—Seattle Veterans Medical Complex patient records, filed by empath therapist Cora Falcon
“Ms. Marist?” Vivian Marist’s American assistant, Leah, poked her head around the door of the office. “We have your new schedule for today.”
Marist looked up from her email, lips pinching together. “And how many meetings has Senator Braun scheduled for us?”
Leah winced. “Eight.”
Marist took a breath through her nose.
“But I do have some other news.” Leah looked down at herphone. “Gretel Macy just responded to your condolences. She said she’ll come by Stone Solutions today.”
“Oh.” Marist blew out a breath. “Good, that’s good,” she said. “I don’t care what Braun has planned—send Gretel straight to me when she gets here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And have someone bring me a second latte.”
“On it.” Leah slipped back out the door.
Marist steepled her fingers. She was sorry for Gretel’s loss; that wasn’t a lie. But Gretel was also now in a position of immense power: the sole heiress of all of Beau Macy’s money, her ownEyes on Empathsblog poised to attract more attention than ever, and smart enough to take a leadership role in American Minds Intact, if she wanted.
They needed to talk.
After talking with Reece’s sister, Alex had gone to find Cora. St. James had obviously been looking for missing people when she’d called—people she’d assumed Alex had hidden from her. Pair that with her increased concern when it’d become clear Alex wasn’t behind this disappearance, and it wouldn’t have taken an empath to connect the dots and surmise the missing people were other empaths.
And that whoever might be responsible for their disappearance was potentially more distressing to St. James than the corrupted empaths.
Reece was still out, but Alex and Cora sat together at the table in Jason Owens’s kitchen turned war room, Evan’s laptop open between them and the spreadsheet of empaths and their suspected trigger points on-screen as they began to search.
“So Reece’s sister is missing some empaths.” Alex checked yet another social media site, but Mireya Gomez hadn’tposted in the past two weeks. “I don’t like that. And I don’t like that I haven’t heard from Traynor yet this morning, and he’s not answering my calls. How long does it take to get to the bank?”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to know Reece followed him.” Across the table, Cora was also bent over her phone. “But no word from Reece either. And nothing unusual for Chand Gupta.”
Alex looked at Evan’s laptop to see who was next on the list. “I’ll take June Hao.”
“That gives me Dawson Jones.”
They looked their empaths up in silence. Alex scrolled through June Hao’s social media posts, checking the various pictures and captions. June was a Southern California girl who spent a lot of time cleaning up beaches. Her last post had been a week ago about her planned travels to Mexico.
Across the table, Cora suddenly straightened up. “Oh, Dawson. What were you thinking when you posted this?”
She held out the phone to Alex. On-screen was a popular photography-based social site. Dawson Jones, a twentysomething with brown hair and blue eyes, was taking a group selfie at what looked like an airport gate. There were at least five others beaming at the camera with him, some of them making hearts with their hands or peace signs.
Every single one of them wore empath gloves.
Meeting my new friends in Las Vegas!read the caption.Next stop, Bellingham, Washington!
The post was time-stamped the evening before.
“Oh my God,” Alex said. “The naive littleidiots.”
“They have no idea Stone Solutions tracks their every post online.” Cora was shaking her head. “No idea what kind of creeps would be interested that a whole cadre of empaths were congregating in Bellingham.”
Their eyes met. “I bet Evan and St. James were trying to move them somewhere safe,” Alex said. “But someone out there interfered.”
“And we know exactly what kind ofsomeoneswant their hands on empaths.” Cora was pulling the laptop close. “I’m sending us both a copy of this spreadsheet for our phones. We want that list of names and then I say we head to Bellingham ourselves. Because someone out there might be messing with these empaths—but that someone isn’t counting onus.”
Grayson stopped for more coffee a little past Bremerton and the signs for theUSS Turner Joy. The snowflakes were bigger on this side of the sound, and just starting to stick to the ground. His weather app was warning of more snow to come that night; he’d definitely be keeping this to a day trip.
