“Well, you might be interested to know that Dr. Lucas is working for your foundation on a revoked license. And I can pretty much guarantee you that the people who run the foundation knew about this. So we can go through the proper channels and fill out forms and paperwork to get the information we need, or you can just give us the addresses. And if you go with the first option, Life Fulfilled is going to have some very bad press in the next week or so when Dr. Lucas’s little secrets are revealed.”
“I can’t make that sort of decision. I’d have to call Mr.—”
“We don’t have time for that right now,” Jack pressed. “We need to speak with Dr. Lucas as soon as possible.”
The receptionist was clearly flustered now, her eyes brimming with tears. She nodded, looking to the schedule and then to the laptop, then the phone, and then back to Rachel and Jack. “You don’t have to say I gave it to you if it comes up later, do you?”
“No,” Rachel said, though there was a chance that was a lie.
“He’s currently seeing Vicki Freemont. The address is 1309 Jefferson Street.”
“Thanks,” Jack said, already turning to head for the door. Rachel followed and as she pushed her way through the door, she looked back to the receptionist one more time. She looked terrified and was quickly wiping a tear from her face. Rachel felt a brief rush of regret for how they’d bullied her but she didn’t allow herself to dwell on it. Instead, she heaped it onto the rapidly growing pile of regrets and borderline-bad decisions she’d made in the past two days and decided to focus on the case instead. If she was taking this many risks to be a part of it, she supposed she needed to keep her mind focused on it at all costs.
***
The Freemont Street address was just fifteen minutes away from the Life Fulfilled offices. It was just off of one of the monument-lined cobblestone streets that etched their way through parts of Richmond’s Fan District. Elms and sycamores lined the sidewalks, and the houses were almost all brick. When they parked on the opposite side of the street, Rachel spotted a small sedan with a Life Fulfilled decal on the driver’s side door.
They walked up the little flagstone path to the front porch, which had several strands of ivy running up the brick posts. When Jack stepped forward to knock on the door, he made a very intentional effort to move in front of Rachel before she could do it. She understood it but couldn’t deny that it stung a bit. Jack knocked and he got a response right away—though it wasn’t quite the response either of them had been expecting.
It was a woman, presumably Vicki Freemont, screaming out in what sounded like a mix of pain and surprise. Rachel’s instinct was to go inside even without anyone answering the door to make sure everything was okay. Jack, on the other hand, hammered on the door once more, calling out this time.
“Mrs. Freemont! Are you okay?”
There was no answer, but Rachel could hear the sound of something skidding across a floor, the sound of wood on wood, one of the objects falling over.
“Jack…” Rachel pleaded.
“Yeah, yeah.”
He tried the doorknob and found it open. They rushed inside, Jack in the front and drawing his Glock as they went. Again, Rachel felt sorely out of place. No gun, no badge; she really was just a spectator at this point.
The front door opened up onto a foyer that instantly merged into a hallway. A den area lay to the right and a few other rooms interrupted the wall on the left. But it was at the end of the hall, in what looked to be a living room as they rushed to it, that the noise was coming from. Again, they heard a woman shout and this time, a man’s murmuring voice behind it.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Freemont,” said a soothing male voice. “That’s the worst of it. No more.”
Rachel and Jack came to the living room and saw a woman of about fifty-five or sixty stretched out on a couch. An older man, easily seventy or so, sat on a small footstool beside the couch, checking the woman’s blood pressure with the typical Velcro wrap and pump.
The older man saw them first, his eyes growing large when he saw Jack’s gun. The woman saw his look of alarm and sat up.
“FBI agents,” Jack said, slowly putting the Glock away. “We knocked in the door and no one answered.”
The woman seemed very irritated, her thin lips creating a deep, intense frown. It made her look about twenty years older. “So you decided to barge on in with a gun drawn?”
“Ma’am,” Rachel said, “we heard you screaming from the front porch.”
“I’d say so. I’ve got a kidney that’s barely functioning, and Dr. Lucas is kind of a bastard when it comes to taking blood pressure.”
Lucas finally sized them up, turning to give them his full attention. He looked quite angry but Rachel saw clear signs of fear there as well—the shifting eyes, the overly rigid posture as he tried to make himself look stable and confident. “And why are you here, anyway? I’m on an in-home call to help care for Mrs. Freemont.”
“Glad you asked, Dr. Lucas,” Jack said. “We’re actually here to speak with you.”
“Is that right?” He spoke softly and glanced in Mrs. Freemont’s direction. It was clear that he had a good idea why they might be here and he didn’t want his patient to know.
“Yes, that’s right,” Rachel said. “And if you make things easy for us in these next few minutes, things may be easier than you’d imagine.”
Mrs. Freemont sat up and made a strange, irritated huffing noise. “What the hell is this all about?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Jack said. “We just need to ask Dr. Lucas some questions.”