CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The elevator came to a bumpy halt as it stopped on the third floor of the hotel Ambrose was currently staying in. He stepped out, adjusting the grocery bags in his hands and heading down the long carpeted hallway toward his room, around a corner and down another short hall. He’d asked for something as far from the elevator as possible, though, and they’d certainly honored his request.

His mind was filled with Lennon, with the way she’d felt beneath him the night before, the memory of her quiet moans, the echoes of which still made heat flare through his veins. It wasn’t only attraction he felt for her—if he hadn’t known that before, he knew it now. He could fall for her so easily. He probably already had.

The way he’d felt when he’d realized she was being attacked by the man in the tent dispelled any notion that what he felt for her was the same concern he’d feel for anyone else being victimized in front of him. No, what he’d felt when he’d come upon the sight of Lennon fighting for her life was a primal response, the depth of which he hadn’t even known he possessed.

He switched the bags from one hand to the other. He’d reacted in rage at the man hurting Lennon, but he’d pulled back before going too far. In a way it was a test that he’d have never confronted if not for this particular circumstance. And he’d passed. He’d been angry—rageful, even—and terrified, too, that she was injured beyond repair. And yes, he’d expressed that using violence because it’d been the only choice. But he’d remained in control of his mind and his body, pulling back when he’d overcome the threat. And he hadn’t hesitated in responding, not even for a fraction of a second. A gust of cool relief was still blowing through him, along with the concern for Lennon and all the other feelings she stirred in him. He’d wanted to stay in that bed of hers, Lennon wrapped in his arms, more than anything he could remember wanting in a very long time. But it wasn’t right for so many reasons, and so he’d gone.

A shadow moved, and Ambrose halted, his pulse jumping as he reached for his gun. The shadow stepped from the turn in the hallway, becoming a man. Ambrose let out a slow hiss of breath, dropping his hand from the holster at his waist. “For the love of Christ, Finch. I might have shot you.”

The man grinned as he approached. “You can’t kill me, Ambrose. Don’t you know I’ve got nine lives?”

Ambrose grinned back and then pulled Finch into a hug as they both laughed. “Yeah, I know, but I don’t want to take any of your last remaining ones. You’ve got a fight on your hands, and we’re all counting on you to win it.”

At the mention of his current fight, Finch removed the beanie he was wearing and ran a hand over what had once been a close-cropped Afro and was now a shiny bald head. “This cancer might take my hair, brother, but it won’t take me.”

Ambrose smiled, and he felt the relief of Finch’s optimism, a necessary ingredient if he was going to win. “Come on in,” he said, using the key card to open the door. The room smelled stale, the lingering scent of a time when smoking was allowed still ingrained in the walls and the furniture. This place definitely wasn’t anything fancy, but it wasn’t the worst place he’d ever stayed, either, not by a long shot. Ambrose set the grocery bags down on the desk and closed the curtains. “I met your son the other day. He seems like a good guy.”

Finch pulled out the desk chair, flipped it around, and sat down backward. “He told me. I mean, he told me a cop and an FBI agent stopped by the center. I got this address from Doc. And Darius is a good guy. The kid has my fire and his mother’s heart. He’s a work of art, man, he really is. A human Da Vinci. I could stare at that dude all day.” He laughed. “Is that weird? Eh, wait until you have kids, you’ll get it.”

Ambrose smiled but shook his head. “No kids for me.”

“You might change your mind.”

He wouldn’t. Not on that. “Anyway, I wouldn’t expect anything less than a human work of art, with a dad like you.”

Finch ran his hand over his head again. “Thankfully the kid was so young when I got clean. If not ...”

“Hey, no reason for regrets, Finch. You cleaned up, and you raised a great kid. That alternate life is somewhere twisting in the mist, unattached to you.”

Finch smiled. “You always did have a way with words. All that reading. Twisting in the mist. Yeah, you’re right, I know. It’s easy to get lost in the what-ifs sometimes, you know? Sitting in that chair every week while they pump chemicals into my body gives me all kinds of time to consider an alternate life, the one I was heading toward.” He paused for a minute. “Mostly, I like thinking about it. It makes me proud that I changed paths. But other times, it gives me the damn chills, you know? That kid ... that kid would have been an entirely different person if I hadn’t gotten my shit together.”

“A lot of people would be entirely different people if not for you.”

“Nah. I only helped a few people on the final steps of their journey.”

“Bullshit.”

Finch laughed and then squinted one eye. “You still box?”

“Hell yes, I still box.” Ambrose ducked his head and did a few jabs into the air. “Do you wanna go a few rounds for old times’ sake? Think you can take me?”

Finch laughed. “Probably not. You look cut. Good for you.”

His expression became serious again, and Ambrose could tell he was still peering down that fog-filled road less traveled. And Ambrose understood, because he did that sometimes too. “Hey, Finch, those what-ifs, that other life that got cut short—it’s the point of all this.”

“I know, man. I know.” He met Ambrose’s eyes. “The project, it has to go on. It can’t stop. All the work ... all the lives. We’ve gotta protect it.”

“That’s what I’m doing. I’m taking a big risk. And it can’t last much longer unless I wanna end up behind bars. I wouldn’t do well in prison, Finch.”

“Yeah, I know. What have you discovered so far?”

Ambrose took the six-pack of water bottles he’d bought out of the grocery bag, tore one off, and held it up to Finch in offer. Finch shook his head, and Ambrose opened the cap and took a swig as he thought back to the information he’d acquired from the police files on the two previous crime scenes. “The pills are almost identical to Doc’s product. Same imprint. The concoction is the same in both ingredients and strength, with the singular addition of an LSD coating.”

“LSD?”

“Yeah. Out of a therapeutic setting, these ones would send anyone for a loop, and likely not a good one.”

“The shape is the same?”

Ambrose nodded. “Same shape, same color, and like I said, identical imprint.”

“That can’t be a coincidence.”

“No, I don’t believe so either.”

“What does the addition of the LSD mean?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a mistake. Maybe something to make it stronger, or more likely to achieve some sort of something.”

“Maybe a message?”

“What kind of message?”

“That this person knows about the project and is adding his own twist?”

Ambrose thought about that for a moment. “Could be.” A sign that this person wasn’t simply stealing or recreating product but adding to it somehow. “Another thing that strikes me as a message is the scattering of pills left at each scene. Even if you purchased a drug like that on the street, you’d most likely buy one for each person joining you.”

“Like ecstasy or acid,” Finch said.

“Yeah. This isn’t the type of drug to support a habit. It’s a party favor.”

“For a fucked-up party.”

“Well, yes. But still. The fact that there are several left behind tells me the person leaving them very much wants us to see the pills themselves, and not just the ingredients that show up in an autopsy.”

“Agreed.” Finch blew out a breath. “What else are you thinking?”

Ambrose took another long drink of water. “I think someone is doing a bad mock-up of the project.” It’d been his worry going into this, and the reason he’d taken the risk he had. The existence of the pills hadn’t yet been released to the media, but Doc knew someone in the SFPD who had leaked the information to him after he’d recognized the pills—or thought he had—in the evidence room. Ambrose had been contacted, and he’d come to San Francisco to infiltrate the SFPD. He just needed to get his hands on the case files and make some copies, nothing more, nothing less. But not more than twelve hours after he’d arrived, he’d been called to a murder scene. The opportunity to set foot inside one that held the similarities he’d been looking for was a stroke of luck. The fact that it’d made him even more certain that the similarities were purposeful worried the hell out of him. Feeling immediately drawn to the inspector working the case had come completely out of left field.

Life. It sure could be strange.

“A bad mock-up of the project,” Finch repeated. “There must be other similarities, then.”

“The victims, for one. Homeless. Strung out. The police have only ID’d one and are still gathering information on him, but I’d bet anything that as soon as they ID more, they’ll find that several have been diagnosed with PTSD.” He paused. Or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe it’d been missed and buried under a whole slew of other diagnoses that were the side effects of that one. “There’s evidence that some purposeful regression occurred,” he told Finch.

Finch’s forehead crunched into folds of wrinkles. “What evidence was there of that?”

“Children’s toys and also sex toys.”

Finch seemed to think about that. “Some people get off on that stuff. Or they think they do. But ... yeah, in the midst of the purple pills with a ‘BB’ imprint, it looks like something we need to figure out.” He pinched the sides of his bottom lip. “Who the fuck would be doing this, Ambrose?”

“The only thing I can figure is that it’s a member. Or a member who talked to someone who didn’t agree with the project.”

“That’s never happened in almost twenty years. You know how we all feel about the project. Who would risk it?”

“People are people, Finch. They mess up. They trust the wrong person.”

Finch still looked unconvinced, though, and still deeply troubled. “They’d have told us,” he said. “They’d have let us know they made a mistake so we’d be prepared.”

“Maybe they don’t even know.”

“We all know at this point. We all know there’s a situation.”

“I don’t know what to say. I can only tell you what I know so far. Doc is formulating an antidote to the drug. Apparently there’s a compound that blocks receptors involved in the uptake of hallucinogens. The science is all way over my head. Doc thinks he’s close but needs time.”

“What good will an antidote do if we don’t know who to give it to until after the fact?” After the fact , of course, meaning they were dead and wearing a gruesome scream.

“That’s the other problem.” Ambrose reached for the folder of photos that had been included in the case files. “I need you to take these to Doc and see if he recognizes them. Some of those photos are pretty hard to look at.”

Finch took the folder but didn’t open it. “I’ll take them to Doc tomorrow.” He blew out a breath. “Anything else?”

“The man they identified told someone he’d found a miracle treatment for his drug addiction.”

“That could mean anything. Man, some people refer to methadone that way.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Finch moved his tongue over his teeth for a moment. “Do the police have any theories?”

Ambrose took another sip of the water, capped it, and set it down. “Lennon ... Inspector Gray theorized about a role-play at the most recent crime scene.”

“A role-play is pretty on target with regression therapy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She sees a lot. She was leery of me at first, but she wasn’t sure why.”

“And now?”

“Now she trusts me more.” And that made him happy, but it also brought him more than a twinge of guilt. Because her instincts were right, and he’d slipped past her defenses anyway.

Finch narrowed his eyes, one side of his lips curling as he watched Ambrose. “Oh damn. You like her.” He laughed. “Well, shit. This complicates an already complicated matter, doesn’t it?”

“Finch . . .”

“You can’t BS a BSer, man. Didn’t I teach you that?” He grinned, and Ambrose paused but then laughed, tipping his chin as he conceded the point. He never had been able to lie to Finch, and more than that, he didn’t want to. Finch was his hero, his mentor, and the best example of an honorable man that he’d ever known. He’d wanted to be seen by him when he was young, and he wanted to be seen by him now.

He leaned back and blew out a breath. “It’s the damnedest thing. I get lost in her,” he admitted. “For someone like me ... you know. She makes me forget.” And last night had been like nothing he’d experienced before. Even after she’d fallen asleep, he’d lain there with her in his arms for hours, just living completely in the moment. He was so damn happy , he wanted to sing. Or dance or do something so completely out of character that only that would convey the way he felt changed by her touch. Her taste. Being connected to her so intimately. Just her .

And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t act on his happiness, his desire to see her, to touch her again, to get lost in her in ways he’d only scratched the surface of—or so he imagined.

Finch watched him for a moment as his thoughts flitted through his mind. “Does she make you forget?” he asked. “Or does she make it not matter?”

Leave it to Finch to strike right at the heart of it. It was a good question, and Ambrose took a moment to ponder it, a well of hope widening as he did so. He’d never thought it possible that his past wouldn’t matter—and he didn’t necessarily mean as far as others. He had people in his life who accepted him for who he was and what he’d done. Hell, he had a whole community of those people on speed dial if he needed them. What shocked the hell out of him was spending time—any amount of time—with a woman who made him believe, even for minutes at a time, that who he’d been just didn’t matter. And for those small gaps of time, he felt the melting of all his past selves into one solid person, and he was only the Ambrose of present, the one he’d fought so hard to become. But thinking about it now? It awed him and humbled him and made him wish for things he’d sworn off long ago.

And she’d achieved that, the inspector who tried so hard to be unaffected by the suffering of others and twisted herself in knots because she never could get there and believed she should. “Maybe both,” he finally answered.

“Does she know about your connection to the case?” Finch asked. “Does she know about Jett?”

“No. I haven’t told her a word about that.”

“Well tell me what she’s like,” Finch said. “This Lennon Gray.”

This Lennon Gray. Named for a peacemaker. Her name even sounded like something he could fall into.

He sighed, and he let himself talk about her even though he shouldn’t, because it just felt so damn good. “She’s smart,” he told Finch. “But she’s even more intuitive. She doesn’t like her job much, though. She doubts herself.” She’s beautiful. But he didn’t say that. It felt personal. If Finch ever met her—which was unlikely—he’d see that for himself. Ambrose liked her shape and her skin and her hair. He was drawn to her features and her expressions. But even so, all those things felt like the least of what she was. “She’s been hurt, but it didn’t make her jaded. And she comes from this great family.” He thought back to the evening he’d spent with the Grays, how it’d felt both surreal and like the truest thing he’d ever experienced. It knocked him for a loop. People lived that way, whole lives surrounded by love and laughter. He’d known it, of course, and he even considered himself to have that now. He had support, he had a large group of people who would give him the shirt off their back, and he’d do the same. But they were family by way of a circumstance that had brought them together later in life. None of them had had that as children or teens; none of them had been guided through the confusing time of early adulthood. Not even close. “Yeah,” he said. “They’re great and so is she.”

“Family,” Finch said. “You’ve got that, too, you know.”

“I know. Yeah, I do.” And he’d made it far beyond any self-pity he might have stepped toward in his younger years. He hadn’t had a support system when he was a kid, but he did now. And damn, but he appreciated it.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Inspector Gray’s out for at least a few more days,” he said. “I didn’t make an appearance at the station either,” he added. “But my informant there assures me everything’s cool. I’m playing it by ear.” What he was really doing was playing it by ear with another element thrown in that hadn’t been a factor when he’d arrived here. He’d hated saying goodbye to Lennon earlier and wondered if she’d picked up on the solemnity of his farewell, his fear that the goodbye was final. Was there a way he could arrange things so that he didn’t have to part ways permanently with Lennon Gray? Because it was the last thing he wanted to do.

Finch stood. “I better take off. I just couldn’t resist stopping by to see you, man. Keep me updated. And hey, we have a session in two weeks. Can you be there? At least at the end?”

“Yeah, I can be there.”

Ambrose walked Finch to the door, where he gave him one more hug. “Stay safe.” And with that, Finch was gone.