Chapter Nine
CHAPTER NINE
All predators can be defeated. It’s simply a matter of finding something more dangerous to take them down.
And if you can’t find a bigger monster to fight them?
You create one.
—COMMENT BY [REDACTED] ON [REDACTED] MANUAL
The midday sky was a lightish gray as Reece drove north on I-5 toward the doughnut shop Officer Stensby had named, replaying their conversation in his head.
Can you meet me in person? Stensby had said, when he’d called earlier that morning.
I guess , Reece had said, even though he was hellishly confused. He and Stensby had worked several cases together and knocked heads on every one. As far as Reece could tell, Stensby didn’t much like or trust empaths, but he’d been the first one to try to pressure Reece to cross boundaries when it came to witnesses.
Look, I can’t talk about it over the phone , Stensby had said that morning. But it has to do with your sister.
There better not be anyone messing with Jamey. All empaths had their trigger points, after all, and Reece was all too aware another move against his sister might send him spiraling to a place he couldn’t return from.
Even on a Sunday there was enough traffic that it took Reece an hour to reach the shop in the northern suburb. And sure enough, there was an SPD police cruiser idling in a parking spot. Reece parked in an open spot and got out of the car, striding up to the police cruiser to bang on the driver’s door.
Stensby turned his head in surprise. His green eyes were bloodshot, the same red as his hair.
“You could have turned off your car and gone inside,” Reece snapped at him through the window. “You’re wasting gasoline idling like this.”
Stensby’s eyes narrowed and then quickly relaxed, like he was trying very hard to keep from revealing his irritation to Reece. Good luck with that. Reece had years of experience with that particular emotion; at any given moment, most people in his vicinity were some degree of annoyed with him.
Reece stepped back and folded his arms, watching Stensby awkwardly extract his long limbs from the cruiser. He wasn’t quite as tall as Grayson, but he lacked all of Grayson’s grace, his movements sluggish and dragging. Combine that with the bloodshot eyes, and Reece would venture to guess Stensby was yet another person who hadn’t been sleeping much.
“What’s going on with Jamey?” Reece said, as Stensby stepped onto the sidewalk and shut his door.
But Stensby just waved down the street. “Is that your Smart car?”
He was already walking toward it. Reece huffed and followed. “Yes. Why?”
“You don’t see a lot of these on the road anymore.”
“And?”
“And is being a gearhead a crime?” Stensby said testily, over his shoulder. “I’m into cars.”
Lie. Jesus, what was the point of lying about that? Was this some kind of masculinity pissing contest? Reece couldn’t care less if a man preferred turbos or tutus.
Stensby was eyeing the Smart car. “These are funny, right? Battery in the passenger footwell, engine in the back?”
“Yes,” Reece grudgingly admitted.
“So if you run out of coolant you have to add it in the trunk?”
“No, the fluids are up front.”
Stensby tilted his head, surveying the front of the Smart car with furrowed eyebrows. “Where?”
Reece sighed. He stepped forward and tapped one of the panels between the headlight and front license plate. “Wiper and brake fluid are behind this one. Engine coolant is behind that one,” he said, pointing to the other panel. “My car also averages forty-one miles to the gallon on the highway, forty-three if I draft. Unlike your cruiser, which gets—”
“How about we go in?” Stensby said.
Inside the doughnut shop, Stensby got a coffee while Reece got a cinnamon raisin bagel, and then they stood across from each other at a bar height table. Stensby picked up the sugar canister. “Has Jamey said if she’s coming back to the force?”
Reece gave him a withering look as he pulled off a piece of the bagel. “Why would she? It’s Lieutenant Parson’s fault she left.” He popped the bite in his mouth. “I’m the one who fucked up and Parson took it out on her.”
“Guess he did.” Stensby poured sugar into his coffee. “Funny, I still don’t know how you got out of a felony without so much as a slap on the wrist.”
His tone was light, but his shoulders tensed. Maybe he wanted Reece to think it was a joke between friends, but his body language told his true feelings loud and clear. Stensby didn’t think he should have gotten away with it.
Reece pulled off another piece of bagel. “The whole thing was just a misunderstanding.” Lie. He tried not to wince. Grayson hadn’t misunderstood a damn thing.
And he’d still taken Reece’s side.
“So you didn’t actually commit a crime?” Stensby said skeptically.
“Of course not.” Lie. Reece gritted his teeth.
Stensby was watching him closely. “I never saw you do anything special,” he said suddenly. “I watched you work our cases, and all you could do was figure out how people were feeling.”
“Yes,” Reece said bitingly. “Because that’s what empaths do.”
“Some people think empaths can do a lot more than that,” Stensby said.
Reece huffed. “You mean AMI thinks that.”
“AMI has a lot of theories,” Stensby said. “They say empaths are probably hiding the truth about all their powers from the rest of us. You know that saying, the best defense is a good offense ? They say we need more offense against you .”
Reece’s jaw tightened. Stensby was spouting AMI paranoia, but he wasn’t wrong; Reece was probably more dangerous than Stensby’s wildest theories.
He forced a casual tone. “What did you want to say about Jamey?”
Stensby glanced around, which was unnecessary—there was no one within ten feet of them. He still leaned forward and said, more quietly, “Rumor is the department is opening an investigation into her entire career.”
Lie. Now it was Reece’s turn to narrow his eyes. “Are they,” he said flatly.
“That’s what I’m hearing.” Lie. Stensby gave him a sympathetic smile that wasn’t remotely real. “A lot of people are suspicious of her because of you.”
That part was true. It was also something Reece already knew and despised himself for. “And?”
“You don’t seem very upset,” Stensby said suspiciously.
“Because I don’t believe you,” Reece snapped. “Jesus, you’re not even subtle. I wouldn’t have to be an empath to know you’re lying. Why are you making up some department witch hunt over Jamey? What do you really want?”
Stensby’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “I want to know how you weaseled out of a crime that everyone saw you commit,” he said. “You were on the news breaking and entering into Stone Solutions. And then I saw you up on that rooftop, with Cedrick Stone and that big secretive guy. I know he’s the one they call the Dead Man, and I thought he’d arrest you and deal with you, but next thing I know, the whole SPD is ordered to forget any of it ever happened.”
“Well, you’re doing a shit job of that, aren’t you?” Reece said, before he could stop himself.
“I’m not going to forget what I saw, Reece.” Stensby’s eyes had narrowed. “I thought the Dead Man was supposed to protect innocent people from empaths, not the other way around. People say maybe the Dead Man can’t be trusted to do his job anymore.”
Anger flooded Reece’s stomach. “Who the hell is talking like that about him? AMI? ” he said, before he knew he was going to speak. “AMI should shut their mouths about Agent Grayson. They have no idea what they’re talking about. No idea what empaths are really capable of. And they better—”
And they better hope I never decide to show them.
Reece slapped a hand over his own mouth before the words escaped. He could feel his blood pressure rising; sweat prickling despite the cold. He mumbled some kind of excuse and stumbled away from the table, not looking back.
Reece found a short hall and the bathroom, a single room that was claustrophobically small and heavily scented with disinfectant. He bolted the door and leaned on the pedestal sink.
His reflection stared back at him from the streaked mirror. His skin was too pale, with a greenish pallor in the fluorescent light and purplish dark circles prominent under his eyes. His pupils were blown, too big for such a bright room, and his hair was sticking to his clammy forehead.
Empaths didn’t make threats. Not even in their heads.
Reece stared into his own eyes. How bad was it really, though? AMI thought worse about him. Wasn’t it exhausting to constantly watch his thoughts, to care so much about the safety of others and never his own? To care so much he concealed his own abilities, just to make others more comfortable?
He reached out to the mirror, touching his gloved finger to his reflected one.
Grayson’s drawl echoed in his mind, louder than his thoughts.
Care Bear, a pair of gloves isn’t what makes you an empath. Your compassion never got left in the glove box of your Micro Machine and towed to Tacoma.
Reece blinked. He stared at his reflection in confusion.
What had he just been thinking about? Gloves? The circles under his eyes? He tried to concentrate, but his thoughts slipped out of reach, the way impressions of a dream might fade the harder you try to give them form.
With a sigh, he gave up. He splashed cold water on his face and then stepped out of the bathroom to find Stensby had vanished.
Grayson strode down the packed corridor, duffel over one shoulder, laptop bag over the other, making his way past gate after gate. As he walked, he called Kenji Ohayashi in Portland.
“Hey.” Kenji picked up right away, sounding surprised. “What’s going on? How’s Burlington?”
Grayson sidestepped a couple with a giant double stroller, quickly twisting so he didn’t bump into their third kid, who was pulling a tiny pink suitcase. “Nine hundred miles behind me.”
“Wait, what? Why is it so loud? Where are you?”
“O’Hare.”
“O’Hare?”
“Fastest connection back to Seattle.” Grayson picked up the pace, passing a group of high schoolers in matching dance troupe shirts, chattering by the gift shop. “I think it was a setup. In Burlington.”
“The murder wasn’t real?”
“The murder was real, and someone’s gonna answer for it,” said Grayson. “But I don’t think the victim was an empath.”
“But the gloves were real,” Kenji said. “So you think—what? That someone put empath gloves on a decoy murder?”
Grayson slipped behind two elderly ladies in flowered pantsuits and hats pointing up at a Departures sign. “The victim had an ichthys drawn in UV ink on her hand.”
“You mean a Jesus fish?”
“That’s right,” Grayson said. “I found the band that was using the symbol to keep track of entrants for a sold-out show. Christian rock. They performed in a chapel last night with crucifixes everywhere.”
“Oh.” Kenji was married to an empath; he understood right away. “Maya can’t even bear the ones without a body; she looks away every time we drive past a church. An empath’s not going to a show in a chapel without a nervous breakdown.”
“I think whoever put the empath gloves on the victim couldn’t see the UV mark and didn’t know it was there,” said Grayson. “I could just barely smell it.”
“But why?” Kenji said. “Why would you ever want someone to think a murder victim was an empath?”
“I don’t know.” Grayson came to a stop at his gate. “But I know I was going to be in Seattle and I ended up in Burlington instead, because the Dead Man always goes when the crime involves an empath. And whoever set this murder up knows enough about empaths to fake a thrall.”
“Not a good sign,” Kenji muttered. “What’s going to happen with the Marie Pelletier case?”
They were already boarding the last group. “I’m gonna send it to the FBI,” Grayson said, keeping an eye on the end of the line. “But if someone out there wanted the Dead Man in Burlington, I’m gonna keep my itinerary quiet until I understand what’s going on.”
“Copy that. But if the body was someone else, then we’ve still got the problem of a Montreal-based empath who hasn’t been seen in days. Were those Ms. Pelletier’s gloves?”
“Stone Solutions Canada called the results inconclusive,” Grayson said, “which is just another way to say someone probably scrubbed most of that serial number off on purpose, so we couldn’t confirm who they were stolen from.”
“So we’re talking about someone who knows enough about empaths to fake a thrall and knew they needed to sabotage the serial numbers,” Kenji mused. “Someone who wanted you in Burlington?”
“Or maybe just not in Seattle,” Grayson said. “And not just me—Detective St. James is somewhere in Port Angeles. My calls are going straight to her voicemail and I think she might’ve been set up too.”
“But why would anyone want you both out of—oh.” Kenji groaned. “Seattle has the empath in the liminal state—Reece Davies. If someone wanted to target him, they’d definitely want the two of you out of the way first.”
“Mr. Davies has got no sense of self-protection whatsoever,” said Grayson. “If he’s alone, he’s a volatile target but also an easy one. All anyone would have to do is ask him to get in a car so he didn’t make his kidnappers sad. He’d do it.”
“And then next thing you know, Seattle’s got another serial killer loose.” Car keys jingled in Kenji’s background. “Did you get in touch with him?”
“I got his auto-response.” Grayson was going to have words with Reece about that. “EI stuck another tracker on his car, though. He’s up in Everett. Couldn’t tell you why, and probably won’t know until he stops driving and checks his messages.”
“I’ll see if I can get ahold of his sister,” Kenji said. “But I’m three hours away and Aisha is out in Montreal. If you think Davies could be a target and you’ve got anyone else who can run interference tonight, you better call them.”
As they hung up, Grayson stepped to the back of the boarding line, phone still in hand, considering his options.
Back in November, he’d had background checks run on all the employees at the fake empath club, McFeely’s. He hadn’t expected to discover the bouncer was vastly overqualified for the job. Grayson was still putting together how an ex-marine with Diesel’s record had ended up bouncing at a club modeled on empaths, but he might be able to manage the one empath Grayson would try to send his way.
Jamey stood in the light snow that coated the grass at the shoulder of a narrow road and eyed the third destination on her list: a hiking trail in Olympic National Park. In the summer, it was popular with Washington residents and visitors alike.
In the winter, it was deserted.
Why would an empath tourist have been here two days ago? Or at any of the other destinations she’d checked, like the empty park cabin that hadn’t had a renter since October? Or the tackle shop she hadn’t bothered to go in—very few people were fishing in Washington in this weather, and an empath in particular wasn’t fishing at all or even setting foot near the unfortunate worms used as bait.
Who exactly had given Stensby these addresses?
Jamey irritably reached for her phone, planning to call Stensby and get more answers.
Her lips pressed together as she saw she had no signal. Again. Like she’d had no signal at any of the other places she’d gone.
She’d been off-the-grid all day.
This didn’t feel right. Forget the rest of the list; Jamey was going back to Port Angeles. She climbed into Liam’s car and pulled back onto the empty highway. As soon as she had a signal, she was calling Aisha, and Reece didn’t need to know about her calls behind the wheel.
About thirty minutes into the drive, her phone went off like a college band after a touchdown, a flurry of notifications hitting all at once.
Well, shit.
She grabbed her phone to find missed texts from Liam, Aisha, and someone named Kenji.
And one very ominous message from Grayson.
I think we were set up.