Chapter Thirteen
Congratulations on your promotion to director, Emily! Stone Solutions leadership has been watching your career for a while
now. Your dedication to our vision is appreciated.
—Three-year-old corporate e-card sent to Emily Lowe
With St. James and Liam flying back up to the safe house to check on Diesel and Dr. Easterby, Grayson had sent a message and
made his way alone to the high-rise that housed American Minds Intact headquarters. The AMI store on the ground floor still
had a Closed for Repairs sign on the door.
Stone Solutions response had already arrived, the unmarked cars forming a line along the downtown street. An unmarked Stone
Solutions ambulance was also on scene, parked just to the side of the building’s entrance. Rubberneckers were slowing, both
on the sidewalk and in passing cars, all of them watching curiously.
A blank-faced woman with short hair and intelligent brown eyes was waiting for him in the lobby.
She introduced herself as Director Lowe.
“I was told to expect you,” she said to Grayson.
She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, but then, she was director of response operations at Stone Solutions—the team that responded to suspected empath crimes.
Her past few weeks wouldn’t’ve been good ones.
They entered the elevator, and Lowe pressed the button for floor sixteen. As they rode up, she handed Grayson a pair of medium-sized
latex gloves that were gonna fit tight as sausage casings on his hands. Grayson awkwardly rolled them on as they stepped off
the elevator into AMI’s luxurious lobby. At least twelve others were already at the scene, some taking pictures, some dusting
for fingerprints.
“Over here,” Lowe said grimly.
Grayson could have followed the blood trail for himself. Beau and Adele Macy were on the floor, slumped against the reception
desk. They were both dressed in winter coats and accessories.
“Office services found the bodies when they came in to clean and water the plants,” Lowe said as Grayson crouched down next
to the bodies. “We intercepted the 911 call. Obviously we’re still waiting on the official report, but by the looks of it,
they were both bludgeoned to death by someone strong enough to shatter bone.”
“What’s the suspected weapon?”
Lowe pointed just past the desk, where a bloody golf club was lying on the rug. “Beau Macy kept a set in his office.”
That would explain the blood. And the amount of it. Grayson touched Adele Macy’s hair with one gloved finger, pulling it slightly
out of the way. “Diamonds,” he observed. “And those are real nice heels for a slushy winter night.”
“They’re both dressed up,” Lowe confirmed. “They must have been heading somewhere after this. They hadn’t even been here long
enough to take off their coats.”
Grayson’s gaze went to the bodies again. Beau in a thick black coat and a scarf, Adele in a long tan coat with a stole. “Has
their daughter, Gretel, been told?”
“Officers have been dispatched to her apartment,” Lowe said. “Of course, the daughter will not be getting details.”
That was procedure. This was a suspected empath crime. Stone Solutions would pack the bodies away to their own lab and spin
a story. Gretel would never be told the real cause of death.
Grayson looked up from the bodies. The blood trail continued on from Beau and Adele Macy, heading down the hall toward the
offices. “Who tracked that blood?”
“The perp.” Lowe’s tone had gone even more grim. “And you need to see this.”
Grayson straightened up and followed Lowe. The blood was still red against the white flooring, a partial outline of a footprint
here and there—bare feet, not shoe prints.
The trail led into the third door. “Office supply room,” Lowe said, standing to the side so Grayson could go in.
He stepped to the threshold. The office supply room had three large copy machines, boxes stacked like Legos, and shelving
along the walls that held a selection of pens, highlighters, dry erase markers and notepads of all types and sizes.
And there, in the middle of it all, was the unmoving corpse of Vanessa Whitman, Stone Solutions’ former director of research
and development.
Grayson stared at Whitman’s body. “Dr. Whitman killed the Macys?”
“Well,” Lowe said dryly, “she was the weapon holding the weapon, at least.”
Because an empath was suspected of thralling and controlling Whitman. Reece was suspected of it. “Dr. Whitman was being treated at the Kirkland hospital,” Grayson pointed out. “I was there myself yesterday.
How did she get here?”
“We have no idea,” Lowe admitted.
Grayson stepped fully into the room, kneeling next to Whitman’s body.
She was dressed in a hospital gown, her legs and feet bare and streaked with blood.
In fact, the only part of her not splattered with blood appeared to be her hands, which were perfectly clean partway up her arms like something had covered them. “Was she wearing gloves?”
“She was, actually,” Lowe said. “We took them into evidence.”
If Whitman had been wearing gloves, that didn’t mean anything good. “I need to see them.”
A couple of minutes later, Grayson was holding a plastic bag that held a pair of black empath gloves, spotted all over with
the rusty reddish-brown of dried blood.
“We took the serial number from the gloves,” Lowe said. “It was sent to Vivian Marist.”
All empath gloves were printed with a serial number, which Stone Solutions used to keep track of which empath had which gloves.
The database with that information was limited to senior leadership. Marist had access. “I need to make a call,” Grayson said.
Lowe nodded and gracefully stepped out of the room, giving him privacy. Grayson called Vivian Marist’s cell phone.
She answered right away. “You’re at the scene?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Grayson’s gaze darted to Whitman’s body. “I’d like you to confirm how you know this was Reece Davies’s crime.”
“You were shown the empath gloves, yes?” Marist’s voice was tight and high. She might have been holding back tears. “Obviously
I ran them through the database. Those gloves were given to Reece Davies.”
Grayson’s eyes went back to the plastic bag and the bloody gloves. “When?”
“This year, on schedule.”
Grayson nodded slowly. “And is there any other evidence that this crime was Davies?”
“What other evidence do you need?” Marist snapped. “He put his own gloves on Vanessa Whitman to send a message.”
Maybe.
But Reece still had his bear hat, the same one that had supposedly been found next to Wayne Smith. When Smith had locked himself
in a storage closet in Bellevue, Reece had been buying doughnuts in Tacoma. And when Vanessa Whitman had been turned loose
on the Macys, Reece had been sending selfies to Grayson.
Grayson cleared his throat. “How did Mr. Davies get Dr. Whitman out of the Kirkland hospital?”
Marist huffed. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out. I’m completely shaken that an empath somehow got in.”
“Allegedly got in.” Grayson looked at the bloody gloves again. “And you’re completely sure Stone Solutions isn’t missing any
inventory?”
“What are you trying to imply?” Marist said sharply. “Jesus, Evan. Perhaps you don’t have feelings, but these were my friends.
Beau and I have worked on countless projects and events together. Adele and I have brunch when I’m in town. And Vanessa—”
He heard her swallow. “Vanessa deserved so much better.”
“She did,” Grayson acknowledged. “And I know you’re probably feeling a lot of horror and grief because this happened to your
friends. But sometimes Stone Solutions forgets that this is how the pacifist empaths feel when violence is done to anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Marist was silent for a long moment. Then she made an impatient noise. “Is there anything else?”
“No, ma’am,” Grayson said.
He finished up at the scene and then took the elevator back down to the ground level. He slipped out of the building, calling St. James as he walked along the dark street back to the Smart car.
She’d just landed up at the Salt Spring safe house, and he filled her in as soon as she answered.
“What a fucking horror show.” St. James sounded angry and shaky, even worse than Marist. “This is what I’ve been trying to
tell you. The empaths have done their share of crime, but these murders are frame jobs, and I—”
“I think you’re right,” he said as he reached the Smart car.
St. James paused. “What?”
“You’re right.” Grayson opened the car door. “The American empaths get their new gloves every year, and they can turn in the
old ones to be upcycled. Does Reece do that?”
“Always,” St. James said. “There are rare metals in the gloves that have to be mined by human workers. Even with all the worker
and wage protections that the empaths fought for, Reece wouldn’t waste the materials.”
“So he doesn’t have any old gloves lying around?”
“Definitely not,” she said. “It’s not easy to get extra gloves. Between public scrutiny and their trade secret paranoia, Stone
Solutions tracks every pair. And the pacifist empaths care so much about not scaring people that they willingly follow the
rules: They don’t share or lose their gloves, and turn them in for new ones on schedule. Why?”
Grayson dropped into the driver’s seat. “The night in November, the first time Reece broke into Stone Solutions, he took off
his gloves and stuck them in the glove box of his Smart car. They were still in there when his car was towed to Tacoma.”
“That’s right,” St. James said. “One of the Vanguards sent some new gloves for Reece, a prototype to beta test. Reece liked them better; I don’t think he wore the old ones again. But the gloves they took off Whitman weren’t the prototypes, were they?”
“Definitely not.” Grayson said it with certainty; he was very familiar with the prototype, thanks to a certain incident in the back seat of a truck. “But Reece still would have saved
his old Stone Solutions gloves to upcycle at some point, right?”
“Absolutely. And with the move from my house to Liam’s studio, he would have been extra careful to keep his old gloves somewhere
he could find them again. In fact, just to be safe, he probably left them in the—” She inhaled sharply. “Are you still driving
the Smart car?”
“I sure am.” Grayson opened the glove box and reached in, his hand closing around familiar material. “And guess what I just
found in the glove box.”
He pulled two empath gloves out of the glove box, holding them up to the streetlights. “So, yeah. It looks like someone used
Ms. Falcon’s thrall to frame your brother,” he said, “and we’ve gotta find out who.”