Penny took a shaky breath. “I don’t understand why Ollie would do something like that.”
Easterby answered. “I’m afraid Mr. Keith was under the influence of several powerful opiates.”
“Drugs?”Penny repeated in shock. “But Ollie doesn’t even drink.”
“Addiction comes as a shock sometimes, I know,” Easterby said, with what sounded like sincere sympathy even if the story had been a bald-faced Stone Solutions lie.
The story might keep Penny from learning the truth about empaths, but she still wasn’t going to walk away from this easily. “Do you have someone you can stay with?” Jamey asked.
Penny sniffled. “My sister’s coming for me.”
Jamey made herself smile with a reassurance she absolutely did not feel. “I’m glad to hear that.” Then she grabbed Easterby by the sleeve.
The other woman was a head shorter and Jamey had to slow her walk as she tugged her to the alley wall, out of earshot and far away from the dumpster. “Stone Solutions is intercepting our 911 calls now?” Jamey demanded.
“We’ve always monitored all emergency frequencies for any cases that could be empathy-related,” Easterby said. “How do you think Grayson knows where to go?”
Jamey shook her head. “That’s not okay—”
“Barely a handful of people in the whole country know the true extent of what empaths can do,” Easterby said, punctuating the words by pointing to the diner’s back door. “And that truth cannot get out.”
“I don’t want it out,” Jamey said. “But Stone Solutions should. If people knew empaths were capable ofthis, they’d throw every last dollar into anti-empathy defenses. There’s an empath out there responsible forsevenmurders—”
“I know.” Easterby ran a hand over her own neck, over the scar. “But no one can know that empaths are capable of this, and the empaths themselves aren’t the true villains. We will get to the bottom of this and learn that the empath is also a victim, I promise you that.”
Jamey frowned. “You’re making it hard for me to paint all of Stone Solutions with the same brush.”
“Was that—acompliment?”
“I said hard, not impossible.”
Easterby grinned. “Still a compliment, Detective. And look, I’ve got something else for you.” She reached into the messenger bag across her shoulder and withdrew a tablet. “These are the results from the tests you wanted done on the Ford Transit’s tires.”
Jamey straightened up.
“The mud from the van’s tires had wood pulp mixed in, but it’s old, and the lab thinks it’s from a long-closed pulp mill. I got a location up in—” Easterby paused. “That’s odd.”
“What?”
Easterby traced a finger over the tablet’s screen. “I talked to the lab over the phone and Indira named a spot near Everett. But this lists a mill to the south, in Tacoma. She must have updated the results and not called back.” She wrinkled her nose. “Surprised me, that’s all.”
It took a lot more than evidence tampering to surprise Jamey. “Do you remember the location of the original place?”
Easterby looked up from the tablet. “Yes. But why—”
“Give me that one. In the meantime, let me know if you find that i8.”
Chapter Sixteen
...the romance novel in question,Engaged to the Empath, has been the subject of controversy since its publication. “We can’t have books romanticizing empathy,” American Minds Intact president Beau Macy said. “What’s next, people seeking empaths out on purpose? Empath fetishists? Where would the depravity end?”
—excerpt from theEmerald City Tribune,
“AMI calls for book’s removal from libraries”
Reece took the exit for James Street from I-5, then Grayson directed him through Pioneer Square to the Alastair Building, a four-story historic warehouse with arched windows and a brick facade in need of a power-wash. Sandwiched between an art gallery and a coffee shop at street level was a trim green awning, and beneath the awning was set of metal double doors with no markings or clue to what they held.
As Reece parked at the curb, Grayson cleared his throat. “Before we go in,” he said, “how’s that blood pressure?”
