CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Ambrose raised his hand to knock on Lennon’s apartment door, but before he could, it pulled open and she was standing there. He lowered his hand, and she stepped back and waved him inside. “You’re late.”

“By seven minutes.”

“You’re lucky I gave you leeway,” she grumbled.

She paused in the entryway, not seeming to know where to take him. There weren’t many choices in this small apartment. But he understood her hesitancy. The last time he’d been here, they’d made memories in each room. And now she wanted to remain in a neutral location, but there wasn’t one that existed here, unless they stood next to the bathroom sink.

After a moment, she turned, obviously deciding the living room was the best choice. But when he followed her the short distance there, she remained standing instead of sitting down on the couch, crossing her arms as she turned to face him.

“It’s a form of therapy you’re using to treat people with trauma,” she said.

He nodded. God, he was tired. It’d been a long day, and then he’d been assisting with Xiomara’s treatment for hours, which took an incredible amount of focus. How could it not, when you were basically tiptoeing through someone else’s memories? He hadn’t played a pivotal role, but he had been part of the revisiting of her story. “Yes,” he said. “Dr. Sweeton began working on Project Bluebird twenty-two years ago.”

“Why is it called Project Bluebird?”

“Because his daughter, who was his first patient, chose a bluebird as her guide.”

“Guide?”

He blew out a breath, raking his fingers through his hair. “You have to keep an open mind when I tell you about this, Lennon. It’s difficult to understand before you’ve been through it. Some of it will sound unbelievable—weird, even, for lack of a better word.”

“Go on.”

He gestured to the couch. “Please. Can I sit down? I’ve been on my feet for hours.”

She glanced at the couch and then back at him, agreeing with a barely discernible nod. He walked to the couch and sat down, gathering his thoughts. “Nancy was Dr. Sweeton’s daughter. She’d been the victim of a crime when she was young. She started acting out, drinking, doing drugs. Eventually she ended up on the streets, experiencing more trauma. Trauma compounding trauma.”

Lennon approached the couch and sat down where she had when they’d been here before, but sliding all the way to the very end and then turning toward him. He chose not to face her just yet. It made beginning this story easier. “Nancy spent time in facility after facility. Those places ... if you’re not traumatized before you enter, you probably will be by the time you leave. The doctors and nurses mostly mean well, but they have so few tools other than endless medication. People who are extremely unwell are locked up together and left to interact with each other in ways no therapist would suggest.”

“Yes, I went to the doctor’s talk.”

He did look at her then. “I heard. But you know from experience too. You know because you’ve met those people. You’ve peered into their eyes.”

She looked away first, but she didn’t deny what he’d said. “Nancy attempted suicide multiple times,” he went on. “She went to rehabilitation centers. She got clean, then she relapsed. Dr. Sweeton had been having success with veterans suffering from PTSD. He was using some hallucinogens to bring them back to the scene of their trauma in a safe way. But Nancy’s trauma had happened when she was very young, before her mind was mature enough to fully parse the event. And so those treatments simply didn’t work on her. He needed to go deeper. And so, over the years, he developed the mix of substances and the protocol for what is now known as Project Bluebird.”

“What happened to Nancy?”

He paused. He didn’t want to start off this way, but it was the beginning of the story, so she had to know. “Nancy died.”

“How?”

“In a nutshell, her mind couldn’t take the influx of trauma, and she had a heart attack.” He’d seen the video of events, because they all had to understand what had happened to Nancy and how to ensure it would never happen again. Her eyes had bulged, and she’d gotten that forever scream on her face as the machines went wild and her body started seizing, and then a massive heart attack killed her where she sat. Long-term drug use had weakened her heart, but it had certainly been the regression back to the moment of trauma that ended her life. “Because of what happened to Nancy, Dr. Sweeton spent a year perfecting the treatment. And then, when it was applied again, it was slowed way, way down. Instead of a single session, it’s done over seven days. The patient is kept in a coma in between the delivery of hallucinogens, and in some cases are put in sensory deprivation tanks. It depends on the results of the tests that are run and whether attachment bonds are present in the individual, and a whole battery of other factors.”

Lennon let out a small laugh barren of humor and massaged her temples. “This is too crazy to be real. My God.” She stood, crossed her arms over her breasts, and paced in front of the coffee table. “You can’t mess with people’s minds like that! It’s deeply unethical. And because of it, someone died. His own daughter!”

Ambrose stood, too, facing her. “These people are already dead. You have to see that. Or if they’re not dead, they’re dying. A slow, miserable death. Lennon, there are laws about the right to try experimental medication once all your other options have failed. These people are hopelessly sick, too, their brains twisted in ways that can’t be untwisted through traditional psychological protocol. They’re suffering more immensely than I can communicate, and I’d make the argument that they’re suffering far worse than someone with an inoperable tumor or other physical disease. You’ve grieved, Lennon. You’ve felt that crushing horror that goes on and on and on.”

“Don’t. You don’t get to use what I shared with you when I thought you could be trusted.”

He exhaled a sharp breath. Okay, he deserved that. But it still hurt. “Imagine that pain, but more extreme. Imagine knowing that that pain will never end. What would you do? You’d do anything. You’d do anything at all. Don’t others deserve the option?”

She pressed her lips together, turning her face from him. “It’s ... no. I don’t know. It’s too risky .”

“These people, Lennon, they’re dying on the streets right in front of us. They’re scratching and screaming for help, and we walk right by. They’re begging for mercy, even though they have no earthly idea what mercy is.”

She met his eyes. “Not all of them are looking for mercy. Some of them kill and rape and hunt.”

“Yes, and in those cases, it’s too late. I respect what you do. You stop those people. You take them out of society. But it’s not too late for everyone. Dr. Sweeton helps the ones he can. We keep them safe during their treatment. We treat them with respect.”

“I saw it, Ambrose. I walked in.”

“I know. And it shocked you. But you weren’t looking at it with the right vision.”

She gave her head a shake, as though denying his words. And he understood. He did. Because if he’d walked in on the treatment at any phase of it without knowing what was going on, it would seem to him like a drugged-up, unclothed person was being taken advantage of. It looked strange and hard to make sense of. But that was because there was literally nothing like it. The doctor had come up with the protocol, and the plan, and it was something no one else had ever done. “When you do, if you do, you’ll see that it’s the most loving, beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It’s how it looks to give someone back their own mind.”

“God, you sound like a cult,” Lennon said. “This isn’t normal.”

“Neither is a four-year-old girl being pimped out by her mother. Her small body being ripped apart while the person who is supposed to protect her watches on. You can’t know what that type of ongoing trauma, beginning at that young of an age, does to a person’s mind and body, the way it damages them, the way it controls them.”

She seemed to deflate a little at that, though her posture said she still didn’t trust him. “Not everyone who’s experienced trauma becomes twisted,” she asserted.

“Humans are different, of course. But all people who’ve suffered that way struggle. Maybe they don’t all become drug addicts or prostitutes, but they all carry that trauma with them in some way or another. And for those people, maybe there are other ways. Maybe they can talk it through and breathe it out. But for many, they simply can’t. If they could, our streets wouldn’t look the way they do.”

She chewed at her lip for a moment and then let out a small vacant laugh. “Like insane asylums?”

He felt a breath of relief. She was resisting, but she was also agreeing. He didn’t expect her to be on board with the project the moment she learned of it. He expected her to want answers and demand that there was accountability. The woman he’d come to know, even in such a short time, would want nothing less than that. And still, it might not be enough. “Unmonitored insane asylums, yes. No one benefits from that. They’re human. They’re the walking wounded, and mostly, it’s through no fault of their own.”

She moved back to the couch and sank down on it, and he followed, sitting down next to her but not too close.

When she met his eyes, he was stunned by the fierceness in her expression. God, he respected her so much. Her mind and her compassion. He wanted nothing more than for her to understand this. Not only because he believed in it to his core, but because it was so intensely personal. And now, so was she. “You can’t take on that kind of responsibility,” she said. “It’s not right, Ambrose. These people can’t legitimately consent.”

There was some truth in what she said. Many of the people who had gone through the treatment were so deeply wounded, they might have agreed to anything. And so the people who ran the project, in some ways, were their advocates. But they hadn’t been chosen by the patients, merely assigned by Dr. Sweeton, and Ambrose understood the ethical concerns. He just believed the good outweighed the bad. No, it was more than that. He knew what it was like to be freed from the prison of self-harm and self-hatred. To finally live a life that had meaning. He knew that firsthand. “There isn’t one who isn’t deeply grateful. I’ll introduce you to all of them.”

“Yes, there is. There is one.” It only took him a second to realize she was speaking of Nancy.

He ran his tongue over his teeth as he thought about that. “I don’t think she’d say that. It’s her legacy, Lennon, and it’s a hell of a lot better than the one she would have had.”

“You don’t get to speak for her.”

“No, you’re right. I don’t. But I do get to speak for myself.”

She blew out a breath, her empathetic eyes searching his face. He wondered if she realized how much care was emanating from her expression, and he wondered if she’d attempt to hide it if she knew. “You went through it.”

“Yes. You didn’t know me then, but if you did ... I’d be the poster child for someone who needed this treatment.” He let out a laugh that sounded more like a cough. “I’m thankful every day that Dr. Sweeton gave me what he did. Those with less-ingrained trauma go through a two-day treatment protocol, but I required the maximum seven days. And I came out of it ... free. That’s the best way I can describe it. I took what he gave me, I built on it, and I gained control of my life. I made something of myself.”

She studied her hands, fisted in her lap, for a moment before looking up. “You lived on the street?”

“Sometimes. I crashed wherever I could. I lived day to day, hour to hour. I had no plan because I couldn’t make plans. I couldn’t ...” He raised his hand and made a grabbing motion in the air. “I couldn’t grasp anything. I couldn’t hold on to it for longer than a few hours. Then cravings would set in, ones that would be stronger than any ideas I’d come up with to start down a better path.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s difficult to describe if you haven’t lived it, and especially if you haven’t experienced both a disorganized mind and one that’s clear. And I don’t mean clear of substances, I mean clear of the knots formed from surviving trauma. Dr. Sweeton would put it in more clinical terms if you spoke with him, but that’s the best way I can describe it.”

She chewed at her lip again, obviously troubled. But he also saw the glint of curiosity, or maybe understanding, in her expression and also in her silence, and it caused a seed of hope to begin to grow. “He’s eloquent and passionate when he speaks about it,” she murmured.

He moved just a little closer, and she met his eyes, but she didn’t move away. “Lennon, please. Don’t put this project in jeopardy. I’m begging you. It’s making the world a better place. It’s saving lives. It’s freeing people. And that freedom—that goodness—doubles and triples and quadruples and on and on, because the people Dr. Sweeton treats go on to help others in so many ways, and to raise children who are emotionally healthy instead of broken, like them.”

She sighed. She seemed somewhat depleted all of a sudden, and he didn’t know if that was good for his cause or not. “You’re not God, Ambrose. Dr. Sweeton isn’t God.”

“No one’s trying to be God. Is a doctor who performs open-heart surgery trying to be God? He or she is simply trying to save a life and repair a broken body.”

She shook her head but brought her hand up and massaged her forehead for a moment, as if the conversation was hurting her brain. “That’s different and you know it.”

“What I know is that ethics laws haven’t caught up to the state of mental illness and PTSD in this world.”

“That’s what the doctors who performed ice pick lobotomies told themselves too.”

“The results of that spoke for itself. We’re not monsters, Lennon. There are over five hundred people who would happily stand in testimony of what Dr. Sweeton gave to them. Their lives. And he risked his own to do so.”

“Maybe he’s just planting pleasant memories in your minds. How do you even know what he did to you was real?”

Ambrose let out a soft breath. “Because I know. It’s been seventeen years, and I’ve watched the process hundreds of times now. The goal is not to distort or erase memories. He uses what he can gather from a patient’s past to help them remember and process their own stories. Then he lets them guide the journey. What I revisited was far from pleasant. Under any other circumstances, reliving it, mentally or otherwise, would have broken me. But I’ll tell you this: even if he had ‘implanted’ pleasant memories into my head, I’d be grateful. My mind was a war zone. And Dr. Sweeton walked through the battlefield and dragged me out.”

She met his eyes then, and again, he saw the empathy there. But he also saw her struggle. And in her expression, he knew that she wouldn’t expose them—at least not yet. But she also wasn’t ready to allow it to continue. “Dr. Sweeton isn’t young. He won’t live forever. What happens when he dies?”

“We have plans for that eventuality. He’s training others who are now in the medical field. They’ll step into his place one day.” Dr. Clayton Contiss, who’d gone through the treatment himself only a year before Ambrose, was already in charge of some of the sessions, with Doc only there as backup.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe you can go international too. An underground therapy, changing the world one drug addict at a time.” When he said nothing, she stared at him for a moment, then murmured, “Oh my God.” She set her mouth, but then sighed and used two fingers to squeeze the bridge of her nose. “Tell me why you infiltrated the department. Who are you really, Ambrose?” she asked after a moment.

He lowered his shoulders. “I work as a bounty hunter. I track down fugitives, but I also locate missing people and bring them home or bring them to justice. I work with the government sometimes, but I prefer to work for myself.”

“Let me guess. You’ve done enough shady business for the feds that you banked on them not pursuing legal action against you for infiltrating our department.”

She looked away. She obviously didn’t need him to confirm her assessment. But he did anyway. “In a nutshell, yes. But any so-called shady business I did was for what I considered a noble purpose.”

“You seem to like to make your own rules.”

“Sometimes I deem it necessary, and justified, yes.”

“What if everyone deemed rule breaking necessary and justified? What if everyone thought their purpose was noble ?”

“Then society would break down.”

“Exactly.” She massaged her temples again. “How did you hear about the crime I was investigating?”

“Like I said, there are over five hundred people who’ve successfully gone through Project Bluebird, dating back over twenty years.”

Her mouth formed a small O. “You have a mole in the department.”

“I wouldn’t call the person a mole. They didn’t join the department for any nefarious reason, nor did it have to do with the project. They joined because they wanted to work in law enforcement. But when this case became known to them, they saw the links to the project and called Dr. Sweeton, who then contacted me. I learned what I could but needed to get closer. Specifically, I wanted to see those pills.”

“And?”

“And originally they were the same, with the addition of the LSD coating. Since then, they’ve been reformulated into an altered combination of the original, for what reason, I don’t know.”

“My God,” Lennon said. “So someone got hold of this drug that Dr. Sweeton illegally manufactures—”

“There are very strict controls in place. He doesn’t manufacture more than needed, and none have ever disappeared or been unaccounted for. Dr. Sweeton has gone through every part of the process and can’t come up with how even one pill could have been taken. Plus he trusts the people who work for him.”

“Then how? How did our killer come up with the recipe for these drugs, and what’s the point? Why is he using it to kill people?”

“That’s what we’re all trying to figure out.”

“If I had this information sooner, the investigation would be further along.”

He understood that, and he’d gone back and forth and back and forth on that. “You can understand why I couldn’t tell you.”

“You wasted time. More people might have died because you waited.”

“I couldn’t jeopardize the project.”

Lennon huffed out a frustrated breath. “This is so fucked up,” she murmured. She shook her head. “I need to think. And I can’t think right now because I’m too overwhelmed.” She was quiet for several moments as he waited. “I won’t do anything without giving you advanced warning.”

“Thank you.” It was all he could ask for, and he trusted her word. “Lennon ... I want to tell you ... I’m sorry for lying to you, but I’m not sorry for what happened between us. It had nothing to do with any of this. It was completely separate. For me—”

“How can it be completely separate? It’s literally sitting smack-dab in the middle of us.”

He felt frustrated and regretful about that, and he was having a hard time explaining himself. Because though she was right, she was also wrong. But before he could say another word, she stood. “Please go.”

He stood too. “Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for considering ... everything. You don’t have to turn us in, Lennon. You can help.” He left her where she stood, arms crossed, looking like she held the weight of the world on her slender shoulders.