Driver and Passenger exchanged a look. “The Dead Man’s down for the count,” Passenger said.
“What?” Reece stumbled. They were moving too fast for him to keep up. “What happened at the dry dock?”
“Didn’t you know?” said Passenger. “The Dead Man’s touch knocks empaths out. He did our team a favor, leaping for you, but he took the FBI thrall’s bullet doing it.”
Reece’s heart stuttered. “Evan was shot?”
“Don’t get your hopes up that it’s more than a nickname now,” Passenger said curtly. “The Dead Man’s not like the rest of us. If anyone can beat a bullet, it’s him.”
Driver unlocked theNo Admittancedoor, which led to an upscale waiting area for another elevator. In the elevator, Driver scanned his thumb, and then pressed the button for the roof.
The elevator began to rise, and Reece’s stomach plummeted.
Less than a minute later, the elevator doors opened into a glass room. The roof stretched out before them, a helipad at the far end. And in the middle of the roof was the man from Adams’ picture, from the AMI meeting, from TV.
Cedrick Stone.
The glass room’s doors opened automatically. The two men pulled Reece down the roof toward Stone, whose face was set in a blandly pleasant expression, characterless as an unadorned white wall. “Mr. Davies,” he said, hair and long coat blowing in the wind. “We finally meet.”
Reece cringed. The timbre of Stone’s voice was all wrong, worse than Whitman’s had been, straitjacketed into an unnatural flatness that revealed no emotions. Stone was ringed by half a dozen men and women in uniforms, all of them wearing empathy-blocking gloves like his handlers.
“Gloves all around, huh,” Reece said sarcastically.
Stone smiled like an actor onstage. “Some people believe a good offense is the best defense.”
“I don’t care about your offense or defense for me,” Reece said. “Where’s my sister?”
Stone gestured to the sky. Reece looked up, and saw the helicopter approaching. “On her way,” said Stone.
He said it easily, but something about it still put chills on Reece’s skin. “Is she hurt?”
Stone smiled again, and this time, Reece caught something under the mask, like the edge of a rock barely hiding the decay beneath. “She matters a great deal to you, doesn’t she?”
Cora’s voice echoed in Reece’s head, and too late, he heard it for what it was: a warning, from one empath to another.
We all have our trigger points.
“We have a very pleasant campus in British Columbia,” Stone said. “Cora Falcon is on her way there right now. We can secure corrupted empaths there, true, but it’s also a research facility, looking for ways to prevent and even reverse corruption. Between us, I think it’s pointless, but Evan insists we try. The pleasantness is also on Evan’s insistence, because he seems to think the empaths are also victims in this. Neither would be my choice, you understand, but as you may have noticed, he has quite a lot of sway on account of what he is.”
“Is he alive?” Reece demanded.
“Such a typical empath,” Stone said, with a sigh. “I’m trying to explain what’s going to happen and all you can do is worry about others.” Stone bent, so their faces were level. “Really, Mr. Davies, you should be wondering what’s going to happen toyou.”
The helicopter was touching down, the wind from the blades sweeping across the roof.
“So we’re going to this place in BC, then?” Reece said. “Me and Jamey both?”
Stone nodded. “And don’t worry; we’re going to take good care of you.”
Lie.
Chapter Thirty-One
Sugar and spice and everything vice, that’s what little empaths are made of. Some folks have to learn that the hard way.
—unsigned note found in the ashes of a laboratory
Reece’s eyes darted over Stone’s face, the polite smile, the perfect mask. No one else would ever have guessed. “Liar,” he whispered.
