Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
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The gray is endless as always, flat and unchanging in every direction. Too thick to walk through, too wide to walk around, too high to climb—
Too high to climb?
Grayson’s eyes opened. He took stock of his surroundings: hotel room; king bed; candy wrappers in the trash; soda cans separated for recycling.
Reece fast asleep on the couch, breaths soft and peaceful.
Grayson silently got out of bed without so much as looking at the clock, going straight to the shower. He got it running extra hot and stood in the spray, staring at the white shower curtain, the white tile, the white porcelain bathtub.
He’d dreamed of gray. He always dreamed of gray; he was never going to dream of anything else again.
But for the first time, there had been something different in the dream. Instead of the color alone, it had been as if he’d stepped backward, gotten a little distance, and seen that the gray in front of his face had the form of an endless wall.
Had the gray always been a wall, and he’d just been too close to realize what he was dreaming of?
He washed his hair with the citrusy shampoo, letting his thoughts organize themselves like books on a shelf.
Maybe it was a wall. Maybe the scientists were right, and it was like when a limb was removed and the wound was cauterized. The emotional part of Grayson had been destroyed, irreparably severed, and so maybe his brain was visualizing a wall to stem the bleeding and cope with the loss.
It didn’t actually matter if he was dreaming of incorporeal gray or a gray wall. At the end of the day, it meant the same thing: Evan Grayson was gone.
And that was a good thing. The world couldn’t afford to lose the Dead Man. No one needed Evan Grayson and no one wanted him back.
He stepped out from the steamy bathroom with a towel around his waist and crossed over to his backpack for clothes. As he dug in the bag, his gaze stole to the couch. Reece must have switched over from the king bed at some point, but Grayson didn’t remember it happening, and it’d been a long time since he’d slept that deep. Reece hadn’t bothered to open up the sofa bed; presumably he’d put the sheet over the cushions, but now it was crunched up at his feet and his comforter kicked to the floor, since he’d probably been roasting in the room he’d set to a Southerner-friendly temperature. His phone was discarded on the coffee table next to him, the message light blinking.
Reece himself was stretched out on his stomach with one arm hanging off the couch. Grayson was used to seeing him in oversized hoodies, but now the T-shirt had ridden up enough to show a sliver of the skin of his side and lower back, and the flannel pajama pants seemed molded to the contours of his legs and ass.
Grayson forced his gaze back to his own backpack. He might be making the occasional bad decision when it came to Reece, but he drew a line at eye-fucking him while he slept, no matter how good the view.
He got dressed and opened the curtain enough to let some of the gray early morning light in. He made a cup of coffee in the machine on the counter and added all the creamers, then sat on one of the bar stools, toes touching the floor as he unlocked his phone.
Reece had texted him a picture: a selfie with the bear hat back on his head and flashing a peace sign at the camera, which was carefully tilted to include Grayson very obviously fast asleep behind him. There was a message with it:
Jamey wanted proof that I was safe, so for the record, I DID send this one to her. She said to tell you she’s sending it to someone named Aisha.
No one was supposed to have pictures of Grayson, and now in the space of a couple days, Reece had three. Grayson should delete this one, and the one of the two of them at the truck, and the gym photo he’d sent from Vermont because Reece had been upset.
He raised his gaze from the phone and eyed the empath on the couch. Reece was still trustingly asleep, his slow and peaceful breathing filling the room.
He looked back at the picture, at the two of them only about a foot apart on the bed. At Reece in pajamas and the bear hat, the rare smile on his face, the camera capturing an evening when he’d been content and happy enough to project those feelings onto a store clerk, a front desk receptionist, and a toddler and her dad.
Grayson’s thumb hovered over the delete icon.
Then again, it wasn’t like Grayson ever shared his phone with anyone, and was there really a point in deleting pictures when other people had them too?
He moved his finger and hit Back instead.
Dr. Easterby had sent her itinerary to Prince Rupert, along with an unexpected text.
There’s going to be a big bill for charter flights, but it’s worth it: Jamey’s officially part of the team.
Grayson hadn’t thought St. James would ever forgive him for arresting Reece—twice—and he wouldn’t have expected her to. It was good, though; Dr. Easterby deserved to work with someone like St. James, who had the extra strength and speed but still had her heart.
Grayson: Call me in if you need me.
He had several emails from Stone Solutions and the Empath Initiative that gave him pause. There had been a break-in at the Bellevue campus of Stone Solutions the night before.
The police suspect arson , Vivian Marist had written. Perhaps the Dead Man’s attention is still on ensuring Vermont’s empaths don’t see so much as a photo of the Burlington murder, but if our foremost anti-empathy weapon could concern himself with a trifling thing like arson at the nation’s biggest empathy defense facility, I can have the jet sent for you.
Grayson considered her message. Arson and a break-in at Stone Solutions was a problem. But Reece was also still a problem, in a dangerous liminal state no empath had ever managed before, accidentally projecting emotions without even realizing it.
With a snap of her fingers, Marist could have the police, ten SWAT teams, the FBI—anyone she liked—coming to their aid.
Reece didn’t have anyone but Grayson right now.
He heard the rustling of a sheet as Reece shifted. Grayson glanced at the couch and found Reece’s eyes partially open, watching him.
Grayson closed Marist’s email without answering. He owed Reece some choice words about the picture, but what he said was, “Hey, Care Bear.”
Reece’s lips curved up. “Hey.”
Seemed like his sweet side came out in the mornings. Maybe Reece was always slow to rise. Maybe he was the kind of person who liked having someone in their bed, lazy wakeups that led to kisses that led to both of them getting up late.
Or maybe Grayson’s mind just insisted on spiraling straight into the gutter around Reece.
But it’d be so easy for Grayson to cross the room and get down on his knees next to the couch. Bury his fingers in that thick dark hair and steal a sleepy morning kiss. Run hands over Reece, to that bare lower back, up under his shirt, across skin that would be soft and fever-hot from that higher empath body temperature. Grayson could follow the path his hands had traced with his mouth, his fingers slipping under the waistband of those pajama pants, which would probably slide down easy—
Real easy, yeah. Because Reece would have been knocked unconscious back at that first kiss. Grayson needed to cool his thoughts, because none of that was ever happening. Reece was off-limits in every possible sense.
Reece stretched lazily. “Did you know you’re too big for that stool?”
Grayson really needed to stop watching the way Reece’s movements pulled his clothes even tighter to his body. “I’m too big for everything.”
Reece snorted.
Grayson gave him a flat look. “That wasn’t a sex joke.”
“If you say so.”
“I wasn’t talking about my dick.”
“Maybe we should make room for him in the conversation.” Reece rested his chin on his arm, eyes wide and innocent. “A lot of room, apparently.”
“What we’re doing ,” Grayson said, “is getting your empath ass up so you can eat something way too sweet for breakfast, and then we can get going. And you’ve got messages on your phone.”
“You can check them if you want,” Reece said, yawning.
“I don’t know your passcode.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t— why don’t you have one?”
“They’re annoying. Besides, who’d want to look at my stuff?”
At some point, Grayson was gonna need to have a conversation with Reece about basic safety. A second conversation. A tenth conversation, or whatever they were up to now. “Read your messages, then put a lock on your phone.”
Reece rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said, swiping his phone off the table. “They’re pointless, though. Too easy to guess.”
“No, they’re not,” Grayson said.
Reece lifted his gaze, then went back to his phone. “You use your brother’s birthday.”
Grayson stilled. “How did you—”
“Because you told me back in November that he passed away,” Reece said, more quietly, as he keyed in whatever new passcode he was adding. “And that the Dead Man is vengeance. It’s not hard to figure out.”
Grayson blinked.
“You keep thinking you’re so unknowable,” Reece went on. “But that’s not true. Maybe I can’t read you like most people, where it’s as obvious as the colors of a rainbow, but your memories keep you from a flat dead gray. You’re quicksilver, and I’m starting to see every glint and shimmer.”
Grayson sat still for a moment, then picked up his phone.
“You’re changing your code now, aren’t you,” Reece said, eyes on his own phone and typing with his thumbs.
“Shut up.”
“I knew it.”
“You’ll never guess this one.”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, sugar .” Reece held his phone out to Grayson. He was frowning. “The text was from Ben. Look at this.”
Grayson took the phone to read Reece’s message chain with the McFeely’s bartender Ben Castillo.
Ben: Any chance you’ve heard from Diesel?
Reece: No, why? I thought he was supposed to be at that car show.
Ben: He is but he disappeared yesterday without saying goodbye and hasn’t answered any texts. It’s just not like him.
Ben: Will you check with your boyfriend too?
“Diesel had won a whole package to a car show here in Vancouver.” Reece’s frown had deepened. “But that airsoft manager, Keith Waller, was hassling Diesel too. We should check the show and see if we can find Diesel.”
“Agreed.” Grayson was still looking at their message chain. “You have a boyfriend?”
The question had tumbled out of his mouth before he’d known he was going to ask it.
“What? Oh.” A hint of color appeared on Reece’s cheeks. “No, no, I—I mean, it’s actually—um. Ben thinks—well.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You.”
“Me what?”
“Ben thinks it’s you. That you’re my hot, scary boyfriend,” Reece said awkwardly. “It’s my fault; he said something at McFeely’s and I didn’t correct him.”
“Oh.” Why had Grayson even asked that question? Why had the thought occurred to him? Maybe they’d run away to Canada together, but that was part of the job. Didn’t make Reece’s relationships any of Grayson’s business.
He considered the phone and text chain for a moment.
He must’ve asked because he’d been surprised. After all, it sure would’ve been surprising if he’d missed that Reece had a partner when they’d practically been breathing the same air for thirty-six hours.
He held the phone back out to Reece, whose face was still lightly flushed.
“I should set Ben straight about the boyfriend thing,” Reece said, taking the phone. “I’ll do it now.”
He was still sprawled out in pajamas, looking soft and warm, like he should’ve been waking up in someone’s arms, not alone on a couch on a would-be kidnapper’s trail.
“Why?” Grayson heard himself say. “You could just tell Mr. Castillo that I haven’t seen Mr. Lane either but that we’ll check the show. We can tell him the rest some other time.”
“You think so?” Reece seemed to brighten. “Yeah, I mean, there are a lot more important things than correcting everyone who thinks we’re boyfriends, right? Who even knows where they get such a wild idea?”
“Who knows,” Grayson said, gaze lingering on Reece.
It had snowed in Vancouver the evening before, delaying flights, and Aisha had opted to head from Toronto to Calgary instead, and then up to Terrace for the night.
She’d caught a few hours’ sleep at a cheap motel, then taken the earliest bus from Terrace to Prince Rupert, head propped against the window as she drank rapidly cooling bus station coffee, watching the darkness rush by until the late winter sun finally rose, lighting the forested mountain landscape in gray.
From the bus station, she’d taken a taxi to the address Jamey had sent. She and Liam had caught the last commercial flight from Seattle to Ketchikan the night before, and Liam had wrangled schedules and favors with his family’s charter until he had one of the floatplanes for that morning.
Now, Aisha was walking across the parking lot of the two-story building that held the offices of a local roofing company and the Prince Rupert hub of Archipelago Air. At the edge of a parking lot was a wooden ramp down to a small dock on the gray waters of the inlet. Two people in rain gear were already down on the dock, smoking in front of a small metal shelter on floats.
Jamey’s last text had been fifty minutes ago, saying the sun was theoretically up even if the rain hadn’t stopped and they were taking off. Aisha stood at the top of the ramp and wrapped her arms around herself, watching the sky. The clouds were low, hiding the tops of the evergreen-covered mountains around her, and even though it wasn’t raining at that moment, the air was wet and cold.
She heard the plane before she saw it, the thrum of the motor that seemed to echo around the landscape. A moment later, the small plane, red and white, appeared, flying just beneath the gray cloud line. She waved up at it and made her way down the dock.
Ten minutes later, the plane was touching down out in the strait, water spraying up around the floats. She waved again, just able to make out someone waving back at her from behind the propeller and windshield as the plane taxied to the dock.
The people in rain gear stepped forward as the plane pulled up to the dock, and a couple minutes later the plane was secured and Liam and Jamey were climbing out.
“I take it back.” Jamey had a flushed, happy grin as she stepped onto the wooden planks, and her eyes were bright. “I’m not joining the Vanguards; I’m quitting everything to move to Alaska, get my pilot’s license, and work for the Lees.”
Liam grinned. He’d switched the long, camel-colored wool coat Aisha had previously seen him in for a puffy parka and winter hat, his look definitely less public relations and more Alaskan bush pilot . “Nothing like flying.”
“You are joking, though, right?” Aisha said, reaching out.
“Mostly,” Jamey said, as they hugged hello.
Liam opted to stay behind at the office to handle some paperwork. Jamey and Aisha got another taxi back into town and to the museum, where they were shown around by a friendly woman with a gray bun and giant glasses.
“Ah yes, spawning,” Aisha said, trying to sound knowledgeable as they paused by a display of the life cycle of salmon. “You know, one of our friends just interviewed to work here.”
The woman blinked. “She did?”
“Just a couple days ago.” Jamey’s eyes were on the woman’s face. “Her name is Marie. Curls like me, glasses—sound familiar at all?”
The woman gave them a sweet, confused smile. “Are you sure you have the right museum? We haven’t had an opening in nearly a year. We certainly haven’t done interviews recently.”
Of course they hadn’t. “Well, shoot,” Aisha said lightly, exchanging a look with Jamey. “We must have the wrong place then.”
From the museum, they tried the Alder Inn, where Marie had supposedly stayed. But when Jamey had asked about her friend Marie from Montreal, the front desk man had seemed sincere when he said he hadn’t seen her.
“Are you two staying long?” he’d added, glancing between them. “I’m off work soon and could help you look around. Or we could get drinks instead. I’m sure your friend will eventually turn up; you said she’s pretty too, right?”
Jamey had given him a flat look and they’d left. Thirty minutes later, they were inside the warmth of a local coffeehouse, which overlooked the busy harbor. In these small Pacific Northwest towns, the water sometimes seemed like an extension of the town, its own kind of Main Street. Aisha watched a floatplane take off, parting the tops of the waves under its pontoons until it lifted and took off into the sky.
“Was Marie Pelletier ever here at all?” Jamey sipped her triple shot latte. “Or did someone send that text about the inn from her phone, pretending to be her?”
Aisha shrugged helplessly. She raised her gaze to the forested mountains on the other side of the harbor, like she could see past them and over to Haida Gwaii. “We need to talk about the other possibility.”
Jamey followed her gaze. “We admittedly don’t know much,” she said, “but nothing we’ve heard sounds remotely like this was a corrupted empath.”
“Agreed,” said Aisha. “Marie shouldn’t be in Polaris. But what a fucking hell of a coincidence.”
Jamey’s lips tightened. “You’ve been to this Polaris facility before?”
Aisha nodded. “I try to go a couple times a year to check on the empaths.”
“Even though they’re all corrupted?”
Aisha ran a hand over the scar on her neck. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I haven’t been up since Cora Falcon was admitted. I can call for a company ride over without anyone blinking; there’s a satellite office here with a helicopter on call.” She made a face. “Getting you in might be a little trickier. Security is—well. What you’d expect from a prison for sadistic superhuman killers. I can’t just add you to the guest list, and breaking in would take planning, or an army.”
Jamey frowned. “In theory this should be nothing but a quick visit for you, everything in order, right?” she said. “Except we’re missing an empath who’s supposedly lying dead in Burlington, Vermont. And I don’t really want to let you go alone.”
Aisha bumped her with her shoulder. “Look at you. You’re like the extra badass version of the friend who makes you text that you got home safe.”
“Shut up,” Jamey said good-naturedly. She took another sip of her coffee, gaze still on the mountains. “Can you show me on a map where the facility is? And where we could, in theory, land a floatplane without being seen?”
Aisha nodded.
“Then Liam and I can be our own ride,” Jamey said. “And if it turns out you do need me, I can also be the army.”