Chapter Eight
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Reece woke late, and with a headache. It’d been almost dawn when he’d calmed down enough to come back to Jason Owens’s house.
He’d snuck in and fallen into bed and a twitchy, restless sleep.
Now it was full morning, the sun too bright and making him mutter a curse as he reached for his phone. He had one text from
Grayson and several from Jamey.
Grayson’s was short and curt: Message received. Don’t bother coming over. I’ll find you.
Reece squinted at it for a long moment, but the words still weren’t making sense. He sent a pair of grouchy texts back.
Reece: It’s too early for your cryptic Fear The Mysterious Dead Man bullshit.
Reece: What the fuck are you talking about?
He switched over to Jamey’s texts instead.
Jamey: You better not have done this
Jamey: I can forgive you for robbery and B they’re right there on the counter.
You can both hear I’m telling the truth. I didn’t do this.”
“No, you didn’t,” Alex said a little more dangerously. “And I want to know who did.”
“He’s taking this personally,” Cora said to Reece. “Like a master vampire who’s pissed that his coven was attacked.”
“People could at least do us the courtesy of blaming us for the right deaths,” Alex said. “After all, if they want us to murder our way through Stone Solutions, we can certainly oblige.”
Reece blew out a long, hard breath. His stomach was roiling with every kind of anger and the deep desire for vengeance, to
fucking well oblige anyone who wanted him to stack up bodies.
But deep, deep down, buried under the fury, he could sense another feeling he didn’t want to have: the painful ache of loss
for Smith.
It made him even angrier. Why the hell should he be sorry Smith was gone?
Alex was getting to his feet, turning to Cora. “Someone took out Smith before we could get those codes for the materials storage,
but you’ve got the list from Eton and Pelham and some good leads on piers. I say we find a new way to send a message to Stone
Solutions.”
Reece viciously stomped down on the grief before Alex or Cora could sense it. “Let’s go, then.”
“You can’t,” Alex said sharply.
“Your sister was a detective,” Cora added. “You know that even if the cops weren’t told the reason, they’ve sure as hell been
told to look for you.”
The mention of Jamey threw Reece’s morning texts into stark relief.
I know you’re too chickenshit to respond to me but listen asshole: I will find who really did this. I am telling everyone it wasn’t you. And I better be right.
Someone was trying to frame him, but Jamey hadn’t fallen for it. His brilliant sister, so full of faith—Jamey knew the murderer
wasn’t him.
But Grayson, on the other hand.
Message received. Don’t bother coming over. I’ll find you.
Grayson believed he had.
Reece realized his hands had balled into fists. “So I’m, what? Grounded?” he spit out, with much more of an edge he’d meant.
“If that’s how you want to see it.” But then Alex put his hand on Reece’s shoulder. “I’ve been hiding a long time, and I know
a thing or two about it by now,” he said more softly. “You go out now, you’re gonna project that rage all over the place,
and you’re gonna get caught. Am I lying?”
Reece clenched his teeth. “No,” he admitted. Alex believed that was true.
“Just lay low today,” Cora urged. “We’ll be back soon.”
Reece watched as they walked out of the kitchen, leaving him alone. Jesus. Even corruption couldn’t stop him from always fucking
everything up.
Evan never thought you were a fuckup, the little voice in his head said.
Absolutely not. He could not think about Grayson right now.
Except he’d already pulled out his phone.
It doesn’t matter if Evan believes you murdered Wayne Smith, Reece reminded himself, even as his fingers tightened on the phone. Evan is an arrogant asshole who’s not as smart as he thinks he is. This is proof. Proof that he’s all looks, no brains.
Proof that he doesn’t know me and never has.
That thought did not help.
Reece tried breathing through his nose, gaze going to the room’s large windows that framed the gray sky mirrored by the gray
waters of Lake Washington. His blood pressure was too high, his skin prickly and hot. If he didn’t calm down, he was going
to lose control of the anger, project through the house, maybe to the neighbors beyond.
I don’t care what Evan thinks.
I don’t care if he thinks I’ve murdered half of Seattle.
I don’t care if I DO murder half of Seattle.
I don’t care.
He glanced back at his phone, Grayson’s last text staring up at him: Is that really how you’re going to play this?
And before he meant to, he was texting back.
Reece: We’re not playing anymore.
Grayson had just gotten into the Smart car when Vivian Marist called his phone.
“Where are you?” she said, instead of hello.
He tossed his hat onto the passenger seat. “Heading to Kirkland to see Wayne Smith’s body.” They would have taken Smith to
the private Stone Solutions hospital with its private morgue. Grayson could check on all the other empath victims who were
being treated there while he was at it.
“Good,” said Marist. “Come to Stone Solutions afterwards.”
He turned the key, then twitched at the sudden volume.
That Hayabusa engine wasn’t subtle. “To see the crime scene? I saw the pictures.” And Grayson had already seen that exact storage closet the night he’d rescued Reece from Stone Solutions, believing he was still too innocent to end up at Polaris.
He touched his shoulder, where his clothes covered the small round scar from the bullet he’d taken that same night.
He really had thought Reece could be saved.
“We’re preparing for the governor to announce Senator Hathaway’s replacement,” said Marist.
“Respectfully, ma’am, I need to find Mr. Davies, not waste time with politics,” he said, as he headed for I-5.
“This is of relevance to the Dead Man,” Marist said impatiently. “Senator Braun plans to take up Hannah’s agenda, not just
her office.”
“Which one?” Grayson said dryly. “The anti-empathy agenda and S.B. 1437 that’s gonna give Stone Solutions all that money?
Or the one you and I both know was Senator Hathaway’s real agenda at the end, withdrawing that bill of hers?”
Marist gave a short sigh. “I worked for Hannah for years, you know. I considered her my friend. Her death was a tragedy.”
What a neat little dodge, to redirect to her friendship with Hathaway and not acknowledge the near-loss of that pile of money
earmarked for Stone Solutions. “Yeah,” said Grayson. “A tragedy engineered by two of your colleagues.”
“Perhaps,” Marist said more sharply. “But last night, our head of security was murdered by Davies—an empath you promised us
was harmless. Telling us we don’t need to worry about empaths that are, in fact, big giant problems has become something of
a pattern with you, hasn’t it?”
Grayson didn’t have a response to that.
“If you’re not coming to Stone Solutions, tell me where you’re planning to search for Davies,” Marist said. “I’ll send a team
to you.”
He took the ramp up to I-5, eyes on the traffic as he pressed down on the gas. “The teams can respond to thralls, not the empaths themselves,” he said as the Smart car accelerated with an ear-splitting whine. “We can’t risk any innocents near Mr. Davies.”
“Yes, but—Evan, what on earth is that racket in your background?”
“My car.”
Marist clucked her tongue. “I thought you drove a truck.”
Grayson hadn’t told anyone yet that Reece had his truck. Just one more mistake he’d made when it came to Reece.
“My truck was stolen.” He cut off an SUV and ignored its honk. “I have reason to believe Mr. Davies has it.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” she said. “Send us your new car’s information; I’ll get your record updated so you don’t accidentally
get towed from our building. And I’ll have your truck reported stolen. We’ll have an APB put out to every police officer and
Stone Solutions agent. We will find Mr. Davies.”
Grayson’s gaze stayed on the interstate, the gray asphalt under the gray sky. He’d been protecting Reece, and an innocent
man had paid the price. It ended now. “Yes, ma’am. We will.”
The remains of Victor Nichols’s room service lunch were cooling on the hotel suite’s dining table next to him. The muted television
played a local station in the background as he leaned forward to examine his laptop screen.
Charles had forwarded a series of pictures and surveyor maps showing hundreds of acres in the Olympic Mountains. In one of
the pictures, a portion of a building could be seen, set into the side of the mountain with a suggestion of more below ground.
Nichols’s pulse picked up.
He’d need to see it in person, of course. But this was very promising.
On the dining table, Nichols’s phone began to ring. He picked it up.
“Well done,” Charles said in his ear.
“I am the preeminent expert on corrupted empaths,” Nichols said dryly. “I know a thing or two about how they kill. Granted, the
illusion of a corrupted empath kill and the chemical actuality of it are very different things. You’ve had the body disposed
of as instructed?”
“Of course,” Charles said. “Did you get my email?”
On the muted television, a commercial for Stone Solutions was playing. Nichols looked at his laptop instead, the photos and
surveyor maps. “You have my full attention.”
“We’ll call it Olympia,” Charles said. “And if our next steps go off without a hitch, it will be yours to run as you see fit.”
“Funded and staffed as I see fit?”
“Indeed. And I will personally deliver the first guest straight to you.”
“We do have to catch him first,” Nichols pointed out.
“It’s been set in motion.”
Nichols’s gaze lingered on his pictures. “When will we move forward on part two?”
“Soon,” Charles promised. “In a way, I have the empaths to thank for helping select the next target. They need to understand
exactly who they’ve gone to war with.”