“Ugh, is this about to be your bigand I can’t take you with me because I can’t put you in danger toospeech?” Reece sounded extremely disgruntled. “I’m surprised it took this long. You know you could have just found a hotel room in Horseshoe Bay while I was knocked out and left me there when you had the chance.”
“Unconscious and alone? When you’re more on edge than ever, and got a bad habit of running straight into danger?” Grayson shook his head. “You’re too close to becoming fully corrupted, and if you turn, it’s gonna put countless others in danger. I wasn’t gonna leave you all by yourself when I want you to be—”
The streetlight rippled through the truck, lighting Reece in the shotgun seat, because after thousands of miles of the same Dead Man roads alone, something had changed.
“When you want me to be what?” Reece prompted.
When I want you to be safe.
“I—” Grayson’s tongue tripped again. “When I, uh. When I want you to be at the safe house.”
He looked back at the road. That was what he’d been going to say all along. Of course it was. He had a temporary passenger; nothing had actually changed.
Reece folded his arms.
“It’s a better spot for you to be than a hotel,” Grayson said. “It’s fully stocked with food, clothes, everything you’d need to lay low for a bit. Even vegan candy.”
“I’m not that easy,” Reece said.
“I had some clothes in my size delivered too,” Grayson said. “You can swipe another one of my hoodies.”
“Hmph.”
Grayson had one more card to play, but he’d wait until they made it to the pier.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, the dark forest rushing past on the right, the black ocean on the left.
“Are yousureyou’re okay?” Reece finally said. “I know you’re the Dead Man, but you just found out your brother is alive—”
“I told you, Reece,” Grayson said. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I can have feelings. I’ll tell you again: Alex was the most dangerous corrupted empath I’ve ever met. I’m gonna stop him, and if it comes to it, I will stop you too. Nothing will ever change that.”
Reece huffed.
“You gotta be careful around me,” Grayson said. “Do you know what the wordcarefulmeans or do I need to define it for Bad Decisions Bear over here?”
“Oh, please,” said Reece. “How can you tell me I need to listen to you and be careful when in the same breath you’re telling me you’re the biggest danger around?”
“Because what did you just do in the back of a pickup truck with thebiggest danger around?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Well, shit,” Reece muttered.
Victor Nichols typed frantically into the phone as the pilot, Tasha, took their helicopter south, toward Vancouver.
“Sir,” Tasha started tentatively. “Are you sure we shouldn’t go back to Polaris?”
“Quite sure,” he said curtly.
“But I heard the alarm—and the others have no way off the island—”
“Just fly the fucking helicopter where I tell you to,” he snapped, and she fell silent.
Nichols finished his message and sent it out.
Polaris was compromised by Alex Grayson.
He’s alive.
