Chapter Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
He keeps his friends close—and his enemy even closer.
—TAGLINE FOR THE 2001 TELEVISION DRAMA THE EMPATH ADVERSARY
After the confrontation with Director Traynor, Reece had driven south, back to Vancouver. Alex and Cora had grabbed their own rides, big black government SUVs that could each fit several of Traynor’s now-thralled soldiers.
The three of them had parked along the curb at the edge of downtown, close to the convention center where Reece had been with Evan only half a day ago, and then Alex and Cora had turned their thralls loose.
Traynor apparently had a specific taste in his backup: big, armed men who liked violence. Reece watched, lips curled in a new kind of smile as ten of those men disappeared with a roar into the streets of Vancouver.
“We’ll keep everyone busy,” Cora promised, as the three empaths stood at the edge of a small green space. At night, the water beyond the city’s edge was black, glittery lights reflected in its surface. She tilted her head, and for a moment, she could have been a therapist again, not an empath prison escapee with blood speckling her jumpsuit. “How are you feeling, Reece?”
Reece’s entire body sparked and buzzed, like he’d drunk electricity. The night was cold, but it didn’t bother him; he’d always run hotter than non-empaths, and now he felt the burn like he was made of fire. The phrase bloodlust came to mind, like he finally understood what other humans must have been feeling when they seemed to crave violence and mayhem.
For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why he’d fought corruption off so long.
“I feel ready to raise a little hell,” he said.
Somewhere down the block, someone screamed.
“I didn’t say thank you yet,” Reece said. “For showing up when I needed you.”
“I owe you the thanks right back. The score with Traynor is mine to settle.” Alex was running a hand over the side of the F-150. “I haven’t seen this thing in two years. I can’t believe Evan kept it.”
Cora looked back at Alex’s SUV, where Traynor was still unconscious in the back. “What should we do with Traynor?”
“I’m still deciding. Just like we’re still deciding what we should do with our Polaris escapee Victor Nichols, when we find him.” Alex looked at Reece. “Nichols has been sending you ominous emails, you know. Stress-testing , he called it in his notes. Who knows the extent of what he’s been willing to do to empaths—or their siblings. And speaking of my brother.”
He looked back at Reece and Cora. “We may run into him at some point, but I think we’d all rather it wasn’t today.”
“This will be fast,” Reece promised. “I just want Vivian Marist’s flash drive with everything they’ve tried to figure out about how Evan became the Dead Man.”
“I can’t wait to read about myself,” Alex said wryly.
“I hope there are more files on there,” Reece said. “Maybe they’ve got the names and locations of more empaths.”
Three more screams rent the air, echoing off the high-rises.
“They sent a bunch of people from Stone Solutions Canada home today after the fight,” Reece said. “The flash drive might still be in Marist’s office.”
Cora cracked her knuckles. “We’ll buy you time to look.”
Grayson parked at a pier not far from the convention center, certainly stealing someone else’s slip, then took the gun from the under-seat storage before he left the boat behind and sprinted up the street lined with hotels and high-rises. Even if he hadn’t known where Stone Solutions Canada was, he could have followed the screams.
He turned a corner downtown, running at top speed past the parking garage he’d parked in with Reece that morning, bickering over who got to be behind the truck wheel. Now, several of the cars along the curb were on fire, and people were screaming and tearing down the sidewalk.
He didn’t see Alex or Cora Falcon, but coming out the front doors of the Stone Solutions high-rise was a familiar silhouette.
“Reece.”
Grayson’s voice cracked, but then, the street was full of smoke from the cars.
Reece whirled around. For a moment, the shock was evident on his face; unlike everyone else on the planet, with their emotions picked up by Reece’s corrupted empathy like ships on a radar, he wouldn’t have been able to feel Grayson approaching.
Grayson gestured around them. “What are you doing?”
Reece looked from the cars on fire to the broken glass on the street to a pair of thralls locked in a fistfight farther down the sidewalk. Then he smiled in a way Grayson didn’t recognize at all.
“Oops,” he said dryly, without an ounce of regret.
That was it then. Another pacifist empath was gone.
Reece was lost.
“You’re fully corrupted,” Grayson said, stating the obvious.
“Oh, come on, it was inevitable.” Reece spread his hands. “To be honest, I don’t know why I fought this side of me so long. Give me power over anxiety any day.”
Out of the corners of his eyes, Grayson could see at least half a dozen other people on the street, all of them big men in camouflage, turning slowly in his direction with malice in their eyes.
“How?” Grayson said, before he could stop himself.
“You know what’s funny?” Reece said, which wasn’t an answer. “Before I turned, I said to myself, the Dead Man can stop me if I become corrupted . And it wasn’t a lie: I believed it, I believed you’d come, and you wouldn’t let me hurt people, and so I could pay the price for corruption and no one would lose but me.”
He waved at the chaos around him. “Now, though, I can see that I underestimated myself, just like you kept telling me. My empathy is strong. And my empathy got used to you .”
Around the street, the thralls were moving in. Grayson counted seven of them, all close to his own size, and all of them would have strength and speed jacked up from the corrupted empathy in their systems.
“I’m not like other empaths with the Dead Man now,” Reece said. “Your voice doesn’t bother me. The sight of you doesn’t bother me. I don’t want you to stop me—and I don’t think you can.”
Grayson took a step forward. “Come here and touch me then.”
Reece scrambled backward, up onto the curb behind him. The thralls moved closer, a living wall between them. At least one of them had blood already welling in his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Reece said, anger flashing in his eyes, “I’ll figure out a way around that too.”
“Wouldn’t count on it, if I were you.” Grayson put a hand on his waistband, on the top of the gun. “I can guess why you came back here, to Stone Solutions Canada. Do you have Vivian Marist’s flash drive in your pocket?”
“No.” Reece didn’t flinch. Instead, he smiled again, the one that wasn’t his, and pulled something small and black from his jeans, holding it up. “You know, I kind of like the way lies sound now.”
Grayson wrapped his fingers around the gun’s grip. “Give me the drive.”
Reece took a deliberate step backward. “I don’t even get a please ?”
“Hand it over. Now,” Grayson said, voice unwavering. “You know I don’t have feelings about you. I will do what I have to do to take that drive back.”
“Sorry, sugar.” Reece took another step back. “Finders keepers.”
“You could say the same about corruption.” Grayson kept his gaze on Reece as the thralls got closer. “Corruption found you and it’s gonna keep you. It’s permanent. There’s no saving you now; my only option is to stop you.”
Reece tossed the drive up in the air, then caught it. He looked straight at Grayson, eyes narrowed. “You can try.”
Grayson raised the gun and sighted down the barrel, so all he could see was Reece.
Reece froze.
Memories started to rise: Reece in the Smart car, Reece in the studio, Reece in the hotel—
Reece under him in the backseat of the truck, his lips against Grayson’s.
Grayson shoved every last memory down. He had a job to do, innocents to protect; there would be no memories stopping him this time.
He cocked the gun, index finger curled on the trigger, gaze locked on Reece’s face, the rumpled dark hair, those big brown eyes, his soft lips.
“Last chance, Reece,” he said, without a hint of emotion.
Not a single memory rose.
But something in Grayson’s chest twisted—and the gun faltered.
The seven thralls were on Grayson in the next breath. He was forced to fight, ducking and dodging and throwing punches of his own as sneakers echoed on pavement—Reece sprinting away down the street, ducking into an alley and disappearing from view.