“This is not like Marie at all.” Chantelle had a soft Quebecois accent, and Aisha could hear the genuine distress in her voice. “Why wouldn’t she call? She doesn’t make people worry, you know?”
“I know,” Aisha promised. Empaths preferred to worry about others.
A cute tabby cat, maybe the one from Marie’s pictures, appeared from behind the couch. Chantelle bent and scooped the cat up. “And then we get calls asking why she was in Burlington. Burlington! Why would she lie to us?”
Aisha tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“She was going to BC,” Chantelle said. “She had a job interview at the museum, curating historical records.”
Aisha frowned. “Isn’t that far for a job interview?”
“Marie’s sister lives on Vancouver Island. She would move to the moon to be closer to Simone,” Chantelle added, which made Aisha smile. “Prince Rupert is a smaller city, but Marie could take the ferry from there to Port Hardy, and it was a big opportunity for an empath. Marie was excited.” She frowned. “Why would she have gone to Burlington instead?”
Aisha’s heart was beating a little bit faster. “So you think she went to Prince Rupert?”
“I thought so,” Chantelle said. “She texted to say she’d made it to her hotel.” She awkwardly balanced the cat in a squishy hug as she grabbed her phone off the coffee table. “Look, see?”
She held up the phone, a text chain on-screen in a mix of English and French.
At the Alder. Time change, ugh. Trying to sleep for the interview tomorrow, wish me luck!
Aisha spoke some French and Arabic, thanks to her mom, but an American dad and lifetime in Seattle had left her rusty in both. “Sorry, my French is pretty basic. What does she mean byAlder?”
Chantelle shook her head. “It’s the hotel name, Alder Inn. Small and local—she liked to support that kind of business.”
Aisha nodded slowly.
“You are with the American empath agency, yes?” Chantelle shifted the cat, who was sniffing her chin. “You are looking for her? You will check Prince Rupert?”
“Yes,” Aisha said firmly. “We’re not letting this go.”
As she stepped out of the stairwell and into the lobby of their building, she called Jamey.
“Hey.” Jamey’s voice had an echo, like she was on speakerphone in a car. “I’m getting close to Lake Sammamish, where they found Stensby’s cruiser. How’s it going in Montreal?”
Aisha frowned. “Marie Pelletier’s roommate said she went to Prince Rupert, not Burlington. Job interview, apparently.”
“In BC?” Jamey sounded as surprised as Aisha had felt. “And no one mentioned this to us?”
“Seems like whoever talked to Marie’s roommate assumed she’d lied to cover up a trip to Vermont,” said Aisha. “Which sounds like a ridiculous assumption to me, more so than ever now that we know it wasn’t her in Vermont.”
“But someone wanted us to think the body was hers,” Jamey said. “Or at least, they wanted Grayson out of Seattle at exactly the same moment that Stensby lured me out of town and a different asshole went after Reece. I don’t think I believe Stensby could pull all of that off alone.”
The lobby held the mailboxes and had a small seating area by the window, a striped couch that looked vintage and a couple of armchairs where patches of velvet had been rubbed away over time. Aisha sat down, eyes on the window. “You think Marie and Stensby and the guy after Reece could be connected?”
“Maybe,” said Jamey. “Although I don’t know what to make of the anonymous call from a mysterious Texan—a second mysterious Texan, like Grayson wasn’t enough.”
Aisha was a doctor, a medical examiner these days, and could tell you when a death looked suspicious. But Jamey was a detective, had the kind of mind that could takesuspiciousand unravel its mysteries. Aisha watched the snow fall for a moment, then said, “There’s another twist that you don’t know yet. I’m not supposed to tell you, but fuck it—I don’t like the coincidence.”
“What coincidence?”
Aisha dropped her voice to less than a whisper. “The facility we talked about last night, in BC, where Cora Falcon is being held with the other corrupted empaths. It’s on an island that’s a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty miles away from Prince Rupert.”
“Don’t peoplelivethere?” Jamey said, in shock. “Tons of the North Coast is First Nations land, or protected wildlife refuge.”
“This island is uninhabited,” Aisha said. “Nothing on it but a ghost town from the Gold Rush days. And then they built Polaris underground, in an old mine. It’s not a fail-safe, but it helps dampen the empathy.”
“Same as the heavy metal threads in the empath gloves.” Jamey let out a long sigh. “And Marie just happened to have a dream job offer in Prince Rupert, the biggest and most accessible mainland city in that area? How could that be a coincidence?”
