Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck Series Book 5)

‘Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

—William Shakespeare

“They have the evidence. There’s a fucking video of what they did to Robert Evans, for fuck’s sake! And you’re still holding me here? On what grounds?” I snap, glaring at Collins and Director McEvoy.

“On the grounds you aided a possible murder suspect in fleeing a town the same night her husband was killed, along with two men inside her home.”

“Cheyenne Murdock feared for her life, and she was not a suspect. She was attacked in her home, and our unsub saved her life.”

McEvoy points a finger at me. “And that mentality is why you’re here. You don’t get to assume she’s innocent because she says she is. Especially after you swore to your team the unsub was a female. Your entire profile for this case is all over the map, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Then you just release a woman after two men are slaughtered in her living room with a skill far too advanced to ignore?”

“Two hit men,” I growl.

“Speculation,” McEvoy growls back.

“Let’s all take a step back,” Collins says, easing his hands between us and pushing us apart, creating much needed separation. “I’ve sent the evidence to be examined,” he goes on.

McEvoy narrows his eyes at Collins. “A woman digs up her basement floor and happens to hand you the keys to a closed case from years ago? And yet she’s nowhere to be found now, as though she magically vanished. It’s not like she can corroborate this story if we can find her, which makes it completely inadmissible.”

“You hope,” I add, glaring at him.

He takes a step forward, and Collins lands a hand on his chest, holding him back.

“All the lies and cover-up schemes in the world won’t do you a bit of good once I get my hands on that video evidence and have it authenticated.”

He takes a step back, his eyes narrowing. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. I’ll bury you, boy. I’ll ruin your name so fucking well that nothing out of your mouth will mean a damn thing. All the evidence in the world won’t do you a bit of good with a reputation like I plan for you.”

“Is that a threat?” Collins asks him, eyeing the director like he just slipped up.

A sinister smile lines the director’s lips. “He’s being held for charges of obstruction and conspiracy to aide a known serial killer.”

“You can’t do that,” Collins growls.

“Watch me. He doesn’t leave this floor until they come with an arrest warrant and escort him out.”

He turns and stalks away, and Collins runs a hand through his hair.

“He must have played a really big part in covering all that shit up if he’s pushing the limits this far,” Collins says, looking over his shoulder. “I need to meet up with some people and get this sorted before he really does try to have you arrested. If you leave here, though, it’ll look bad. I won’t doubt that he has people blocking your exit. They’ll have permission to restrain you by any means necessary. So stay put. Don’t do anything stupid.”

He turns and walks away, and I grab the first thing I can get my hands on and throw it across the room. People gasp and scatter away as the broken stapler falls to the ground in two pieces.

“They just pulled in Donny,” Leonard says near me, looking around like he’s wary of everyone’s intentions.

“They’re going to split us all up and talk to us one-by-one. Just remember this is about me and none of you. Say whatever you need to in order to keep any blame off you.”

“I escorted Cheyenne Murdock and her daughter out of town. Not you,” he argues.

“Under my orders,” I remind him.

He narrows his eyes. “I’m not letting them take you down.”

I look around, making sure no one is close enough to overhear. “Their allegations aren’t wrong. I’m definitely compromised and you know it. In all honesty, I started obstructing this case the second I learned of Lana’s involvement.”

“In that case, Hadley and I are both in the same tub of shit you’re in. You’re not going down for this. Lana’s methods may be barbaric and illegal, but after seeing what they had to endure and then contend with in the aftermath, I can’t fault her logic.”

“Makes you question everything we’ve ever stood for, doesn’t it?” I ask, exhausted as I lean back against someone’s deserted desk.

“No. We’ve always fought to save the innocent from the sick and depraved. Lana had no one to fight for her or her family. She was tasked with the worst case scenario on her own.”

I cock my head as Hadley walks by, glancing over her shoulder as though she’s checking to see if she’s being followed. She holds her laptop closer to her body, clutching it like she’s up to something.

“She wasn’t on her own,” I say distractedly, watching as Hadley ducks into Craig’s office and closes the blinds.

His door doesn’t have a lock on it though.

He’s still out on the bullshit assignment they used to keep him away from Delaney Grove.

“Keep an eye on things and come find me if anything new reaches you. I’m confined to this floor for now.”

My eyes lift to where one of the director’s men is standing at the doorway, his eyes trained on me. He definitely plans to keep me in place.

“Where are you going?” Leonard asks me, but I don’t answer.

I’m sure he watches me as I head through everyone whispering about me, and burst into Craig’s office without knocking.

Hadley squeals and slams her laptop shut.

“What are you doing?” I ask, suspicious.

I shut the door behind me, and she blows out a relieved breath before reopening the laptop. Her fingers fly rapidly over the keys as her eyes grow determined.

“They won’t give me an office with privacy, so I’m borrowing Craig’s, since he’s still gone.”

“But what are you doing?” I ask again, coming up behind her so I can see the screen.

I lean over, putting one hand on the desk beside her, and one on the back of her chair, as I stare at all the nonsensical lines of code on her screen.

“I’m hacking into Jake’s video feed.” She motions to the three monitors in Craig’s office that he uses for work. “It’s not quite as elaborate as Jake’s twenty monitors, but it’ll do.”

“I guess that means you lied when you told Leonard you couldn’t hack the feed,” I grumble.

“I didn’t lie. I couldn’t hack them at the time. Jake’s brilliant, by the way. I never would have found the frequency he uses if he hadn’t shown me how to discover it. It runs at the same frequency normal power lines do. I don’t even understand how he did that.”

She continues to type in random letters, symbols, and numbers that make zero sense to me.

“Why would he tell you?”

“Because he trusts me. It was that instant sort of trust that he doesn’t usually feel. We’re kindred. He wanted someone to really appreciate the effort and genius that went into all his work, and I’m as much of a tech nerd as he is. You and Lana are both oblivious to the layers and difficulty level that goes into something like this. Me? I had a nerd-gasm that led to a real orgasm later on. I got that turned on.”

“More information than I needed,” I mumble.

She ignores me. “And he is a fucking genius. I only thought I was good. No wonder he’s never been caught.”

Suddenly, all the monitors come alive with images of the town. Cars are fleeing by the second, rushing to get away from something. My eyes move from screen to screen as Hadley flips to different views. I’m searching for some explanation.

But all we see is the aftermath of whatever has happened.

“Can you rewind this?”

“Not right now. He has it set to live feed only. We can only view what he’s viewing. He’s using the feeds to broadcast this live over their TVs. He’s so fucking perfect.”

I ignore that last part, focusing on the rest of it. I catch glimpses of words, but the screen changes before I can read them. I thought Hadley was flipping screens, but it’s Jake. Like she said, we can only observe as he observes.

“I want to find Lana. Is there any chance you can hack into a different—”

“Don’t even pretend you know how to speak geek. If I tried to hack anything from this point on, it would mess up what he’s doing. Even if I didn’t care to do that, he’d immediately back hack me and possibly close out everything, may even lock me out of the system completely. I wouldn’t doubt that he’d be able to bring the entire federal network down. Like I said, he’s better than me. Much better. But he’s also more passionate and has pushed himself to the limits for this very goal.”

I try calling Lana’s phone, cursing when I realize she must have already switched burners again. This one is no longer an active number.

A different screen pops up, one I know too well. “They’re reading heat signatures? Why?” I ask, watching as more and more red dots join into the middle of the street, everyone heading for the exit.

“For whatever their endgame is. That monitor is linked to his phone, bringing up any screens he brings up—”

The monitor shuts down, and Hadley curses. “He apparently didn’t want me watching that part.”

She waits, staring at the other screens, but none of them shut down.

“So he knows you’ve hacked him?”

“Like I said, he’s brilliant. He probably has a system set up to alert him of any interference. He doesn’t seem to mind us watching this, but he wants his phone a secret.”

“Because he’s running this show from that phone, and he doesn’t want us knowing what comes next,” I say, worried.

A screen flips to a residence where an older man and an older woman are sitting in their living room. They’re right across from where Lana would have been assaulted.

They’re talking about the madness going on outside and how they plan to wait it out, when suddenly the TV flicks on, and a masked face comes into view. Instead of the mirror mask Lana was wearing, it’s a red mask.

“Get out, Whitmires! Get out now!”

The woman and man both scream, and the man clutches his heart, his eyes wide in horror. That’s all the prompting they need.

They don’t even bother grabbing a bag before rushing out.

The screens all change again, and I try to focus on the ones that seem the most important.

“How is he viewing all this from one phone?” I ask Hadley.

“He has a system set up to flip between screens, but he can minimize up to five at a time and watch them in thumbnail size. I wonder if he’ll go house to house with that tactic.”

“What happens if that tactic doesn’t work?” I ask more to myself than her, dread creeping up my spine.

There has to be a reason they’re focusing on evacuating the town.

My eyes hone in on the monitor with the most activity. The deputies are scattered, all of them looking angry and desperate to keep people in the town. One even punches a civilian, but two men grab the deputy and sling him into a car.

He backs off when one pulls a gun on him, and the civilians help the fallen man back to his feet before backing away into a car.

“They’ve bound them together to stand up to the sheriff and his men,” I surmise.

“No one will fight for the town, and after the show they put on with the broadcast, no one wants to be there when the sheriff goes down either,” she says, but then sucks in a breath.

She turns to face me, her eyes wide. “I think I know where Lana is.”

“Where?”

She gestures to the screens. “Who’s missing?”