The Risk (Mindf*ck Series #1)

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

—Albert Einstein

“So your girl is like totally loaded,” Hadley says, plopping down beside me.

“You’re looking into her financials?” I ask incredulously. “That’s an invasion of privacy!”

“Meh, I just peeked. She’s not a suspect or anything, so I’m not breaking any big rules.”

“Just the law,” I state dryly.

She grins. “I was recruited for my mad skills with computers and shutting down websites that shouldn’t be open. I was placed up here for my forensics expertise. Never once was I wanted for my pristine moral compass. And it was just a little peek. Honestly. But seriously, she’s like majorly rich. What’s her house like?”

Groaning, I shake my head. Hadley definitely isn’t FBI because she’s a saint with a badge. She’s FBI because it was prison or work with us.

“Don’t tell anyone else you did this,” I mumble, finishing up the last of the case file that is now ready for the DA.

“Duh,” she says, smirking. “So what’s her house like? I really want to know.”

“Nothing flashy. It’s a two story white home that looks nice enough. She hasn’t lived there long, so there’s no art or anything on the walls. Floors are hardwood throughout, but no marble statues or gold banisters, if that’s what you’re asking. And her driveway looks like something out of Sleepy Hollow that doesn’t at all match the sweet house at the end.”

She frowns like she’s disappointed. “I wanted mansions and swans in a lake. Damn. Why have all that money if you don’t have a nice home?”

“Some people are humble, Hadley. I wouldn’t have even known she was rich.”

Talking about Lana gets me thinking about her again after I’ve just stopped. I’m worried I’m demonstrating obsessive behaviors. Which I don’t know if I like or not.

She hasn’t answered my calls all day, and my texts haven’t been responded to either. So I’m surprised when I finally get an answer.

LANA: SORRY!!! My work got in the way this time. Been crazy busy and only had my business phone with me. Just got back into town a few minutes ago.

I didn’t know she had a business phone or that she went on a business meeting. But I’m relieved to know I haven’t been blown off.

“Is that her?” Hadley asks, reminding me she’s still lurking.

“Go away, Hadley. She doesn’t have swans in a lake.”

She mutters something about a waste before sulking and walking off.

I start to text her, but decide I’d rather hear her voice instead, so I call as I head out to my car.

“Hey!” she answers, sounding a little out of breath. “Again, I’m sorry. I was really busy earlier, and like I said, I didn’t have my phone, and—”

“Don’t apologize. Just wondering when I can see you again. I’m back home. A case is closed, so I’ll have a couple of days off as a reward. Why do you sound out of breath?”

“Just finished a necessary workout. And I happen to have exactly two days off as well. My business partner is reworking some things so that we can squeeze in a little extra business this month.”

She never talks about her business, and now Hadley has put it into my mind. If she’s so wealthy, why does she do so much legwork herself? Why not hire people?

“So we have two days with each other?” I muse, putting a few of the unsolved files in my bag.

“Yes. And I still have your boxers. In fact, as soon as I finish showering, I’m going to put them on.”

“Any chance I can come over?”

“That was me inviting you over,” she says dryly. “I really suck at this subtlety thing, huh?”

Grinning, I get in my car and start backing out, ready to have some time to unwind. I’d like to get some fresh clothes from my house, but that would take longer.

“Wait! I just thought of something. What if I come to your house? You’ve seen mine. Show me yours.”

Well, that solves that problem.

“It’s nothing special, but I’d love for you to see my bedroom.”

She laughs under her breath. “I might leave my panties behind as a reason to return.”

“I’m not wearing them and eating ice cream,” I say, loving the way that makes her laugh.

“Good to know. If you’ll give me the address, I’ll shower and meet you there. Are you home now?”

“I’m just leaving the office.”

“Okay. Then I’ll hurry and get ready. Send me the address, Agent Bennett.

“Back to Agent Bennett?”

“I’ll call you Logan later on tonight,” she quips, causing an immediate reaction from the wayward appendage that has forgotten I’m closer to thirty than eighteen.

“See you soon.”

I hang up and shoot her a text with the address. I probably need a shower too, so at least I’ll have time. I also decide to stop and pick up something to cook so that we don’t have to leave to go anywhere. We have two solid days, and all I want to do is spend every second getting this addiction under control.

I hurry through the motions of buying groceries, load down my back hatch, and rush home. My phone is ringing as soon as I step through the door of my house. I groan when I see it’s Craig.

“Please don’t tell me we already have to come back in.”

“Well, hello to you, SSA Logan Bennett. I guess that pussy is golden if the company man himself doesn’t want to come back to work.”

“Craig, if you want to remain pretty in front of the cameras, I’d suggest refraining from speaking about Lana’s pussy anymore.”

“Right. Got it. Anyway, you told me to call if any new leads came in. Hadley finally figured out the type of knife used by the Boogeyman in his kills. I’m forwarding you a picture.”

“Thanks,” I grumble, not feeling as appreciative as I should.

“No worries, Logan. No one expects you to come back in tonight or even tomorrow. You closed a major case and just in time to save a girl’s life. And hell, you pretty much did it on your own today. No one else would have fucking pieced together a da Vinci fixation from finding clay.”

“There were other factors,” I point out.

“Yes. Symmetry,” he says flatly.

“And more.”

“I’ll let you get back to your two days of peace.”

He hangs up just as a text comes through from Lana.

LANA: My GPS says I should be there in thirty minutes. I’m going to see if I can shave a few minutes off that.

A smile spreads as I text her back.

ME: No texting while driving.

LANA: Threatening to arrest me?

Laughing, I put my phone away. Lana is not the girl I first pegged as detached. Lonely, perhaps. But not detached. I’ve come to realize she’s just like me. Solitary but not devoid of possibilities.

After putting all my groceries where they belong, I start removing my shirt, then grimace when I smell the exhaust fumes from the chopper all over me. How did I not realize how bad I reek?

I start to head to the shower, but my phone chimes with a message. Craig has delivered the picture he promised, and the knife is nothing special. But at least we know the model and type to tell the police to search for if the time ever comes.

Not if. When. I will catch this bastard.

Studying the photo of the supposed murder weapon has me restudying the case for so long that I don’t even realize how much time has passed until there’s a knock on my door.

Fuck me.

It’s already been thirty minutes, and I’ve been staring at a case instead of showering off the day’s stench.

I jog to the door, internally cursing myself the whole time. When I swing open the door, a flurry of dark hair is all I glimpse before Lana is on me, her lips crashing against mine.

I sure as hell don’t protest as I drink her in, tasting her, smelling how incredible… Ah hell.

Reluctantly, I break the kiss, and she steps back, grinning at me. I love that smile and how freely she gives it.

“I smell like shit.”

She laughs while shaking her head. “You smell like… I don’t know what that smell is to be honest.”

“Helicopter. I’ll run through the shower, and we will pick this back up where we left off. Make yourself comfortable. I won’t take long.”

“I don’t mind the smell,” she says, biting that damn lower lip that has my cock protesting my hygienic needs.

“Five minutes. That’s all I’ll take.”

She bats those long lashes, her grin spreading as she looks around my house, taking in all the sights. My gun is on top of the living room table, and she sidesteps it like it makes her uncomfortable.

“Safety is on,” I tell her, winking before I jog to my bathroom and hurry through the motions of showering.

I toss on a pair of boxers after I finish drying off, and I head back out to find Lana at the kitchen island, looking over the Boogeyman case.

“This is brutal,” she says, looking up at me with a frown. “Is this the guy you caught?”

“That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left that out. You’re not supposed to see that.”

She frowns.

“Closed case files aren’t as classified. Or at least that’s what I’ve read.”

“Old closed cases aren’t classified. Recent ones are. But this isn’t even a closed case. It’s an active investigation that I should handle with more care than just leaving haphazardly lying around.”

Her lips tense as she takes a long step away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I just saw it and…I shouldn’t have just started reading it. Sorry.”

I shrug, pulling her to me by the waist, just needing to touch her. I had no idea how much I needed to touch her until she got here.

“Like I said, that’s my fault. But since you’ve seen it, how about giving me your opinion.”

Her eyebrows go up.

“My opinion? My opinion is that guy is sick. Women being raped and left to bleed out slowly by multiple stab wounds is vicious and… Anyway. That’s my opinion.”

“I meant your opinion about the type of suspect we might be looking for.”

She purses her lips.

“I barely glimpsed it.”

I pull her over to the file, and I spread out the sheets, including the new picture on my phone that I show her.

“You noted that he let them bleed out instead of saying he stabbed them to death. That’s actually important to the profile. Now tell me your opinion.”

“I don’t want to get you into trouble, Logan. Don’t show me things you’re not supposed to, and stop telling me things you shouldn’t.”

She eyes me, scowling a little.

“Right now, there’s not a lot they’d do to me if they found out I was sharing details with my girl. I’m a badass. Just read it and give me your thoughts.”

A smile spreads over her lips for some reason, but she tucks her hair behind her ear and ducks her head before she begins reading over the files.

“That excites you?” I muse, remembering she said this stuff makes her stomach churn.

“You called me your girl,” she says quietly.

My grin spreads as I lean over, brushing a kiss over her bare shoulder since she’s wearing a camisole.

“As far as I’m concerned, you are.”

She clears her throat, and I lean back, enjoying the hell out of the way she blushes.

Her face turns serious as she studies the file, taking in the details, and reading over it pretty damn quickly.

“At first glance, it looks like overkill because of all the stab wounds. But they’re all shallow and not lethal on their own. He most likely does it while he rapes them, pushing the tip of the blade in just enough to draw blood. They get deeper as he goes, because it’s part of the high he gets. Rape is usually about power.”

“It’s almost always about power,” I amend. “Contrary to popular belief, there are very few sexual assault cases that have anything to do with sexual desires.”

She nods absently, but I notice a distant look in her eyes. “He’s a sadist. Relative to the case, he’s most likely unable to orgasm without the life threatening pain he inflicts. Impotence was probably a factor in his psychotic break. Maybe he stumbled upon this feeling of euphoria by mistake, and he’s escalated now to actually killing women. He gets high on the power, and gets off on the pain.”

She blows out a breath as her hands tremble, and I start to apologize. She really can’t handle seeing this shit, and it was stupid of me to even involve a civilian who hasn’t been desensitized to the point of seeing them as dead bodies and facts instead of people and merciless assaults.

But she speaks before I can.

“He’d be unnoticeable to the world. Probably a blue-collared worker who doesn’t draw any outward attention. He’d likely be unsocial, given the struggle he’s had with impotence. It would have left him withdrawn because he’d have felt like he was lacking, emasculated even. Now he enjoys the shadows where he’s dwelled because it allows him to hunt without being noticed.”

Damn, she’s good.

She flips another page. “In the beginning, there was a lot of rage—again, that stems from the impotence. Now there’s a controlled method to his psychosis. He’ll develop an immortal complex where he feels as though he’s untouchable. I’d say a white male between the ages of twenty-five and forty. He’s right handed, and he has the ability to blend in with the unremarkable. Possibly in the custodial field.”

My eyebrows pinch together.

“You were dead on until the custodial field. We guessed someone in law enforcement or security, due to the fact he has been able to gain access to homes with no effort, and the cameras to the apartment buildings have been disabled each time.”

She shakes her head. “He may have an understanding of security measures, but most custodial workers do. They come in after hours, spend long amounts of time talking with night shift guards or behind the scenes issues that no one else sees.”

I narrow my eyes at her, studying her features as she looks up to meet my gaze.

“What makes you so sure you’re right?”

She smirks before sliding a page in front of me. “How he cleaned up after himself. He shined the murder rooms up.”

“Forensic countermeasure,” I point out. “Most seasoned killers always clean up after themselves.”

She nods. “I said how he cleaned up after himself. He didn’t just clean. The room was spotless, and each surface was cleaned with an appropriate cleaner.”

She points to a line. “Window cleaner for windows. No streaks left behind either, whereas it’s noted the rest of the windows were dingy.” She points to another line. “Hardwood floors were cleaned with hardwood cleaner. No streaks.” She points to another line. “The tables were all shined with wood-safe cleanser. No streaks…”

As my head wraps around the facts I should have already caught, she goes on.

“My father was…um…friends with a janitor when I was younger. It’s a habit, almost a compulsion, to use the appropriate cleaners for surfaces after so many years of training the mind to use those. If I were you, I’d look for custodial services in the area and check to see if these apartment buildings ever outsourced to individual cleaning companies.”

I slide the paper closer, my eyes moving over all the facts. “We interviewed all employees and did background checks,” I say absently. “And we considered the cleaning so thoroughly bit to be a case of OCD but ruled it out based on the fact there were different amounts of stab wounds, and they didn’t clean anything other than the kill room.”

“A lot of custodial services pay cash under the table because it’s hard to keep workers. Some of them have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy because they have to hire whatever walks in needing a job. The company keeps the majority of the money. Workers make crumbs in comparison. So cash under the table that isn’t taxed is a big way to draw in more workers, and also keep from having to supply benefits to said employees. It’s likely they never mentioned them because they didn’t want to have to tell you that.”

“You’re a fucking genius,” I groan.

I grab her face in both my hands and kiss her hard, even though I also want to throttle her at the same time.

“But now I have a call to make,” I grumble, feeling her smile against my lips.

“Make your call. Catch a bad guy. Maybe the lead is solid and you can catch him before he kills again.”

Reluctantly, I pull up my phone, and dial Hadley. She’s going to fucking kill me.