Filed to story: The Mindf*ck Series Read Online Free
I’ll die with them.
My eyes flick to the camera holes around me, all of them blacked out with no sparkle, meaning they’re cut off.
It’ll be a tragic, poetic ending that will immortalize all I’ve done.
At least no one has to watch the end.
Suddenly there’s a face in front of me, and more tears leak out as I see my brother.
“Marcus,” I whisper, touching his cheek as more tears race down my face.
His face disappears with the touch, and I break, sobbing as I quit firing back. Logan’s face is the last thing to cross my mind before I see the blaze of the fire nearing.
Chapter 16
They say miracles are past.
-William Shakespeare
LOGAN All the screens go blank at once, and nothing but white noise fills the air around us. I shake a monitor as though it’ll force the screen to work again.
“He’s shut down the cameras,” Hadley says, her fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Get them back on!” I snap.
“I’m trying!”
My face is burning with the tears, and it’s all I can do not to collapse to the ground.
Leonard is sitting silently, wringing his hands as he stares at the ground and bounces his knee.
The news is reporting the interruption to the live feed, but I can barely hear the words they’re saying.
My heart is hammering against my chest.
“Got it!” Hadley shouts as the screens come back to life.
My eyes go to the fire that is now closing in on the town hall, and suddenly it explodes, a deafening sound roaring through the speakers around us. I stagger back as the building continues to erupt, pieces of it blowing up at different times.
Silence falls on the entire room, the newsfeed also coming back up with Hadley’s link reactivating it.
Everyone outside the room is staring at the news with the same shock we’re staring at our monitor. But I barely notice anything around me as I break, throwing anything I can get my hands on as I fall apart.
Glass shatters around us. Voices call my name. Everything and nothing happens all at once as I slam my fist into Leonard’s face, fighting against the hands grappling me to the ground.
Ice and fire wash over me with no mercy, and I shut down. Everything on me turns to stone as I’m restrained and forced to watch the fire join the building, blanketing the town.
There’s no way she got out in time.
Chapter 17
Three months later…
LOGAN I run my hand over the stubble on my chin, looking at the case files in front of me.
“Welcome back,” Elise says as she passes my desk, looking at me like she’s concerned.
Only three of us know why I broke down three months ago. Only three of us know why I’ll never be the same again.
Everyone else thinks I broke down because we were pulled out of that town when it needed us.
By the time ambulances and fire trucks arrived on scene, there was nothing left but flames they couldn’t put out in time to save anything. The town burned, leaving nothing but charred, empty structures in its wake.
None of the bodies were recognizable. They were too burned to be identified. And the only place with bodies was the town hall and the sheriff’s home.
For three months, the news has spoken of nothing else, giving contradictory reports from truthful and falsified sources.
That’s why I’m back.
Lana gave her life for the truth.
The last thing I’m going to do is let them cover it all up again.
Elise pauses like she’s waiting for me to respond. I just dip my head at her in acknowledgement, and she blows out a breath as I finish typing up the full report.
Hadley has been looking for Jake nonstop, but she’ll never find him. If he survived, he’s long gone by now, possibly stuck in a drunken stupor after having to watch his best friend die.
There’s no doubt that’s why he turned off the video footage. He couldn’t bear to see it. I wish I hadn’t.
I should have never left Delaney Grove. I should have risked my career. Now I don’t even want to be anywhere.
I didn’t realize until she was gone that nothing else mattered at all.
Nothing I stood for was worth more than her.
Nothing I valued held any true value at all.
Everything I have is pointless without her.
I could have saved her, but I walked away instead. She’s dead because of me.
Reading over the report one last time, I print it off and stand up. Leonard eyes me on his way to the copier, watching me as I place the papers in a folder.
“Day one back, and you’re already putting together a new case file?”
I shake my head. “No. I’m fixing the old report they refuse to go public with.”
He sighs harshly. “Let it go, Logan. They’re never going to admit any of the truths to the public. The entire Bureau has been humiliated by everything out there. They’ve given all the concessions they’re going to.”
“Yet they still claim the allegations of falsifying DNA evidence is a hoax and a lie. They’re claiming the video evidence isn’t authentic. And they’re also not redeeming the name of Robert Evans.”
“And they’re not going to,” he says softly, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Like I said, they’ve given all the concessions they’re going to. The director is gone now. Johnson is dead. No more corruption from this point on, Logan.”
I look at the file in my hands.
“Whatever Collins says today will determine if that’s true or not,” I say when I look back up.
He blows out a breath, and I place the file back on my desk. I have an appointment with Director Collins very soon. Whatever he says will determine my future course.
For the past three months, I’ve been on leave. Everyone agreed I needed a break after the breakdown I had. I was also relieved of my duties temporarily until I go through a department psych evaluation.
If anyone knew what I’d lost, no one would question my sanity. They’d know for certain I’m too fucked up to be here without needing a piece of paper to tell them as much.
During my forced leave, the only way I could keep myself together was to look into the original killer case. No one tried to stop me, and Collins gave me all the information I needed or requested. He even had Leonard drop it off by my house.
At first I couldn’t figure out the mystery.
At first, it made all the sense in the world for it to be the sheriff, with the exception of his daughter. That threw the entire thing into a tailspin.
But finally, I realized the women were surrogate kills. And once I figured out why they were surrogates and who they were surrogates for…everything made perfect sense.
Especially when I linked the trigger to a specific date-the date of the first kill. It’s not surprising that Johnson never linked the two together. He focused on one man and made the evidence fit.
He never took the time to look around, which was my problem, until I finally forced myself to rule out the sheriff.
It didn’t make sense that Lana would kill so many in such grizzly ways without ever going after the original killer that started all this. It didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t have figured it out, given how fucking brilliant she and Jake were.
But then I discovered how genius they actually were.