Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck #5)(3)
Jacob Denver is sitting on a couch like he’s been waiting for me.
I cock my head, my eyes narrowing, and he sits comfortably, completely relaxed.
My eyes dart around, seeing the empty cabin and bare walls. He speaks as I clutch the gun with both hands, ready to aim it at him if he gives me a reason.
“I knew you were coming,” he drawls, leaning up. “So put your gun away. If I was a threat, you’d already be dead. Fortunately for you, I happen to enjoy breathing, and I’m not sure Lana would be okay with me retaining oxygen if I laid a hand on you.”
I cut my gaze toward him, releasing the gun with one hand, while holding it with the other.
“Where is she?”
He snorts derisively. “You came alone, which means you haven’t told your team yet. Well, other than the Leonard guy whose cabin you charged into then ran out a little while later.”
“You’re watching us. Big surprise. I already knew this. Where is Victoria?”
His eyes widen marginally. “Oh, so you’ve figured out the truth now instead of slamming her with accusations and silencing her. Little late, don’t you think?”
There’s a harsh bitterness to his tone, like he hates me and has been waiting to be proven right.
“Her name is Lana. Victoria Evans was killed by this town. She can’t be Victoria Evans. She had to reinvent herself just to find the will to go on. You called her sick, but you have no idea what you’re up against. You have no fucking idea what she survived.”
His words grow angrier with each new sentence, and he slowly stands.
I grip the gun tighter with one hand, watching him warily.
“Looks like your legs work just fine,” I quip, eyeing the man who has played the world.
He taps his legs. “They work better than your mind.”
“I thought she was Kennedy Carlyle, and had developed an unhealthy obsession with the Evans family due to the two coincidental times their paths crossed with death. And—”
“Kennedy Carlyle was a self-absorbed drug addict, who, quite frankly, was a motherfucking menace to society. It was only a matter of time before she got as high as her parents got drunk and killed someone. As fate would have it, she only killed a tree the night she also killed herself. Seemed like a waste of a perfectly good identity and funds for someone who needed to survive.”
“I assumed it was you,” I say calmly. “The one who changed her world.”
“Falsifying hospital records is actually easy, as long as you know where to start,” he says, once again tapping the sides of his legs that he fooled the world into believing were useless. “She needed a legitimate identity; she needed money; she needed a chance. If they’d found out she survived, they would have come. And back then? They would have killed her with almost no effort.”
He blows out a breath, trying to calm his anger. I continue staring, letting him speak, trying to figure all this out as he does.
“When she told me she was screwing around with a FBI agent, I almost had a fucking brain aneurism,” he says, looking away while laughing humorlessly. “I’d killed myself trying to make sure no one ever figured out who she was.”
His eyes meet mine again.
“Then we talked face-to-face, and she fucking smiled when she said your name. She smiled like there was hope.” He swallows a knot. “I forced her to separate the kills by a month, telling her it was more cautious, when really—”
“You worried when this was all over, she’d no longer have a purpose to stay alive.”
His eyes glisten, and he clears his throat, nodding stoically.
“I was stalling,” he says quietly. “But after she met you? I saw so much fucking hope. As of today, I saw an empty shell. I wanted to be wrong about you, SSA Bennett. I went along with all her changes to our plans. Do you know why she refused to let you hear the story from Lindy?”
I tilt my head before putting my gun in the back of my pants.
“She wanted us to hear the story when we got here. She wanted it to have maximum impact.”
He stares me hard in the eyes. “She wanted it to have the maximum impact on you. To hell with all the others. She may still want revenge, but everything else has been centered around you. She practically prayed the Boogeyman would come after her, just so she could kill him and end the threat he posed to your life. And you treat her like a monster. Why? Because she kills? Do you treat your military like monsters? Do you stare at your own reflection with such disdain? Because I’ve seen your file. You’ve shot and killed thirteen serial killers since your career began. Those were real monsters, just like all the men Lana has dispatched.”
I stagger on my feet, struggling with that thin line between madness and sanity.
“But she’s supposed to what? Just move on and forget it happened?” he goes on. “Because the law says it’s wrong to exact revenge on monsters unless you have a badge or a government decree?” He takes a step toward me, holding his finger in my direction. “This is a girl who spent years training, learning control to keep her mind sound. Something our military or law enforcement doesn’t even require. These men? They destroyed her entire family. They destroyed her. Two fucking kids!” His voice breaks, and he turns around, putting his back to me when his emotions get the better of him.
I don’t even know what to say. Anything but agreement would result in a possible violent outburst from him, and for some reason, I can’t bring myself to fully agree aloud either.