Reece had frowned.They sent you different locations? That’s weird, isn’t it?
Grayson hadn’t thought too much of it. Marist and Traynor were usually on the same page, but there’d been a lot going on.
Go to the location Vivian Marist sent you, Reece had said at the dock only minutes later.
Grayson had trusted him and gone to Marist. Then the empaths must’ve ambushed Director Traynor, and no one had seen him since.
Grayson shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything more,” he said. “You planning a check-in with Dr. Easterby or Mr. Lane?”
She nodded. “I’ll call Aisha as soon as it’s a reasonable hour of morning.”
Back in November, Grayson had bought an isolated house on a stretch of Salt Spring Island shoreline in BC, thinking it could be a safe place for Reece. Now it was Dr. Aisha Easterby, a medical examiner with Stone Solutions, and Dominique “Diesel” Lane, a bouncer from Seattle’s fake empath club, who were at thesafe house recovering from their ordeal at Polaris, where they’d been drugged by Dr. Nichols but unharmed by Alex and Cora.
Why the two empaths had left them alone was as much a mystery as why Reece had left behind the un-thralled head of security, Wayne Smith.
Grayson got to his feet. “You want another mocha?”
St. James shook her head. “I’m going home to Liam.” She pointed at his phone. “Can I get Stone Solutions emails too?”
I can’t compromise my email. National security.
He paused, the words held on the tip of his tongue. The Dead Man was supposed to work alone. He wasn’t even supposed to take pictures of himself; he sure as hell wasn’t supposed to share his classified emails from Stone Solutions and the Empath Initiative.
But St. James had been one of the best detectives on the West Coast. And when she said,I guess you’re probably one of the only people on the planet who understands, that went both ways. Maybe their partnership could only be temporary, until the empaths here were caught, but he was lucky to have her.
“Of course,” he said instead. “I’ll set that up.”
After she’d left, Grayson got a second latte and sat back at their table. Alone, obviously, because he didn’t have a Liam—or anyone else—to go home to. He never would. That was the difference between a detective and the Dead Man.
He pulled his phone back out of his pocket to set up email forwarding to St. James, his gaze catching Marist’s name and his last conversation with Reece playing in his head again.
Marist? Surprised to hear you pick Stone Solutions over the Empath Initiative. I was thinking if I had to pick, I’d meet Director Traynor.
No. Go to Marist.
It’d be easy enough to assume Reece had sent Grayson to Marist because he was already corrupted and planned to ambush Traynor. But more of Reece’s words from the truck echoed inGrayson’s memory, spoken as the two of them had leaned so close into each other that he had felt that empath body heat.
Look me in the eyes and say, “Reece, I promise I’ll come back to you.”
I need to know you’re going to be safe. Promise me, Evan.
Those couldn’t have been the words of a corrupted empath. So, what had happened? When had it happened, and how?
And maybe most puzzling of all—why?
He lit his phone screen, once again illuminating his background picture of Reece in the bear hat Grayson had bought him. Bright smile and even brighter eyes, the pacifist angel who’d made sure Grayson could get a decent night’s sleep.
Without planning to, Grayson found himself opening his text messages, his fingers beginning to type.
What happened to you, Care Bear—
He hit Delete instead of Send, and the letters vanished from the screen.
Chapter Four
You won’t see any updates on their socials. You won’t hear about it on the news. But here atEyes on Empaths, we KNOW that something big must have happened at Stone Solutions last night.
HOW do we know? Because the Stone Solutions Board of Directors ALWAYS meets at Stone Solutions headquarters in Bellevue—except TODAY, when they’re borrowing a conference room at American Minds Intact.
