But he’d already been surrounded.
“Search together or split up?” Grayson asked as he and St. James reached the top of their section.
“I think we have to split up,” St. James said grimly. “Weneed to find Reece and Alex fast, because if Stone Solutions gets there before us, we may never see them again. I’ll go left.”
She disappeared as Grayson turned right. St. James wasn’t wrong—maybe Alex and Reece had a hell of a body count between them, but someone had helped Nichols kidnap Grayson and had been planning to send more empaths Nichols’s way. Maybe Grayson could talk Marist around to better holding conditions for the ten pacifists who’d somehow been caught in this mess, but if Stone Solutions was first to either Alex or Reece, they’d be tranquilized and locked away who the hell knew where before St. James or Grayson could so much as protest. And maybe Grayson couldn’t care about that, but St. James sure as hell did.
Grayson ducked into a stairwell and leaned against the landing wall, closing his eyes to think. Alex was going to be reading the stadium’s mood like an orchestra conductor; he’d have picked it up the moment things began to shift and empaths started going down. But Alex wouldn’t have left just to save himself, wouldn’t have abandoned the other empaths to their fate unless he had a damn good reason—
“We need to talk.”
Grayson’s eyes popped open. His gaze went up the stairs to the familiar figure at the next landing. “That’s my line,” he said dryly.
Alex calmly took a seat on the top stair. He appeared alone and defenseless, but it was certainly an illusion, the danger lurking just out of sight. “What, I don’t get ahey, little brother, how you doing?”
Grayson gestured at the door and the stadium beyond. “I got some idea how you are already.”
“I suppose so.” Alex’s gaze was on him. “I can probably guess how you are too.”
“I’m fine,” Grayson said. “I’m never anything but fine anymore.”
Alex’s eyes flicked over him. “We have five minutes to talk, maybe only four.”
“Or maybe you have thirty seconds before I take you down like all your empath friends,” Grayson said. “I do have a real specific job now, you know.”
“I’m the one who changed you,” Alex said, clearly unimpressed. “I really doubt you’d be able to knock me out.”
“Last time I checked, I was still bigger and faster than you—”
“Can you stop being sodramaticfor the three minutes it will take me to tell you what really happened in this stadium?” Alex steepled his hands together. “Maybe you already know Charles Stone has been framing us. Last night, he had ten empaths kidnapped and locked them in the Stone Solutions suite. This morning, he injected my thralls with some deadly cocktail and turned them loose on the stadium, planning to blame the kidnapped pacifists.”
“Okay, but I met several of those empaths,” Grayson pointed out. “They weren’t pacifists anymore.”
“No,” Alex agreed. “Stone didn’t know Cora and I had joined the others in the suite.”
“You turned the other empaths?” When Alex shrugged with fake modesty, Grayson huffed.“How?”
“I don’t think you or anyone else needs those details.” Alex rested his chin on his hands. “Holt Traynor told us that Stone was responsible for what happened to us in that bunker. He might even be the one who orchestrated what happened to Mom and Dad.”
Grayson folded his arms. “Is all this your way of trying to convince me that we should work together instead of against each other?”
“Just this once,” Alex said. “Because I don’t want Charles Stone to get away this time.”
Grayson straightened up off the wall. Alex’s eyes tracked his every move, and yeah, that relaxed pose was just a front, like a snake sunning itself, harmless-appearing but ready to strike if provoked. “At least one thing that happened in that bunker wasn’t Charles Stone’s fault.”
“Fair enough,” Alex said. “Though I wasn’t trying to turn you into some secret shadow agentempathhunter. That’s not even a real thing.”
“I made it a real thing.”
“Yeah, you did, and if that wasn’t bad enough, you had to go work for the very assholes who had us locked in that bunker in the first place?”
“I didn’t know who was behind it, did I?” Grayson said. “And even now, I can’t feel anger at Stone for what he did.”
“But you could help me take him down,” Alex said.
“How many lives is that gonna cost?” Grayson said. “Maybe I can help, but maybe I shouldn’t. I’m gonna make a logical decision based on protecting innocents and pacifist empaths. That’s who I am now. You know that better than anyone else, and you know exactly how permanent the change was when you destroyed my emotions.”
“I didn’tdestroyanything,” Alex said. “I built a wall. With your full cooperation, I might add.”
