“They were getting close, wouldn’t you say? Driving up to Canada together? Sharing hotel rooms? You even got a picture when Evan’s not allowed to take pictures of himself.”
“Notallowed?”
“He’s supposed to be a classified weapon,” Aisha said more quietly. “Stone Solutions, the Empath Initiative—that’s all theysee in him, and they want to control the Dead Man as much as they control the empaths.”
Jamey frowned. “Wedon’t see Evan that way. And Reece especially would never see him like that.”
“No, Reece would have had empathy for even the Dead Man,” Aisha agreed. “But now, very suddenly—he’s corrupted. And none of us know why. Even without feelings, I don’t think Evan is taking it well. He tried so hard to protect him.”
I’ve gone through the events in Canada so many times, Grayson had said to her over their predawn coffees.I still don’t know what caused corruption to fully steal Reece that night.
“StealReece” was the phrase he had used, like Reece had been pulled away from him. But then, Grayson had originally bought the safe house where Aisha and Diesel were recovering to keep Reece safe.
He’d taken a literal bullet to try to save Reece.
Jamey sighed. “You know, if Reece had sent me that Canadian selfie with anyone else, I’d assume they were hooking up,” she admitted. “But those two can’t even touch.”
“To be fair,” Aisha said, sounding thoughtful, “an empath is plenty creative to get around that hurdle.”
“Oh my God,” Jamey said. “That is mybrother.”
“In fact, if you’re curious—”
“I’m not.”
“—you can checkEyes on Empaths—”
“I won’t.”
“—and read the fan fiction someone posted about them,” Aisha finished. “It’s pretty inventive. There’s this part where Reece—”
Jamey quickly hung up.
The Stone Solutions’ jet had taken off from a small private airport on Vancouver Island, and now landed at another privateairport near Seattle. Dr. Victor Nichols opened his umbrella as he descended the airstairs. A black Maybach waited alone on the tarmac, the driver, Mr. Huang, standing motionless next to the back seat door.
Nichols strode briskly over to the car. “Dr. Nichols,” Huang said as he got the door.
Instead of the typical bench, the back of the Maybach held twin executive seats flanking a console. Charles was already seated in the far recliner, the tray table unfolded and a laptop in front of him. He looked up as the door opened. “Ah, Victor! I trust you had a good flight?”
“Tolerable.” Nichols slid into the recliner behind the driver’s seat as Huang shut the door. “I didn’t expect you to come yourself.”
“I’m skipping out on a board of directors meeting, it’s true, but I wanted to see you in person. You’re a particularly valuable member of my team. I’m grateful you were canny enough to escape Polaris.”
In front of Nichols, Huang had taken his seat behind the wheel. The custom-designed divider between the front and back was already shut, enclosing them in a soundproof bubble where even the wheels against the tarmac were barely audible as they got underway. “The pilot who flew me to Vancouver Island had some opinions about our abrupt departure. Are we in danger of her sharing her knowledge about me with others?”
“She’s been handled,” Charles said dismissively. He gestured to the small screen embedded in the seat in front of him. “You’re just in time for kickoff. Cedrick loves football, you know. Our box at Lumen Field was his purchase.”
Nichols did not give one solitary fuck about football, and Cedrick was a juvenile idiot whose luxurious upbringing had made him believe he was invincible. But he was hardly going to say any of that to Charles. “How is Cedrick?”
“Unchanged.” Charles’s tone was extra flat. “Truth be told, I find it galling that the empath who put him in that state is currently free.”
“You can thank the Dead Man for that,” Nichols said just as flatly. “Both for Davies’s freedom and for the destruction of Polaris by the brother Grayson told us was dead.”
For years, Nichols had run the Polaris prison for corrupted empaths. Stone Solutions was the public face of empathy defense, manufacturers of the anti-empathy gloves the pacifist empaths wore, but the public were naive and stupid fools without any clue of the far greater danger corrupted empaths posed beyond the endlessly debated privacy concerns.
That was where Nichols had come in.
“Evan can be a challenge, it’s true,” Charles said. “But unique as he is, he has his uses. He’s certainly trying to stop the empaths now. We simply need to be certain he sees the logic of continuing to work against the empaths. It’s not as if he can be swayed by emotion.”
