Page 80 of Twisted Shadows
Reece furrowed his brow but got the kit out of the glove box from under his gloves. Opening the hinge lid revealed a shallow tray of supplies, and under the tray was—
“How many passports do you have?”
“Enough to do my job.” The road was more brightly lit now, a line of cars up ahead waiting at the single open booth at the border. “I change the truck license plates every few months. It’ll come back as a rental if they run them.”
Reece picked up the top passport, the darkest green in the dim light withMéxico Pasaporteon the front. “Won’t these all have your picture? Not only can I not remotely pass for you, don’t you think the border agent is going to notice if the pictures match?”
“The pictures aren’t identical, but if they do notice, then I have actual government credentials I can pull out. But I want to keep us under the radar, and EI doesn’t know about these identities.”
Keepusunder the radar. Meaning EI still didn’t know the two of them had run off to Canada. Reece side-eyed Grayson. “Does EI have any idea you keep all these secrets from them?”
“Wouldn’t be secrets if they knew.”
“But you’rethe Dead Man. Aren’t you, like, an EI agent, in a way? Doesn’t Stone Solutions have you on their payroll?” Reece gestured at the border. “You can’t tell me any of them would be happy with you, if they knew about this.”
“I’m not exactly in the business of making folks happy.”
“But what is EI going to do when it learns you’re cutting them out of the loop?” Reece pressed. “What isStone Solutionsgoing to do if they find out? Are you going to get in trouble?”
“You know I can look out for myself.” And before Reece could argue, Grayson nodded at the stack. “We’re almost at the border. Give me the US one for León Collins—I have a beard in that picture. You take the Canadian one.”
Reece pulled out the blue passports from the stack and opened one up to find a version of Grayson with dark brown hair and glasses. “Thirty-one-year-old Teodoro James, born in Victoria,” he said, reading from the page. “Nice disguise, but I will never pass for half this hot and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort.” And before Reece could process that compliment, Grayson was adding, “Pull the coat to your chin and face the window. Pretend to be asleep.”
Reece groaned, but it wasn’t like he had a better option. “If we’re going to be around another person, let me put my gloves back on—”
“You can’t,” Grayson said.
“But I have to—”
“We’re here because you almost got empath-napped,” Grayson said, cutting him off. “And there is a Canadian empath out there who’s still missing. So far the only thing we’ve learned that you and Ms. Pelletier from Montreal have in common, besides being empaths, is that y’all both have sisters who picked careers saving people. That’s not much to go on, and until we know what’s going on, we can’t risk anyone learning you’re an empath. All right?”
Reece sighed, but nodded. He passed the two passports over, then stuck the others back in the glove box. He reclined the seat a bit, pulled the coat up high, and rolled on his side, just as Grayson pulled past the Peace Arch and into the line.
This late on a freezing Monday night, the border line was short, and before too long, Reece could sense the light on the outside of his eyelids. He peeked through his lashes over the dashboard. They were next in line, and he could just make out the border agent in the booth, the lines in her forehead, the tenseness in her shoulders. In a near-silent whisper that only Jamey or Grayson would still be able to hear, he said, “Can you ham up the Southern thing? Lay it on really, really thick?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“The border agent looks like an introvert who’s had a long day and is very tired of people,” Reece said, in the same whisper. “Last thing she’s going to want to deal with in her line is a chatty Southerner who won’t shut up. Annoy her enough and she might be itching to push us through and be rid of you.”
The car in front pulled away, and Reece closed his eyes fully. He felt the truck move forward, then heard the window lower.
The woman’s voice came. “Passports?”
“Yes, ma’am, here you go.” Grayson’s voice had suddenly become less deep and a lot more friendly than Reece had ever heard it. “How’s your night going? They got heat in that little booth there to keep y’all warm in all this snow? We don’t get much snow in Texas, but we do get ice storms, and then we don’t have the salt or plows ready to go like y’all do, though I reckon one of those storms would shut things down even up here. Hail too, and graupel—bet y’all haven’t even heard of that.”
The agent grunted, and Reece could almost taste her grumpiness. “Business travel or personal?”
“Personal as it gets. The long-distance thing gets real old, real fast.” Grayson had dialed the accent up to thick as molasses. “My boyfriend—that’s Theo there, asleep in the seat, you’ve got his passport—he came down to see me, like a—we call them Winter Texans, but do y’all call them snowbirds here, like Yankees do, or maybe y’all call them snow geese in Canada, because of the Canadian geese?—anyway, we met online and then Theo came to Austin for American Thanksgiving—you can see I used to have a beard in the picture, had to shave it for the relatives, I’m thinking of growing it back but that’s a whole other conversation—and now it’s my turn to visit Vancouver Island; I didn’t even know there were islands in Canada before I met him. Do I need to wake him? Baby, we’re at the border. Can you tell the agent why you were down in Texas with me and how we’re going to your place in Oak Bay? Oh, and tell her that whole long story about how I didn’t know you could drive cars onto the ferry ’cause I thought you rode dog sleds in Canada.”
“It’s fine, I can see him,” the agent said hastily. “Welcome to Canada.”
Reece bit his lip hard, trying not to smile and ruin Grayson’s unexpectedly good performance.
A few minutes later, the truck was moving again. Reece opened his eyes. “You took my advice,” he said happily, as he brought the seat back up.
“When it comes to people, I put my money on the empath’s opinion every time.” Grayson’s voice had dropped back into its usual gravelly register, and his accent seemed downright subtle now, in comparison.
