Filed to story: The Mindf*ck Series Read Online Free
Logan spins the sheriff, shoving him into a tree and cuffing his hands behind his back.
“Get your fucking hands off them!” Johnson shouts, charging toward us. “You can’t arrest the sheriff!”
“He attacked a federal agent,” Leonard says. “Just as they did.”
“I didn’t,” the one under him groans.
Leonard makes him cry out in pain as he tightens the cuffs more. “No, you tried to attack a defenseless woman.”
I really don’t like being called that. It’s rather insulting.
I turn around, walking away before Johnson pisses me off too much. Logan is one hell of a fucking trigger for me, because I want to blow Johnson’s head off even as he and Logan argue, their voices raising.
The war has started, and it’s not too long before Logan is sent away. We’ve guessed their every move. We’ve already hit checkmate, but they still think it’s the middle of the game.
I can’t blow it all by stabbing Johnson right between the eyes in the middle of the park full of badges and witnesses.
So I walk away. I count to ten. Then to two thousand. I jog. I run. I fucking meditate.
But the urge to kill those sons of bitches is still raw and raging inside me. I’m fighting to hold back my urges until the endgame. Right now it feels almost impossible.
For once, I’m worried about my sanity.
So I call the only person who cares enough to help talk me down.
“Talk me down,” I say to Jake, my heart thumping heavily. “Talk me down now.”
“Ducks have corkscrew penises,” he says as my footsteps pause. “Come on over. I’ll show you some pictures. Nasty little fuckers.”
I roll my eyes, finding myself smiling for no reason at all. “Do I want to know why you know about this?”
“I have a vast amount of useless, sometimes disturbing knowledge for purposes such as this. The more random, the better to throw you off your game with, my dear.”
“I don’t want to see corkscrew penises.”
“Then I’ll pull up a blue waffle for you. Come over. Now. Before you do something stupid.”
“What is a blue waffle?”
I can almost hear his mocking grin. “You’ll see. Guarantee you won’t be thinking about killing for a while. Your mind will need to be bleached.”
“The things I do to stay sane,” I grumble, changing course as I go to investigate this blue waffle thing.
Chapter 15
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
-Voltaire
LOGAN
“Hey,” I say, relaxing when Lana answers the phone.
I don’t blame her for bailing on the madness that followed the sheriff’s unprovoked attack, but I’ve been worried since she hasn’t answered her phone for the past few hours.
The sheriff and his deputies are cooling down back at their station. Johnson won the war on the arrests, but he’s running out of juice. This is one more strike against him in the file Collins is currently preparing.
“Hey,” she says softly, her voice like a soothing balm.
“Where are you?”
I look around the cabin, finding no sign that she’s been back.
“I went for a run. I was getting…annoyed. I don’t like being annoyed,” she says sadly. “I hope you’re okay. I didn’t want to call until I knew for sure you weren’t around any of them.”
“I’m fine, Lana,” I say with a smirk. “Trust me, I can handle a few backwoods cops and an outdated agent with superiority complexes.”
“Don’t underestimate them.”
Her voice comes from behind me, and I toss my phone to the bed when I see her standing in the doorway, her chest rising and falling rapidly as a small sheen of sweat beads at her forehead.
“A body drops from the tower, and you go for a run,” I say on a sigh, not realizing how tense I was until this moment.
“They were attacking you. I knew if I said anything, I’d just make it worse,” she says as she pulls off her jacket and steps farther into the room. “And I suck at biting my tongue.”
My grin etches up as I move in closer, tugging her to me by her waist.
“I can handle my own battles, so you can use your tongue for better things,” I murmur against her ear, feeling her smile even though I can’t see it.
I start kissing a trail down her neck, and she presses her body to me.
“I’ve needed this,” she says, her arms tightening around me in an embrace.
As much as I’d love to do something more than hug, I realize it’s sort of what I need in this moment too. Mostly because she’s fucking ridiculously brave enough to wander around a town where a man was just skinned alive. Why can’t she be normal and lock herself inside this cabin?
I’m getting an ulcer over her.
“We’re getting away as soon as this case is over. Just you and me and a beach far, far away.”
“I know you said a week but…maybe longer than a week?” she asks, leaning her head back. “My treat?”
“I can’t take more than a week at a time, given our current work load. But maybe soon. And I’ll pay for it.”
She rolls her eyes before her head finds my chest, and she continues holding onto me.
“I love you,” I say softly.
Her arms squeeze me tighter as the chatter outside the window grows restless, everyone waiting on me.
“I love you too,” she says on a long sigh. “I take it you have somewhere to be?”
“Sort of have to find the guy who just skinned a grown man alive.”
She nods and steps back, wiping something away from her eye. “Right. Sorry.”
“You okay?” I ask, lightly gripping her chin and turning her to face me.
She peers up at me, her eyes hesitant. She never asks for anything, but always gives so much. Yet I see a question in her eyes, and I’m willing to do whatever she wants. Even if it’s getting the hell out of here and abandoning this case.
Then again, I still have a lot of justice to find in an extremely unjust town, while pretending to focus only on the current killer. Although, considering Johnson and the sheriff are already plotting my demise, I suppose I could give up pretenses. They know by now I’m doing more than gathering some background that could point to our killer. Hell, I’ve basically announced it.
I’m building a whole fucking case against them.
It’s just really hard to do without any physical evidence.
“What do you need?” I ask her when she grows silent.
“This afternoon, if you get a chance, do you think we could spend a couple of hours together?”
It’s the first time she’s ever asked that. Usually it’s me asking her to bend her life around my crazy schedule, not to mention put up with possible death threats.
“I can take off the entire afternoon,” I say, strumming her cheek with my fingertips.
I really can’t afford it right now, not with Johnson scheming with the director as I speak. But I won’t tell her that.
“Just a couple of hours,” she says with a small smile. “I know you have a lot on your plate.”
The chatter outside keeps growing louder, and I bend to press a kiss to her lips.