“Lucas!” Mary sounds breathless. “What are you doing here?”
Lucas looks at her, and I see his gaze start with her feet and work his way up. She is pretty and flushed in a bright yellow sundress, her auburn curls tumbling around her shoulders. “I was …” He can’t seem to take his eyes from her. “I was just …”
“Church was so boring,” Mary chatters. “Mrs. Potter was wearing this huge hat and you couldn’t see anything over it. And the sermon was an hour, I swear it.”
Lucas opens his mouth and closes it again. “I was just leaving,” he says abruptly.
“Oh.” Mary’s smile fades. “When will we see you again?”
He glances at me, then turns back to Mary and smiles so wide you can see his crooked bottom teeth. “Soon. Real soon.”
She beams at him and I step back. I try to contain my own smile and fail miserably. The more I meddle in the past, the more I’m tempting the butterfly effect, and I know I need to be careful. But I may have been the reason Lucas wasn’t focused on Mary in the first place, and that seems like an even larger interference. Fixing it was obviously the right thing to do. Lucas and Mary are meant to be.
Lucas walks to his truck. “See ya, Mary.” He turns to face me and his expression drops a bit. “Good-bye, Lydia.”
He doesn’t wait for a response, just gets in and starts the engine. A loud rumbling sound fills the yard. “Good-bye, Lucas,” I say, even though I know he can’t hear me anymore.
CHAPTER 18
Not long after Lucas leaves, Elizabeth appears with Peter and the whole family has lunch. Everyone is quiet after Dean’s sudden departure, and we all pick at our food, not saying much. When the meal is over, Peter plays with his soldiers in the backyard. Mrs. Bentley asks me and Mary to weed her victory garden while she has tea in the parlor with Elizabeth.
We wear old baggy jeans with rolled-up hems. “Dungarees,” Mary calls them as she ties a scarf around her head. It takes forever to pull all the dandelions and grass peeking out among the early summer vegetables. Mary complains about the heat and her aching muscles until I find a long, wiggly earthworm in the dirt and dangle it in her face. She squeals and shrieks and I smile, happy to distract her—and myself—from thoughts of Dean.
“Don’t look now, Lydia,” she says, pointing at something over my shoulder, “but I think you’ve got a visitor.”
I look up from the dirt to see Wes standing near the edge of the backyard. At the sight of him, my heart starts to beat faster, even as the anger and disappointment from last night washes over me.
I walk over to him, stopping a few feet away. Caked dirt falls from my fingers and sprinkles onto the grass beneath our feet. “What do you want, Wes?”
He stares at me, his eyes darker than usual. He’s acting as though nothing is different, as though he didn’t try to manipulate me just a few hours ago. “I need to show you something.”
“What is it?” I ask.
He looks behind me, where Mary is avidly eavesdropping. She doesn’t even pretend to look away.
His voice drops, low and deep. “I need to show you something,” he repeats, and he sounds so forceful, so intense, that for a minute I forget to be mad at him.
“Come with me.” He turns and walks away. I follow him around the side of the house and into a small section of forest, far away from the eyes and ears of the Bentleys.
“Wes, what’s going on?”
He turns to face me and reaches into the pocket of his olive army jacket. He pulls out a folder and holds it between us, his face grim.
I take it from him. My dirty fingers leave brown smudge marks on the surface. On the back of the folder is a red CONFIDENTIAL seal. On the front are the words THE RECRUITMENT INITIATIVE stamped in black. I turn it over in my hands and look up at Wes. “This is the same type of file I took from Dr. Faust’s office.”
Wes nods, then gestures for me to open it.
Inside are only two documents. One is a picture of Dean. He looks stern, an army cap pulled low over his head. The other is a document with “The Recruitment Initiative” typed across the top.
I skim the words as Wes watches silently. The recruitment program has been established to locate and train soldiers and selected civilians to participate in missions related to the Montauk Project, specifically Tesla’s Machine. All recruits are taken on a volunteer basis with the understanding that these missions may result in failure.
And then, at the bottom of the page: The program was initiated by Sergeant Dean Bentley on special assignment. Volunteers are approved and selected at this time by Dr. Josef Faust and Lieutenant Dean Bentley.
I grip the folder with both hands. “Dean … recruits?”
Wes doesn’t say anything, letting me put the pieces together myself.
“Dean isn’t going on the mission,” I realize. “Dean is finding the soldiers for the mission. That’s why his name was on the Project Hero mission statement. He was the one who found the subject for it.”
“There’s something else you should know.” Wes steps closer to me. “The Recruitment Initiative has two branches. One branch is called Retrieval and the other is Training. Retrieval is the process of bringing recruits in. All recruits, Lydia, not just the volunteer soldiers.”
“Kidnapping,” I whisper.
Wes’s jaw is clenched tight. “Training has four different modes: survival, tutoring, combat, and brainwashing.”
“The torture.”
“Yes.” His voice is blank as he speaks, as if he’s removed himself from the experience. As if it happened to someone else entirely. “Brainwashing is the first mode of training.” He leans down. “Do you understand what this means? The Recruitment Initiative is the program that snatched me off the street. They
