Sidetracked

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Lana Myers and the consultant cover
2. Logan Bennett and two cases at once
3. The list and ten years of waiting
4. Fire, family, and what the book withholds
5. Motels, ledgers, and killing under watch
6. Heat, trust, and what wears thin
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I did not plan to read Sidetracked right away. I finished The Risk late on a Saturday and told myself I would take a break before book two in the Mindf*ck series. The first book ends mid arc, with Lana and Logan stuck between attraction and suspicion, and I kept thinking about that last scene while making dinner. By nine I had the next file open. Sidetracked is short, 115 pages in the December 2016 indie edition from S.T. Abby, and I read it in one sitting with the lamp on and the house quiet.

This is book two of five, so it assumes you know the setup. Lana Myers lives quietly in Minnesota and kills men tied to harm from ten years earlier. Logan Bennett is the FBI agent hunting those deaths while dating her without knowing she is responsible. If you have not read book one, start there. This summary picks up where that cliffhanger left off and follows both of them as pressure builds on each side.

A quick note on content, because it shapes everything else. This is a dark romance and thriller with a serial killer as a central voice. The motive goes back to sexual assault from about a decade earlier. The book refers to that history without staging long graphic flashbacks, and I will keep it that way here. What appears on the page in present time is planned killing, FBI work, stalking behavior from a separate offender, grief, and explicit consensual scenes between adults. If assault, murder, or coercion themes are difficult for you at present, skip this one or wait for a steadier time with support around.

Lana Myers and the consultant cover

Lana works best when she looks unremarkable. In Sidetracked she leans harder into that cover because Logan keeps her close. She cooks, she remembers coffee orders, she asks about his sister, she keeps her apartment tidy in a way that invites trust. Under that surface she tracks schedules and gaps in coverage. The tension in this volume comes less from whether she wants to stop and more from how she keeps going while sleeping next to the man assigned to stop her.

The FBI consultant thread gives her a reason to stay near the investigation. Logan values how she thinks. She notices patterns in behavior that tired agents miss. She asks plain questions about victim routines and access points. She points out when a timeline assumes too much about travel time or sight lines. None of this reads as genius exposition. It reads as someone who has spent years studying how people get caught.

That access cuts both ways. Every meeting teaches her what the task force knows. She learns which leads have stalled and which lab results might arrive soon. She also learns how Logan talks when he is worried, which helps her guess when to pause. Those scenes stayed uneasy in a good way for me. She cares for him, and she uses what she learns to stay free for one more week.

One small beat stuck with me. Logan brings home case frustration and talks around details he cannot share. Lana listens, makes food, and offers a practical thought about how a stranger might enter a building unnoticed. He laughs with relief and writes it down later. She watches him do it and feels both proud and sick. Abby lets that contradiction sit without commentary.

Her double life strains here in a way book one only hinted at. In The Risk she could vanish for a night and blame poor sleep. Now Logan calls, checks in, and sometimes drives by. Friends of his on the team know her face. That visibility forces her to change methods. She delays one plan entirely. She reworks another to fit a narrow window. The book makes clear that love does not soften her resolve. It makes logistics harder.

Logan Bennett and two cases at once

Logan opens this book tired. He is still the decent agent from book one, methodical with maps and interviews, polite with local officers, impatient with politics. Abby keeps his voice steady and warm. He profiles, he requests records, he waits on labs, he argues for cooperation when agencies compete. He also misses sleep and eats badly on the road. That fatigue matters because it explains some lapses without excusing them.

He carries two active problems. The first is the string of deaths Lana causes, which he does not connect to her. The second is a separate offender the press calls the Boogeyman, a serial rapist and killer operating in the same region. The Boogeyman case brings media attention and pressure from supervisors. It also brings a different kind of fear, since the victims are chosen for vulnerability rather than past ties.

I thought the two case structure helped the middle. Logan cannot fixate on Lana alone because the other file keeps pulling him into briefings. He maps links, pushes for phone and location checks, and tries to keep local departments sharing rather than hoarding. His boss wants quick progress that looks clean on camera. Logan wants answers that hold up, even if they embarrass connected families. That friction felt true to small city task force work.

His personal life narrows to Lana. He texts her between meetings. He asks her to stay over when nights run late. He defends her to colleagues who wonder why he is distracted. Part of him registers that she deflects questions about her past. He files that under privacy after trauma rather than deception. Readers will see the gap sooner than he does. That dramatic irony drives much of the suspense.

A parking lot call early on set the tone for me. Logan steps out of a grim review, rubs his eyes, and phones Lana to hear something normal. She walks him through a simple meal while parked a street away from a routine check. Neither says what they are really doing. Both feel closer after. Abby writes a lot of their bond in such ordinary exchanges. It makes the later danger land harder.

The list and ten years of waiting

Lana does not kill at random. She works from a private list built over years, names tied to the group harm from a decade earlier and the silence that followed. Some men held status afterward. Some married and settled into coaching and church committees and neighborhood trust. All counted on no one speaking up. Lana kept track while pretending to move on.

The book keeps her logic personal. She does not talk about reform or deterrence. She wants specific people gone by her hand because she believes courts failed and will fail again. She avoids hurting partners or kids or roommates. She picks times when bystanders are away. She leaves signs that link deaths so police will eventually see a pattern. That last choice is risky, and the book frames it as half strategy and half wish to be seen.

Her planning scenes show patience without reading as instruction. She watches a house for nights to learn when lights go out. She notes dogs and shift changes. She checks cameras at nearby pumps. She chooses clothing she can discard and pays cash where she can. She wipes surfaces she barely touched and thinks about hair and fibers. Abby keeps these passages brief. The point is character rather than method. Lana is careful because she rehearsed this in her head for years.

What surprised me was how little satisfaction she reports. Afterward she feels flat rather than triumphant. She sleeps poorly, rechecks her notes, and wonders if she missed a camera. Fear in town does not return what she lost. News vans appear. Neighbors add extra locks. Bar talk turns sharp while men lawyer up. Wives ask old questions they avoided for years. All of it confirms that people act when bodies fall in ways they would not act when a young woman asked for help years earlier. That observation stays cold.

One exchange, kept short on the page, stayed with me. A target tries to buy his way out and then threatens. Lana answers with plain facts about what he did and who else stayed quiet. No long speech follows. The violence itself is quick and not described for effect. I was grateful for that restraint. The book never asks you to enjoy the act, only to sit with why she believes it is owed.

Fire, family, and what the book withholds

Sidetracked reveals a bit more about why Lana lives as she does, but it holds back the full account for later books. Readers learn that after the assault and cover up, her family home burned and she lost people she loved. The narrative offers this in fragments. A smell that brings nausea. A dream she cuts off before the end. A refusal to drive past certain streets. A flare of anger when someone calls that period an accident.

I am keeping this vague on purpose, because the book does. It does not stage the fire as a set piece with minute by minute action. It treats memory as interrupted. Lana mentions paperwork and placements and years of feeling unhoused even when she had a roof. She mentions being young and disbelieved, then older and done asking. Those lines explain her self reliance better than any dossier could.

Logan keeps trying to get her to talk. He asks gently, then more directly, then backs off when she shuts down. He tells himself patience will win trust. He also admits to his sister that secrecy scares him. He wants a future, and he cannot picture it while whole years of her life stay closed. His confusion felt human to me. He is not cruel in his curiosity. He is a man who solves problems for a living meeting someone who will not be solved.

The withholding works for series momentum but it can frustrate. By the end of this volume you understand motive in broad shape and you still lack several specifics about who knew what and who paid for silence. Abby plants hints through minor figures who remember the town from that era. A retired clerk. An old neighbor. Someone who recalls which families closed ranks. Each hint points toward later payoffs rather than immediate clarity.

I came to see the fire thread as grief layered over rage. Revenge gives Lana tasks and dates and a sense of motion. Grief has no task. It surfaces at odd times, in a kitchen or a car, and leaves her quiet. Logan reads that quiet as sadness he can soothe. Readers will read it as history he cannot yet touch. That gap between his reading and ours carries much of the romance ache here.

Motels, ledgers, and killing under watch

Logistics dominate the middle of Sidetracked, and I mean that as praise. Lana cannot operate as she did when no one watched her. After the Boogeyman threat rises, Logan arranges protection around people he loves, including her. Patrols pass more often. Colleagues drop by. Phones light up with check ins. For a woman hiding bodies, constant care is its own cage.

Motels become her pressure valve. She books rooms outside town under false details when she needs to think or to stage a move without leading anyone to her door. Abby writes these stays with texture. The ice machine buzzes down the hall. Towels feel thin. A clerk watches the lot a beat too long. The vending area smells of cleaning fluid. One clerk remembers more than Lana likes, and that small memory creates a thread of risk that runs for chapters.

Her ledger anchors the plan. It is not a fancy prop. It reads as a working notebook with names and routines. Crossed out attempts fill the margins with cramped handwriting. She updates it after each watch, notes what changed, and marks windows that closed. When protection tightens, she strikes lines through options that no longer work and writes new routes in margins. The image of those crowded pages says more about obsession than any monologue could.

Close calls pile up without feeling staged. A patrol arrives early on a street she meant to cross. A camera she thought was dead blinks red. A neighbor stays up late with a dog that barks at headlights. A text from Logan asks where she is just as she needs silence. Each time she aborts or adapts. She waits in her car with hands steady and breath slow, then drives home and acts normal. That discipline is chilling and, in story terms, convincing.

The Boogeyman pressure complicates all of it. Because Logan is visible on that case, the offender notices him and looks for a way to hurt him through Lana. Security thickens further. Lana must now dodge both law enforcement care and a predator watching for an opening. She responds by simplifying. Fewer tools and shorter windows. No flourishes. I admired how Abby used constraint to raise stakes rather than adding new gadgets.

A detail I appreciated was how tired Lana gets. She makes small errors she would not have made rested. She forgets to eat, then overcorrects with coffee that makes her jittery. She rereads a page three times. Those human slips keep her from feeling invincible. They also set up the cliffhanger, where exhaustion and love push her into a choice she cannot reverse.

Heat, trust, and what wears thin

The romance moves fast, and readers will split on it. Logan and Lana fall harder here. They share keys and routines. Lazy mornings feel domestic against the blood on the timeline. Physical scenes between them are explicit and frequent for such a short book, though written as consensual adult heat rather than coercion. Abby gives them tenderness too. Logan checks for comfort. Lana asks for what she wants. Afterward they talk in low voices about work and family and the future they imagine.

I bought the affection more than the speed. Two guarded people recognizing focus in each other makes sense. Yet trust arrives quickly for people with reason to withhold it. Logan shares case stress and procedural hunches he should probably keep inside the task force. Lana lets him see rooms and habits she once guarded. You can explain it as fatigue and relief. You can also see the seams, where plot needs them close so danger can reach both at once.

Fair criticism belongs here. Forensic timing feels compressed. Lab results and record pulls arrive faster than real world backlogs allow. A few interview breakthroughs hinge on convenient memory. Lana talks her way past one scrutiny moment a bit too smoothly for someone under that much watch. None of this stopped me turning pages, but readers who love precise procedure may raise an eyebrow.

Indie texture shows as well. A couple of phrases about hair and coffee repeat. Dialogue tags lean on the same rhythm in places. The timeline asks you not to audit clocks too closely across motel nights and briefing days. The 2016 self published origin explains some of that roughness. Later books polish sentences while keeping the same edge. I noticed the seams and kept reading because momentum covered them.

Triggers deserve plain speech. Even with non graphic handling, the premise can distress. The book returns often to past assault and to victim blaming. Powerful families shielding sons form another thread. Present day murder runs through it as well. The Boogeyman plot adds stalking and threats toward a woman as a way to hurt Logan, which some readers will find especially hard. Consensual spice is explicit and not fade to black. Know your limits before starting. There is no shame in skipping a book built to unsettle.

The ending works as a hard hook into book three. Lana takes a step she cannot undo. Logan learns something that reframes what he thought was care. The Boogeyman thread tightens around them both. I closed the file annoyed at stopping mid breath and eager to continue, which seems to be the design for a serial of this length. If you want resolution inside one volume, this will frustrate. If you accept that Sidetracked is a middle act, the ride holds.

For pairing, read The Risk first. The emotional beats here assume that history. After Sidetracked, continue in order rather than skipping ahead, since the ledger and motel threads carry forward. Readers who want slow burn detection or courtroom payoff should look elsewhere. Readers who want fast dark romance with thriller pressure, dual voices, and moral discomfort that lingers after the last page will find plenty to chew on. I finished uneasy about whom I rooted for, and that unease kept me thinking the next morning.

FAQ

Is Sidetracked part of a series?

Yes, it is book two of the Mindf*ck series from 2016, continuing directly from The Risk. The indie edition runs 115 pages.

What should readers know about content warnings?

It centers on past sexual assault as motive without graphic flashbacks. Expect murder, stalking, grief, and explicit consensual romance between adults.

Do I need to read The Risk first?

Yes. Sidetracked starts mid arc with Lana Myers and Logan Bennett already involved, and the revenge list and Boogeyman threads assume book one.