Scarlet Angel (Mindf*ck #3)(38)

I flip through the screens, checking out all the pretty camera placements Jake has found. He was a busy boy last night while I was finishing off Morgan.

“My brother was gay. Jake is bisexual. Jake was too scared to tell anyone he and my brother were in love. People made my brother feel like he was a walking sin or abomination when he came out a few months before they killed him.” I try to say it with no emotion, but it’s a lot of effort.

She sucks in a breath, and I rub my chest where the pain, that always accompanies my brother’s memory, starts to form.

“Jake always says his biggest regret was being too scared to show Marcus how much he meant to him. Marcus knew he wasn’t ashamed of him. He knew how toxic that town was. He didn’t confess his sexuality to prove his love for Jake. He did it to be honest with himself. He never once doubted that Jake loved him.”

“But Jake is doing this to prove his love?” she asks sadly.

“No. He’s doing it because he’s a romantic.”

The confusion on her face doesn’t surprise me, but she doesn’t press for me to elaborate. We drive in relative silence after that, until we’re nearing Delaney Grove. Then the conversation mostly veers toward a few other cases the team is working on.

Jake sends a text while we’re talking, and I read it.



JAKE: Olivia called and said Dad is giving her a hard time about his medicine. I’m going to go take care of that, but I’ll be back soon. Step one of our plan is already in action.

ME: Call me if you need help.

JAKE: Don’t worry about me. Should only take a couple of hours. Just watch the fun stuff. I’m about to send you some pictures you’ll appreciate.



Hadley asks for my opinion on some of those cases, drawing me away from Jake’s texts, and I give it. Then she makes voice memo notes.

“Logan will think I’m twice as genius as he already thinks I am if I go spouting off these facts,” she says, laughing.

But I don’t laugh, because I get distracted. Jake sends me a picture of a street. Of the street. Of the words written in red.

The angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

“What?” Hadley asks.

Jake also sends me a picture of Logan studying the message, and I pull up the video footage, watching the man I love as he observes the people around him. Most are pale and terrified.

They know what happened on that spot. They painted over it. Made it black again. Pretended as though the red stains aren’t there just because you can’t see them.

Logan doesn’t seem disturbed or terrorized, just as I knew he wouldn’t. He’s a logical man, after all. He doesn’t believe in ghosts.

But Delaney Grove…they’ll fall to their knees soon.

“I don’t understand why they’re all falling for that,” Hadley states.

“It’s called conditioning. They’ve been conditioned to be sheep. Sheep follow sheep,” I tell her.

“I don’t get it,” she argues.

“You have someone you look to for inspiration?” I ask her.

“Queen Latifah. Why?”

I smile to myself. “My father was an Einstein man. My mother loved Confucius. My brother, the hopeless romantic who was too easily emotional, lived and breathed Shakespeare.”

“What does that have to do with sheep?”

Smiling, I face her. “Personally, I was always in love with the words of Voltaire.”

“All that sounds a little pretentious to me. But your family liked dead people who had something to say that people felt the need to recite. Proceed.”

Still smiling, I say, “Voltaire said, ‘Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.’ For too long, Sheriff Cannon has ruled the county, and very few ever break away from the corruption he instills. Women are beneath men. And his word is gospel.”

I gesture to the flock who are crying, panicking, and already on the verge of an all-out mutiny against the sheriff by now. After one single day of mind-fuckery.

“Sheep,” I repeat quietly. “Fucking baa.”

She blows out a shaky breath as we drive the rest of the way into town, and she texts someone. I look around, seeing the place that has jaded so many and broken many more.

“I’m back, motherfuckers,” I say quietly as we pass the town hall. “And I’m going to make your life hell before I paint your town red.”

I try to find Logan on the cameras, using the app Jake installed for me before the first kill, but can’t. He’s apparently in some blind spots.

I don’t even notice we’re parked until Hadley turns off the engine.

“I’m letting Logan know you’re here, in case—”

Her words end on a shrill scream when my door is ripped open, and Logan reaches in, heaving me out of the car with one pull. I grin against his lips the second he kisses me, and I wind my arms around his neck, enjoying the feel of his body pressing against mine.

“Sheesh! We’re in the middle of Fucking Madhouse Hollow, on the edge of the woods, and you give a girl a heart attack?! Not cool, Bennett. Not fucking cool,” says the redheaded girl who knowingly drove the killer into town.

Logan smiles against my lips despite the crazy he’s had to endure since he arrived early this morning. I’m trying not to laugh at the irony of Hadley screaming and freaking out like he was the killer coming to get us…when…yeah…