Chapter Five
To: [REDACTED]
From: vivian.marist@
Subject: BOD meeting
An impactful strategy meeting for the Stone Solutions Board of Directors is planned for this evening. An event of this caliber
clearly cannot be held at Stone Solutions until security is strengthened and the lobby windows are replaced, but AMI has graciously
agreed to host the meeting at their downtown headquarters.
Obviously AMI is not responsible for empathy defense, and so of course is not quite as secure as Stone Solutions itself.
I’m sure you remember which empaths are responsible for Stone Solutions’ current state.
And who is responsible for those empaths currently being free.
Stone Solutions would appreciate the Dead Man’s presence at the meeting.
“‘Stone Solutions would appreciate the Dead Man’s presence,’” Grayson repeated, reading over Vivian Marist’s email.
Surely looking for the empaths was a better use of his time? But while they could split hairs over whether Cora Falcon’s current
freedom was Grayson’s fault, his horse wasn’t very high when it was his own brother who’d sprung her from Polaris. And Reece
being corrupted and free was, of course, entirely Grayson’s fault, so he settled for sending Marist a polite yes, ma’am in response before getting back on the road.
American Minds Intact’s headquarters was in a nondescript downtown high-rise, halfway up a hill and not far from the water.
Soon enough, Grayson was pulling his rental Prius along a stretch of yellow-painted curb on the busy street, just past the
overpriced AMI shop that took up half of the building’s first floor. Clothes with the AMI logo were displayed in the window:
a tote bag that read Our Minds, Our Business; stainless steel travel mugs with the AMI logo; a mannequin wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the neon yellow of a safety vest
with Empathy Is Danger-y spelled out in big letters. They sure were scraping the bottom of the barrel when it came to slogans.
He was early for the meeting but climbed out of the car anyway, ignoring the AMI store in favor of the coffeehouse next door.
He got a latte and stepped back out to the sidewalk, standing under the coffeehouse’s awning and out of the flow of relentless
foot traffic as he pulled out his phone. He’d gotten more emails, but his thumb went, unbidden, to the texts from Reece.
Reece: No more Mr. Nice Dead Man, is that what you’re trying to say? Please.
Reece: If you’re so sure you can handle bad empaths, come and get me then.
“‘No more Mr. Nice Dead Man’?” Grayson repeated out loud as he sipped his coffee. “When have I ever been nice?”
Maybe when you pinned Reece down on your truck’s back seat and made him come with his own gloves, said a little voice in his head.
Grayson twitched. He carefully ignored any rising memories as he sent a text back. Because he would take that invitation and come and get Reece.
In a completely platonic, law-and-order sense of the phrase.
Grayson: Pretty cocky coming from an empath who’s gonna wind up back in my handcuffs.
As he tucked his phone away, his sensitive ears caught a familiar distant chime, the same message alert he’d once used on
the phone Reece had stolen.
Grayson looked up automatically, glancing up and down the street. Pedestrians were flowing both ways, huddled into their coats.
There was a small bottleneck blocking the sliding doors of the AMI store, where a couple had apparently decided to make out
right in the doorway. Other than the couple, though, almost everyone he could see had their eyes on their own phone; could’ve
been any of them using his old model.
As he turned toward the building, a flash of movement in the sky caught his eye. He looked up to see a bird high overhead,
strikingly jet-black against the gray clouds. Countless crows called Seattle home, but this bird was bigger, with a wedge-shaped
tail; a rare and remarkable sight in the city.
Grayson’s gaze tracked the raven as it glided through the air, then flapped its wings and disappeared past a cluster of evergreens toward the water.
The trees’ many shades of green were vivid and bright with life against the silvery day and the mirrored gray of the sky and sound.
Above his head, the lightest of rains had started up again, nothing like a Texas downpour, but a soft mist that he could barely hear against the awning.
Grayson was very still for a moment.
Once upon a time, he’d loved the Texas Hill Country: the rolling and wooded green hills that went on for endless miles, the
hidden lakes and rivers that stretched out blue as the sky above. Where a hundred-degree day might be followed by a sunset
you couldn’t take your eyes from and then a warm night bursting with countless stars overhead.
Awe, Alex had explained back when they were sixteen and thirteen, and Grayson had just gotten his license and seized any excuse
to take their dad’s truck for a drive through the hills or to stargaze from the bed. That feeling that steals your words, that’s bigger than you, like your heart and breath don’t fit in your body anymore. It’s
awe.
But that, of course, had been the Before Days. Now there wasn’t a single sentiment in Grayson able to experience awe or appreciate
the beauty of nature anymore, whether it was a hawk in the blue skies over green hills in Texas or black ravens against shimmering
mist and mountains in the Pacific Northwest. He was letting old habits distract him again, and now more than ever, he couldn’t
afford to let memories dictate any of his actions.
He drained the coffee cup and tossed it in the recycling, then went into the building to find the elevators and the board
of directors meeting.
“Where’s Alex?” Eton asked for the third time.
Reece took a breath through his nose. They’d been staking out the AMI store for about twenty minutes. It was not going great.
“Alex wants you to be here,” he said, also for the third time. “Remember?”
Eton’s expression turned dreamy. “Okay. Whatever Alex wants.”
Reece took another breath. Alex had been right; the thralls did not do well away from him, and Reece was in an AMI store where
the slogans were painfully terrible and his temper was strained as hell. It wasn’t a great combination.
Across the street, a Prius had pulled up at a stretch of yellow curb, illegally parking in front of the neighboring coffeehouse.
Reece quickly turned away, before a flare of anger could escape and influence any hapless shopper caught in his orbit. Jesus,
people were irritating. Could he thrall the city into following the goddamn traffic laws?
“The man,” said Pelham as Reece flipped through AMI-branded flannels with more force than necessary.
“What man?” Reece said with an edge.
“The man,” Eton said insistently.
Reece glanced out onto the sidewalk. A stream of pedestrians was passing by like a ceaseless river. “Who?”
Pelham shoved Eton out of the way. “Coffee.”
Eton bared his teeth in response.
Alex hadn’t been kidding; both thralls were far more agitated and less communicative with Reece alone, away from the empath
they were devoted to. Reece needed thralls who were actually helpful.
His gaze went to the nearest shopper, a woman in her late thirties who was stiffly browsing the clearance rack with a pinched,
resentful face. He could thrall her and give her an outlet for that bitterness.
Or maybe she’s unhappy because it’s difficult to get by in an expensive city, said that little part of him that just would not shut the fuck up.
She’s looking at smaller sizes than she would wear herself; maybe she’s trying to find something she can afford for a kid.
Even if she does hate empaths, are you really going to thrall someone’s mom?
Reece clenched his jaw.
“The man,” Eton said, and shoved Pelham.
Not again. “Would you stop?” Reece snapped.
“But The Man,” Pelham said insistently, speaking the words as if they were a title. “Texting.”
Reece’s phone chimed. He pulled it out of his pocket.
Grayson: Pretty cocky coming from an empath who’s gonna wind up back in my handcuffs.
Reece’s lips pinched together. That arrogant dick—
Eton shouldered Pelham so hard he stumbled, just as the thirtysomething shopper started flipping clothes so aggressively they
flew off the rack.
Keep it together, Reece snapped at himself, jamming the phone back in his pocket. He straightened up and turned toward the door. And as he
did, his gaze went through the store windows, to the tall figure in jeans and a tan coat outside the coffeehouse on the sidewalk.
The man was staring down the street, turned at an angle that hid his face, but there was absolutely no mistaking the all-too-familiar
silhouette that Reece had once had under him and over him in the F-150’s back seat.
“Shit.”
Reece dove behind another rack, this one of neon-yellow hoodies, eyes wide and heart pounding.
“See?” Eton said. “The Man.”
“Next time say the Dead Man.” Reece was already pulling out his phone.
Of course Grayson was here at the board of directors meeting.
Stone Solutions and AMI had an incestuous relationship, and the Dead Man was right in the middle of things.
And of course Reece had fucking missed it, because corrupted empathy could figure out where Wayne Smith was likely to be, but a stolen
moment in a truck hadn’t changed Grayson’s immunity to empathy.
And now he was right fucking there, those same broad shoulders that had filled the cozy truck cab, the same strong body that had been less than an inch from
Reece, all his to touch until even empath gloves and that Dead Man armor couldn’t hold back Evan’s physical desires—
Pelham abruptly pointed at the doorway. “Love!”
“What?” Reece followed Pelham’s gesture, and his eyes landed on a couple suddenly making out in the store’s doorway. He winced;
no question which emotion he was projecting now. “Son of a bitch.”
He pushed through the circular rack of hoodies and out the other side, not stopping until he was disappearing through a curtain