Fucking hell. The person who knew who they were from the very beginning. The person who rejected who he was, who covered up his gray hair and covered up his need to escape, until those times when the latter was too much to bear.
“We need to get back to the library,” Lincoln said.
“Why?” Jo asked.
Because he needed to look again for a certain dark-haired man in the photos with Jeff Baxter. With Larry. The man who found out what Baxter was doing in those meth houses, went in to stop him, and when an altercation ensued, called his best friend for help.
A slight shift in their frame of reference and it all made sense. “Larry’s not Dr. Fear. It’s his best friend, Chancellor McCullough, and I have the evidence to prove it.”
Lincoln barreled around the corner into the library elevator lobby and just missed colliding with Jeremiah.
“Whoa, where’s the fire?” Jeremiah said, stumbling backward. “Jo? Mark? What are y’all doing here?”
Lincoln flung out a hand, grabbed Jeremiah by a suspender, and punched the elevator call button. The elevator doors opened, and Lincoln dragged him inside. “They’re on the case with us.”
“Kline knows?” O’Shea asked as he ushered Jo into the cab.
“Some of it,” Lincoln said, hitting the down button. “I needed help going through the archives. Jeremiah knows them better than anyone.”
Jeremiah’s eyes grew wider. “Thank you, I think. But what’s going on?”
“You have Crohn’s.”
His jaw dropped—surprise—slammed shut—anger—then dropped again—outrage. “That’s personal!” he shrieked.
“We took a sample of your hair.”
“You did what?” he shrieked louder. “I didn’t give permission?—”
Lincoln grasped his shoulders, forcing down his flailing arms. “I’m sorry, Jeremiah, but Carter is missing. Dr. Fear has him.”
All the fight, all the color, drained from the younger man’s face. “And me having Crohn’s has something to do with it?”
“Dr. Fear also has Crohn’s.”
Paler still, but as the elevator doors slid open, steel infused his spine and he marched out of the cab toward the archives. “What do you need to know? What do I need to find?”
Lincoln hustled to catch up. “Do you get treatment at the county hospital?”
He nodded.
“Is there a support group? Like a weekly or monthly meeting? I had a friend in grad school?—”
He continued to nod. “Yeah, yeah we do, meets once a month.”
“Is Chancellor McCullough in that group?”
Jeremiah stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes impossibly wider. “He leads it.”
“Fuck.” Lincoln ran ahead to their workroom and promptly cursed himself for anger-straightening everything after the blowup with Carter. “Where did I put the Baxter photos?”
Jeremiah zoomed past him to the other table. “Over here.”
“Not those. That’s the stack with the gray-haired men. We’re looking for the ones we tossed out of that stack.”
“I put them on the cart to refile. Just a second.” He raced out into the general archives room and down an aisle.
Lincoln moved to run after him, but O’Shea’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Explain, Agent Monroe.”
