Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
“Oh Christ.” He ran a finger under his lip. “Let me text Doc and see if Franco’s name rings a bell with him.” He grabbed his phone and shot Doc a quick text and then looked back to Lennon, who was still reading the screen.
“Money was tight, and so Franco worked summer and Christmas breaks to afford tuition,” she said. “Correspondence with his mother grew sparse, texts only answered with one or two words. He thought she was angry at him for going so far away. Apparently, they’d argued about it. When he arrived home, he discovered her mutilated corpse.”
Sickness swelled inside Ambrose. God, the heinous things humans were capable of.
Lennon turned the screen around, and Ambrose looked at the picture there, of a dark-haired boy and a woman with orangey-red hair. A mother with her arm around her son as they both smiled happily at the camera, a window behind them with a logo that had sunrays fanned out around it. Rays of Hope. His eyes moved to Franco. A good-looking kid, his smile close lipped but sincere. Was he the man collecting drug addicts and those living or working on the streets and triggering their trauma in horrific ways, encouraging them to bludgeon and stab each other to death?
“Do you think . . . is he exacting revenge for his mother?” Lennon asked. “Getting even with those he considers irredeemable?” She paused. “God, she took them into her home, and they tortured and killed her. For a few thousand dollars. It’s sick.”
“If we’re right, so is what he’s doing.”
“I know. I know. It’s all sick.” Her shoulders rose and fell as she took in a breath. “I need to update Lieutenant Byrd about all of this.” He took the laptop from her and then watched as she called her boss, explaining what she’d found out about the podcast and Franco Girone. To his credit, the man didn’t waste time asking her how and when she’d done all the research and footwork that had gone into the discovery when she was supposed to be off duty. Instead, he took the information and said he’d put out an APB immediately.
Lennon hung up and looked at Ambrose. “If Franco knows chemistry, and is the man responsible for these crimes, he probably has some makeshift lab set up in his house. That’s the first place the police will go.” She looked to the side for a moment, obviously thinking. “So, if it’s him, we know how he targets his victims and has so much information about their triggers. But the thing that I don’t understand is how he might know about the pills. At the first scenes, the pills were the same recipe as Dr. Sweeton’s. Our killer’s obviously been experimenting since then, like we said. But initially, he started with those. How? How did he get one of those pills to use to produce more, if any extras are immediately destroyed?”
Ambrose ran his hand over his jaw, something occurring to him. “He doesn’t need a pill, though. Just the formula.”
“Right,” Lennon said, looking away and chewing at her lip. “In fact, that would make it easier than having to reverse engineer. So where might Dr. Sweeton keep that type of information?”
“He has all the files pertaining to Project Bluebird in his home office,” he said. “I’m positive that means the formula for the drug he uses too. His office is under lock and key, though. The man doesn’t even allow his housekeeper in there. I trust him, Lennon.”
“I know,” she said. “I do too. But what about his wife?”
“No. She doesn’t have a key either. We went over all this with him when the pills first showed up.”
“But even if he didn’t give a key to her, his wife could find a way into his office, right? If she really wanted to?”
“Why are you asking about Brittany Sweeton?”
“Just spitballing,” she said with a smile. He smiled back. The question troubled him, though, and that small tremble he’d come to know as instinct rattled inside. He’d witnessed a few terse phone calls between the doctor and his wife in the last week. He’d sensed some marital trouble but dismissed it as temporary and likely related to the current stress the doctor was under. But murder? Or participating in murder? That didn’t sound like the Brittany he’d known for many years. Sure, she was materialistic and somewhat shallow. And she’d made some suggestive comments to Ambrose over the years that were inappropriate, considering she was married. But he’d brushed her off, and she’d let it go. So yeah, personally he wasn’t her biggest fan. But what if? Lennon’s instincts were good—and they weren’t muddled by preconceived views because of familiarity.
What if the marital trouble he’d witnessed had been going on for longer than he knew? What if Brittany had done something, either knowingly or not, that had begun this whole cascade of murder and revenge?