplessly. “Report said he’d overdosed on a bad combo, but when I touched him, all I felt was agony. And I couldn’t pull away.”
Grayson’s expression hadn’t changed once. “Then what?”
“Jamey.” Reece blew out a breath. “She was supposed to be camping with Liam, but he’d gotten sick, so they came back early.” His throat was tight. “A neighbor had heard the man in the yard and called it in, and Jamey heard my address on the police scanner. She got there first—kicked the fence down trying to find me. But she was too late.”
“You felt the man die?”
Reece had felt the man’s emotions vanish like someone had just—turned him off. Reece distantly realized he was shaking. “I don’t know what happened next. I blacked out, and woke up three days later at Jamey’s place. And when she said everything was fine, I could hear her lie.”
“What do you remember from those three days?”
Reece looked up at the roof, anywhere but Grayson’s dead eyes. “Her begging me to hold on.”
If Grayson found that interesting, it didn’t show on his face. “Any other side effects?”
“Nightmares. Insomnia. Fun stuff like that.”
