“I’m coming!” she called back. She sprinted forward and nearly slipped when her boot skidded in liquid. Oh, she wasn’t going to look at the floor, no sir, didn’t need to see what she’d just slipped in, she could guess just fine.
At the far end of the hall was a cell with glass walls. The glass had splintered like a windshield struck with a giant rock, except there was red threaded through the cracks and Jesus, whatever empath was behind this house of horrors was not fucking around.
But behind the glass were two beds, and Jamey’s breath left her in a rush of bone-deep thankfulness to see Aisha, alive, and Diesel in the other bed.
“Jamey.” Aisha looked like she might cry from relief. Her ponytail was a mess where it was wedged against the pillow, her eyes glazed behind crooked glasses. She looked secured to the bed by zip ties, an IV in her arm.
“St. James, thank God.” Diesel also looked drugged to the gills, skin glistening with sweat, similarly restrained and hooked up to an IV. “Can you get me loose? I can help you.”
“I don’t think either of you is going to be in shape to do much of anything but stumble around,” Jamey said grimly, “but we’ll work with it.”
A scanner stood just off to the side, and Jamey tried the swipe card. A moment later, the door beeped and sluggishly slid open.
“Jamey,” Aisha said again.
“Hey, doctor,” Jamey said, pushing Aisha’s glasses into place as she leaned over the bed to get her loose. “You know what they gave you in these IVs?”
“Expensive shit,” Aisha said, sounding hazy. “Gonna take a while to burn off. But, Jamey, the empaths who lived here. They’re gone.”
Jamey cursed as she snapped the tie on Aisha’s closest wrist. “Escaped?”
“Dead.”Aisha shook her head despairingly. “Even Marie and her sister.”
“But this place is crawling with empath thralls.” Jamey yanked the tie off Aisha’s other wrist. “Who made them?”
“Cora,” Aisha said. “And Alex.”
“Alex?As in AlexGrayson?” Jamey raised her eyes heavenward. “Evan told me he was dead. Hell of a mistake to make.”
“Alex must have come to find the empaths but only Cora was left.” Aisha met her eyes. “They were here. Alex and Cora. They spared us.”
They’d what? Jamey had questions, but they’d have to wait; Aisha sounded like she was still half-under. Aisha was already reaching for her own IV to pull it out, and Jamey quickly stepped over to Diesel’s bed and his bound ankle.
“Did you just—rip that zip tie off? With your bare hands?” Diesel said, his voice thick but shocked. “Goddamn, St. James,” he added, with admiration. “What do you do on arm day?”
Jamey snorted. “I’ll tell you, assuming we get out of here. Let’s find a place I can set off my bat signal and just pray the empaths leave us alone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sugar and spice and everything vice: we keep telling you it’s what empaths are made of.
Maybe it’s time for more folks to learn it for themselves.
—A.G., UNTITLED BLOG
The snow wasfalling in bigger flakes that melted as soon as they hit the asphalt. At a small gas station off the highway, Grayson sat in the driver’s seat, waiting for the truck to fill at one of the two pumps. Vivian Marist had been the one to send him a video clip from the Leviathan Hotel. He’d watched it three times, but there was no mistaking it.
It was Alex, with his arm around Gretel Macy, winking at the camera.
This was probably another moment where someone with emotions might be having a lot of them.
Grayson went back to his messages, to the confirmation that a boat would be waiting for him about twenty minutes north. Still no response from Detective St. James or Dr. Easterby about meeting Reece at the safe house, but he’d give them a few more minutes.
It was for the best. Director Traynor and Vivian Marist might not have figured out yet what Alex had wanted with Officer Stensby or where he’d gone from Stone Solutions, but if Grayson’s theory about corrupted empaths seeking each other out was right, then Grayson knew what Alex had wanted and where he’d gone.
Polaris.
Grayson would need to head straight there, and Reece absolutely could not come.
