“I have a plan for that too,” Charles promised.
Grayson was grabbing coffee from the shop across from the studio when his phone began to ring, St. James’s number on-screen. He stepped over to the wall and answered. “Grayson.”
An engine roared in her background. “We’re in the air heading back to Seattle,” she said. “I’ve only got a signal for a moment.”
Grayson dropped his voice to a murmur only she’d hear. “Status of Mr. Lane and Dr. Easterby?”
“Better.”
He watched the barista steaming milk for drinks. “And the pacifist empaths?”
“All en route to Bellingham today. Liam will pick them up in the morning,” she said. “But listen: Aisha wants Victor Nichols’s research on reversing corruption.”
“You really think that man had a single piece of research worth saving?” Grayson said skeptically.
St. James cut out for a moment. “—don’t know,” she was saying as she came back on, sounding very honest. “But whatever might be in that research, I know that if someone is going to have their hands on it, I want it to be Aisha and not another ghoul like Nichols.”
Grayson hadn’t thought about it that way. “All right,” he said, “I agree with you there.”
Her response came in garbled and patchy. “—Aisha doesn’t work there anymore—doesn’t have access to their files—”
“The research wouldn’t be that easy for your average Stone Solutions employee to get anyway,” he pointed out. “Emergency protocols would have been initiated when Alex broke into Polaris. Deleting sensitive files would’ve happened automatically—”
The line died.
He palmed the phone for a moment. St. James had been right about all of it: The empaths were being framed—Reece in particular—and whoever was involved knew what they were doing.
And Nichols was still missing.
The barista called out his drink. Grayson stepped up to the counter and took it, still lost in his own thoughts.
There was, of course, the possibility that the missing Dr. Nichols was involved in the framing. If so, what was his motive? His endgame? What did he want with Reece?
Aisha and Diesel described Nichols’s twisted experiments at Polaris, the little voice in his head pointed out.Reece’s liminal state wasn’t supposed to be possible, and now no one knows how he became corrupted. He’s a walking contradiction offering endless knowledge to be mined. Take three guesses what Nichols would want with him—
The shock of hot coffee on skin jolted Grayson out of his thoughts. He glanced down at his hand. He’d squeezed the coffee so tightly the lid had popped off.
Grayson shook his hand, droplets splattering. He reached for the napkin dispenser on the counter. Wasn’t like him to be careless like that.
But he’d been so focused on catching the empaths that he’dlet the search for Nichols slide. That ended now. If Jamey and Aisha wanted that research, Grayson would get it for them.
And if he could find Dr. Nichols in the process, he had some plans for that man too.
Vivian Marist stood by the windows in her temporary eighteenth-floor office, staring at nothing in particular. She had had plenty of rough days in her career, days she didn’t want to show up or days she didn’t want to face.
This was absolutely one of them.
And the empaths were yet again responsible.
Not all empaths were the enemy. She did fully acknowledge that fact. In fact, none of them were—not at first. But all of them had the potential to become terrifying killers posing the highest possible danger to non-empaths.
She hadn’t known that when she worked for Hannah Hathaway. Back then, they’d been focused on privacy concerns—and Marist was cynical and realist enough to admit they were even more focused on Hannah’s senate re-election. Anti-empathy legislation was an area ripe for political exploitation, to garner votes by leveraging fear that other people were a threat. Oldest trick in the book, and it had worked wonders for Hannah’s career.
Whether it was actually good for America to foster fear instead of compassion, to set people against each other instead of working for the good of everyone, well. Those were questions for philosophers. She’d had a job to do.
There was a polite knock on the door. A moment later, it was cracked open, and Anthony Sayers, Stone Solutions’ director of media relations, poked his head in. “Senator Braun is here. He’d like a quick word.”
“Marvelous,” she muttered.
