Chapter Twenty-Four
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
We can bandy around words like “singular” and “unique” but it will never make them true. Replication is key to any study: if it can be done, it can be duplicated.
Nothing—and no one—is an exception.
—COMMENT BY [REDACTED] ON [REDACTED] MANUAL
The freak who runs this place is a sadist. I would know.
Cora’s words replayed in Aisha’s head as she stepped out of the fire stairs into Polaris’s top level, where the empath quarters were supposed to be. She’d been up to this level before, to check on the three other empaths who lived here. They knew her too, would call her name when she entered, because their empathy always picked it up when someone approached.
Today, however, all she heard was silence.
Her footsteps seemed unbearably loud as she walked down the hall. The heat had been turned off on this level, and her breath was a visible puff in front of her as she swiped her key card and stepped into the residential area. She approached the closest room, the walls made of glass like the medical rooms.
Her spine stiffened, her stomach plummeting.
It was empty of the furniture it was supposed to have. Instead, there were two steel tables under the skylight in the middle of the room, covered with sheets, the outline of a petite body under the first, a second, taller body under the other.
“No, no no no ,” she whispered, hurrying forward. She hadn’t heard about any recent empath deaths. There shouldn’t be any bodies here.
Her hand was shaking as she unlocked the door and stumbled across the room. She reached the table and yanked the sheet back.
Marie Pelletier, unquestionably dead, her corpse at least a day old.
“Marie.” Aisha could feel the ache welling her throat, her chest. She grabbed the other sheet and pulled it back, already knowing what she’d see: another woman, younger than Marie but with the same curls and delicate features. They were unmistakably sisters, Marie and Simone Pelletier.
“Oh no,” Aisha whispered. “No, I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
She glanced up, seeing the telltale red dot of a security camera in the corner. She had minutes, maybe seconds now. She sprinted to the corner of the room, with its window, beneath its high skylight, and pulled the two-way radio Liam had given her out of her coat.
She’d be fired for this—probably arrested too—but something in this mine was rotten to its depths, and it wasn’t the corrupted empaths.
“Code red,” she said into the radio, desperately hoping Liam was right and he’d pick her up. “Code red .”
“Enjoying your discoveries?”
Aisha whirled around to see Victor Nichols had appeared in the doorway. “Victor,” she said, breathing too hard. “What have you done?”
“What have you done?” he countered, gesturing at the radio in her hand. He seemed more curious than concerned, watching her with his pale eyes behind his glasses.
Aisha ignored the question. “Where are all the other empaths? André, Faith, Timothy—where are they?”
“I’m afraid they and their partners didn’t make it, same as the Pelletier sisters,” Nichols said easily. “Trial and error; you’re a scientist, you should appreciate that.”
“Trial and error for what ?” Aisha snapped.
“To protect ourselves.” Nichols spread his hands. “Here, on this island, we’re like the ancient humans with the saber-toothed tigers. Only we’ve evolved beyond spears—we’re depending on our minds to create weapons against the empaths.”
“Oh my God. Are you behind the predator theory that’s spreading?” Aisha’s gaze went to Marie, the sweet librarian who’d loved her cat and was now lying dead in Polaris. “Empaths are pacifists .”
“Until they’re evolved,” said Nichols. “And then they become perfect predators, able to hide among us, to control us. This is a war, Dr. Easterby, and the empaths are going to win if we don’t find a way to stop them.”
Two more people appeared in the doorway behind him: Higgins from earlier and one of the men from the helipad.
“But that brings us back to our original question,” Nichols said. “Who were you trying to contact on that radio?”
“The Dead Man, obviously,” Aisha lied. Maybe Nichols could still be scared into sense.
But Nichols lit up. “Oh, good,” he said. “That’s perfect, actually. A little ahead of schedule, but we can be ready for him.”
“What?” Aisha said helplessly.
Nichols didn’t answer, instead motioned to Higgins, who stepped forward. He had a syringe in hand, and given the sedatives Cora had been on, Aisha could guess where this was going.
There was a tiny chime, and Nichols suddenly looked at his watch. His lips tightened. “Deal with her,” he said crisply to Higgins, as he spun around and headed for the door, movements quick and tight.
Aisha tried to squash the tiny ray of hope. Even Jamey wasn’t that fast. She couldn’t be, could she?
“Put her with the other one,” Nichols said, as he disappeared through the morgue door.
Other one?
Aisha looked from the syringe to Higgins, who had the gall to smile at her. “He did say you shouldn’t have come today, Dr. Easterby.”
Nothing had turned up in Marist’s office linking a pair of gloves from Vancouver, British Columbia, with a Washington airsoft course, and the secretary was starting to give Reece and Grayson impatient looks. Whoever had Stensby’s phone hadn’t texted back yet.
They were facing more dead ends, and Reece was getting very tired of those. A Canadian empath was missing, and someone had wanted Reece to go missing too.
They needed answers.
Grayson stepped close to him, close enough Reece’s skin broke out in prickles of want. “I want to search a few more places, but it’s gonna be more obvious,” he said, in a whisper. “Think you could distract the secretary for a few minutes?”
“Sure, sure,” Reece said quickly, like he wasn’t thinking how nice it’d be to reach out and slide his arm around Grayson, fainting be damned.
He stepped out of Marist’s office and into the reception area, where the secretary was texting on the phone. As subtly as he could, he pulled the office door mostly shut behind him, enough to hide Grayson. “We’re wrapping up,” he lied, as he leaned over a reception chair and pretended to go through one of the messenger bags.
She glanced up, meeting his eyes and giving him a smile and a thumbs-up before going back to her phone.
She probably made Marist’s appointments, sent emails on her behalf. Probably knew a lot more than anyone ever gave her credit for. Maybe Marist had asked her secretary to run errands for her—errands like mailing a package to an airsoft course outside of Seattle.
Marist seemed to have taken her computer down to the AMI conference in Seattle, but they could probably get a good amount of information from her secretary’s computer.
Reece hesitated.
What would it take to get the secretary to leave?
There was, of course, a way Reece could find out.
He bit his lip. No. No, he couldn’t think about using insight on purpose. He shouldn’t think about it. It was a hard line; Grayson had said so.
You’re in Stone Solutions. The company that might have hired someone to kidnap you. That was going to hurt Jamey. That kidnapped Cora and purposefully corrupted her. They hurt your fellow empaths.
And Cedrick Stone would have hurt Evan.
Reece cut his eyes to the partially open office door that hid Grayson. The last couple times Reece had used insight, he’d puked all over himself. Grayson would notice that, and maybe they were sort of flirting and sharing a truck and a hotel room, but Grayson had made it clear that the Dead Man’s amnesty wasn’t going to extend to Reece using insight on purpose.
But then, the last couple times, using insight had been an accident, brought on by stress. If he did it on purpose, could he stay more in control? So that Grayson wouldn’t even know?
He looked back at the secretary, and before he could think on it further, his gaze went unfocused, absorbing details about her.
High heels, skirt and tights, all crisp and neat, dressed up despite the winter weather and business casual attire of the rest of the office, her posture tense as she perches on the edge of her chair—
Hair in a smooth updo and heavy eye makeup, but faded lipstick on chewed-on lips—
Pretty nails as she’s glued to her phone, her face set in anticipation every time her fingers stop moving, the occasional small and furtive smile stealing through—
She has an office crush.
Reece’s stomach swooped. He clenched his teeth hard as he took a stabilizing breath through his nose. No puking , he ordered himself, as he forced the nausea down.
He pushed himself up from the chair. “Some interns brought coffee and stuff,” he said, trying for a friendly tone. “Did you get any?”
“Hmm?” she said distractedly, not looking up from her phone. “Oh, no, I’m not hungry.”
“You must be the only one, then,” Reece said casually. “I think the whole office turned up in the break room.”
She paused, looking up at him. “Really?”
“Yeah,” said Reece. “They were all still hanging out when I walked past, making happy hour plans and stuff. Must have been, like, everybody who works here.”
“Oh.” She put her phone in her purse, then stood. “Coffees too, you said?”
A minute later, Reece was alone in the front room—and she hadn’t locked her computer when she left. He kept an eye out on the hall as he bent over the desk.
What would Jamey start with, if she was standing here? The answer came as easily as the secretary’s office crush: expense reports and time sheets, looking for a record of a trip to the post office.
He began opening programs until he found one with saved receipts. The box the gloves had been mailed in had been postmarked two weeks earlier. He scrolled backward until he could scan the entries in the system for that date.
Nothing from the post office. But there was a receipt from a Vancouver restaurant, for—Jesus, Marist had spent how much on dinner? Reece read over the entry, gaze lingering on the description.
Business dinner.
Other attendees: Holt Traynor (Empath Initiative); Victor Nichols (Polaris Empathic Research Facility)
All three of them had been in Vancouver the day the gloves had been mailed to the airsoft course. Reece leaned closer.
“Mr. Davies.”
Reece froze. He glanced up, trying—and almost certainly failing—to keep an innocent expression. “Evan. Hey. Find anything else?”
“I think we got a bigger question right now.” Grayson was leaning on the bookcase, his arms folded. He was watching Reece with a completely inscrutable expression. “Like whether this is the part where I ask if you’re being a bad empath?”
“Depends,” Reece said lightly. “Are we making that porno after all?”
Grayson’s gaze flicked over him, almost like an automatic motion, like he couldn’t help himself.
“Because I could be really bad for you,” Reece said, just as light. “If that’s what you’re into.”
“You’re not going to get me to take that bait.” Grayson’s tone was as unreadable as his expression. “What are you doing?”
Reece had to stick to the absolute truth. The way Grayson was watching him, he’d see any tiny flinch. “I thought our secretary friend might have some useful information on Marist on this computer,” Reece said carefully. “No one thinks about the people further down the chain and the piles of dirt they have on their bosses.”
“That’s fair.” Grayson was still considering him. “How’d you get her to leave?”
“Told her about the drinks in the break room.”
“Oh yeah? And how’d you know that would make her leave?”
Reece swallowed. “Who doesn’t like coffee?”
The air between them was charged, almost tangible. This is what you want , Reece reminded himself. You want Grayson to be suspicious. You want him to know when you’re lying. You want him to catch you—to stop you.
Didn’t he?
Grayson moved closer, up to the other side of the desk. He put his hands on the surface, leaning in to mirror Reece. “Sugar,” he said patiently, without the slightest inflection or change in his tone, and somehow it sent warning bells off in Reece’s brain all the same. “You haven’t forgotten who or what I am, have you?”
“No, sir , Agent Dead Man,” Reece said, with all the sass he could muster.
“Then I suggest you come clean,” Grayson said. “Because you might be adorable in a bear hat, but I told you, I’m not gonna underestimate you anymore. And I’m not gonna fall for your lies again.”
There was a moment of silence between them. Reece realized his fingers had balled into fists.
All flight, no fight.
He knew that was bullshit now.
Grayson’s blank hazel eyes were staring him down. It wouldn’t matter to him that they’d driven up to Canada together, bought clothes together, shared a hotel room and watched television together. That Grayson understood him better than anyone ever had, in all of Reece’s life. None of that mattered to Grayson at all.
But it mattered to Reece.
He closed his eyes. “I used insight to figure it out.”
Grayson somehow went even more silent. After a moment, Reece cracked open his eyes to find Grayson’s unreadable gaze on him.
“On purpose?” Grayson asked.
“I don’t know,” Reece said honestly. “I know I hate this company. Cedrick Stone was going to do terrible things to Jamey, and I watched him aim a gun at you. And I was thinking about that, and the next thing I knew, I was using insight to figure out how to get the secretary to leave so we could look at her computer.”
He hesitated, then said, “I don’t want you to underestimate me or fall for any lies. I don’t want to do this shit. I want you to stop me when you have to.”
“I know.” Grayson leaned forward, and they were just that little bit closer. “And I know you got the corruption pulling on you on one side, but you got me on the other. And as long as I’m here, I’m never gonna let you leave Care-A-Lot without a fight.”
Reece swallowed. “And you’re real good at winning fights,” he said, echoing Grayson from the morning, the words sticking just a little in his throat.
“I try.” Grayson held up a small, black rectangle. “And to your earlier question: I found this behind Marist’s group photo.”
“Flash drive?” Reece said, eyes widening.
Grayson nodded. “How about we take a look?”
Gretel sat in her car, her dad’s voice coming through the Bluetooth speakers.
“I know it’s frustrating when your FOIA requests don’t get anywhere,” Beau said. “But maybe there isn’t a story here.”
Gretel ground her teeth. “There is ,” she said. “I’ve dug plenty up in the public records already. Have you ever looked at how much funding EI gets from the military? It’s weird. Suspicious.”
“Why would it be?” Beau said. “Empaths are dangerous.”
“They’re pacifists,” Gretel said. “So what is EI doing with piles of military money? That they pass on to Stone Solutions?”
“Stone Solutions makes the gloves—”
“More money than that. There has to be more they’re doing.” Gretel glanced at her phone, at the inexplicable picture Alex had sent, of Officer Stensby and the big blond man in camouflage outside Cedrick Stone’s office at Stone Solutions. She hadn’t heard from Alex since.
“Come on, Dad,” she tried again. “Don’t you wonder why someone always seems to be calling and asking for your AMI member lists? Asking about how many cops and soldiers AMI’s got?”
Beau sighed. “I don’t have time to talk you out of a new obsession every week. Every time we talk, it’s some new story—”
“And you make me send them all to AMI,” Gretel said, teeth clenched. “You trust my work. And I’m telling you, something is going on with the empaths. Something someone is not telling us. Something big.”
Beau was quiet for a moment. “Okay, honey,” he finally said. “I’m listening.”