Chapter Eleven
To: Marist, Vivian
From: Whitman, Vanessa
Subject: the yacht last weekend
Well THAT was one hell of a party. Lucien has certainly kept our funds coming in. I hadn’t met him before but apparently he’s
known the Stones more than twenty-five years. I feel like he reminds me of someone, but I just can’t think who.
(He’s a lot better looking than I ever expected a lobbyist to be. Can’t wait for our next brunch with Adele!)
Grayson drove to the Vietnamese café St. James had picked and was led to a two-person table along the windows. He took a seat,
checking his phone as he waited.
It was only his own texts still on-screen.
Grayson: I bought us time before corruption got you.
Grayson: So no. It wasn’t POINTLESS. And I’d take that bullet again for the pacifist version of you.
Grayson: But you’ve made it real clear that’s not who you are anymore.
Reece hadn’t responded yet. Maybe never would again. Reece had crossed a line for good last night.
Or maybe you implied he’s no longer worth saving, a little voice in Grayson’s head said, and now he understandably doesn’t want to talk to you.
Grayson hesitated. But no, that was just one of the lingering quirks of growing up with an empath, that sometimes your inner
voice was real focused on other folks’ feelings. Reece didn’t care what Grayson said or thought. Reece didn’t even care if
other people lived or died.
St James doesn’t think Reece committed this murder, the little voice said.
Well, people didn’t always make the right call when it came to their family. Grayson would know.
St. James was one of the best detectives on the West Coast.
Maybe. But Reece had fooled even the Dead Man into thinking he was innocent once.
Their conversation from weeks ago came back to him, when Grayson first found out Reece could hear lies and had been hiding
that secret from everyone.
I’ve been trying all day to protect you from this fate, Grayson had said to him in the marina dry dock. I just didn’t know I was too late. Corruption’s a one-way street. Once it starts, there’s no coming back.
Don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me I’m doomed.
Reece’s eyes had been so big, so full of dread and hurt. But the truth was the truth, and Grayson had told him the worst truth a pacifist empath could hear.
Your powers will only get stronger, and you’ll become willing to use them for pain and worse as the sadism sets in. You say
you aren’t a murderer yet, but you will be.
And now that day had come.
His gaze lingered on the messages again, on the last thing Reece had texted.
Reece: You were never going to save me.
Grayson’s hand strayed to touch the bullet scar through his coat.
Maybe Reece had thrown it all back in his face, reminding him again that the pacifist empath Grayson had known was gone for
good.
But retaliating by telling Reece he wasn’t worth a bullet anymore sure as hell wasn’t the nicest thing Grayson had ever texted someone else.
“Hey.” St. James’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Sorry I’m late. I promise it was worth it.”
Grayson dropped his phone to the table, automatically rising to his feet and reaching to get her chair. “Not like I’m gonna
get irritated—”
“Sit the hell down,” she said, already taking her seat.
They both ordered pho and Vietnamese coffees. As the waiter left, St. James folded her arms on the table.
“I have a proposition,” she said. “Innocent until proven guilty, right? So you give me every piece of evidence you have that
Reece killed Smith, and I’ll tell you why it’s bullshit.”
Grayson had expected something like this. “Fair enough.”
The waiter set their phin filter–topped mugs on the table and disappeared again. Grayson began to count off the evidence on his fingers. “Wayne Smith was killed by an empath. He has a history with Reece and was found in the same storage closet he once locked Reece in, with Reece’s hat next to him.”
“Is that it?” St. James said patiently.
“What do you mean, is that it?”
St. James leaned forward. “Try this: Wayne Smith was killed by an overdose, possibly of adrenaline, which could have been
caused by an empath but could have been the result of a chemical injection intended to look like an empath thrall’s death.
Smith was chosen specifically because of his history with Reece—a history known to the real perpetrator, who also left a decoy
hat at the scene.”
Grayson paused. “You think Reece was framed,” he said slowly.
“We’re not dealing with run-of-the-mill crimes or run-of-the-mill criminals here,” she said. “Why would Reece have killed
Smith instead of thralling and taking him? He was head of Stone Solutions’ security; he had to be more useful to the empaths
alive. And Smith was cremated before you could get a look at his body, Evan. Tell me that’s not suspicious as hell.”
She was grasping at straws, desperate to find a way to exonerate Reece. “I bought that hat for Reece,” Grayson said.
Her eyebrows went up. “You bought it for him.”
“Yes.”
“The bear hat.”
Grayson casually turned his phone face down. “What of it?”
“Because you call him Care Bear?”
“Called him, past tense, and I don’t think I have to explain my reasons.” Grayson folded his arms. “My point is that the hat was
from me, and no one else knew that, not even you. It’s obviously a message from Reece.”
“Is it, though?” She put her phone on the table between them, facing Grayson. On-screen was a familiar store’s webpage. “The bear hat is exhibit A. Available at a chain retailer in Canada with overnight shipping to Seattle.”
She flipped to a new webpage. This time it was Gretel Macy’s Eyes on Empaths blog, specifically the picture of Grayson taken at the Vancouver auto show and shared on the site. St. James pointed to the
corner. “You can see Reece in the picture. He’s wearing the hat. The real perp might not have known you bought it, but they
knew it could be used to link the crime to him, with the bonus that the Dead Man would certainly recognize it.”
Grayson took the phin filter off the mug and picked up a spoon. “What else?” he finally said as he stirred the strong coffee
and sweetened condensed milk together.
“Exhibit B. Finding this was the reason I was late.” She opened something else on the phone. “Recognize that truck?”
Grayson stared at the phone screen, watching a few seconds of grainy security video of what was unmistakably his F-150 Raptor
pulling into a gas station.
And then Reece jumping down from the driver’s seat.
“What’s this?” he said.
“It’s from last night,” she said. “When Wayne Smith was in that security closet, Reece was buying vegan doughnuts in Tacoma.”
Reece’s movements were so familiar, the hands in the hoodie pockets, the messy hair. Grayson realized he was reaching for
the phone, as if he could go straight into the video and somehow reach Reece.
He drew his hand back. “How did you find this?”
“Got a tip. From your brother.”
Grayson looked up sharply. “Alex actually texted you? He just ignores me.”
“Like Reece ignores me,” she said ruefully. She touched the screen again, the video pausing with Reece mid-movement. “But
yes, Alex texted me back. I don’t think he wants Reece to take the fall for a murder he didn’t commit either.”
Grayson’s gaze went back to the grainy image of Reece. “You can’t trust Alex,” he said. “And Reece could have thralled Wayne Smith earlier in the night and told him to lock himself in that same storage closet—”
“Exhibit C,” St. James said firmly. “Wayne Smith only ever hurt Reece himself.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re an empath specialist,” St. James said. “Think, Evan. We’re not talking about what regular people would do; we’re talking about what an empath would do. Would Reece bother
to seek revenge on someone who hurt only him? Or do empaths, even the corrupted ones, only go after people who hurt the people
they care about?”
Grayson sat back in his seat. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” he said, raising his gaze to meet St. James’s eyes.
“I thought Alex could be saved once too. All it got me was strapped to a chair in an underground bunker. I don’t want that
fate for you.”
Sympathy softened St. James’s eyes. “But what did Alex do when you two got free?”
“He thralled them all and set fire to everything in that bunker,” Grayson said. “Turned everyone and everything to ash in
revenge.”
“Yes, he did,” she said. “But revenge for who?”
“I don’t understand—”
“Was Alex getting revenge because he himself was hurt?” St. James said more quietly. “Or was Alex furious that his captors
had dared to hurt his beloved older brother?”
Grayson opened his mouth, then closed it. They were quiet as the waiter returned, setting big bowls of pho in front of each
of them and a plate of greens, jalapenos, lime wedges and sprouts in the center of the table.
“Why would someone murder Smith and frame Reece?” Grayson said as the waiter left.
St. James set her phone down. “That is the question we need to be asking.”
“But even if Smith’s murder somehow was a frame job, Reece did set thralls loose in the AMI store,” Grayson pointed out. “A
lot of folks could’ve died.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe Reece trapped the thralls in the dressing room and cleared out the store before anyone was hurt.”
“Why would Reece have been the one who trapped the thralls—”
“Because everyone else in the store was stampeding out in fear,” St. James said. “And if you accept the theory that Reece was projecting that fear, then it follows that the crowd would
have been too overcome and too busy fleeing to secure the thralls, making Reece himself the most likely option.”
Grayson’s gaze went, unbidden, back to the image of Reece on her phone.
“Reece’s compassion has always been his greatest strength.” St. James picked up her chopsticks. “Maybe he’s on the edge of
mercy, his pacifism hanging on to that cliff for dear life. But I don’t think he’s fallen off yet.”
She pointed at him with the chopsticks. “So I’m going to solve the case of who’s framing my brother. And maybe you should take some time to consider why, exactly, you’re so determined to believe he’s unsavable.”
Charles: The timeline must be moved up.
Charles: We enact phase two tonight.
Nichols eyed the message from Charles Stone, then pocketed his phone. Fine by him. The sooner he got out of Seattle and into
his new facility, the better.
A town car was waiting outside his hotel at 7:00 p.m. on the dot, just as Charles had promised. Nichols had been driven to Kirkland, and the three-story unmarked building that served as Stone Solutions’ private hospital and morgue.
An unmarked van was waiting in the delivery bay, a pair of men in dark coats waiting at its door. The interior of the van
would be indistinguishable from an ambulance, but the exterior was far more subtle and forgettable on Seattle’s streets.
A few minutes later, Nichols was in one of the hospital’s finest rooms, a large corner space dedicated to the care of one
patient. And there, sedated and unconscious on the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV drip, was Vanessa Whitman.
Nichols eyed her dispassionately. He’d met Whitman a time or two, before her brief stint as Stone Solutions’ director of research
and development, which had ended when Cora Falcon had thralled her and left her catatonic. Whitman was an endocrinologist
who had been involved in the experiments on Falcon and Reece Davies; perhaps she would have been pleased to be part of tonight’s
orchestrations.
Well. Perhaps not if she’d known she was going to be the test subject.
Nichols touched his pocket. The syringe was there, along with the second vial, the very last of the limited supply he had
crafted in Polaris.
But Charles had promised there was more. And with any luck, the new Olympia facility would be everything Charles had promised,
and Nichols would be able to resume his work.
He straightened, pulling his hand from his pocket. “Load her up,” he snapped at the waiting orderly as he turned back to the
door. “We’re taking her downtown.”