His lips quirked up at the corner. “Reece isn’t that bad. No matter what his mouth says, his heart’s always in the right place—”
Liam’s phone went off. He glanced down and his expression went very still. “I take it back.” He was still staring at his phone. “He’s the worst.”
“What’s wrong—” Jamey was interrupted as the phone on her desk across the pen began to ring. “Stone’s lawyer,” she said to Liam.
He nodded, already turning toward the door. “You solve a murder. I’m going to get your brother andpersonallyescort him past those reporters. Possibly gagged.”
“His heart’s in the right place,” Jamey reminded him.
“It’s not his heart that he can’t keep shut,” he called over his shoulder.
Reece stared through his rain-streaked windshield at the crowd amassed in front of the Seattle Police Department headquarters.
He’d been so pleased with himself for finding a tiny slice of curb to fit his car into, noticing parking options were slim for an early Tuesday morning, even by downtown standards.
Then he’d seen the reporters like a human moat between him and Jamey.
He was still sitting in his car at the curb, frozen like a deer in headlights, when someone slapped their palm against the driver’s window, making him nearly jump out of his seat.
He jerked his head to see Liam, his expression even more vexed than usual. “Window down,” the other man said testily.
A ticked-off Liam was still an improvement over a reporter. With a grunt of effort, Reece rolled down his window enough to talk. “I just got here. Why are you already mad at me?”
“If I call, you answer.”
“It isn’t safe to use a phone while driving.”
“I don’t care if you’re navigating an eighteen-wheeler through a field of china and kittens! You know what’s even less safe?” Liam pointed down the street to the crowd. “You, bringing your big mouth here, in front of all of them.”
“Probably is less safe,” Reece agreed. “I’m a very good driver.”
Liam’s eye twitched. “Then next time,” he said, with the kind of dangerous sweetness that meant nothing good, “driveawaybefore you comment onEyes on Empaths.”
Oh. Crap. “How did you—”
“You use your real name on all your social media!”
“Well, yeah,” said Reece. “I’m not going tolie.”
Liam made a deeply frustrated noise and held up his phone. “You wrote that if empaths had mind-control power, you wouldn’t waste it on pumpkins, you’d be brainwashing the President.”
Reece winced, but his conscience made him add, “I may have also mentioned hypnotizing Congress—”
“Oh, I know,” Liam said, eye twitching again. “And I thought you couldn’t possibly have written something that inflammatory during the murder investigation of an anti-empathy senator, not fifteen minutes after I told you to keep a lid on it. But oh yes. You did.” He leaned down. “Gretel Macy wrote a fresh article for herEyes on Empathsblog, chock-full of new theories based completely on your comment, and she emailed it directly to me with a request for a statement.”
Reece groaned. “Oh, come on. It’s just a blog—”
“—run by the daughter of the AMIpresident. She bumps shoulders with all the big names in this city and most of the anti-empathy crowd reads her blog. You just gave them months of ammo.”
“But all the other commenters on the blog were saying empaths are behind Hathaway’s death! That’s so unfair, Hathaway may have hated us, but we wouldn’t—no empath wouldever—” Reece cut the words off, not even wanting to say it.
Liam sighed, but his eyes had softened. “Not everyone thinks empaths are behind this. No matter how difficultsomeempaths make our lives.”
He glanced at the crowd of reporters, then back to the window. “Let’s just thank the stars that Gretel Macy isn’t a real reporter and no actual news stations are picking up her articles. My main concern right now is getting you past all those cameras without you saying something that’s going to ruin my career.”
“I can keep my mouth shut.”Lie. Reece raised his eyes heavenward.
“No, you can’t,” said Liam, and of coursethatwasn’t a lie.
