Page 16 of All the Lies (Mindf*ck 4)

I wish I could see the video, examine their expressions, but I don’t want Jake to face-time me right now, because he’d have to pause all this.

“He ain’t ever handled someone who isn’t afraid of him. But if we take out their leader, the others will fall in line. They always do. You cut a head off a snake to end it. You don’t just cut off one rat from its food supply.”

My stomach plummets like a rocket as I slowly stand to my feet.

“How do we do this?” Justin asks, his voice more determined now that Chad has convinced him this is the answer to all their problems.

“Simple. Block off the road to the cabins. Wait at the courts. It’ll give you the element of surprise, and it’s just far enough away that the others will never hear or see you if they come back before you finish it.”

My heartbeat slams into my throat, and I grab my hood, jerking it over my head as I head toward the backdoor, taking long, quick strides. “They’re going after Logan,” I tell Jake, panic inching up my spine with paralyzing force.

“Look at camera thirteen,” he says quietly.

I pull up the app, and my feet lock into place as I see Logan being detoured by the roadblocks.

Almost immediately, I break into a sprint, tossing my phone into my back pocket, as I use every burst of speed inside me, my adrenaline making me run even faster.

The whole town will bleed if I’m too late.

The whole fucking town will scream for me.

Chapter 5

It is the flash that appears; the thunderbolt will follow.

—Voltaire

LOGAN

“I’ll run in and see if Craig has anything while you’re checking on—”

; Donny’s words end on a grunt, and I turn around, confused as to why he just stopped talking. When I see him on the hard court, a little blood running from his mouth as he lies there unconscious, I grab for my gun too late.

Something hard slams into my head, and I fall forward, disoriented and dizzy, as I crash into the unforgiving pavement below me. My stomach pitches, and my head gains thirty pounds as I try to black out, fighting hard to stay conscious.

A blur of a man’s silhouette steps into my vision, the moonlight not favoring me enough to show me his face. At least not until he kneels down and smiles at me.

Deputy Justin Hollis.

“You boys just can’t learn to leave well enough alone, now can you?” he taunts, grabbing my gun from my hip.

Weakly, I try to fight for it, but my hands aren’t cooperating, and the world is still spinning around me. It feels like gravity has waged a war against my body, pinning me down.

As I struggle up to my hands and knees, Hollis laughs, kicking me in the stomach, sending me spiraling down on my back as my stomach heaves.

I shake my head as his laughter echoes back and forth in my mind, sounding like it’s coming from everywhere at once.

“Big bad Supervisory Special Agent Bennett. You don’t look so threatening to me. Even the sheriff was worried about you.”

The distinct sound of my gun being cocked registers, echoing from all over like his laughter. But before the gunshot can come, I hear a sharp intake of air and a pained yelp escape from him.

The gun falls, rattling somewhere in the distance, and my blurry eyes look up to see Hollis’s head snapping back as a figure clad in all black becomes a blurring fury of motion.

My head is too groggy, making the scene nothing but a distorted movie in front of me. The black-clad figure spins, shooting a foot out to the deputy’s chest. Hollis cries out, crashing to the ground. And the figure comes down on top of him, raining punches on his face.

Even the hands are clad in all black, so I can barely see what he’s doing.