Chapter Sixteen #2
the green. People going about their lives, no idea Reece was here, drowning in fury, enough empathic power burning through
him to ensnare anyone unlucky enough to be nearby—
Before he’d meant to, Reece had yanked his phone out of his pocket. His fingers moved on autopilot as he opened his text messages
with Grayson, scrolling up and up, to the picture of him in Reece’s bed. He stared at Grayson’s face for a long moment.
And then he hit Call.
It rang several times, the toneless drone tinny and distant against the vastness of the lake and cloudy sky above. Then, finally,
the familiar deep drawl floated up from the phone. “Grayson.”
Voice alone wasn’t going to be enough. “I want a video call,” Reece snapped.
There was a pause. “What?”
“Alex gave you super hearing. I know you heard me.” Reece’s voice was still too low, too rough. Tension was vibrating under
his skin, forcing him to pace as he spoke.
“Why?”
“I got my reasons,” he said, mimicking Grayson’s drawl. “Isn’t that the bullshit nonanswer you usually give? You keep bragging that you’re
not scared of me, so put your camera on and prove it.” His voice broke as he said it, sharp as cut glass.
There was another pause, a longer one.
Then the line cut out in Reece’s ear.
A few seconds went by. His fingers tightened on the phone, but then it began to ring again with an incoming video call.
Reece hit Accept, and Grayson’s face filled his phone screen.
“This proof enough for you, sugar?”
Reece’s fingers tightened on the phone for a very different reason. Grayson had cleaned up at some point, jaw shaved and hair
styled, though his hazel eyes were still bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles underneath. He was obviously filming himself
from the driver’s seat of the Smart car, head nearly at the roof and broad shoulders blocking most of the view, but the background
noise held the telltale sound of cars zipping ceaselessly past. “Are you on I-5? While using video? Evan Miguel Grayson—”
“You’re the one who asked for this. And I pulled onto the shoulder before calling you back.” Grayson was staring at him. “I
wouldn’t’ve expected that you knew my middle name.”
Reece hadn’t expected the old traffic lecture to fall from his lips. He shook himself irritably. “Yeah, well, just because
you don’t know me at all doesn’t mean I have the same problem.”
Grayson sat back in the seat. “Point taken,” he said. “You didn’t kill Smith, and I owe you an apology for believing that
frame job.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t apologize yet,” Reece said lightly, the dagger’s edge still in his voice. “I don’t think murder is off the
table at all.”
He stepped out onto the dock, feeling raw and exposed under the endless gray sky above. But his blood pressure had dropped
a point or two the moment Grayson had come into his sight, whatever stupid brain cell that still cared about Evan Grayson
calming the moment he saw the familiar face, whole and unharmed.
On the screen, Grayson tilted his head. “You planning to turn on your camera?”
“Maybe I’m plannin’ on just watching Dead Man TV.”
The dock’s wooden planks were stained a deep reddish-brown that hid any evidence of the inevitable decay. Reece walked past
the covered boat slip with its small skiff, heading farther out into the lake.
Grayson raised an eyebrow. “Or you’re admitting you’re scared of me.”
“Don’t you wish.” Reece reached the end of the dock and sat down on the edge, letting his legs dangle so his sneakers were
maybe a foot above the waters of the lake. He raised his phone and then turned on his camera.
There was no change in expression, of course, but Reece could tell the moment his image came on-screen by the way Grayson’s
hazel eyes flicked up, then down. He didn’t speak, just took Reece in for a long moment. Maybe Reece was the empath, but he
suddenly felt unbalanced and laid bare, like he was the book and Grayson was the reader.
He probably wasn’t looking his best these days either.
“You okay?” Grayson finally said.
My skin is crawling and my blood is burning and all I want is to see people suffer but some wisp of conscience keeps holding
me back and who knew pacifism could fight like hell? I was a mess before, and I’m still a mess now, and the only time I’ve
ever been okay was those few days when I was with you.
“Never better,” Reece said, in an unbothered tone, because Grayson wouldn’t hear the lie twisting his words in the cold lake
air.
“Uh-huh.” Grayson didn’t sound remotely convinced. “Someone piss you off?”
Reece huffed a dark kind of half laugh. “Yeah,” he said truthfully. “Yeah. Someone did.”
“The person who’s framing you?”
“No,” Reece said. “This person hurt—” you “—someone else.”
There was a pause. “Of course they did,” Grayson said, like that had held a deeper meaning for him. Then he straightened up. “Did something happen to Alex?”
“You mean besides having his parents murdered and his brother tortured because some sick fucks wanted to see what would happen
to him?” Reece said with bite. “No. Why?”
“Because I talk to your sister more than you do now,” Grayson said, and that flat voice didn’t quite have an edge of its own,
but it sure wasn’t soft. “And far as I know, no one has hurt her lately except you.”
“Why don’t we leave our siblings out of this?” Reece said warningly. “What are you even getting at?”
“You’re pissed at someone for hurting someone else,” Grayson pointed out. “With St. James ruled out, I was trying to figure
out whose pain could make you willing to call me.”
Reece looked into his eyes, the warm shades of golds and browns in the familiar face. It took him back to that golden-hued
picture of Grayson in Texas, the bright blue summer sky between the green leaves of an oak tree. Once upon a time, there had
been smile lines next to Grayson’s eyes, because he used to be happy, until Traynor and Stone and the others had taken that
from him.
But while Grayson wasn’t happy anymore, he also wasn’t hurt right now. He probably needed more sleep, but he was safe in Reece’s
Smart car in Seattle, not a bunker in West Texas, and the sight of Grayson had settled the black lighting enough that Reece
might be able to walk back into Jason Owens’s house without murdering Traynor on the spot.
“Be careful with that engine,” he said, and hung up.