“That’s wise. He’s likely in great danger.” Marist cleared her throat. “I’ve heard a rumor or two about Victor’s research methods—nothing I’ve ever taken seriously, you understand, because he’s not an easy man to work with so I suspect people just like to gossip. But if they know he’s alive, the empaths may feel they have reason to target him.”
“Genius is always slandered,” Charles said with a shake of his head. “Victor has given me invaluable input over the years. I’ve never cared about methods when they deliver results like his.” He steepled his fingers. “Do we know what the empaths wanted tonight?”
“Head of security saw three empaths go into the delivery room,” she said. “Though Mr. Smith also says the room was empty.”
“At my order,” Charles said. “Certain records should never available lest they be demanded in discovery by lawyers—or other unscrupulous parties.”
Stone Solutions already had draconian document retention and destruction policies. But Charles was taking precautions, as he’d said, and it had served them tonight. “Smith recognized Reece Davies. It appears Davies is now corrupted and working with two others, suspected to be Alex Grayson and Cora Falcon.”
“And of course, I also have Mr. Davies to thank for Cedrick’s condition,” Charles said in a particularly unreadable tone. “I readthe Dead Man’s report and other accounts of the rooftop incident in November.”
Agent Grayson’s report had also pointed out that Cedrick had engineered Cora Falcon’s corruption and planned to use Davies’s half sister to conduct corruption experiments on him. But then, many might feel that simply another attack on a genius. After all, Agent Grayson had questionable sympathies toward the empaths that had garnered him much resentment from others in the empathy defense sector.
Marist generally gave Grayson more grace. Even before he’d been changed into the Dead Man, Grayson been altered by his own empath sibling when he was just a child, and his protective streak toward empaths was very possibly a side-effect. That said, his judgment in lying about his brother’s death and protecting Davies had tried even her good will.
“It’s past time that Mr. Davies was brought in,” she said. “Though as you’re aware, given the events at Polaris, we’ll need a holding facility.”
“That will be handled,” Charles said confidently. “In the meantime, I want the heat turned up on all empaths. We’ll be tripling our advertising spend, effective immediately.”
“I thought that was planned for Q2,” Marist said, somewhat delicately. Next year’s budget had been created in anticipation of the passage of the big anti-empathy bill in the Senate, S.B. 1437—and with it, the much-needed rider that would pump piles of funding into Stone Solutions. Even retired, Charles ought to have guessed their current budget was stretched.
“We can speed up that timeline, thanks to some good news. I can’t share yet, but you can drop hints at tonight’s board meeting.” He tilted his head. “Though given the damage to Stone Solutions’ headquarters, I suppose we’re going to have to find somewhere else to hold the meeting.” He picked up his coffee again. “Just one more thing I have to thank the empaths for.”
His eyes had narrowed, just at the corners. Marist picked up her own coffee. The empaths had brought Charles Stone out of retirement and pissed him off to boot.
She almost pitied them.
Stop jerking off to your own hair and pay attention: I am not your Care Bear anymore. Don’t you get it, Evan? I’m the bad guy now.
Grayson sat in the parking lot in his rental Prius, gaze on Reece’s last text.
A memory rose, unbidden: twilight in the truck’s back seat, Reece under him, flushed and glowing, pupils blown so wide with surging empathy that those big brown eyes had become onyx black, possibly the prettiest damn thing Grayson had ever seen. Reece’s voice had been gravelly with desire as words had spilled into the no-man’s-land between their lips.
I can’t believe I ever thought it was hard to look at you. I can’t get enough now, can’t stop looking.
If we could touch, I’d fucking climb into you, lose my goddamn self, it’d be heaven.
I’d let you call me Care Bear forever.
Reece was right. He wasn’t that empath anymore.
“Leave my hair out of this,” Grayson finally muttered, as he tucked the phone away in his pocket and stepped from the car.
Breakfast pickings were slim at 5:09 a.m. on a weekday, but as a former detective who’d worked at all hours, St. James had known of a coffeehouse that would be open. She was already inside, the lone customer ordering at the counter as Grayson opened the door and slipped into the café’s warmth to join her.
“And an extra shot in that mocha,” she was saying to the barista. She glanced over her shoulder at Grayson. “On me.”
He shook his head and held up his credit card. “On Stone Solutions.”
St. James turned back to the barista. “Make it three extra shots. And a smoked salmon bagel. And a bear claw.”
Grayson ordered most of the items on the breakfast menu and the biggest latte they had. He’d already drunk half of it by the time they’d carried everything over to a small table along the window and sat facing each other in rickety wooden chairs.
“Tonight was embarrassing,” St. James said as he unwrapped a breakfast sandwich. “I don’t know if I can handle empaths making me look like a fool. For fuck’s sake, I taught Reece how to tie his shoes.”
Grayson took another long sip of the latte, then bit into bacon, cheddar and egg. “Corruption lets the empaths access paranormal insight into others. Ms. Falcon was a veterans’ therapist for years. She’s drawing experience from her patients.”
“Yeah, and in fairness, Cora is terrifying,” St. James said. “But Reece can’t even navigate our bank’s website. How is he suddenly a criminal mastermind?”
