Page 64 of Twisted Shadows
Reece nodded. “But last night—airsoft guns aren’t supposed to hurt anyone, but that’s not what the guy had, his gun didn’t have the orange tip—” He was breathing faster.
“Hey.” Grayson closed the laptop. “You don’t have to do this.”
Reece furrowed his brow.
“You don’t have to help with any of this. You don’t have to even think about it,” Grayson said. “Putting an empath through stress or violence is never my first choice. I’ve got that safe house. You can go there anytime you want.”
Reece chewed on his lip. And then he shook his head. “I think everyone is safer if I’m with you.”
“You’re not,” Grayson pointed out.
“I’m counting on that. I don’t want to be safe; I want other people to be safefromme,” Reece said, without flinching. “I don’t want to be alone with my head. I want to come with you today, wherever you go.”
“Even if I’m going to an airsoft course?”
Reece nodded. “I’d rather be with you.”
He hadn’t flinched when he said that either. Grayson’s words slipped out before he could stop them. “Pretty sure there are other things we could get up to with a day together.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Hypothetically,” they said, as one.
Gretel had not made good drinking decisions at the Leviathan. Even after a dose of painkillers and two cups of coffee, she was still in bed, scrunched low on the pillow with glasses in place as she read through headlines on her laptop.
SPD Patrol Car Found Wrecked by Lake Sammamish
The line that had her stuck was buried in the next-to-last paragraph.The SPD has not made the officer’s name public, but sources tell us the patrol car was assigned to Officer Jared Stensby, who could not be reached for comment.
Why couldn’t he be reached? She’d seen him just last night, at dinner at the Leviathan Hotel.
She reached for her phone, scrolling through texts from the night before.
Alex: Sorry I have to cut and run, something came up. Make your dad pay for a car home if that champagne hasn’t worn off, okay?
She snorted. If she hadn’t known it was Alex, she’d have thought that text came from Reece Davies; the empath went off about that kind of thing like it was a reflex.
She sent him the link to the news article, with a note.
Gretel: Weird coincidence, right? Did you see Officer Stensby when you left last night?
She switched back to the laptop and over to herEyes on Empathsinbox. Three different readers had sent notes about the empath club, McFeely’s—apparently there had been a panic outside the club involving several of the employees.
Proof of empath mind control??one of the notes was titled.
Mmm, probably not. Gretel had a tag on her blog devoted to McFeely’s—not least because a reader sent in countless pictures of the wildly hot bouncer—but she wasn’t sure she believed the companions at McFeely’s were real empaths. Still though, the reviews said the staff were good listeners, and the club’s whole schtick was being ajudgment-free zone of acceptance. Frankly that sounded like a damn good time; maybe one day she’d stop by and hope she wasn’t recognized.
She tabbed to her dad’s email and scanned through, pausing on one.
The member lists are appreciated, and congratulations to AMI for its growth. Keep us posted; we’re always interested in hearing about your recruits.
It was from a generic email address. Gretel sighed, loud and frustrated. Beau didn’t even care about his members’ privacy enough to protect them from randos asking for member lists. This was probably some shady marketer and now every AMI member would be put on targeted spam lists.
She shook her head and kept reading.
The body lying dead in a Burlington park wasn’t an empath, which meant it wasn’t Marie Pelletier. Except the real Marie Pelletier might not have died in Burlington, but she still hadn’t been seen in days.
Aisha made her way to Marie Pelletier’s home in Montreal’s Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie borough. Her roommate, Chantelle, was also a librarian, and let Aisha come into their small two-bedroom flat.
