“Didn’t you tell me you’re a real good driver?” Grayson said lightly, as his gaze flicked down to Reece’s lips, the motion likely too subtle for most people to notice in a darkened truck cab but a giant billboard for an infatuated empath.
Reece couldn’t stop himself from leaning closer. The feeling of being caught in Grayson’s gravity, like the moon and tide, had only become stronger. “I need to know that you’re going to be safe. Promise me, Evan.”
Grayson exhaled, and Reece felt his breath ghost against his cheek. “I’ll try,” he said, soft and low. “Gonna check the boat. Wait in the truck where it’s warm; I’ll be right back.”
Reece sat in the passenger seat as he watched Grayson walk down the dock, lit by the truck’s headlights. In Reece’s hand, the metal of the truck keys was cool against his skin because he wasn’t wearing his gloves.
They hadn’t found the record of gloves they’d been looking for in Stone Solutions Canada.
But they’d found an attempt at aHow to Make a Dead Manmanual.
Reece frowned, watching Grayson in the boat as he poked around, lifting the seats and checking beneath them—body turned at a funny angle, meaning he was probably making sure whatever weapons he’d asked for were there, but not wanting Reece to see them.
Stone Solutions, the Empath Initiative—they all thought Grayson was the weapon.
And now Evan is in danger.
Reece ground his teeth. Why? Why did he keep thinking that? The answers were there, he could almost taste them, like he could see the shadows on the ground but not what cast them.
Stone Solutions had used Cora’s fiancé to corrupt her, and she’d come into her stronger empathy powers too late to save him. Same for Alex and his parents. But Reece had already been twisted by scientists, and his empathy could find out what he wanted to know.
If he was willing to use insight.
His fingers tightened on the keys.
Insight isn’t an option and never will be,Grayson had said,because using it on purpose is a one-way street. You ever cross that line, you’re not coming back, Reece. And then the Dead Man will have to step in.
There are no circumstances worth the consequences.
“Bullshit there aren’t,” Reece said under his breath.
Grayson had been willing to take a bullet to protect Reece from corruption and still had the scar. He’d throw himself between Reece and corruption like a shield and pay the price before he let Reece use insight to protect him.
And maybe he was right, that using insight was a one-way street.
But so was losing Evan.
Reece took a bracing breath. “The Dead Man can take me down if I turn,” he whispered into the truck cab. “If corruption gets ahold of me and I can’t come back from this, the Dead Man can stop me.”
Not a lie. Reece believed that.
He closed his eyes and deliberately reached for the power crackling at the back of his skull.
Why do I think Evan is in danger?
His eyes popped back open wide, the dark truck cab suddenly brighter as Reece’s pupils dilated.
Alex and Cora didn’t hurt Diesel, but why would a bouncer and ex-marine be in an empath prison—
Not just a prison. A research facility. Run by a man who left comments on a broken Dead Man blueprint, who could have sent Keith Waller the empath gloves from Vancouver—
Waller is ex-army and had been trying to recruit Diesel too, and has not just fear but also greed in his eyes as he says that Reece is who he needs, that unlike others, Waller knows how to follow orders—
Waller was going to kidnap Reece, just after an empath from Montreal also went missing. And the one thing Reece and Marie have in common is a sibling, just like Alex, who made the Dead Man—
Stensby thinks Reece should have been locked up for his crimes and wants to know why the Dead Man protected Reece from consequences, hints that someone told him Agent Grayson can’t be relied on because his priority is protecting empaths—
Someone doesn’t trust Evan.
