Chapter Ten
. . . and as if the infamous hypothesis that empath are modern-day “Incubus” wasn’t enough, that team has sent in yet another
request for an unspeakably large grant, this time for a new study entitled “My Brother’s Keeper: The Spicy Secret Lives of
Empath Siblings.”
Can someone please explain to Ted that EI funds are for serious research, not clickbait?
—Internal memorandum at the Empath Initiative
Grayson had gone to Kirkland and the private Stone Solutions hospital, only to be stopped short by the morgue supervisor.
“I’m sorry, Agent Grayson,” she said, “but there’s no body for you to look at. Mr. Smith has already been cremated.”
Grayson blinked. “Mr. Smith was a murder victim,” he said. “Why would he have been cremated already?”
“National security,” the supervisor said, like that should have been obvious. “The instructions I received were quite clear.”
“Were they.” Looked like Grayson would be stopping by Stone Solutions to have some words with Vivian Marist after all.
He checked on the patients before he left.
Vanessa Whitman, the former research and development director, was in the nicest corner room, her catatonic state unchanged since she’d been thralled by Cora Falcon in November.
There were half a dozen thralls in other rooms at the hospital now too, all heavily sedated: Officer Stensby and Keith Waller, along with two others rescued from Polaris, and the Stone Solutions security guards they’d found in the AMI dressing room, Eton and Pelham.
Far as Grayson knew, they’d never kept thralls in this state before. It was dangerous; if any of them ever woke, they’d be
violent and deadly again, likely to die themselves within a few hours but with the added risk of taking more innocents down
with them. Something else to ask Marist about.
Grayson arrived in Bellevue not long later, pulling the Smart car into his reserved parking spot as the volume of his engine
drew stares from the three smokers huddled under a nearby awning.
But as he started to open the driver’s door, the sliding glass doors of Stone Solutions opened, and Beau Macy, the American
Minds Intact president, came storming out.
Vivian Marist was right behind him. “Beau, wait—”
“I will not be placated, Vivian! This is a travesty—a sheer mockery of the American political system! I will not be made a
fool.”
The three smokers were now watching Beau and Marist with great interest. Grayson hunched back into the car.
“Beau, please.” Marist was having to take quick, mincing steps in her pencil skirt and very high heels. “I know Adele and
Lucien have a—er, a history—but it was just the one weekend on Cedrick’s yacht—perhaps a mere handful of other weekends—”
“Unacceptable!” Beau paused to point at her. “I will not stand for this. AMI will not stand for this. If Stone Solutions backs that piece of shit as our new senator, we’re finished. Finished. AMI will find another company to support. You hear me?”
He turned around and stormed towards a Mercedes. Marist threw up her hands. “Beau!” She chased after him. “Beau, be reasonable—”
Grayson eased his driver’s door shut. On second thought, his conversation with Marist could wait.
Alex lingered in the back seat of Kosler’s police cruiser, door open, gaze on the text messages from Detective St. James.
You helped me save Reece once before. Help me again now.
I am not your enemy.
“Aren’t you clever,” he finally said to the phone.
“Who are you talking to?”
Alex looked up. Cora was waiting for him to get out of the car. “Reece’s sister got in touch,” he said as he held up his phone.
Cora’s eyes widened. “Alex, no,” she said. “No, no, no. You do not want a piece of Briony St. James. No disrespect, but she
is too dangerous, even for you.”
Alex’s eyebrow went up. “That wasn’t a lie.”
“Because I believe it,” she said emphatically.
Alex slid out from the back seat, joining Cora on the pavement. Up ahead, the pier was bustling with activity as a ship made
its way into port. Kosler was somewhere in the crowd, confirming this pier was receiving a very specific set of shipments.
Maybe they couldn’t destroy stores of materials at Stone Solutions, but there were always other routes.
“St. James knew just what to say to make me want to respond,” he said as they watched the small feeder ship making its way toward the dock.
“I should have realized she and Reece weren’t a one-way street: Reece picked up deductive skills from her, but she’s clearly picked up a thing or two about human nature from him.
” He glanced at Cora. “St. James is the only one listed as a possible trigger point for Reece on that twisted spreadsheet of Stone Solutions. But he’s corrupted. And she’s still alive.”
Their eyes met, a symphony of conversation passing between them in shifts of expression so subtle a non-empath would never
have followed.
“You’re right, it is interesting,” Cora said, as if he’d spoken his thoughts out loud. “You lost your parents. I lost John. Yet Reece became corrupted
without losing his sister.”
“But Reece did call to ask us to meet at Director Traynor’s location,” Alex pointed out, “because he knew there was danger
to Evan.”
“Oh, come on,” Cora said dryly. “We’re not actually going to talk about Reece being hot for your brother, are we? I thought
we were politely pretending we hadn’t noticed.”
“Are we gonna keep politely pretending right up until Reece has a breakdown and leads the wrath of Stone Solutions right to
us?” Alex countered. “I don’t want them to ever get their slimy hands on either of you again.”
Cora nudged him with her shoulder companionably. “So Reece called us in to help take down Traynor,” she said thoughtfully.
“He used his own new corruption to protect the Dead Man.”
Alex made a face. “I am never going to get used to that moniker. And that’s not a lie.” He picked up his phone again. “But
Reece makes you wonder, doesn’t he?”
Their eyes met, another silent symphony of meaning passing between them.
“You and me—we didn’t have time to save anyone,” Cora said. “We didn’t even know what was happening to us until it was too
late.”
“But if Reece was able to evolve in time to save Evan,” Alex said, “could other empaths do the same? Could they choose corruption, if they had the opportunity, and the knowledge—and a powerful enough motivation?”
“What an interesting theory,” Cora mused.
Up ahead, Kosler was crossing the pavement, making his way back to them. “What are we going to do about Reece in the meantime?”
Alex said to Cora. “What if he runs straight back to Evan? The Dead Man is not going to have mercy for Reece.”
“You’re the one who made your brother the world’s most unique and dangerous empath hunter,” Cora pointed out.
A memory rose in Alex’s mind: Evan’s voice, hoarse from screaming, with a surreal hollow edge from the echo off the bare concrete
walls of their cell.
Do it. Whatever you need to do to make me stronger, do it. I will get us the fuck out of here, Alex, I swear it. Evan had swallowed, blood still streaking his face, his eyes haunted. I don’t want to feel anything anymore anyway.
It hadn’t been a lie.
Alex shoved the memory away. Fire had been too good a fate for that bunker. “Our lives would probably get easier if we just
killed Evan,” he muttered, typing into his phone.
Cora rolled her eyes. “We’re obviously not killing the Dead Man.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t try to bullshit a fellow empath,” she said, nudging him again. “I know why you torched that bunker in Texas. I would
have done it too.”
“Fair enough,” Alex admitted as Kosler approached.
“Alex, sir.” Kosler was almost bouncing on his toes. “It’s not what you thought. None of the crates on the dock contain thread.”
Cora frowned. “But Eton and Pelham specifically remembered seeing delivery paperwork for a company called Metallic Tailors
that makes heavy metal threads for the empath gloves.”
“Did they ever take those deliveries themselves?” Alex asked her.
Cora shook her head. “They just signed paperwork afterward. But according to their notes, it’s one of the companies that delivers
to Stone Solutions’ Bellevue location from this pier.”
“Metallic Tailors doesn’t seem to ship here, but this is a delivery port used by Stone Solutions.” Officer Kosler gestured at the ship coming into port. “And that vessel has a shipment
of rare metals earmarked for Stone Solutions.”
“Well, in that case.” Cora glanced Alex’s way. “I might have an idea for that shipment, then.”
St. James’s messages were still on Alex’s phone screen. He tapped out a quick text and hit Send.
Alex: Find out where you can get vegan doughnuts in Tacoma at 2 a.m.
“Lead the way.” He pocketed his phone. “Let’s go have a word with those nice sailors.”
Grayson figured that if Reece had been trying to send a message with the guard’s murder in Stone Solutions, there was a chance
he’d left more messages at other familiar places. He’d spent the afternoon looking, checking the airsoft course in Tacoma,
the café where they’d shared a midnight meal, the shady bar in Renton, the sushi house downtown.
Nothing. No more crimes; no signs of Reece, or of Alex or Cora.
Finally, as the pale day gave way to a deep gray winter twilight, he gave up, and was driving on I-5 when his phone rang.
“Did you see the news?” St. James said when he answered.
Grayson accelerated, the Hayabusa engine screeching as he passed an eighteen-wheeler. “What news?”
“Stone Solutions apparently made a donation this afternoon.”
He could practically taste the air quotes she’d used around the word. “Do I want to know what they donated?”
“A small fortune in heavy metals and rare earth elements,” she said, “given to a renewable energy start-up for their windmills.”
Grayson blinked.
“The ship transporting the materials docked in Seattle today, then immediately pulled back out of the pier and set sail for
California,” St. James added. “The ship’s captain sent a press release to every shareholder and news station about the donation.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Stone Solutions I know.”