Chapter Six
So excited to find more of my fellow Captain Feelings fans! They canceled this graphic novel series way too soon. Does anyone
have a digital scan of Volume Three? It’s the one where our intrepid empath captain faces off with his nemesis, Dr. Stoic,
when a corporation tries to build a high-rise over a community garden. It’s a classic!
—Internet forum post
“I understand, Dad,” Gretel Macy said into her phone, for the third time. “Yes, I will write about AMI store, but no, I won’t make AMI look bad, and yes, I’ll—sure, all right, of course you have to go.”
Gretel hung up and set her phone to the side. She ran both her hands through her hair, then looked back up at her computer
screen.
There had been sudden, inexplicable panic at the AMI store, resulting in property damage and the entire staff and all the
patrons fleeing the premises. Her dad was demanding Eyes on Empaths help with damage control; her readers were begging her for more details. She needed to be writing.
And instead she was staring at the giant mind map that stretched across both of her oversized monitors, a collection of clipped
images, links to blog posts and news articles, and note after note speculating about connections and links.
Empath Initiative > oversees empaths but funded by military. WHY???
Stone Solutions > receives millions from Empath Initiative for empathy defenses
Cedrick Stone > father was first director of the Empath Initiative, family fortune made from military contracting. Still hospitalized:
location secret.
And below all those notes, the inexplicable picture Alex had texted her, of Seattle Police Department Officer Stensby and
a large blond man in military camouflage standing outside Cedrick Stone’s office in Stone Solutions, sent after Stone Solutions
had experienced yet another break-in and fire.
I did promise you a story, Alex had texted.
It was a story all right, but one Gretel didn’t know how to read yet. And Alex himself was a mystery too, who’d seemed to
vanish as abruptly as he’d appeared. Good-looking, smart, and one of the best listeners she’d ever met, and she didn’t even
have his last name, just the memories of their brunch and their stop by her dad’s AMI event.
Gretel frowned and reached for her coffee. The cool liquid touched her lips, and she grimaced. How long had she been hyper-focusing
on all this and ignoring the story she was supposed to be writing?
Long enough her coffee had gone cold. Again. She made herself get to her feet and stretched.
She hadn’t shared the picture Alex had sent with anyone else.
Alex hadn’t told her to keep it secret, but it didn’t make any fucking sense.
Why were a cop and his buddy involved in a break-in and a fire at Stone Solutions?
How had Alex gotten the picture—had he somehow been there?
But then didn’t that implicate him in the fire?
She’d finally been able to identify Stensby’s companion, at least. She’d seen him at a couple of AMI events, and someone had
been asking her dad for lists of AMI members who were cops and active or former military. She’d gone down that list, running
names on the internet until Keith Waller turned up pictures of the same big blond man on an airsoft course’s social media page. Stensby had been in a couple of the
pictures as well.
She’d called the airsoft course already, but had only been told that Mr. Waller apparently no longer worked there. The woman
she’d talked to didn’t know where he’d gone. He’d been the manager; seemed like an abrupt departure.
Gretel frowned at her monitors again. She had articles to write, other things to research, but she had that itch in her brain
that just wouldn’t let this go.
In the days following Senator Hathaway’s murder, Cedrick Stone had been implicated. Stone Solutions had, of course, denied
the accusations. But Stone hadn’t been seen or heard from again since that night.
And yet Alex had a picture of the outside of his office. He’d claimed he was going to write a story about Stone Solutions’
security for his own empathy blog.
Tell me about your blog, she’d said to Alex. What’s it called?
I haven’t been bold enough to name it, he’d said in that warm Texas drawl. It’s just a place for my thoughts right now, really.
She had his first name and a topic. Was that enough to find his blog?
Gretel set her still-cold coffee on the desk and got back in the chair.
Grayson’s first call outside the AMI high-rise was to Diesel at the Salt Spring Island safe house, where he was recovering with Dr. Easterby.
“Hey, Blondie.” Diesel sounded a little rough when he answered the phone, but then, spending days as a mad scientist’s prisoner
did a number on you. Grayson would know. “What can I do for you?”
On a night not long ago, but somehow a million years gone by, Grayson had hopped an emergency flight from Burlington, Vermont,
back to Seattle and found Reece fleeing the fake empath club, McFeely’s, and brakeless on I-5 thanks to an act of sabotage.
When they’d finally gotten Reece’s Smart car safely stopped, Grayson had sent it to Diesel’s cousin’s auto body shop for repairs.
But since Reece was driving around in Grayson’s stolen truck, his car was still waiting at the shop.
“You think your cousin might be open to some extra work on Mr. Davies’s Smart car this afternoon?” Grayson asked. “It’d be
hell of a rush job, but I’d pay like it.”
“I bet he would. Andre loves a challenge,” Diesel said. “What did you have in mind?”
St. James arrived on-scene just as Grayson was hanging up with Diesel. They stood together on the sidewalk, watching the chaos
still surrounding the AMI store as an unmarked Stone Solutions ambulance that looked like a plain delivery van pulled up outside
the building.
Grayson nodded at the ambulance. “That’s for the thralls they found in the dressing room. They’ll be taken to Stone Solutions’
private hospital in Kirkland—heavily sedated and on life support, obviously.”
“And no question this time that they were thralls.” St. James frowned. “Who do you think barricaded them in a dressing room?
They probably saved a lot of lives.”
“One of the store patrons, maybe,” Grayson said. “Could’ve been one smart, brave soul in the crowd.”
“Hmm.” St. James didn’t look convinced. “We don’t know which empath made the thralls.”
Grayson tried to keep his voice on the nicer side of flat. “Considering my texts, I think Reece is the obvious answer.”
“Not necessarily,” she countered. “Mr. Eton and Mr. Pelham are Stone Solutions security who didn’t report to work today. They
could have been thralled last night by any of the three empaths.”
It was a stretch, but Grayson let it go. He had something else he wanted to ask for from her.
He told her his idea, and she agreed and left to make it happen. He then spent the next few hours cleaning up the mess Reece
had left behind at the AMI store, to the unenviable soundtrack of Vivian Marist, Beau Macy, and the entire Stone Solutions
board of directors ranting about public image. Beau had, of course, immediately brought up the possibility of an empath conspiracy,
and even if he fortunately still had no idea what kind of empaths were actually behind this particular event, there were still
gonna be some messy media clips that weren’t gonna help the public view of empaths.
Finally, though, he’d had the Prius towed and called a ride to Andre Lane’s auto body shop to pick up the Smart car. Now he
drove—carefully—through downtown, finding the entrance to the parking garage for Liam’s building off one of the less-trafficked
streets. In the garage, he followed memory up the ramp to the spot Reece had once directed him to park in, back when they’d
arrived together in the truck, that night in Seattle a few days and a million years away.
He inched the Smart car into the spot assigned to the studio.
The upgrades Andre had put in were exactly what Grayson had asked for—and not quiet.
By the time he’d parked, four people were watching him, their eyebrows up as he unfolded himself from the driver’s seat and awkwardly got out of the tiny vehicle.
Admittedly, even alone, at his size he probably still looked like an entire circus exiting a clown car.
As he stood, he could see over the edge of the parking garage and down to the street below. The coffee shop where Keith Waller
had once stalked Reece was closed for the night, but Grayson could hear a bar nearby, voices spilling out into the night.
The other tenants had already disappeared through the glass doors into the elevator bay as he came around to the back of the
car and popped the hatch. He held up his phone, making sure a full view of the engine was visible in the frame. He didn’t
want Reece to miss it.
“We’re gonna see how you like someone helping themselves to your wheels,” he muttered as he snapped a picture.
He locked the car and, instead of following in the others’ footsteps, found the fire escape and stairs to the lobby’s office,
where St. James had left Liam’s key with the office manager. He took the elevator from the lobby up to the fourth floor. As
it rose, he caught his reflection, the dark circles beneath bloodshot eyes, the three days of stubble on his jaw, the grease
in his limp hair. The past few days sure hadn’t done him any favors.
He found the apartment number, unlocked the door and stepped inside, gaze darting around the studio. They’d gotten ahold of
the building’s security footage from the garage and elevator cameras, but there hadn’t been any leads that way, and in the
chaos of the last few days, St. James had only had time to peek in the apartment itself and confirm Reece wasn’t staying there.