Lucy almost spoiled the plot right after they reached the main level.

For a moment, Jocelyn was certain Tanner had abandoned them, but then he came around the corner, wheelchair gleaming like a chariot, and Jocelyn felt a spike of hope. Unfortunately, that hope was immediately dashed as they crossed in front of Crawford’s office. Lucy recognized the name or the door, seizing in their grasp, her mouth opening wide in horror.

Jocelyn anticipated the scream just in time, clapping her hand over Lucy’s mouth and wrestling her down into the wheelchair.

“No, no, no,” she whispered. “Not him. We’re not going to see him. Tanner, go!”

“Go where?”

“The lobby, the doors! Take her outside!”

“Outside!?” Madge hiss-whispered, trotting after Jocelyn and Tanner. The wheelchair squeaked as they turned it around and raced down the corridor, through the lobby, past the bewildered nurses at the station, and toward the front doors. “You’re going to get us fired, Joss!”

“Relax, it’s just for a minute, just so she can get some air and see the sky,” Jocelyn replied, sounding much more calm and confident than she felt.

For her part, Lucy was behaving, sitting quietly, her hands clutching the handles of the wheelchair for dear life but her mouth clamped shut. Good. They might actually make it out the doors without the whole of Brookline being alerted.

Jocelyn dodged around the wheelchair, breaking into a run and reaching the doors before Tanner could crash into them. Flinging the doors wide, she couldn’t help but smile, absorbing the look of wonder and excitement that broke across Lucy’s face as the sunshine fell in her lap.

“Is there a point to this?” Madge asked, watching as Tanner wheeled the girl down the walkway and toward a shaded patch just to the right of the hospital. They paused near a bed of tulips, the flowers all bowed from so many nights of rain, but a few petals still clinging on. “Other than getting us all sacked, of course . . .”

“Isn’t the ‘program’ all about unorthodox treatments?” Jocelyn said with a shrug. “Maybe she just needed some fresh air. It couldn’t hurt.”

“Yes, it could,” Madge replied. “What if she runs off and we can’t catch her?”

“There’s a fence.”

“What if it’s . . . I don’t know, overstimulating or something!? What if she has a deathly allergy to tulips? Or grass? What if she catches pneumonia and dies?”

“Man, are you always this square?” Tanner teased. He smiled at them, apparently enjoying the little jailbreak, his blue eyes gleaming behind his specs. “We take patients outside all the time for therapeutic walks. It’s not that unusual, Madge.”

“You do not get to call me square and then pretend we’re on a first-name basis!” she squawked, pacing. Her red, red lips turned down in a pout, but then she stopped, observing Lucy from the side as the girl simply sat in the wheelchair, kicking her gangly legs out, the bottoms of her feet brushing the grass. “Fine, I can admit she looks . . . better.”

“Not so square then,” Tanner said with a smirk.

“How do you feel, Lucy?” Jocelyn asked. She ignored the ga-ga looks the other two started giving each other. She couldn’t imagine how anyone found a hospital setting romantic. And she didn’t expect an answer from Lucy, but she asked anyway, going to crouch in front of the wheelchair and look up at the girl.

Lucy’s big, black eyes swept the unkempt yard, taking in the fence, the trees, the wisps of fog that rolled up toward the grounds from the picturesque town below. It was impossible to tell what she might be thinking, but at least she wasn’t screaming.

Jocelyn carefully, slowly, put out her hand, waiting to see if Lucy flinched or recoiled. But the girl did nothing, simply watched the nurse’s hand get nearer and nearer, and then she closed her eyes as Jocelyn tucked a piece of lank hair behind the girl’s ear.

She would call that progress.

“There now,” Jocelyn said. “I think we can do a lot together, Lucy. I think we can help each other. You don’t have to say anything, all right? Nobody expects you to say anything.”

“Carnicero.”

Jocelyn blinked. The other two fell silent, too.

“The butcher,” Jocelyn said softly, watching Lucy nod. “You . . . you think someone in Brookline is a butcher?”

“Sí. Usted sabe el carnicero. El carnicero de Brookline.” Her voice was high, prim.

Jocelyn gradually shifted her eyes to Madge, who swallowed noisily and said, “Yes, you know the butcher. The butcher of Brookline. That’s . . . that’s what she said, Joss.”

Jocelyn turned back to Lucy to inquire further, but the girl had reached for Jocelyn’s hand, taking it and holding it firmly between her two small, cold palms. Even the sunlight didn’t seem to warm her skin to above freezing.

“He wants to cut open my head,” the girl told her, her voice lightly accented. “He wants to cut it open and scoop out what’s inside.”

“Lucy, I really don’t think that’s true,” Jocelyn said. “But I’m glad you’re speaking to me. That’s very brave of you, and I’m really, really proud. Does being outside make you feel better? I know it makes me feel better.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes, studying Jocelyn as if she were a piteously stupid creature. It made Jocelyn feel small, it made her feel like Lucy was much, much older, impossibly older, a soul that had seen and done things Jocelyn couldn’t even fathom.

Lucy released her hand, placing her own hands back on the wheelchair armrests. “Don’t let him cut open my head,” she said. “And now I would like to go back inside.”

An act of rebellion. Perfect. I could hardly devise a better wedge to drive them apart. A minor inconvenience has been smoothed over—my supplies have run low over the years since my initial training, and I feared the supplements might dry up for good. But where there is a will there is a way, and where there is a need there is greed. Trax Corp. will do nicely for now, so long as they prove a discreet and reliable partner.

More exciting still, the patient I have been waiting for has presented himself. Years of anticipation leading to this moment and I can hardly describe the feeling. Elation. Relief. Patient Zero has surfaced and now my work truly begins.

—Excerpt from Warden Crawford’s journals—May