“Look, I’m no fan of empath whining or their mind-raping trick,” Nolan said. “But I’d be lying if I pretended to understand why we need Hathaway’s anti-empathy bill. They all wear their gloves without complaint and I’ve yet to get called out on a case because some empath overstepped their bounds.”
“So it must seem,” Stone said lightly.
“And even if they did overstep, what exactly are they going to accomplish?” Nolan continued. “Telling us all how wefeel? Harmless enough.”
“Tell me, agent.” There was something new in Stone’s voice, something harder. “Do I strike you as the type of man who wastes his time?”
Nolan scoffed. “Of course not—”
“Then why do you believe I would make my life’s work defending the American people against a harmless mutation?”
Nolan paused. He hadn’t ever thought about it that way. “I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said slowly.
“And do you really believe that if empathy was harmless, Evan Grayson would be allowed to operate with his appalling impunity?”
Chills began to prickle over Nolan’s skin. “I suppose I would hope not,” he said tightly. “But if empaths aren’t harmless, what are they?”
“Abominations.”
Abominations. Nolan frowned, his stomach twisting with unease. That couldn’t be right. Empaths were pint-sized whiners who couldn’t tolerate others’ pain, let alone cause it.
Weren’t they?
“The most dangerous monsters are the ones that look like friends,” said Stone. “I’m afraid I’m guilty of leading you astray this evening. I have not had you tailing Evan. I’ve had you tailing Mr. Davies.”
Nolan looked to the dark glass of the sushi house windows, hiding the people within. “Davies? He’s barely more than a kid—”
“He’s a ticking bomb,” Stone said, soft, menacing. “And the longer he stays with Evan, the greater the danger to the rest of us grows.”
Nolan sat back in his seat. He couldn’t be hearing this right. Maybe Stone was nuts. Maybe everyone involved with empaths was nuts. “What kind of danger?”
“Ask yourself if there could be a reason beyond politics that the Dead Man and I are involved in this case.”
Nolan’s stomach lurched—but no, that was insane. “With all due respect, Mr. Stone, you can’t possibly think Detective St. James’ empath kid brother is somehow involved in a vicious triple homicide—”
He cut himself off.
That morning at the marina, Nolan had heard the screams of the witness, Vincent Braker. The sight of blood leaking from the man’s eyes like tears was indelibly scorched into Nolan’s brain.
But Davies had been in the ambulance too.
Had tiny, harmless Davies somehow done that to Braker?
“What I think,” said Stone, drawing Nolan’s attention back to his phone, “is that I ought to be allowed to protect those of us without the empaths’ powers.”
Nolan stared at the sushi house windows. “Do you really believe you might ever need to protect people from Davies?”
“Wouldn’t you rather I don’t wait until we all discover it’s too late?”
Nolan’s mind extrapolated a city of Brakers, people screaming, bleeding from their eyes. “If Davies could be dangerous, he should be locked up. He should be in custody, not out having fucking sushi.”
“I have both the means to seize the world’s most dangerous empaths and the facilities to hold them,” said Stone. “But I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why the hell—”
“He’s with Evan. And it is Evan’s condition for doing the work he does that he be exempt from all interference or reproach.”
Nolan gritted his teeth. “You can’t have some vigilante empath expert who’s exempt from oversight! Agent Grayson’s dangerous—”
