Scarlet Angel (Mindf*ck Series Book 3)

The devil can cite Scripture for his own purpose.

—William Shakespeare

In one week, I’ve marked off two names from my list. We’re getting closer. Jake is sweating bullets.

I’ve sped up the timeline and started hiding the bodies. I’ve changed my MO. I’ve also started adding the nails, something I hadn’t planned to do until later in the game.

My wax apple also has a lot more nails to mark the new debts I’ve collected, but we’ve moved my murder room to Jake’s house.

The media are no longer interested in me since Craig delivered the profile of the Scarlet Slayer. Yes, the media named me. Somehow, Jake got me the name he wanted.

It’s ironic the media lost interest in the hero side of me in favor of the dark side of me. Just goes to show how twisted and ugly this world can be.

“I hate how fast you’re cruising through the names,” Jake grumbles as I mark off the latest victim’s name.

“Two in a week isn’t too fast. I wanted to drag it out, but I’m sick of this. I’m ready for it to be over.”

“Because of Logan?” he asks, studying me from his seat.

“Yes and no. I’m tired of being tied to the past and unable to let it go. Aren’t you?”

He leans up, perching his elbows on the rails of the chair. “Tell me something, Lana, what do you think happens when this is all over—if we even survive it. Do you think he doesn’t find out? Do you ride off into the sunset—the agent and the killer? I want to know what you think for real. I’m good with ending this where we are, and moving on the best we can. I think that’s the only way you’re going to be able to keep him, if that’s your true endgame.”

My lip trembles, and I clear my throat. “Stopping now would be wrong. Marcus and Dad…they’re still dead and haunted by the way they died.”

He leans back, his eyes on me. “Sometimes I think I feel Marcus. I think he’s right here beside us, keeping us from being discovered. Other times I realize it’s ridiculous, and that our luck will eventually run out.”

“Do you want to stop?” I ask quietly, sitting down on the edge of his desk.

“Honestly? No. I want to kill them all for what they did. I want them to suffer. But it’s not fair for me to expect that from you when you seem to finally be healing. And it’s because of Logan you’re healing. He gave you back something you lost.”

“What?” I ask as he moves to the other side of the room, grabbing a drink from the mini-fridge.

“Your heart,” he tells me, looking at me with sadness in his eyes.

“You could move on,” I tell him, shrugging. “Marcus would want that.”

“I’ll stick to my torrid affairs with no emotional connection for now,” he answers with a brittle grin.

“Every time I think I can walk away…that’s the only time I close my eyes and see it happening all over again,” I say to him, sighing long and hard. “Sometimes I think I really did die, and that I’m truly the avenging angel my brother said we’d be together.”

I feel as though I only have one purpose in life.

“Maybe you are,” he agrees. “But maybe you’re allowed to give up vengeance for hope.”

“Then why do I see the nightmares when I consider stopping?”

His lips tense.

“Exactly,” I tell him, motioning around the room. “If my life was spared to right the wrongs of that time, then I won’t be at peace until they’re all dead. Others in that town are suffering. You know it. People just like Lindy who speak out against the ‘justice’ they dole. Women like Diana who has spent the last ten years worried one day her son would turn up dead or missing. People like my father who was killed for crimes he didn’t commit.”

He nods dully, knowing I’m right.

“It’s your choice, Lana. I’m just saying I’m with you regardless of what you choose.”

Tears. I hate tears. But they keep reappearing in my eyes at random.

I go to plop down in his lap, and he wraps his arms around me, pulling to me to him as I hug him. “You know you’re my second favorite brother, right?” I ask him, a joke I’ve said since we were kids.

He laughs against the side of my face. “Yeah. I know. Just like you’re my favorite sister, but only because you’re the only one I have.”

As we both laugh at the small bit of the past we’ve held onto, my mind turns over the past events of the last few days. The newest additions to my string of kills.

“Scream for me,” I tell Anthony, smiling while he bleeds, his cries of agony like sweet music to my ears. But the melody is off key, not hitting the same notes as it usually does.

This normally feels so much better.

“You fucking cunt! I knew you were evil. Just like your father.”

“No. I was sweet,” I tell him, meaning it, as I slowly slide the blade across his chest, leaving a shallow cut there. He gives me nothing more than a wince. “I was naïve. I wasn’t a virgin, but I wasn’t the whore you labeled me. My body was my temple and all that, until you all held me down, took your turns, and left me for dead. You killed Marcus. And he gave his life so that I could come back and pick you off one at a time.”

He screams when the knife slides down, and I taunt him again with the words he once used against me.

“Scream for me, Anthony. Scream loud. No one can hear you. No one cares.”

He does scream. He screams into the vast nothingness of the basement that is completely underground. Really, they make it too easy sometimes.

But I won’t leave him here. No one will ever know I was here at all.

“You’ll burn in hell. What we did was try to destroy the evil in the world. Evil is hard to kill,” he spits out.

“You seriously want to justify what you did as an act of justice? You claim righteousness even after your acts of violence and sin?”

He grins, his mouth a bloody mess. “You can’t sin against the devil. You’re straight from his loins, just like your father. They’ll stop you. Good always triumphs over evil. I’ll be avenged.”

My lips twitch, amused at how delusional he truly is. “This is good triumphing over evil,” I say quietly, watching as his eyes narrow to slits. He hates me considering myself the avenging angel, and I use it to my advantage. “This is your punishment. The act of good prevailing.”

“You and your faggot brother were already going to hell. We just sped things along.”

“If you’re the one in the right, why isn’t there some divine intervention saving you?” I ask him, standing slowly. “I was resurrected from the ashes, surviving against all odds. Yet you’re down here, suffering for the crimes of your past. Not me.”

He opens his mouth, but closes it. “See?” I muse, smirking. “Even the devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose. William Shakespeare, in case you’re wondering. But I’m not the devil, Anthony. I’m the angel who has come to take you all to hell.”

He finally screams louder than he has before when I take away that last bit of power he had, slicing it off at the base, kicking it away like the trash it is.

“You’ll never hurt anyone else,” I whisper darkly, drinking in the sounds of his pain, and ignoring the hollowness I feel for the first time ever.

I won’t stop.

I can’t.

Now to go back to Kentucky.

“I’ll tell the next one you said hello,” I go on, talking over the sounds of his sobs. “Your bestie is next.”

I’m jarred out of the memory by the sound of someone pounding on Jake’s door.

“Shit,” he hisses, glancing at the monitor beside us.

I scramble off his lap, my heart thumping painfully in my chest as I see Logan knock on the door again. This cannot be happening.

“Mr. Denver,” Logan says, looking up at the camera Jake never bothered to hide on his front porch. “If you’re in there, we’d like to speak to you.”

Donny is beside him, looking all MIB with his glasses on. Logan opens his thingy and flashes his credentials to the camera.

“We knew this would happen,” Jake says as I shake with panic.

One man has the power to undo me, and he’s about to link me to everything if he finds me here.

“I’m SSA Logan Bennett,” Logan goes on, his voice for once not having a calming effect on me. Not even a little bit. I’m full blown crazy panicking now.

“Calm down,” Jake says, amused. Freaking amused. This is not amusing at all. “Just stay in here and lock the door. They won’t have a warrant. And it’s all about to be pointless to question me. We’re prepared for this. Remember that.”

I nod, then swallow hard, trying to lasso my logic back to me and swallow a massive chill pill. We’re always careful for me not to be seen when I come over. I park in town, using a rental car, and he picks me up somewhere with no cameras. I ride back in his van—that I call a kidnapper’s van—and he parks inside his garage. No one ever sees me.

They won’t know I’m here.

So why am I panicking?

Calm and collected, Jake puts several of the kill-list things under the false panel of the floor, then moves the lamp back over it, hiding it from sight. He flips a button, and five of the monitors on the walls sink into the walls as the false panel comes down, concealing them from sight as well.

“Stay here,” he repeats, moving out of the room quickly.

Immediately I go and lock the door, and then I listen through the walls like a total creeper. All I need is a glass stuck to my ear.

Nope. I don’t look guilty at all.