We stare each other for several uncomfortable minutes. I’m not sure what he’s trying to see.
“Hey.” Logan’s voice has us both jerking our heads to the bedroom doorway where he’s shirtless and moving toward me. His eyes flick to Leonard. “Anything happen while we were out?”
Leonard shakes his head. “All was ghost-town quiet. The sheriff is standing by his promise that Hollis was a bad seed who acted alone, and that he has no idea what set him off. Johnson says he’s already vetted the rest of the guys, ensuring us none of them are hostile toward our team.” Leonard rolls his eyes.
“Amazing. He managed to vet over twenty other deputies since last night, not to mention an extra five police officers,” Logan says with no emotion, but a definite suspicious lilt.
“This is the most fucked up shit I’ve been involved in,” Leonard says, his jaw ticking.
“Leave Donny with Lisa today. You ride with me. I’m going to go find Carl Burrows today and get some answers about Robert Evans.”
The glass in my hand almost slips, and I curse as coffee sloshes over, scalding my fingers.
Logan grabs some paper towels, and he brings my wounded hand to his face, inspecting it. I feel Leonard’s eyes on us, but I ignore it. I don’t know or care what his defect is.
Discreetly, I fire off a quick text to Jake—one-handed and without looking at my phone.
My heart almost thudded out of my chest as I raced through the town last night, running faster than I ever have. When I saw Hollis training Logan’s own gun on him, something inside me snapped. The killer came out and reveled in spilling his blood even more than I enjoyed killing Lawrence and Tyler.
If Logan hadn’t been hurt, I would have dragged the kill out for days.
“Haunted House is tonight in town,” Leonard says randomly as Logan kisses my fingers where the coffee burn has already ebbed.
“And?” Logan asks, looking over.
“And Kyle Davenport will be there. Says he ‘ain’t missing the only good thing in this fucking town because of some cowardly piece of shit killer.’ His words.”
Leonard shrugs, his eyes now not on me for a change.
I knew Kyle wouldn’t miss the Haunted House. He always takes a girl in there—whether she wants to be there or not—and fucks her in a corner to the sound of screams that get him off.
He’s sick like that. It’s one of the things that should have given him away long ago, but I didn’t see it until it was too late and I was a victim. People just walk by him while he’s hurting someone, thinking it’s all part of the ‘adult’ show of the Haunted House. It’s the ‘Sin House’ after all. It’s set up to show all the sins in the dark, demented world just outside the lines of Delaney Grove.
They condition kids to be afraid of leaving early on. The adult house is for sixteen and older, terrifying the impressionable minds from early on isn’t enough. They need to get the rebelli
ous teens submitting to the terror tenfold, upping the Haunted House to be over-the-top. Rape scenes are even played out. Sometimes they were real.
Lindy was raped in the Haunted House.
Speaking of Lindy, Antonio is already bankrupt, which was faster than promised. She’ll be happy to know he’s currently losing all his possessions. His car was taken away just yesterday. I got to watch it live on my phone.
The man who called his wife a whore, even though he knew all Kyle was saying was a lie, is finally getting his piece of justice pie. He just wanted to continue to be a ‘highly respected’ patron of this town, and he cast his wife aside to suffer alone.
Now it’s just a waiting game of making his life miserable enough to kill himself.
“He’s a stupid fuck,” Logan mumbles, running his lips over my forehead. It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about Kyle.
“I agree. But the sheriff is sending four deputies with him. Just letting you know,” Leonard says, but his eyes shift to me for an eerily long second.
I ignore his eyes like I have all morning.
Four deputies? Only two will go in with him. Those can be easily dispatched—well, as long as those two are on my kill list. So far, there’s only one deputy who is innocent of the crimes committed ten years ago, and then the two dispatch officers.
The other two deputies will be outside, watching for any suspicious man. They’ll never know.
“Grab some sleep. We’ll go see Carl when you’ve had some rest,” Logan tells Leonard, snapping me out of my thoughts.
“I’ll only need about three hours,” Leonard grunts as he stands.