Page 12 of Twisted Shadows
He stuffed his duffel in the backseat and then slipped into the driver’s seat. As he let the engine idle and warm, he sent a pair of texts.
Grayson: I don’t put my keys in my coat pockets anymore.
Grayson: Guess whose fault that is.
He pulled the SUV out of the rental lot and onto the road. A few miles passed as he cranked up the heat and found the rental’s high beams, and then the reply came in.
Reece: I don’t know. Someone who’s a better driver than you?
Grayson should have known that was coming. Most people had too much survival instinct to taunt the Dead Man, but Reece was basically a sarcastic lemming.
Grayson: You’re the one who commits grand theft auto—of MY truck—but I’m the one getting sassed again?
Reece: Are you texting from behind the wheel right now?
Grayson’s gaze jerked from the phone screen to the road.
Maybe he wouldn’t reply to that one.
Thirty minutes later, Grayson was pulling into a small parking lot at the far end of the park along Lake Champlain, where the body had been found. Unlikely to be much left at the crime scene, especially after a day of snow, but there certainly wouldn’t be clues at the hotel.
He stepped out of the SUV and down to the parking lot. The snow was slowing but the wind was even colder here, coming off Lake Champlain with bits of ice in it. He zipped his coat all the way up to his chin and walked into the park. The trails were buried by snow and the moon was only a sliver, the night dark enough that Grayson flicked on the tiny flashlight he kept on his key chain.
His watch buzzed.
Reece: Since you dodged my question, I know I was right about you texting while driving. Did your plane land already? Are you out on a hot date or something?
Grayson glanced up. The park was dark and silent, empty besides him. The flashlight’s bluish glow illuminated a sea of spindly trees, their bare branches casting twisted shadows on the untouched snow blanketing the grass. A messy rectangle of yellow police tape was woven through the trunks up ahead, marking off where the body had been found. There was nothing to hear but his footsteps crunching ice or the occasional car in the distance. Even the edges of the lake were frozen, no waves lapping at the shore.
Grayson: Not exactly. Are you?
Seattle was full of waterlogged numbskulls if no one was taking Reece out on a Friday night. It’d be good for Reece, of course—he was an empath who’d feel better around other people, would probably be downright delighted if he got to read someone.
But happy as Reece would be, anyone crawling into an empath’s bed was going to leave a thousand times happier. Empaths read emotions, not physical bodies, but they could figure out what a body liked by following the feelings, and you’d end up with an empath drunk on their partner’s pleasure and a blissed-out partner who’d just had the best night of their life.
At least, for most people. Obviously not Grayson. But it wasn’t like that mattered; no empaths were looking to get in bed with the Dead Man and he couldn’t have touched any of them anyway.
The response came in.
Reece: Yeah right.
Clearly Reece lived in Soggy Idiot Town.
Grayson: You ought to have plans tonight besides complaining about my driving.
Reece: We don’t all have a line of people hoping to get in our pants.
Grayson: You think I do?
Reece: I bet the traffic to your dating profile could crash a server.
Grayson stopped at the edge of the yellow tape to tap out a response.
Grayson: What dating site do you imagine the Dead Man would use?
Reece: Corpse Match? Single Brain-Eaters? Plenty of Zombies in the Graveyard?
Grayson: I should not have given you that opening. Rookie mistake.
