“I—”
“Are youtalking on the phone while driving?”
Reece’s words caught in his throat as his breath started to come faster.
“Oh my God.” She sounded on her way to panicked, which wasn’t helping him at all. “What happened to you?”
His voice broke as he said, “My insight kicked in and—”
“Your what—”
“—and I saw my memories of Whitman and I think sheknows, Jamey, she knows why Cora did this—howshe could have done this—”
“Forget all that!” Jamey snapped. “You can’t think about that now. You’re going to pass out behind the wheel if you don’t slow your breathing. Reece—”
He tried to focus on her voice, but it was too stripped by the phone, a shadow of the real thing. Another car swerved around him and the hand holding the phone began to shake. “Jamey, I have to hang up, I could kill someone—just like Cora—”
Not lies. Reece threw the phone down on the passenger seat.
Grayson and Jamey hadn’t wanted to tell him the truth. They didn’t want him to know, had wanted him to innocently believe that it was an empath who’d been born differently, not his friend, the sweetest person he knew.
How could Cora possibly be capable of this?
He tried to focus on the road, which blurred as he blinked back moisture in his eyes. Maybe this was how it started, being willing to use a phone while driving, taking that chance with human life, and then he’d become a killer overnight, able to use his empathy to—
No.
He tightened his jaw.
Not tonight. Tonight he was going to find out how it happened.
He drove past a speed limit sign, sixty-five miles per hour. Taking a deep breath, he gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands and stepped on the gas until he was heading for Bellevue at sixty-six miles per hour.
Nolan was sprinting back to his Explorer when the door to Yokota’s Sushi House flew off its hinges.
Literally.
Nolan ducked, covering his head with his arms as the door smashed into the sedan in front of him, sending a shower of glass raining over the pavement.
He looked up in time just in time to see Grayson crossing the street. Nolan raised the gun in one shaking hand. “Don’t come any closer—”
But Grayson moved too fast, faster than Nolan could react. In a moment, he was in front of Nolan, grabbing his arm. The gun went off, the bullet flying harmlessly toward the sky as Nolan was lifted off the ground and the world turned on its head. A second later, his back slammed into the pavement, knocking the air out in a pained grunt.
Nolan looked up to see Grayson standing over him, his own gun in Grayson’s hand. They were nearly the same size and Grayson had just flipped him like he weighed nothing.
“Whatareyou?” Nolan wheezed out.
“Complicated.” Grayson crouched and reached into Nolan’s coat so fast he almost didn’t feel it. When he straightened, he had Nolan’s phone and car keys in hand. He turned the phone over in his palm. “Passcode.”
Nolan gritted his teeth. “That’s government property—”
Grayson cocked the gun.
“Seven two nine one nine,” he blurted.
A moment later, Nolan’s own phone was ringing on speaker, then a now-familiar voice answered. “Agent Nolan?”
Grayson nudged Nolan in the ribs with his boot, none-too-gently. “Heishere.”
