Filed to story: The Mindf*ck Series Read Online Free
“No. She was actually a coroner for the same hospital where the kids died. I figured that’s one reason they also chose that one. Their mom was a loved woman with a lot of friends from there.”
I nod in understanding, and we turn to leave.
“They worked in a pack mentality that night,” Donny whispers as we step outside and shut the door.
“With Kyle as their most dominant alpha. It was more prison pack mentality, joining together so as not to be the odd one out.”
“As young as fifteen, some of them,” Donny growls.
“Adolescents are easier to manipulate and control. They looked up to the three-Lawrence, Morgan, and Kyle. But Kyle mostly called the shots. Someone that night would have butted heads, with their being so many alphas.”
“Not that we’ll know. Morgan and Lawrence are already dead.”
“Devin. We need to find him.”
“He left part of the way through it to lock up Lindy May. What if he came back and watched? How else would Diana have known the rest of the story?”
I purse my lips. I noted that too. But Diana never explained.
“Were we ever able to interview the ones on duty in the hospital the night the kids came in?” I ask Donny.
“No. It’s been over ten years ago. We were lucky they were able to give us what they had.”
“Why not tell someone there they were hurt?” I ask him.
He shrugs, every ounce of energy suddenly gone from him. I feel like I’ve been through the same emotional vacuum.
“I don’t know, but I do know Johnson knew about this. Kyle was put into protective custody.”
“We need more than one woman’s word this all happened. She wasn’t even an eye witness. And if we’re taking on Johnson, then we’re also taking on Director McEvoy. We’re going to need solid evidence. In the meantime, we need to find out who else is a target and what really killed Robert Evans.”
“I’ve never once in my career wondered if I was on the right side of the law. Until today,” he says quietly.
Revenge killings always make us question our standing. “He won’t stop just at the ones who killed the kids,” I remind him.
“He opened some doors, but didn’t touch anyone. He stole some mirrors, put some ink in some water and played with some paint. He could have already killed numerous people. But he hasn’t.”
“He’s terrorizing them. It’s his form of revenge against the whole town. He knows how their minds work. They’ve been drenched in ten years of guilt for knowing this and doing nothing. They believe something supernatural is really going on right now.”
“Why do I feel like he’s just getting started?” Donny asks as we get in the SUV.
“Why doesn’t Kyle Davenport have the same surname as his father?” I ask.
He pulls up his iPad, reading something on it. “Says Jane Davenport was the mother. The sheriff didn’t know Kyle even existed until Jane showed up in town one day with Kyle in tow, and she handed over custody.”
My eyebrows go up. “What?”
He shakes his head, whistling low. “Hadley dug all this up somehow. Kyle is one sick fuck. Started torturing and killing animals at the ripe age of five. By seven, his mother decided she couldn’t handle him. He had a tantrum and cut her with a knife. She took him to the sheriff, who was all too happy to take away all her custodial rights, and she stayed in town, watching her son grow up from a distance. I bet her life was a living hell.”
“Where is she now?”
His brow furrows. “Dead. She died ten years ago, shortly after the trial for Robert Evans started.”
“Why do I feel like that’s not a coincidence?” I groan.
“Because everything in this godforsaken town is tied to that nightmare somehow.”
Just as I crank the car, I look up, seeing a flash of red. Quickly, I get back out, and I climb onto the hood of the SUV, reading the tops of the buildings in the distance. It’s the town hall I see from here.
Written in red on the side of the roof is one message:
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
Donny climbs up beside me, and he sucks in a long breath.
“First he quotes the bible and now Voltaire? What’s the purpose?”
“No clue,” I tell him as I hop down. “Even though I think it’s pretty clear what the messages separate mean.”
Just then, my head snaps to the speaker on the pole, because music starts filtering through it.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Momma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird. And if that mocking bird don’t sing, Momma’s gonna buy you a diamond ring…”
“That’s not creepy at all,” Donny says with a shudder as the nursery song plays on in a woman’s voice.
Everyone in the street turns to stare at the speaker closest to them, all of them paling.
“You think he’s going to cleanse the town?”
I tighten my lips. “He’s showing a lot of control. I don’t think he wants to cleanse, but I think he wants them to confess. He’s here because we are. Otherwise, he’d have killed the last name on the list that isn’t in this town. He came when we did.”
“But why?”
“When I find out, I’ll let you know,” I tell him, driving away from the house that dropped a bomb on us I wasn’t prepared for.
Chapter 2
To the wicked, everything serves as a pretext.
-Voltaire
LANA
“How’s your dad?” I ask Jake as he walks around the room, hooking up a final monitor.
“He’s taking the meds again. You know as well as I do how hurt his ego is that he’s sick. But it’s handled. Now we can focus on this.”
I watch the look on Logan’s face as he steps out of Diana’s house, and I know she told him all she knew.
“I’ll watch Diana’s house, in case they make their move,” Jake tells me, brushing my shoulder with his as he sits down beside me, his eyes flicking to the numerous monitors he has spread out on the walls of the old hunter’s cabin.
The FBI came through, did a sweep of all these, and then Jake set up our temporary headquarters in his father’s cabin that has been empty for years.
I nod appreciatively, but I can’t take my eyes off Logan, seeing the pain in his eyes. Pain for a girl he never knew. Pain for a boy he’ll never know. Pain for a past that has haunted me for ten years.
And he’s not even finished getting all his details just yet. There’s still more to learn.
“He’ll find the evidence he needs, Lana. You’re right about him. He’s the real deal.”
Too good of a man to be sullied by the dark thing I’ve become.
“I know he will. Then my father’s name will be cleared-at least to the people in this town who condemned him.”
“And Marcus will have his vengeance from the grave,” he adds quietly, cueing the music that has everyone in town pausing almost immediately.
Only the ones too young to remember the sound of my mother’s voice singing that song on the church stage are able to shrug it off. But everyone else is growing increasingly terrified.
Terrified of the dead coming back to haunt them.
“You ever wonder what we might have become if my father had never been convicted of those murders?” I ask him softly.
“No. Because if I start wondering, I’ll never stop,” he says without hesitation.
The musty smell of the cabin will have to be washed off me before I leave.
“I’m putting him in danger by letting him go on this egg hunt,” I tell Jake as I turn up the volume on the monitor with the sheriff speaking.
“You have his back,” Jake says, his lips twitching as we see the sheriff turning a precarious shade of white, hearing the music play through the speakers.