The Mindf*ck Series

Chapter 2

𝘛𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵.
- 𝘝𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘦

𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗔

“How’s your dad?” I ask Jake as he walks around the room, hooking up a final monitor.

“He’s taking the meds again. You know as well as I do how hurt his ego is that he’s sick. But it’s handled. Now we can focus on this.”

I watch the look on Logan’s face as he steps out of Diana’s house, and I know she told him all she knew.

“I’ll watch Diana’s house, in case they make their move,” Jake tells me, brushing my shoulder with his as he sits down beside me, his eyes flicking to the numerous monitors he has spread out on the walls of the old hunter’s cabin.

The FBI came through, did a sweep of all these, and 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 Jake set up our temporary headquarters in his father’s cabin that has been empty for years.

I nod appreciatively, but I can’t take my eyes off Logan, seeing the pain in his eyes. Pain for a girl he never knew. Pain for a boy he’ll never know. Pain for a past that has haunted me for ten years.

And he’s not even finished getting all his details just yet. There’s still more to learn.

“He’ll find the evidence he needs, Lana. You’re right about him. He’s the real deal.”

Too good of a man to be sullied by the dark thing I’ve become.

“I know he will. Then my father’s name will be cleared—at least to the people in this town who condemned him.”

“And Marcus will have his vengeance from the grave,” he adds quietly, cueing the music that has everyone in town pausing almost immediately.

Only the ones too young to remember the sound of my mother’s voice singing that song on the church stage are able to shrug it off. But everyone else is growing increasingly terrified.

Terrified of the dead coming back to haunt them.

“You ever wonder what we might have become if my father had never been convicted of those murders?” I ask him softly.

“No. Because if I start wondering, I’ll never stop,” he says without hesitation.

The musty smell of the cabin will have to be washed off me before I leave.

“I’m putting him in danger by letting him go on this egg hunt,” I tell Jake as I turn up the volume on the monitor with the sheriff speaking.

“You have his back,” Jake says, his lips twitching as we see the sheriff turning a precarious shade of white, hearing the music play through the speakers.

He remembers that night. The night my mother sung that song on the church stage for a very important play. Almost the entire town was there.

“It’d better be enough, Jake. If he gets hurt because of me, I’ll fall over that edge, forget what this is all about, and kill without prejudice.”

My hands shake just thinking of the monster I’d become if I lost my entire soul.

Jake’s hand covers my trembling one, and he leans toward me. “I’ll reel you back in.”