“Right,” Gretel said, drawing the word out. “And by chance do you know an empath named Alex Grayson?”
Shit. They stood there for a moment, on either side of Jamey’s cozy dining table, their gazes locked. “Why do you ask?” Jamey finally said.
“I’ve been noticing things lately, things that don’t add up around the empaths. Then today Vivian Marist made some comments that seemed... odd,” Gretel said. “Is there something more to know about Reece and the empaths, Jamey?”
Jamey bit her lip.
The silence fell again.
Eventually, Gretel sighed. “All right, I do get it,” she said, sounding more resigned and rueful than angry. “Eyes on Empathshasn’t exactly been a beacon of positivity in your life. If it was my brother, I wouldn’t tell me anything either.”
Outside, another car was pulling into the driveway. Jamey nodded toward the door. “That will be Liam and our friends.”
Gretel looked out the window, then back at Jamey in confusion, the overhead light catching the circles under her eyes. “One of your friends is the hot McFeely’s bouncer?”
Outside of Everett, in the woods on the same property as the abandoned pulp mill, Alex crouched next to Cora behind the tree line, watching the guards opening the back doors of a windowless van.
“There,” he said quietly.
A large man, armed with an equally large gun, was trying to direct empaths toward the van. One of the empaths, probably half the man’s size, was shaking her head rapidly and pointing at the gun in fear.
As Alex watched, the man backhanded the empath, sending her staggering into the others, who instantly crowded around her like worried ducklings.
Anger flooded him, in tandem with Cora’s hissed breath. “I’m going to make that man break his own teeth,” Alex said under his breath.
“I want my shot at him first,” Cora said through a clenched jaw. “But what’s happening here? Where are they taking this many empaths?”
The guards seemed to have gotten tired of waiting. They were grabbing the empaths, who were utterly without defense, limp and unresisting as the guards forced them into the van.
Alex and Cora exchanged a look. “Thrall or investigate?” Alex whispered.
“Investigate,” Cora said decisively. “This isn’t the head of the snake, but maybe they’ll lead us there. Come on; I have an idea.”
She ducked out from behind the trees. “Hi, guards!” Cora called brightly as Alex scrambled after her.
All of the guards turned as one to stare at them. “Where the fuck did you come from?” said the big guard with the gun.
“Oh, we got loose last night,” Cora said, still bright. “We were going to run away, but then we realized that your boss might get mad at you, so obviously we had to come back.”
“What she said.” Alex matched her tone with a sugary-sweet one of his own. “We sure don’t want you to get in trouble,” he added, all big eyes and innocence and of course, lies. “We wouldn’t ever be able to stand someone else getting hurt.”
“Empaths. Jesus Christ,” one of the guards muttered.
The biggest one gestured with his gun. “Get the fuck over here,” he snapped. “And get in the fucking van with the others.”
“Yes, sir,” Alex and Cora said together, and climbed inside.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Whether Hades’s guardian was a monster or a protector depends on your point of view. Either way, don’t start a fight with the darkness unless you’re ready for Cerberus.
—A.G., untitled blog
Private Dane had done a lot of sketchy assignments in his life, but guarding some weird-ass secret laboratory two thirds of the way up a mountain, on countless private forested acres hours away from the nearest town, had to top the list.
“I’m freezing my nuts off.” Croft, Dane’s squad mate, wasn’t hiding his annoyance as they continued their patrol around the perimeter of the building, which looked short and squat from the outside, its low profile set into the mountainside with most of the floors underground. “Snow’s fucking burying us now.”
Dane grunted. They weren’t supposed to talk on the watch.
