Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck #5)(32)

“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.”