Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck #5)(2)

“What the hell?” I ask quietly.

Blue eyes. In the picture they have on file before the accident, Kennedy Carlyle looks nothing like Lana Myers. And her eye color was blue—no contacts.

I flip the pictures, finding the photos taken for the police report of Kennedy’s damage. I know Lana’s body too well, and the marks in the picture, though somewhat similar, aren’t exact.

A chilling sensation creeps up my spine as sickening possibilities start to unfold.

“Any chance you have the file on Victoria Evans?” I ask calmly, keeping my voice steady.

He hands it to me immediately.

“Why?”

I take a quick, steadying breath before I open the file, and a pair of haunted green eyes stare back at me with a face that doesn’t match Lana’s, but still carries some resemblance.

My heart sinks to my toes as I flip open the pictures, finding the ones they also sent to the police. Nausea almost overwhelms me when I see the marks aligning perfectly with the scars I know by heart.

“Oh shit,” I say on a hissed breath.

“What?” Leonard demands.

My eyes pop up as regret wells and explodes inside me, shaking me to the core.

“Lana Myers is not Kennedy Carlyle.”

He looks genuinely confused, and I hand him the same folder.

“Lana Myers is Victoria Evans.”

He drops the folder like it’s on fire as his eyes jerk up to meet mine, wide with shock.

Somehow, probably with some help from Jake, she went in as Victoria Evans, and left as Kennedy Carlyle. Considering I can barely stomach looking at either of their badly crushed faces in those photos, it’s not a surprise that he did it with such ease.

“That changes everything,” he says on weary breath.

He breaks out his laptop, and I lean back, my anger slowly fading as my mind starts to work. I stopped at that coffee shop by chance, because our usual spot was too crowded. I pursued her, wanted to earn her trust, even saw something in her I needed for myself.

Every smile before me was probably rare. Every smile with me was given freely with genuineness. Every touch was hungry and full of emotion she struggles to show.

She trusted me.

“You may very well be the damn reason she’s not suffered a break,” Leonard hisses, still typing away on his laptop.

I take another shot of liquid courage and stand, but Leonard catches my wrist.

“These images don’t match up on the computer.”

“What?”

He points to the files. “I got copies of their paper files. You know I’m old-school. But on the computer, the images are swapped.”

I look on the screen, and sure enough, Victoria Evans has the wounds of Kennedy Carlyle and vice versa. Green eyes meet mine from Kennedy’s file.

“Jake could change what they had in the computers, but not before they started a physical file,” I whisper to myself.

I’d have never known.

“What are you going to do?” Leonard asks me.

“Tell Hadley not to say anything. I can’t talk to her right now. And you don’t say anything either.”

He almost smiles, but stops himself. He’s been advocating for her from the sidelines, and I’ve been on the verge of removing him from this case.

All along, I was in love with the girl who wants this town dead.

I jog back to my cabin, swing open the door, and practically sprint to the bedroom. That’s when my heart sinks.

The handcuffs are tossed on the floor, along with the sheet. And everything Lana brought is gone.

I swallow against the knot in my throat, slowly lowering myself to the bed.

She saved my life.

I cast her aside.

It takes me a minute to realize I’ve been gone for over an hour, even though it feels like only minutes. I gave her too much time to disappear.

I grab my phone and dial Leonard as I walk outside.

“I need to know any ties to this town that they still have.”

Typing rattles in the background. I’m tempted to ask Hadley, but after what I just said to her, I doubt she’d be likely to help.

“Christopher Denver owns one of those hunting cabins in the woods. I’ll text you the location.”

I hang up and immediately change clothes and shoes. You can’t run through the woods too well in a suit.

I dart out of the house seconds later, reading the text with the location. More memories flit through my head as I run.

Lisa fucking taunted her, practically tried to provoke Lana. Lana could have destroyed her.

Or Victoria, rather.

She left the argument with Johnson and the sheriff earlier because they were pissing her off, and she was afraid of what’d she’d do, not what’d she say.

Seeing the sheriff had to be hard on her, and she asked for two fucking hours, as though she needed me. And I came back, fucked her, then unloaded mayhem, as if I was daring her to show her true colors.

I walked out when she simply cried. The cold-hearted killer who tortured and slaughtered the monsters from her past… I made her cry. She never even got angry.

There are so many unpredictable variables about her, and I have no idea what to do.

As soon as I reach the cabin, I pull my gun from my ankle holster, holding it at my side. After two quick breaths, I kick in the door, but stop moving, my gun still at my side and not aimed at anything.