CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Ambrose had never been at the building he and Lennon pulled up to the next afternoon. He’d barely remembered doing the podcast. It’d been in another location then ... and that’d been an entirely different lifetime. Something he’d merely done for cash, in an endless array of other things he’d done for cash.

They got out of the car and knocked on the door, waiting for a moment as footsteps inside drew closer. Then the door was pulled open by a tall dark-skinned man wearing a ball cap. Ambrose was transported back in time, to a velvet couch, when he’d been called Jett and struggled to sit still for the thirty-minute interview. He swore he could taste the nicotine coating his mouth, even though he hadn’t had a cigarette in seventeen years.

“Inspector Gray,” Jamal said. “I didn’t expect to see you back. Did you find something in one of the interviews?”

“Jamal Whitaker,” Ambrose murmured before Lennon could answer. He felt half in a dream, one foot in the life he’d built and one foot in the one that had crumbled.

The man cocked his head and looked at him curiously. “Hi. Do I know you?”

“You did. Once. I did an interview for you a long time ago. I had bleached hair, and I called myself Jett then.”

Jamal’s forehead bunched, and he rubbed at his lip as he obviously attempted to place Ambrose. “I’m sorry. I do so many interviews, sometimes it’s hard to remember faces. And you don’t look anything like the people who typically sit on my couch.” Jamal opened the door wider. “Come on in.”

They followed him to the open space where the studio was, and though the building was different, the furniture Jamal used on his show was the same, or at least very similar. Either he’d kept them in miraculously good condition or replaced them with similar items as they aged over the years. “Recognize that?” Jamal asked.

Ambrose walked over to the sofa, then ran his hand along the plush arm. “Yeah. I do. I remember this.”

Jamal watched him, crossing his arms. “I don’t get a lot of success stories walking back through my door. You’ve obviously come a long way from when you were a person I’d be interested in interviewing.”

Ambrose smiled, tipping his chin to acknowledge the compliment he knew it was. “Thanks. I’m surprised you’re still doing this.”

“Yeah. I’ve thought about hanging it up a time or two, but ... I don’t know. As soon as I start to consider it, I get an email about how watching someone tell their story changed their life for the better, or how a person saw their own story in someone else’s. So as long as I keep feeling like it’s doing some good, I’ll stick around.”

Ambrose smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.” He joined Lennon where she stood.

“Anyway, you’re obviously here for a reason. What did you find?”

“I was able to find one of the women I was attempting to ID in your material,” Lennon said. She glanced at Ambrose. “But Ambrose told me that his interview wasn’t aired because he called and asked that you not show it. I’m wondering if there are others who might have made the same request.”

“Yeah, sure, there have been a handful over the years. They tell me at the end of their interview that they don’t want it aired, or they call and say they changed their mind later. I pull it, no questions asked.”

“Does anyone besides you have access to the videos?”

“No. I keep them in a password-protected Dropbox and have for many years. No one else has access. That’s why I didn’t even mention them.”

“Okay. I need to see them.”

Jamal eyed her. “Do you have a warrant?”

“No,” she said. “But I can get one. I’d rather not waste time when there’s a killer on the loose who may be targeting those people.”

He considered her again, for long minutes, and Ambrose could feel her holding herself still as she waited next to him. “I’ll copy them to a thumb drive, but I’d like it back,” Jamal finally said.

Lennon let out a gust of breath. “You’ll get it, I promise.”

They went back to Lennon’s house to watch the videos, sitting on her couch with the laptop on the coffee table in front of them. The first victim they recognized was the older woman from the very first crime scene. She’d grown up in foster care and been terrorized by a woman in one of the group homes who had been especially vicious after a few strawberry wine coolers. She’d come to associate that scent with torture. And fear. And shame. She’d been in and out of jail or homeless for most of her life.

They were all there. The man who’d been regularly whipped by his father with a belt, the slow loosening of that piece of leather making his guts turn to water as he anticipated the pain to his small body. The humiliation. All the items found at the scene made sense. It was gruesome, knowing they’d been right. They’d been used as tools to dredge up terror, and they’d worked.

It was horrendous and unthinkable. It was deeply evil.

They’d seen enough, at least for now. Lennon’s cheeks were streaked with tears, and Ambrose felt the weight of sorrow pressing on his chest, not only for the way these people had died, but also for the way they had lived.

“This is where the killer got his information,” she said. “The victims’ triggers. This person knew just how to torture them. So it’s either Jamal himself, or someone who accessed his Dropbox without his permission.”

Ambrose frowned. Jamal had been completely forthcoming, though. And if he had wanted to hide—or destroy—the videos they’d just watched, he easily could have. “What about an outside hacker?” he asked.

“Possibly,” she murmured. “Or a different angle entirely that we’re not thinking of.”

Ambrose nodded, and Lennon let out a frustrated sigh. She went to turn off her computer but accidentally brushed her finger over the play button, and the next video began. Her eyes widened, and his heart gave a sharp knock. It was him. Ambrose. Jett. Emaciated, jittery, hunched, his hair bleached. “Oh,” she said, the word a breath and a sob. The sight of who he’d been brought him such deep distress and, yes, shame. He’d found peace over the years, and an abundance of gratitude that he’d been healed. He could think about who he’d been and all that he’d experienced without feeling pain. But he’d never expected to sit next to the woman he knew he could fall in love with—if he hadn’t fallen already—as she was confronted with the very real vision of his former self.

But she placed her hand gently on top of his and met his eyes. “I want to know you,” she said.

“That’s not me anymore.”

“I know that. But it’s who you were, and I want to understand.”

And so, with an abiding trust, he drew his hand away and sat back, as she leaned forward to have a better view of who he’d once been but was no longer.