What was gonna be unleashed if a person Reece loved got hurt?
With no answers and no further calls, Grayson got back on I-5 and headed for downtown.
The Empath Initiative’s Seattle office took up three floors of a nondescript government building near police HQ. The EI receptionist had been informed to expect Grayson and directed him to sign the visitor’s log as she went to get the keys.
On the lobby wall, the television was playing, a panel discussion about what Beau Macy’s death would mean for Seattle. Marist was there, her face set in a mask that gave nothing away. Grayson recognized Senator Braun next to her, and watched for a long moment. Good-looking guy, and not just by politician standards. He’d probably broken hearts once upon a time.
Or maybe Grayson was being reminded of another good-looking man with dark brown hair and eyes.
The receptionist returned and took him past a maze of cubicles, filing cabinets, stacked mailbox cubbies and combination printer-copiers to a long hall that ended in a closed door flanked by a modest plaque readingDirector. “Mr. Traynor is based in DC, but he’s here often enough he has his own office,” she said as she fit the key in the doorknob. “I receivedinstructions to keep it locked. No one has been in or out, not even the cleaning staff.”
She unlocked the door and opened it to reveal an office that was almost shockingly neat—no family photos or other personal effects, just a single framed print of a battleship on the wall and a bulletin board that held a job safety poster and a printout of the federal holidays schedule. The desk was large, but its surface was nearly bare save for the keyboard, monitor, a mail tray and an empty laptop dock.
“Let me know when you’re done and I’ll lock back up.” The receptionist disappeared, delicately closing the door behind her. Very savvy; she might not know he was the Dead Man, but she couldn’t have missed that he’d just pulled enough strings to get permission to poke around in Traynor’s sealed office. She wasn’t gonna want to know what he was up to; plausible deniability was always useful, especially in government, where all the little things were supposed to be disclosed to taxpayers.
Grayson headed for the desk and started with the mail tray. He sorted through the stack—the inescapable paper coupons, an alumni magazine for Rainier University, political flyers, generic donation entreaties from American Minds Intact. The hutch above the desk likewise didn’t turn up anything more exciting than office supplies. He crouched down behind the desk and glanced into the bins, which hadn’t been emptied. The trash only held a couple of tissues, but in the recycling bin was a padded manila envelope.
Grayson fished it out. It had a hand-lettered return mailing address of a postal box in Prince Rupert. He slipped his hand inside, but the envelope was empty. He checked the mailing date: a couple of weeks prior, sometime after Cedrick Stone had been hospitalized but before Traynor had gone missing. He took a picture of the envelope and put it back in the bin.
Grayson took a seat in the desk chair—actually big enough to fit him comfortably, wasn’t that a first—gaze going to the print of the battleship. Traynor had been army, not navy, but maybe he liked ships.
He began opening desk drawers. Most of them held more office supplies, but the bottom right drawer was lined with hanging file folders. Grayson pulled them out of the drawer and set them on the desk, methodically reviewing their contents: a selection of floor plans for EI offices around the country; a large yellow envelope labeledReceipts.
He gave the office floor plans a cursory glance, gaze lingering on the one from Port Angeles, which took up six pages all stapled together. Then he opened the envelope and began to sort through the most recent receipts. It was the typical spread you’d expect of a government employee on business travel: reasonable hotel rooms, moderately priced restaurants, transportation and gas stations. There weren’t a whole lot of them, but then, Stone Solutions treated Traynor to every luxury they could get away with not documenting; he didn’t have to foot many of his own bills.
It meant that the rental car receipt mixed in with the rest got Grayson’s attention, particularly the mileage total racked up in a single day. It was dated the same day Grayson had gone to Vancouver with Reece, two days after the manila envelope with the overnight postage had been mailed from British Columbia. When had Traynor found time for a road trip? And where had he gone?
Grayson sorted through the rest of the receipts and found at least one of the answers: a receipt from a gas station in Port Angeles, dated the same day.
Grayson went back to his stack of office floor plans, pulling out the one for Port Angeles.
He took another picture and sent it to St. James. Then he called her.
“We just landed in Seattle,” she said by way of answering, and he could hear an engine in the background. “What did you just send me?”
“Victor Nichols’s research might be in Port Angeles.”
Grayson explained Marist’s comments about Nichols preferring external drives and what he’d found in Traynor’s office.
“But there isn’t an EI office in Port A,” St. James said. “They started that huge one but never finished it.”
It was true. EI had planned for a big research and development facility, bought up acres of land just outside of Port Angeles and started construction on offices and labs.
Then Stone Solutions stepped on-scene. And everyone decided it was easier to funnel taxpayer money into a private corporation and let them handle empathy defense—or at least, Charles Stone, who was head of EI back then, successfully lobbied to have the money given to his son Cedrick’s new company instead.
“A half-built R & D campus that’s been sitting abandoned for years seems like a pretty good place to hide something,” Grayson pointed out.
St. James made a thoughtful noise. “I’ll go look.”
“I’ll go. I’ve been before and know what’s there,” Grayson said. “You just got back, and at least one of us ought to be in Seattle at all times right now.”
“Worst babysitting ever,” she muttered. “You going now?”
Grayson glanced at the window. Night had already fallen, glossy and shimmery from the winter rain. “Morning, I think,” he said.
She gave him an update on the pacifist empaths’ travels toward Bellingham, and they hung up a few minutes later.Grayson took the gas station receipt and the map, pocketing both before putting everything else back in the desk and then getting to his feet.
His gaze flicked to the window again, the flecks of white sleet against the dark glass. The empaths were dangerous, yes, but they were also being framed, and he’d be leaving town tomorrow. It was only for a day trip, but something about leaving even just for hours still had him pulling out his phone.
