Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Polaris has always been more essential to the population’s safety than anyone has wanted to admit. Cedrick Stone can emblazon anything he likes with Stone Solutions’ “Defending American Minds” motto, but the true defense against empathy has always been here, on my island in Canada. We are the ones who contain the danger, and we are the ones who will figure out how to defeat it.
—EXCERPT FROM VICTOR NICHOLS’ JOURNAL
“Code red. Code red .”
Jamey had given Aisha’s directions to Liam, and they’d flown over the Inside Passage ferry route before crossing an island to land on a lake maybe half a mile away from the mine that held Polaris.
They’d just touched down when Aisha’s voice came crackling out of the plane’s radio.
“I have to get to her.” Jamey was already reaching for the .44 Magnum Grayson had given her back in November, leaning forward in her seat so she could wrap the holster around her waist.
Liam was bringing the plane across the lake’s surface. There was no dock for them to taxi to; she’d have to be ready to leap. “I wish I could come,” he said.
“Are you kidding? You’re vital ,” Jamey said. “We only have a shot here because you’re our escape route. I’ve busted a lot of crooks and trust me: a crime is only as good as your getaway driver. Flyer.”
“Why is it so hot when you talk like that?” Liam had the plane nearly up to the shore. “You got the flares? Send one up like a bat signal as soon as you need me; I’m not going to take my eyes off the sky.”
Jamey kissed his cheek. When Liam had the plane close enough to the lake’s edge, she opened the passenger door and braced herself. “Wish me luck.”
“I’m going to tell you to be careful and come back safe with Aisha, that’s what I’m going to do.” Liam leaned over and kissed her, on the lips this time. “Give ’em hell, baby.”
She smiled and then leapt for the shore. The mud was slippery, but she’d been ready for that and kept her feet, darting off into the tree line. She worked her way through the forest until she heard noises up ahead: a helicopter taking off; rotted wood and metal collapsing, voices.
But not just any voices. Screaming.
She slowed her steps, making them silent as she slipped through the trees. But with a plummeting stomach, Jamey thought she might know what she was hearing. Moments later, she could see them: at least ten people, some of them tearing at each other in a rage, way too much red on their faces.
Empath thralls.
But here ?
Her eyes widened as they landed on familiar red hair. Shit, that was Stensby there in the group, yelling at the others. What the fuck was Stensby doing here?
She whirled around, putting her back to the tree and taking a silent breath. Okay. She was breaking into a top-secret empath prison to rescue her friend and doing it through a raging crowd of murderous empath thralls. All in a day’s work. Apparently.
She patted her pocket, confirming she had the flare, and then pulled the Magnum out of its holster.
“Stay safe, Aisha,” she whispered. “I’m coming.”
Reece offered to watch for the secretary’s return—probably still feeling guilty about accidentally using insight, which yeah, he ought to’ve felt guilty for approximately forever, so Grayson let him stand guard. As Reece watched the hall and elevators at the far end through the glass, Grayson popped the flash drive he’d found into the secretary’s laptop. With any luck Marist had some kind of record of the oversized empath gloves that had gone to Keith Waller at the Seattle airsoft course.
But as Grayson scrolled through files, he didn’t see anything that looked like production orders.
He did, however, see something that had no business being on anyone’s flash drive, anywhere in the world.
“Evan?”
Grayson heard Reece as if from a distance as he opened the file.
“You went all quiet. Did you find something?” Reece had come up next to him. He blinked at the screen. “What’s that?”
Memories began to rise. Grayson ignored them, flipping through pages in the document like he was reading a dictionary.
Reece was frowning. “I see some pictures, some words that don’t make sense. Is that in code?”
“Abbreviations. Might as well be code if you don’t know them.” In his shoes right now, someone with emotions might have been screaming, Grayson distantly realized, as he calmly clicked through page after page, flicking away the memories before they formed like flies on a hot summer day. No one would need emotions to not be interested in reliving these particular moments.
“There are comments in some of the margins.” Reece leaned in and read one out loud. “‘Now a perfectly engineered weapon for these predators.’” His gaze turned flinty. “Someone with the initials VN wrote this. N for Nichols , as in the guy on Marist’s wall? The one you don’t want me asking questions about his research facility?”
He didn’t wait for Grayson’s answer, pointing to the reply to Nichols’ comment. “ ‘The irony.’ That’s from HT , who’s that?”
“Holt Traynor, the Empath Initiative director.” Grayson quickly clicked forward, before Reece could ask who predators referred to.
The next section of the file was older pictures, the West Texas landscape, a bunker underground, a room that had since been burned to ash.
“Is that a—dentist’s office?” Reece’s frown had deepened. “That’s a weird chair. What’s it for?”
Grayson immediately hit Back, away from the room, returning to the landscape. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why would I worry about a chair?” Reece’s gaze had gone to Grayson. “What am I really looking at?”
Grayson cleared his throat. “Aren’t you supposed to be keeping watch?”
“What are you trying to distract me from now?” Reece said suspiciously. “What is this document?”
“Something I would never explain to an empath,” Grayson said. “Which is why you’re going back to your watch.”
But Reece wasn’t moving. “Evan, I am getting bad vibes from this,” he said, pointing to the screen, and there was a new tightness to his voice. “And you’re acting like you know what all this is, and I don’t like that. I really don’t like that.”
He’d gone very tense, and Grayson could practically see his blood pressure ticking up. “I do know what this is,” he admitted, trying for part of the truth that would calm Reece down. “But it’s fine. It’s not like I have any feelings about those memories.”
“Oh, I see,” Reece said, and he sounded more upset, not less. “So this is bringing you the kind of memories other people would have feelings about? Should I guess what kind of feelings people normally have seeing creepy documents found on hidden flash drives in corrupt corporations?”
Well, shit. “Reece—”
Reece tapped the screen. “What is this? And what does it have to do with you?”
His eyes were on Grayson’s face, and he wasn’t flinching away from the lack of emotions. On the contrary, he’d gotten close enough that Grayson could feel the heat pouring off him.
Grayson shouldn’t confide in an empath. But standing here, in Stone Solutions, reading a file annotated by the directors of the Empath Initiative and Polaris, the person Grayson trusted most was the partially corrupted empath who wanted to stay by his side.
“It’s a broken instruction manual, more or less,” Grayson confessed. “How to make a Dead Man.”
Reece’s eyes widened. “It’s about you ?”
Grayson glanced back at the screen, still showing the photo of the hidden entrance to a bunker in fuck-knew-where West Texas, where the sky went on for a million miles over red rocks and jackrabbits.
“You told me once that your brother was the one who made you the Dead Man,” Reece said, not much more than a whisper. “You said he became corrupted. That you tried to get him help, but you asked the wrong people.”
Grayson’s gaze stayed on the photo. “There was a time when my empath brother was the sweetest, sunniest person I’d ever met,” he heard himself say. “And then, one night when Alex was home from college, someone broke into our ranch and murdered our parents in front of him.”
Reece didn’t speak, just waited, big eyes on Grayson. Still not flinching.
“I was away, in Austin, and I’m pretty sure now the killer planned the strike for when I was gone, because they were trying for corruption on purpose,” said Grayson. “But even still, I don’t think they were prepared for what they unleashed. Alex was turned, exactly like Ms. Falcon, and a lot more people died before I could find him. And while I was looking, I talked to a pair of scientists who told me if I brought them my brother, they could use me to bring Alex back.”
In the picture, the mountains on the horizon were rocky and red, a world away from the mist-draped green mountains outside Marist’s skyscraper window. “A lie, it turned out. I just didn’t know it then. Corruption is permanent, and all they wanted was to see if they could use me to make Alex even more powerful.”
The sun was bright in the picture. There’d been no windows in the bunker, no way to see the outside world. “But those scientists weren’t prepared for Alex either. I walked in there thinking I was going to save my brother and walked out unable to care that I hadn’t.”
“You’re glossing over a whole lot there, Evan.” Reece’s voice had gone hoarse.
“You don’t need the gory details. And you won’t find them in this useless manual, because no one knows how Alex managed to destroy my emotions,” Grayson said. “And no one ever will, because he’s gone now.”
The memories were threatening like a tidal wave now—the fire, Alex, the sound of the Magnum.
Grayson place his finger on the screen, over one of Nichols’ annotations.
Completely emotionless.
Can do whatever needs to be done.
“Stone Solutions, the Empath Initiative, others—they came looking for us. But they were too late. And when they found out what had happened, they created the Dead Man, because they all know the truth.” Grayson looked at Reece. “That I’m capable of anything to defend people from corrupted empaths—that I made sure Alex was gone.”
He expected Reece to flinch away from him. Expected to hear him make a sound of horror.
He wasn’t expecting Reece to look him dead in the eyes and say, “Liar.”
Grayson drew back. “What?”
“You’re lying,” Reece said. “I can’t hear it, but I know it.”
“But—”
“You want everyone to think you killed your brother, even me,” Reece said. “I don’t know what really happened in that bunker, or why you’re lying, but save your breath; I know you better than that. You didn’t do it.”
Grayson stared at him.
Reece reached for the flash drive. “These fuckers can’t be trusted with this. We’re taking it with us.”
“We?” Grayson put his hand on the desk, in between Reece and the flash drive, and Reece was forced to stop before they made contact.
“Move your hand, I’m taking that drive,” Reece said.
“Did you just miss the part where I told you what was done to my brother?” Grayson said. “You think I’d let you set foot anywhere near the Dead Man’s past?”
Reece’s mouth pinched.
“In fact,” said Grayson, “where you’re standing right now is too damn close. Seattle is too damn close. You got a place in the south that you’ve always wanted to see? SoCal? Mexico?”
“Evan,” Reece said warningly.
“I got a couple folks I trust,” said Grayson. “We get you set up somewhere else—anywhere else—and then I’ll take care of this.”
“I’m not going down south.” Reece stepped closer. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Grayson had to tilt his head down so their eyes stayed aligned. “You said you’d go to a safe house. I’m just asking you to go a little early—and a lot farther away.”
“And I’m telling you no ,” Reece shot back. “You said I wasn’t your prisoner.”
“You’re not,” said Grayson. “But that doesn’t mean you’re gonna come to all the awful places the Dead Man has to go.”
Reece moved right into Grayson’s personal space, close enough to raise a concern about accidentally making contact. His cheeks were flushed and his shoulders tense. “Try and stop me.”
“Reece—”
“I will steal your truck again before I leave you to face whatever’s going on here alone,” Reece said tightly, and he didn’t flinch, so he wasn’t lying. He tilted his head back, looking up at Grayson. “Cedrick Stone was going to use Jamey to corrupt me all the way. He was going to do that by tor—by tor—” He broke the word off with an angry sound. “By hurting her in every terrible way he could think of. Is that what happened to you and your brother? Did they try to use your pain to make your brother more powerful?”
There was a muffled crash down the hall, like someone in another office had just thrown something against the wall.
Grayson took a breath. “Reece—”
“And these creeps put details in a fucking document, like you’re some kind of lab experiment?” Reece demanded, pointing at the laptop, his bare hand coming dangerously close to brushing Grayson’s arm.
Another crash, then another.
“I think you might need to take a couple deep breaths,” Grayson said.
“Stop trying to distract me,” Reece snapped. “What happened to you?”
In the hall, someone threw open their office door so hard it swung one hundred and eighty degrees to smash into the wall. With a shout, a petite redhead in sensible shoes and dress pants threw herself out of the office and at the door across the hall. A moment later, a man’s yell split the floor.
Grayson’s gaze flicked back to Reece. His dark brown eyes were glittery bright as he glared up at Grayson, his chin high and movements jerky. “It doesn’t matter what happened,” Grayson said. “I keep telling you, it’s not worth getting angry over something done to a man without feelings.”
“And I’m not listening.” Reece’s voice was darker, more gravelly than normal. “Because you’re worth everything.”
More yells were coming from down the hall. At the far end, the elevator doors were opening. “Reece,” Grayson said, trying to keep his voice soft, “I think you’re projecting your anger and setting off the floor.”
Reece didn’t seem to hear him. “The more you refuse to answer, the more I know I’m right,” he said, too loud, as the four people who tumbled out of the elevator were already swinging at each other.
“Care Bear,” Grayson said, and Reece finally blinked, finally looked at him and seemed to hear him. Grayson leaned down, holding his gaze. “You’re starting a white-collar brawl.”
“What?” Reece glanced out the windows and froze. “Oh shit.” His face went from red to white and then back to red. “And I’m still pissed. I know you were hurt and I can’t stop being furious.”
Grayson grabbed his shirtsleeve. “Come on.” He tugged Reece into moving. “Get behind me.”
They stepped into the hall, and Grayson had to immediately dodge the coffee mug that came sailing his way.
“Shit,” Reece swore again. His skin was mottled and sweaty. “I have to get under control. Oh, watch out!”
The petite redhead in the pantsuit was coming at Grayson, swinging a small purse that could probably barely bruise.
Meanwhile, three men from the elevator were heading straight for Reece, who wasn’t moving and hadn’t even seemed to notice them. Just a wide-eyed little lemming, completely oblivious to any danger to himself, breathing too hard and looking around in a panic.
Grayson dodged the woman’s purse and stepped in front of Reece in one motion, throwing up a hand to block a punch from one of the men. Another man had grabbed a large potted plant off a marble-topped table and was bringing it around like an Olympic discus.
“Fire door,” Grayson said, twisting to get his elbow in between the plant and Reece’s head, so that the pot shattered against the edge of the table instead.
“Evan, your arm!” Reece said, without even looking at the ceramic pot that had barely missed his temple. “And this guy—sir, I am very angry right now, but if you hit me you might hurt yourself—”
“Reece, would you stay put for once, don’t step any closer to him—”
The man swung the broken ceramic pot at another man at the same time someone else was swinging at the woman, and if Reece had to watch this much longer, he’d start hyperventilating.
Reece wouldn’t be able to see pain on Grayson’s face, though. He pivoted, putting himself between the men and taking the blow himself. Pain erupted across his right shoulder blade as the broken ceramic pot tore through his sweater, but he ignored it.
“Reece,” he said loudly, “open that fire door and get your ass moving. We’re getting you out of the building.”
Reece swore but cooperated. As soon as he was through the door frame, Grayson stopped pulling punches. Two minutes later, the hall was littered with unconscious bodies and he was taking the steps down to catch up.
“So many stairs,” Reece groaned, as they scrambled down twenty-odd flights.
“Be glad it’s down, not up.”
They finally hit the ground floor. Reece shouldered open the door and they stepped right into a packed lobby.
Every head turned in Reece’s direction.
Chaos erupted.
“You’re still mad ?” Grayson said, as several people in various states of business casual began swinging at each other.
Reece winced. “I don’t like exercise and it was a lot of stairs!”
Five office workers with coffee cups and bagels were approaching Reece and Grayson, fury in their eyes. Grayson reached into his jeans pocket. “Here.”
Reece’s eyes went wide as he caught what Grayson had just thrown at him. “These are your truck keys!”
“I’ll handle the lobby.” Grayson stepped in front of Reece, eyeing the oncoming horde. “Get the truck. Be careful. ”
Reece was, mercifully, already running toward the front doors. Grayson pushed up his sleeves and dove into the fight.