“You live with a telepath,” I blurted out. Crash paused as he drew a pendulum out of his bag. Momentum sent it turning in a lazy clockwise circle. “Isn’t it exhausting to constantly filter your own thoughts?”
Crash might like to needle me, but he can turn serious on a dime. “That’s not how Red’s talent works. To listen in, he needs a physical connection.”
“Yeah. But there’s more than ample opportunity to touch.”
“True. Remember, though, Red isn’t just a telepath. He’s also the most ethical man I’ve ever known. Painfully so. I’ve always prided myself on keeping to my own standards, but he takes scruples to an entirely new level. He wouldn’t read me without asking.”
Wouldn’t he, though? If the situation truly called for it? Sometimes it’s necessary to fill in your partner’s blind spots, likewhen I told Evelyn not to let Jacob test out those SPECS. I wasn’t proud of myself for going behind his back, but it had to be done.
“Why do you ask?” Crash wondered. “Is there an interesting new telepath in your life?”
“Empath, actually. Someone from work.”
“Oh, well, empathy is its own precious ball of wax. I’mgladI’m not in the gifted and talented category.” Sure he was. “The constant reminder that pretty much everybody’s a wad of emotions under a thin veneer of civility would get old, fast.”
“Not to mention the fact that some people aren’t even aware of what they’re hiding from themselves.”
My observation sailed straight over Crash’s spiky blond head. “And then all the Jacobs of the world would take over. Because they’d be the ones holding all the cards—with everyone else at the table as good as blindfolded.”
We turned as Jacob trudged down the stairs, muzzy with sleep. “What’s going on?”
Had he heard us talking about him? “House smudging,” I said quickly, just as Crash singsonged, “Wouldn’tyoulike to know?”
Jacob paused, narrowed his eyes further still, then shuffled off toward the coffee with a noncommittal grunt.
“Maybe I do have the advantage when it comes to Red,” Crash said. “I can tell when something’s bugging him even if he’s practicing ‘right speech’ when he’d rather cuss me out. Jacob’s internal poker face is a good reminder of exactly how much I rely on those quiet emotional nudges.”
Thankfully, I didn’t have to hear him rehashing his relationship in any detail, as I was saved by a ding from Records. It was barely seven and someone was already on the case? Or maybe, like Crash, the department had been going all night.
“I gotta take this,” I said—but Crash had already forgotten about me as he strode to the cannery’s nearest cardinal point, pendulum swaying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“WE FOUND SARAH Dombrowski,” I told Jacob. He looked up from the fridge, visibly shedding the fog of sleep as his investigator brain clicked into gear. I scanned the report. “Says here she’s working at some exterminator called Pest Rid…and she’s on her way to a job site right now.”
Jacob knocked back the half-cup of coffee he’d just poured himself. “I’ll get dressed, you call Evelyn and tell her to get ready.”
Evelyn? “But the site is up Belmont. By the time we head all the way downtown and back, who knows where Sarah will be?”
“True. Have HQ call her a cab.”
“Since when do we need a scientist to interview a witness?”
“It’s not her science I’m interested in,” Jacob said. “It’s her empath ability. Think how useful she was when we questioned Sledge.”
“I can hear every word you’re saying,” Crash called from the basement. “Kindly refrain from blurting out anything that’ll get me whisked away in a government humvee with a bag over my head.” Great. Nowhewas worrying about it, too?
Jacob and I closed the distance between us and met in the middle beside the dining room table. Softly, he said,“Something’s not adding up here. I just think we should use all the resources at our disposal.”
Part of me agreed. But part of me suspected he was biding his time until he could get his hands on the SPECs. Sure, I had told Evelyn not to humor him. But there’s only so much Jacob a person can take before caving in and giving him what he wants.
But at least I’d be there to run interference. “Fine.” I texted Evelyn a brief message with the address and she responded with a thumbs-up. “But only because everyone’s being so hinky about that damn apartment.”
Jacob and I headed right over to the address Records gave us, hoping to catch Sarah. A few more items rounded out the dossier I’d been given, though our team said the apartment on her driver’s license was currently rented by someone else and her social media was closed down months ago—not that shutting down those platforms permanently deletes anything. Not if you’ve got F-Pimp’s clearance.
We pulled up to the address, a preschool with a yard full of colorfully tacky plastic playground toys with a Pest Rid van parked in the loading zone out front. Sledge had claimed he dated high-maintenance women, but what did that mean, exactly? Sarah worked as an exterminator. That hardly sounded like diva behavior to me.
As we waited for Evelyn, we paged through the current info. “Shouldn’t there be more?” I asked Jacob.
