Chapter Five #2
at the back of the store. He ducked into a dressing room and slammed the wooden door, taking deep breaths as he smashed out
a text message to Alex and Cora. This was fine; everything was fine. He could handle this—
The dressing room door suddenly opened, revealing Eton. “The Man left.”
“Oh,” Reece said a little weakly. “Good—”
Eton suddenly made a snarling noise and turned away. A moment later there was a loud clattering, maybe the rack of clothes
at the dressing rooms’ entrance, followed by several shouts.
Shit. The thralls were not doing well at all. And Grayson was literally overhead, at the board of directors meeting in the
AMI offices on the sixteenth floor. If things in here got out of hand, he’d be part of the responding team.
His phone chimed again, two messages simultaneously.
Cora: Don’t take on the Dead Man alone.
Alex: Get out of there. Leave the thralls.
There was another shout, this time a woman, and the sound of shattering glass, like the thralls had broken the three-way mirror.
Reece quickly darted out of the dressing room. Eton and Pelham were at the end of the hall of dressing room stalls, grappling
with each other. Reece could run now, leave them here to cause chaos.
And murder, the little voice in his head said. Because they’re not going to stop at chaos. There will be murder.
A woman screamed, running out of her dressing room in an AMI T-shirt as Eton and Pelham crashed into it.
Reece didn’t care who died in here. He didn’t care—
But he was already moving. He slammed the dressing room door shut on Eton and Pelham, grabbing a chair meant for a waiting
patron and jamming it up under the handle to keep them in there. At the same time, he reached through the tumult of emotions
inside him for the fear he’d felt the first time he’d realized Evan Grayson was the Dead Man.
And as he strode through the curtained archway back into the store, he let it go on purpose.
Around him, the AMI erupted into chaos. People began to scream and stampede for the door, knocking down shelves and racks,
leaving AMI merchandise shattered and trampled underfoot.
Reece grabbed a hoodie and an AMI-branded selfie stick off the floor as he joined the crowd, cutting through the cash wrap
and out on the street. How long did he have until word of the chaos reached the AMI offices upstairs and they sent the response?
Probably four, maybe five minutes, and then Grayson would be heading straight for Eton and Pelham.
Unless Reece could redirect him.
He darted around the illegally parked Prius and crouched in front of the hood. “I should have guessed this was you,” he said
aloud as he jabbed the tip of the selfie stick through the grill. A moment later, his press-and-push maneuver was rewarded
with a quiet click.
Reece tried the unlocked hood, and it lifted easily. He reached for one of the ignition coil bolts, and it loosened under
his grip.
“As I said,” Reece muttered as he unscrewed the bolt. “Come and get me.”
“—as we align on this deeper dive, just here, you can see S.B. 1437 will be a true game changer, leading to a predicted share
price increase of more than six percent—”
Grayson watched Vivian Marist make emphatic circles on a projected slide with a laser pointer as heads around the conference
table considered the figures. The board of directors meeting had been going all of five minutes, and they were already discussing
profit. He recognized a few of the folks around the table, including Beau Macy, the AMI president, listening attentively to
the promise of even more money.
Grayson didn’t own Stone Solutions’ stock.
His gaze drifted out the floor-to-ceiling windows, which framed a view of the sound and Bainbridge Island. The interior wall
was likewise floor-to-ceiling glass, so that the view could be enjoyed by anyone walking past the conference room. The Stone
Solutions’ board of directors sat around the solid mahogany conference table in oversized leather chairs every bit as nice
as the ones at Stone Solutions itself. AMI liked to claim they were underdogs in the fight against empaths, but they sure
weren’t hurting for funds.
“—and if we circle back,” Marist continued, “we see that leveraging the synergy of S.B. 1437 and our disruptive new media campaign together could move the needle nearly seven percent—”
Three people passed the conference room’s interior windows on their hall patrol again, including head of security, Wayne Smith,
and two members of the undercover response team. Grayson edged his way a little deeper into the conference room before he
was seen.
“Vivian,” one of the directors said, a white man with prominent eyebrows. “Will you be addressing the recent SEC filing?”
“Well, the specifics around Cedrick’s illness are still sealed,” Marist said apologetically, “so nothing new will be added
to our public disclosures—”
“Not that,” said the director. “The 8-K Cedrick filed in October.”
“Oh.” Marist frowned. “Well—”
The conference door was abruptly flung open. “Ms. Marist! Mr. Macy! There’s a panic happening in the AMI store—they’re destroying
property—”
Beau Macy was getting to his feet, but Grayson wasn’t waiting to hear the rest. Panic meant fear, and a crowd suddenly set
off by an emotion likely meant they’d let the empaths play them again. They’d targeted the first-floor store while all of
security and response were up here guarding the BOD on sixteen.
He pushed off the wall and darted out of the room, dodging the guards as he skipped the elevator and went for the fire stairs.
He could hear the screaming by the ninth floor, and the crowd noise was nearly deafening as he burst out the ground-floor
door onto the sidewalk. He twisted his way through the thick, panicking crowd and pushed into the AMI store.
Then he paused. The store floor was covered in destroyed stock but empty of people. Had everyone already run out?
As he stood there, ears pricked for sounds, his watch buzzed. He pulled out his phone.
On-screen was a picture of his F-150, parked along a stretch of curb under a bare-branched tree, and two texts.
Reece: You want to use those handcuffs? I’ll be at the Space Needle for the next 10 minutes.
Reece: Better hurry. All these tourists might make me twitchy.
Grayson shoved the phone into his pocket, sprinting back to the front of the store. Several others were shouldering their
way in through the sliding doors, not the security guards from upstairs but at least eight of the high-level responders from
the Stone Solutions operations team.
“You armed?” Grayson checked.
“Yes, sir,” one of them replied.
Grayson hesitated, but they’d be trained and ready for whatever might be in the store.
They were not ready for Reece.
He slipped out around them and ran for his car, dropping into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. He pulled away from
the curb and into the thick of traffic, cutting to the middle lane so he could turn and head for the Space Needle.
And that was when the engine started sputtering.
“What the hell,” he said out loud, pumping the gas. But the car had slowed to a crawl, and then it came to a stop, right in
the middle of the downtown street.
As Grayson pumped the gas again, jamming the Start button, his watch buzzed. He yanked out his phone.
It was a new selfie of Reece, perched on the back of the F-150’s open tailgate. He was wearing one of the highlighter-yellow AMI hoodies with Empathy Is Danger-y emblazoned across the front and holding some short metal rods up for the camera.
Reece: Though I guess it might be hard to hurry without these.
Around Grayson’s stalled Prius, traffic was backing up, honks filling the air. Pedestrian traffic was at a complete standstill,
some people still screaming, others just staring.
Two more texts came in.
Reece: These are your ignition coil packs, btw.
Reece: Just in case you don’t know enough about cars to recognize them. :)
The chaos continued around Grayson as he stared at the picture of Reece. “All right. If that’s the way you want it,” he finally
said. “No more Mr. Nice Dead Man.”