Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It will never matter that the empaths, in their original state, abhor violence; all of them have the potential to evolve into killers. The fact of the matter is, we can wait like scared rabbits for the pacifists to turn on us, or we can prepare to fight back.
We must be ready to defend ourselves: there’s no cost too high to pay.
—PARTIALLY BURNED NOTE FOUND IN THE ASHES OF A LABORATORY
The quiet ring woke Jamey instantly, years of sleeping lightly and responding to emergency calls jolting her awake. She grabbed her phone and silenced it before it woke Liam, who was sprawled on his back next to her, fast asleep since they’d gotten back from Port Angeles only a few hours ago.
Holding the phone to the side so the screen light wouldn’t be in his face, she glanced at the caller ID. Lieutenant Parson?
It wasn’t even six a.m. Whatever Parson was calling about, it wasn’t good news. She quickly got to her feet, slipping out of the bedroom and into the hall before answering.
“Lieutenant,” she said, keeping her voice down. “What’s going on?”
“Jamey, it’s Stensby.” Parson’s voice was muffled, like he was calling from a car, and he sounded shaken. “They just found his cruiser crumpled and smashed out by Lake Sammamish.”
Jamey’s breath left her in a rush. A complicated flood of emotions tore through her: years of working closely together intertwined with the betrayal of learning he’d lied to her and tried to hurt her brother.
She stepped into the kitchen and leaned back against the counter. “Was he in it?”
“No.” Parson was a little hoarse. “No one has seen Stensby since an AMI dinner yesterday evening.”
Jesus. Was Jamey’s mystery caller involved? Responsible? “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m not on the force anymore. Why are you calling me?”
“I don’t know what kind of friends you’ve made since you left,” Parson said tightly. “But Stensby’s disappearance has been flagged for forces higher than the SPD. And I’m supposed to give you whatever help you want.”
That was definitely Grayson’s team at work. And maybe Jamey should stop pretending she wasn’t itching to work with them, Grayson and all.
She watched the clock on the microwave flip from 5:43 to 5:44. “Send me what you’ve got,” she said.
The vibration of his wristwatch woke Grayson. He cracked his eyes and glanced at the screen to see Detective St. James on the caller ID.
He reached down to the floor next to Reece’s couch and grabbed his phone.
“Grayson.” He kept his voice the barest whisper. She’d hear it.
“They found Stensby’s cruiser abandoned out by Lake Sammamish.”
Grayson raised an eyebrow.
The studio was quiet at that hour, only a few cars outside, the hum of the refrigerator, Reece’s soft breaths. Grayson sat partway up, enough to see Reece sprawled on the studio’s double bed. Still fast asleep—peacefully asleep, even.
Grayson lay back down. “Got any details?” he said, keeping up the whisper.
“It’s smashed up like it went a few rounds with a junkyard car crusher, apparently,” she said. “And no one has seen Stensby since the AMI dinner last night.”
Interesting. “Any leads on your caller?”
“Because he’s likely somehow involved?” she said. “No.” She paused, then said, “He had an accent just like yours.”
She hadn’t mentioned that the night before, but then, their conversation had been short by necessity. “A lot of people do.”
“Not around here,” she said. “He had your accent and he said he had personal interest in Reece’s safety . Does that describe anyone you know?”
“No,” Grayson said honestly. “I’ve met a lot of people interested in empaths, but I don’t know any other Texans who’d be personally interested in your brother.”
“I’ll send you Stensby’s number, but whoever was on his phone last night, they’re not answering. Calls are going straight to voicemail now; they probably chucked Stensby’s phone in the ocean.” She sighed. “So you’re back in Seattle, then? Reece said he was with you last night; I trust you checked his apartment to make sure Stensby didn’t sabotage that too?”
Grayson glanced over at Reece again, gaze lingering. “Definitely saw the apartment, yeah.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.” Her voice had taken on a note of suspicion. “Where’s Reece?”
He ran a hand over his face. She wasn’t gonna like this. “About five feet away from me.”
There was a pause. “Five feet.”
Grayson cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Where . ”
“His new apartment.”
“You’re in his apartment.” No, she didn’t like this at all. “Your next sentence better promise me he’s handcuff-free.”
“He is.” Grayson propped himself up on his elbow. “I slept on his couch. Thought he ought to have someone with him.”
“Because of Stensby?”
“Because of him and whoever’s been following Reece.”
“Following Reece?” St. James sounded shocked. “He didn’t tell me that part.”
“No, he—”
“And you didn’t tell me that part either,” she said, more darkly. “Instead of calling for my help, you decided Agent Empath Hunter ought to sleep over at my empath brother’s house. For safety ,” she added, with a depth of sarcasm that could only have come from Reece’s sister.
Oh. He could have called her instead of inviting himself over. She’d been on her way back from Port Angeles; he could have taken Reece to her house and waited for her, then gone to a hotel or caught a few hours of sleep in his truck.
His gaze darted to Reece again. He’d slept in Grayson’s too-big hoodie all night. The hood was bunched at the back of his head on the pillow, and his face was the most peaceful he’d ever seen it.
No, Grayson definitely needed to be the one who stayed over. To protect Reece—which was of course to protect the city from Reece. Obviously.
“Who was following him?” St. James said.
“Don’t know yet,” Grayson admitted. He gave her all the details Reece had given him, from the chase to the emails to the man outside the building.
“Shit,” she muttered, when he finished. “Aisha told me the body in Vermont wasn’t really an empath. Someone wanted you in Burlington. Or didn’t want you here. Can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want you around when you’re so good at sharing vital information about their brother’s stalkers.”
Maybe Reece had learned his sarcasm from his big sister, not the other way around. “The real Marie Pelletier is still missing from Montreal.”
“I know,” St. James said grimly. “Aisha said she’s going to visit her roommate and get more details. Meanwhile Reece gets his car sabotaged and almost gets himself empath-napped. I still don’t understand why he didn’t tell me any of this.”
“Got himself twisted up thinking he thralled you as a baby,” Grayson said, which made St. James groan. “Think I straightened him out on the whole empaths and their siblings, though.”
“Maybe he’ll listen to you where he didn’t listen to me,” she said grudgingly. “Obviously you know what you’re talking about.”
Memories started to rise: a ranch set on acres of rolling, tree-covered hills; the smell of horses; tumbling out of a barn hayloft and already so different from other kids that he only skinned his knee when he should have broken his leg. His tiny brother, putting too many Band-Aids on the cut, lisping through his missing front teeth, Gonna take all your pain away so you don’t hurt anymore .
A different part of Texas, flat and endless; his brother, bigger now, but still so much smaller than he was; the scorching heat of flames underground, and the sound of gunfire.
Nothing hurting anymore.
“For the record, I didn’t tell Reece the parasite theory,” St. James said. “I still think it’s fucked up.”
Grayson blinked, and the memories were gone. “Lot of fucked-up empath theories out there.”
He hesitated. He barely knew St. James, when it came right down to things, but he trusted her and had done from the moment she’d pulled a gun on him to protect her empath brother.
“Brand-new one catching fire, according to the EI director,” he admitted. “Predator theory.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” She sounded aghast. “Please tell me that’s not what it sounds like.”
“You know it is.”
“Have the people who come up with this shit ever met an empath?” She muttered a curse. “Let me talk to Reece.”
He glanced back at the bed, at Reece sprawled peacefully in the hoodie. “He’s sleeping like a baby right now. How often do you think that happens?”
“Are you bragging that you made him feel safe enough to sleep?”
“No.” Was he? “’Course not,” Grayson said, and he was definitely talking to St. James and not himself. “I’m just saying we oughta let him sleep a little longer.”
“Right,” she said, drawing the word out skeptically. “I got coordinates from Lieutenant Parson; I’m going to join him at Stensby’s car, see what I can learn. Don’t bring Reece there.”
Obviously Grayson wasn’t bringing Reece to the scene of any kind of violence, but she was probably still mad at him so he let it go. “If you’re taking care of that, I’ll find whoever’s been tailing Reece.”
“Start with the coffee shop across the street,” said Jamey.
“Pretty sure a man in camouflage and a balaclava wasn’t sipping gingerbread lattes or peppermint mochas on spy duty,” Grayson pointed out.
“No, but the coffee shop has been running a holiday promotion this week—tag them on social media and get a free cookie. Check their accounts at the times Reece saw him; bet you’ll find at least one photo of beaming tourists with Balaclava Camo Man in the background.”
Oh. “That’s a good idea,” Grayson admitted.
“Almost like I was a detective,” Jamey said dryly. “And what do we do with Reece?”
“I was gonna bring him with me,” Grayson said.
“With you. And you think my empath brother should spend the day with an empath hunter because why , exactly?”
Grayson’s gaze darted back to Reece, the slow rise and fall of his chest, the sleep flush across his cheeks. “Because protecting your brother is how I protect Seattle.”
“Mmm,” St. James said, disbelief clear in the sound. “Fine. But Agent Grayson?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re from Texas, aren’t you? Don’t you tell a story down south, of dads on their front porches with shotguns, protecting their innocent daughters from the unfeeling assholes who’d break their hearts just to get laid?”
Grayson hesitated. “We might?”
“Just remember: I’m a hell of a lot scarier than that.”
She hung up on him.
He lay back against the pillow. That could have gone worse. Maybe.
He pulled up the coffee shop’s social media account on his phone and scrolled back to see the pictures and tags from Friday afternoon, when Reece had been moving in. Outside the studio’s big windows, the morning was dawning in a palette of silvers and whites: steel-colored sky and mercury rain, milky clouds and pale flecks of sleet.
His dreams had none of the depth or dimension of a Seattle winter morning. He only ever dreamed of a flat, unchanging gray. The doctors theorized it was the same sort of thing as the phantom sensations sometimes experienced by people who lost limbs. Grayson’s emotions were gone, and his mind had conjured a phantom gray to fill the empty space where his dreams used to be.
Over his scrolling, a new text message alert appeared at the top of the phone screen.
Director Traynor: Didn’t get your update yesterday. What’s the latest in Burlington?
The Empath Initiative and Stone Solutions would expect to be told that the murdered woman in Vermont wasn’t an empath. They’d expect to be told that the Dead Man had left.
Grayson raised his eyes from his phone to Reece, still peacefully sleeping on a bed that was very much in Washington, not Vermont.
The next thing I knew, he was just as scared as I was. So I ran.
The Empath Initiative and Stone Solutions also would have expected the Dead Man to do something about an empath who’d projected his emotions onto others—they’d expect the Dead Man to bring the empath up to the Polaris empath prison, to make sure innocent people weren’t at risk. Even if the empath was still a pacifist and had been in the most danger of all.
Grayson’s gaze lingered on Reece.
The Empath Initiative and Stone Solutions might’ve expected Grayson to hand Reece over to be locked up, but how was that the right thing to do? When Reece had only lost control because he’d been held at gunpoint, and had still run away on his own to protect everyone else? When Reece had been put in this dangerous, complicated liminal state by the Stone Solutions CEO in the first place?
Was Grayson really supposed to trust any of them with Reece right now?
He sent a response to Traynor.
Grayson: Burlington’s cold.
Grayson: Nothing else to report.
He went back to the coffee shop’s social media account, and then paused. There was a picture of three people, holding up their Christmas-themed coffee cups, and behind them a figure in camouflage was lounging against the wall of the building.
Grayson zoomed in on the background. This had to be the man. His face was hidden by the balaclava and he was holding a phone to his ear with a thick glove, the kind with hard knuckle reinforcement.
He took a screenshot and then got up and dressed, and was moving silently through the kitchen when Reece stirred. Grayson tipped some kind of crunchy frosted cereal into a bowl as he watched those big brown eyes flutter open.
“Morning,” he said, to orient Reece and remind him he was here. Reece had been pretty deeply asleep, and it wouldn’t be very nice for an empath to be surprised by the Dead Man in their kitchen.
Reece, though, didn’t startle. He just turned his face in Grayson’s direction. “Hey.”
Grayson grabbed the cashew milk. “Took you up on that offer. I’m helping myself to everything I want in this apartment.”
If Grayson had been like everyone else, Reece would’ve heard that lie. There was something in the apartment Grayson wanted a lot more than Reece’s vegan sugar-bombs. Didn’t help that Reece was stretched out on the bed with messy hair and soft eyes, bundled in that too-big hoodie that fit him better. No gloves between them. Reece had touch-starved himself into misery out of worry for others, and Grayson’s body would have happily volunteered for all of the touch Reece could need or want.
But it obviously wasn’t an option, for those million and one reasons that formed the gulf between the Dead Man and an empath, especially an empath flirting with corruption. His touch was dead enough to knock Reece out, and even if it was possible to get past that, possible for Reece to get used to his touch the way he’d gotten used to his voice, they couldn’t find out, because the Dead Man had a responsibility to keep the world safe and keep all his weapons against a potentially corrupted empath.
The two of them couldn’t touch.
And they shouldn’t touch.
Grayson’s mind knew this.
His body, however, didn’t much care about those couldn’ts and shouldn’ts .
His body wanted to break the damn bed.
“I got some investigating to do this morning,” Grayson said, veering the subject far away from those thoughts. He’d tell Reece about Stensby a little later; at least let him wake up before having to stomach that.
“Oh yeah?” Reece rolled onto his stomach, wrapping his arms under his pillow, his expression too innocent. “Somewhere we need to drive to?”
“Somewhere I might need to drive to, maybe,” Grayson said dryly.
“Oh, come on,” said Reece. “What’s a boy have to do to get your truck keys?”
Grayson took a bite. “Steal them.”
Reece sighed dramatically and rested his chin on the pillow, gaze on Grayson. “So what’s the news you’re not telling me?”
Grayson’s eyebrows went up. “What makes you think I’m not telling you something?”
“Because you’re standing exactly like Jamey does when she’s stalling on sharing something I won’t want to hear,” said Reece. “You two are so much alike.”
Grayson leaned back against the counter with his bowl. Another thing to keep in mind: St. James gave Reece a window into Grayson that most empaths didn’t have. Another reason the Dead Man couldn’t afford to lose any more of his defenses when Reece was concerned.
“Just spit it out,” Reece said. “Waiting makes the anxiety worse.”
“If you say so,” Grayson muttered. More clearly, he said, “Officer Stensby’s car turned up smashed to pieces last night. Stensby himself is missing.”
Reece went very pale. “Is it—does it have anything to do with—”
“What he did to your car?”
Reece swallowed and nodded.
“Don’t know,” Grayson said honestly. “Your sister tasked me with stopping you from turning up on the scene like you have a bad habit of doing.”
Reece frowned. “I have Stensby’s number,” he said, reaching for his phone. “I can call—”
“Someone else has his phone,” Grayson reminded him. “Whoever called your sister to tell her that Stensby had sabotaged your brakes.”
“Then I’ll call whoever that person is,” Reece said. “Maybe they’re still with Stensby, or maybe they know what happened—”
“Or maybe the pacifist empath doesn’t call the number of a man who tried to kill him,” Grayson said bluntly, “and he lets his detective sister with her superhuman strength handle it.”
Reece huffed.
“Detective St. James tried calling and got voicemail; she thinks the phone’s probably been ditched in the ocean somewhere,” Grayson said. “I got another job anyway, which is figuring out who was behind the wheel of that Hellcat.”
“So what’s my job?” Reece said.
“Looking cute in that hoodie. And you’re already real good at it.”
Oh, Grayson should not be saying that kind of thing; it was just adding fuel to the fire that wasn’t supposed to be burning for Reece in the first place. But a smile curled on Reece’s lips, easing some of the distress from the news about Stensby.
Then his smile faded. “I talked to Stensby yesterday, at that bakery in Everett. Looked right into his eyes. And the guy in the balaclava; I looked right into his eyes too.”
Grayson stilled. In other circumstances, this conversation might be about to go south real fast. But Reece’s voice had gotten smaller, and he’d hunched into the hoodie.
“So, um.” Reece bit his lip. “That means I might be able to use that insight ability, right? Like I did in November, to figure out what was going on with Senator Hathaway’s PA, and to figure out what was going on at McFeely’s? The ability you said helps empaths connect the dots about people in ways no one should be able to?”
Grayson shrugged, watching him. “It helps a certain kind of empath connect the dots, usually.”
Reece buried his face against the pillow. “I don’t want you and Jamey to have to do all this work because of me,” he said, somewhat muffled. “I don’t want to put either of you through this. And I could make it so much easier on you both, but I don’t want to use insight either—it’s too much, too violating, I don’t ever want to use it on purpose—”
“Good,” Grayson said, which made Reece still. “That’s a good thing. I told you, back on the Hathaway investigation, that I wasn’t willing to throw empaths on the altar. I’m not willing to use empaths in ways that could hurt them or corrupt them. I meant it then, and I mean it now.”
Reece lifted his head, just enough Grayson could see his eyes. “Even if it could solve the case?”
“There are no circumstances worth the consequences,” Grayson said. “Insight isn’t an option and never will be, because using it on purpose is a one-way street. You ever cross that line, you’re not coming back, Reece. And then the Dead Man will have to step in.”
Reece swallowed. “Okay,” he said, blowing out a breath. “But you have to let me help you and Jamey somehow.”
Reece shouldn’t be put through more stress, but there was a plea in his voice, and he’d already seen the guy in camouflage. Maybe he’d see something in the picture Grayson hadn’t.
Grayson set the bowl on the counter and picked up his phone, unlocking it and walking over to hand it to Reece. “Tell me what you make of this. And take the phone carefully .”
“I know .”
Reece stretched out his arm, still lying on the bed on his stomach as he gingerly took the phone. Their fingers came within two inches of each other, and Grayson should have just texted him the link because this was torturing his body with what it could never have.
He stepped back—not as far as he ought to have—as Reece considered the picture. “His gloves are weird.”
“Tactical hard knuckle gloves,” Grayson said. “Could be military.”
“Not the knuckles,” said Reece. “Last night, when he had his hand on me—”
“He laid hands on you?”
Reece glanced up. “Yeah,” he said. “He was scared of me.” He winced. “I mean, even before I projected and made him afraid.”
Someone had been who-knew-how rough with Reece and the empath was more upset that the man had been scared. Grayson bit back several choice words about that and instead said, “You felt his fear?”
“Through the glove,” Reece said. “But it was—patchy, if that makes sense? Like a radio signal that’s not coming all the way through? He seemed really surprised I felt anything at all.”
Interesting. Grayson dropped onto the couch, reaching into his bag and pulling out his laptop.
Reece tilted his head. “Does that mean something to you?”
“Man in military gear, afraid of empaths, thought he could touch you without you feeling his fear.” Grayson popped some words into the search engine, and then turned the laptop around to show Reece. “And look at this: we got a brand of tactical gear that claims their gloves can even block empathy.”
Reece raised his eyebrows. “I thought the materials in empath gloves were highly classified.”
“They are. And Stone Solutions guards that secret like dragons guard gold.” Grayson turned the laptop back to himself and added some more search terms. “But there’s a market for fakes for folks who want to buy offensive protection. Your stalker must have believed the gloves would work against your empathy and been real surprised to find out they didn’t.”
“Bet he’s an AMI member,” Reece said bitterly. “Xenophobes are the easiest prey. They’re so afraid of others they’ll pay for everything from guns to AMI dues.”
“Or fake empath gloves, apparently.” Grayson pulled up a website. “There’s an airsoft course to the south that sells this brand in their shop.”
Reece swallowed. “Some of the SPD officers are airsoft fans. Like...well.”
“Stensby?”
Reece nodded. “But last night—airsoft guns aren’t supposed to hurt anyone, but that’s not what the guy had, his gun didn’t have the orange tip—” He was breathing faster.
“Hey.” Grayson closed the laptop. “You don’t have to do this.”
Reece furrowed his brow.
“You don’t have to help with any of this. You don’t have to even think about it,” Grayson said. “Putting an empath through stress or violence is never my first choice. I’ve got that safe house. You can go there anytime you want.”
Reece chewed on his lip. And then he shook his head. “I think everyone is safer if I’m with you.”
“You’re not,” Grayson pointed out.
“I’m counting on that. I don’t want to be safe; I want other people to be safe from me,” Reece said, without flinching. “I don’t want to be alone with my head. I want to come with you today, wherever you go.”
“Even if I’m going to an airsoft course?”
Reece nodded. “I’d rather be with you.”
He hadn’t flinched when he said that either. Grayson’s words slipped out before he could stop them. “Pretty sure there are other things we could get up to with a day together.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Hypothetically,” they said, as one.
Gretel had not made good drinking decisions at the Leviathan. Even after a dose of painkillers and two cups of coffee, she was still in bed, scrunched low on the pillow with glasses in place as she read through headlines on her laptop.
SPD Patrol Car Found Wrecked by Lake Sammamish
The line that had her stuck was buried in the next-to-last paragraph. The SPD has not made the officer’s name public, but sources tell us the patrol car was assigned to Officer Jared Stensby, who could not be reached for comment.
Why couldn’t he be reached? She’d seen him just last night, at dinner at the Leviathan Hotel.
She reached for her phone, scrolling through texts from the night before.
Alex: Sorry I have to cut and run, something came up. Make your dad pay for a car home if that champagne hasn’t worn off, okay?
She snorted. If she hadn’t known it was Alex, she’d have thought that text came from Reece Davies; the empath went off about that kind of thing like it was a reflex.
She sent him the link to the news article, with a note.
Gretel: Weird coincidence, right? Did you see Officer Stensby when you left last night?
She switched back to the laptop and over to her Eyes on Empaths inbox. Three different readers had sent notes about the empath club, McFeely’s—apparently there had been a panic outside the club involving several of the employees.
Proof of empath mind control?? one of the notes was titled.
Mmm, probably not. Gretel had a tag on her blog devoted to McFeely’s—not least because a reader sent in countless pictures of the wildly hot bouncer—but she wasn’t sure she believed the companions at McFeely’s were real empaths. Still though, the reviews said the staff were good listeners, and the club’s whole schtick was being a judgment-free zone of acceptance . Frankly that sounded like a damn good time; maybe one day she’d stop by and hope she wasn’t recognized.
She tabbed to her dad’s email and scanned through, pausing on one.
The member lists are appreciated, and congratulations to AMI for its growth. Keep us posted; we’re always interested in hearing about your recruits.
It was from a generic email address. Gretel sighed, loud and frustrated. Beau didn’t even care about his members’ privacy enough to protect them from randos asking for member lists. This was probably some shady marketer and now every AMI member would be put on targeted spam lists.
She shook her head and kept reading.
The body lying dead in a Burlington park wasn’t an empath, which meant it wasn’t Marie Pelletier. Except the real Marie Pelletier might not have died in Burlington, but she still hadn’t been seen in days.
Aisha made her way to Marie Pelletier’s home in Montreal’s Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough. Her roommate, Chantelle, was also a librarian, and let Aisha come into their small two-bedroom flat.
“This is not like Marie at all.” Chantelle had a soft Quebecois accent, and Aisha could hear the genuine distress in her voice. “Why wouldn’t she call? She doesn’t make people worry, you know?”
“I know,” Aisha promised. Empaths preferred to worry about others.
A cute tabby cat, maybe the one from Marie’s pictures, appeared from behind the couch. Chantelle bent and scooped the cat up. “And then we get calls asking why she was in Burlington. Burlington! Why would she lie to us?”
Aisha tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“She was going to BC,” Chantelle said. “She had a job interview at the museum, curating historical records.”
Aisha frowned. “Isn’t that far for a job interview?”
“Marie’s sister lives on Vancouver Island. She would move to the moon to be closer to Simone,” Chantelle added, which made Aisha smile. “Prince Rupert is a smaller city, but Marie could take the ferry from there to Port Hardy, and it was a big opportunity for an empath. Marie was excited.” She frowned. “Why would she have gone to Burlington instead?”
Aisha’s heart was beating a little bit faster. “So you think she went to Prince Rupert?”
“I thought so,” Chantelle said. “She texted to say she’d made it to her hotel.” She awkwardly balanced the cat in a squishy hug as she grabbed her phone off the coffee table. “Look, see?”
She held up the phone, a text chain on-screen in a mix of English and French.
At the Alder. Time change, ugh. Trying to sleep for the interview tomorrow, wish me luck!
Aisha spoke some French and Arabic, thanks to her mom, but an American dad and lifetime in Seattle had left her rusty in both. “Sorry, my French is pretty basic. What does she mean by Alder ?”
Chantelle shook her head. “It’s the hotel name, Alder Inn. Small and local—she liked to support that kind of business.”
Aisha nodded slowly.
“You are with the American empath agency, yes?” Chantelle shifted the cat, who was sniffing her chin. “You are looking for her? You will check Prince Rupert?”
“Yes,” Aisha said firmly. “We’re not letting this go.”
As she stepped out of the stairwell and into the lobby of their building, she called Jamey.
“Hey.” Jamey’s voice had an echo, like she was on speakerphone in a car. “I’m getting close to Lake Sammamish, where they found Stensby’s cruiser. How’s it going in Montreal?”
Aisha frowned. “Marie Pelletier’s roommate said she went to Prince Rupert, not Burlington. Job interview, apparently.”
“In BC?” Jamey sounded as surprised as Aisha had felt. “And no one mentioned this to us?”
“Seems like whoever talked to Marie’s roommate assumed she’d lied to cover up a trip to Vermont,” said Aisha. “Which sounds like a ridiculous assumption to me, more so than ever now that we know it wasn’t her in Vermont.”
“But someone wanted us to think the body was hers,” Jamey said. “Or at least, they wanted Grayson out of Seattle at exactly the same moment that Stensby lured me out of town and a different asshole went after Reece. I don’t think I believe Stensby could pull all of that off alone.”
The lobby held the mailboxes and had a small seating area by the window, a striped couch that looked vintage and a couple of armchairs where patches of velvet had been rubbed away over time. Aisha sat down, eyes on the window. “You think Marie and Stensby and the guy after Reece could be connected?”
“Maybe,” said Jamey. “Although I don’t know what to make of the anonymous call from a mysterious Texan—a second mysterious Texan, like Grayson wasn’t enough.”
Aisha was a doctor, a medical examiner these days, and could tell you when a death looked suspicious. But Jamey was a detective, had the kind of mind that could take suspicious and unravel its mysteries. Aisha watched the snow fall for a moment, then said, “There’s another twist that you don’t know yet. I’m not supposed to tell you, but fuck it—I don’t like the coincidence.”
“What coincidence?”
Aisha dropped her voice to less than a whisper. “The facility we talked about last night, in BC, where Cora Falcon is being held with the other corrupted empaths. It’s on an island that’s a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty miles away from Prince Rupert.”
“Don’t people live there?” Jamey said, in shock. “Tons of the North Coast is First Nations land, or protected wildlife refuge.”
“This island is uninhabited,” Aisha said. “Nothing on it but a ghost town from the Gold Rush days. And then they built Polaris underground, in an old mine. It’s not a fail-safe, but it helps dampen the empathy.”
“Same as the heavy metal threads in the empath gloves.” Jamey let out a long sigh. “And Marie just happened to have a dream job offer in Prince Rupert, the biggest and most accessible mainland city in that area? How could that be a coincidence?”
“It can’t,” said Aisha, and then added, “and you can’t ever tell Reece where Polaris is.”
Jamey went quiet.
“If you want to see it yourself at some point, for whatever reason, Grayson can probably make that happen,” Aisha said. “But no empaths can know where the corrupted empaths are being kept.”
“...okay,” Jamey finally said. “You’re right, there’s a million reasons you don’t ever want the pacifist empaths showing up at a facility for corrupted empaths. So are you heading to Prince Rupert tonight?”
“We’ll see how close I can get. Airports I’m looking at are pretty small, and it’s snowing here and probably at plenty of connections across Canada right now.”
“Send me your itinerary,” said Jamey. “I’ll see what I can learn from Stensby’s car. There’s also that creep who went after Reece, but Grayson’s claiming he’ll deal with it while we’re handling this.”
“God help the creep, then,” Aisha muttered.
Jamey snorted. “Grayson will have to be careful about being nonviolent; he’s got Reece with him. And I don’t like that at all, but part of me apparently still trusts Grayson to handle it.” She sighed. “Probably because Grayson went straight from the airport to find Reece on the highway—managed to save Reece from failing brakes. And I talked to Reece last night, and he actually seemed happy, like it had cheered him up to be reunited with Grayson again. So... I don’t know.”
“Does I don’t know mean it’s still not a yes to being an official part of the team...but it’s not a hell no ?”
“Maybe,” Jamey said wryly. “Montreal has amazing Lebanese food, right? Send me a picture and make me jealous. And call me again later.”