FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series (33 page)

What else could go wrong?

“They’ve given the case to somebody else, but the new guy is starting from square one. He won’t have anything until at least Monday.”

Monday would be too late. And they all knew it.

Stacey cleared her throat, knowing they couldn’t waste precious minutes worrying about a profile that wouldn’t do them any good, anyway. “I want to ask my dad if he remembers any cases of animal abuse from his years in office. Or even if he got calls about lots of missing pets in one particular neighborhood, that type of thing.”

Stokes seemed to have finally regained her equilibrium. “Good idea,” she said.

For the first few minutes since the agents had arrived, the other woman had said almost nothing, appearing completely lost in thought. Stacey didn’t wonder what she was thinking about. Jackie wore a wedding ring on her left hand. And had proudly talked about her kids the other night.

How do they stand it? How do parents do it?

Stacey had wondered before. She’d probably wonder for the rest of her life.

“So you and I will take the surveillance files to your father and ask him about the animal abuse,” Dean said.

“We’ll have to bring the laptop and set everything up for him. He has a computer, though it’s pretty old. I had wireless Internet hooked up for him, but I don’t think he even knows how to sign on to it, and the network’s not secured.”

Stokes had apparently gotten her head back into the here and very desperate now. “Okay, while you and Dean go talk to the former sheriff, Kyle and I will head out to try to interview a few others, people who were a little friendlier with the victim than we thought?”

The woman exchanged a quick, private look with Dean, which Stacey interpreted immediately. “Deputy Flanagan’s arm is really broken.”

Dean coughed into his fist, and she nearly smiled. Did he really think she didn’t understand the way he thought? Of course he’d continue to suspect Mitch until the other man was definitively ruled out. She would expect nothing less.

And would do nothing else herself.

“You’re certain?” he asked.

“The local doctor’s a nice old-timer. Realizing we probably suspected him, Mitch went to see him. Doc called me right before you arrived this morning, said he had copies of the X-rays if I wanted to see them. The left arm was broken in two places. He also said he always initials his patients’ casts, and the one Mitch is wearing right now is the same one he put on the night the arm was broken. That was a few days before your last victim disappeared. I assume if the Reaper had been favoring one arm, or trying to hide it, you would have noticed something on the tape?”

Nobody answered. The three agents simply stared at one another, their moods growing even darker. Which told Stacey all she ever wanted to know about the details of that last videotaped murder.

“He used both arms,” Dean said, his voice low.

Beheaded
.
God, that poor young girl.

“Thanks,” he added. “It looks like you managed to get another suspect crossed off our list.”

“So we go to this crazy commando guy’s place,” Mulrooney said.

Stacey groaned. “Oh, no, please don’t go to Warren’s. Let me handle him.”

“We can’t waste any time, Sheriff Rhodes.” Murooney didn’t sound unkind or unappreciative. “I know you’ve been very helpful, but—”

“This isn’t about me not wanting you bigger kids to play in my sandbox,” she insisted. “I just know this guy. He’s not the Reaper. You’d be wasting your time.”

Dean stepped in. “But we both saw the look on his face that day when he came out on his ATV. He knows something.”

Yes. He might know something. Still, the last thing any of them could deal with now was an armed standoff with an unstable man who almost certainly was not the killer they sought.

“I agree, he might have information. But there’s only one way we’re going to get it, and that’s if I can get him to come into the office. If a pair of FBI agents step onto his property, Warren will start screaming Waco. He’ll threaten to kill anybody who gets too close, and you two will have to end up shooting him to protect yourselves.”

“Jeez, and they say big cities have the crazies?” Mulrooney said with a rueful shake of his head. “What do they put in the water around this place? Crack? I mean, you’ve got serial killers, animal abusers, psycho commandos, abusive stepfathers. Sounds like everyone in Hope Valley is tripping.”

It did sound that way, which broke Stacey’s heart. Because it just wasn’t true. Hope Valley was a good place. A safe place. It was a far cry from the rest of the world. “You’re seeing the worst of the worst. There are many more good people here than bad. But we’re not exactly out there looking for them, are we?”

“It’s not like anybody in law enforcement spends their days tracking down the good guys,” said Dean.

“Too bad.” Mulrooney snorted. “If you ask me, going after Mr. Rogers beats chasing Jack-the-freakin’-Ripper any day.” He and Stokes exchanged a look. “Okay, back to the bar we go.”

Stacey thought for a long moment before she opened her mouth, considering what she and Dean had talked about the other night. About the possibilities, the profile. The chance that someone she knew very well might be a monster.

It didn’t seem possible, but she couldn’t deny it had to be checked out. Since she had to go to her father’s, and the other agents needed to fill the time until she could meet back up with them to call Warren in, they were the obvious ones to do the checking. “I have something else you might want to look into,” she murmured, not meeting Dean’s eye. She bent down and scrawled a name and an address on a piece of paper, handing it to Special Agent Stokes.

“You think this guy could be involved?”

Did she? Did she really? It seemed impossible.

Then again, someone murdering innocent victims and charging people for the privilege of watching it done had seemed completely impossible to her a week ago, too.

“I don’t know that I’d call him a suspect,” she admitted. “But he was at the bar the night Lisa disappeared. And his background and lifestyle make it at least possible. He’s worth a look, anyway.”

Dean glanced over Stokes’s shoulder at the piece of paper and read the name. He didn’t respond with any more than a brief nod. But the gleam in his eyes said he agreed.

Her brother’s best pal, Randy Covey, was worth checking out.

Wyatt had known
it was a long shot. Brandon and Lily were brilliant at what they did, but knocking off an international Web site when they weren’t even certain where it was hosted was a tall order.

But somehow, deep down, he’d expected them to pull it off.

Knowing he’d catch heat, knowing he’d be criticized for risking the whole operation, knowing he’d be blamed if this son of a bitch Reaper went underground and hid in anonymity for the rest of his days, knowing all that, he’d wanted them to succeed.

They hadn’t.

They hadn’t
.

He didn’t know who’d been more upset: Brandon because the failure was an insult to his abilities. Or Lily, because she was Lily.

Her reaction would haunt him in days to come. He didn’t know if he would ever forgive himself for hiring her in the first place, knowing her vulnerabilities.

Lily had already become almost obsessed with that perverted character who called himself Lovesprettyboys. For the same deviant to win the auction and make his sick choice had almost pulled the legs completely out from under the young agent.

“A boy,” he whispered, still not believing it. “He paid to watch someone rape and murder a little boy.”

There could have been no worse words for Lily Fletcher to read on that screen. None that would stab straight through her heart as viciously as if she were pierced with one of the scythes the Reaper used so joyfully in Satan’s Playground.

He’d tried to talk to her. She’d told him she didn’t need to.

He’d tried to send her home. She’d refused to go.

Instead, she’d been in her office with Brandon, each working frantically on their assigned tasks. Brandon tried to monitor any private communication between the killer and his customer. Lily was trying to find the money exchanged between them.

She’d had no luck before. That didn’t mean she would give up. In fact, he now knew she wouldn’t give up until both of the real monsters from that virtual world were behind bars.

“Wyatt? Wyatt!” Brandon called from out in the hallway.

He jumped up from behind his desk and hurried out of the office, seeing the younger man rushing toward him. “You’ve found something?”

Brandon shook his head, turning on his heel and hurrying back down the hallway. “No, it’s Lily.”

Oh, God.
What had she done? What had he done to her? Had her fragile psyche finally cracked under the strain of her family’s horror combined with this current one?

He skidded into the office Brandon and Lily shared. His heart pounding and his pulse roaring through his veins, he half expected to see her slumped at her desk.

She wasn’t. Instead, she sat upright, her fingers clicking wildly, her nose almost touching the monitor.

“What happened?”

“Shh!”

He remained silent, and so did Brandon, for a long minute or two. Then Lily froze. Her mouth dropped and she jerked so hard her glasses fell off her face. Putting her hands on the edge of her desk, she launched herself backward with a shocked cry, as if she couldn’t bear to see whatever it was she’d discovered.

“What?” Brandon knelt beside her. “Tiger Lily, what is it?”

She shook her head, looking up toward the ceiling, as if that held the answers. “I understand now. I see. I followed the spiderweb. Couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d worded it. ‘Real.’ ‘No Credit.’”

“I don’t understand, Lily.” Wyatt walked over and put a hand on her slender shoulder, hoping the agent hadn’t had some kind of mental breakdown. She’d been honest about the psychiatric therapy she’d undergone after her nephew’s murder and her sister’s suicide. Had today’s horrifying discovery pushed her back over the edge?

“I couldn’t track the money,” she whispered. “Couldn’t find it; the trail went nowhere, thin and fragile as a spiderweb.”

She was starting to make sense. And his pulse gradually began to slow. “But now? What happened, Lily? Have you tracked it now?”

“No.”

“You’re obviously over-tired,” Brandon said, his tone sympathetic. “You need a break. Maybe we should call someone to come pick you up?”

Brandon didn’t know. Nobody knew, except Wyatt, that there was no one to call. Lily was completely alone in the world. Her sister and nephew had been her last two surviving family members. Now they were both gone and she had absolutely no one.

“Lily,” he murmured, knowing this wasn’t fatigue, but was, in fact, something like shocked wonderment. “Tell me.”

She finally tore her gaze off the ceiling and met his stare directly. “I can find him, Wyatt.” The assurance returned. Steel oozed back into her posture, and the weak, haunted woman began to disappear right before his eyes.

“Good,” he said, his tone soothing, though he was confused by her mood.

“I can track the auction payment as soon as it’s made. Because this time, it will be made.”

Brandon slowly rose, obviously realizing his office mate wasn’t in the middle of a nervous breakdown. “What are you talking about? He’s always gotten paid, except for that very first murder, Lisa Zimmerman’s. Why is this one different?”

“Yes. Paid.” She pulled her eyes from Wyatt’s and looked back at the computer. The screen displayed a sequence of numbers, as well as some odd, coinlike symbols “Paid in
Faida
.”

Wyatt didn’t follow.

“It’s an old medieval term,” she said, her voice growing hard. “It means blood money.” She nearly spat the words.

“What are you saying?” Brandon asked, even as Wyatt felt the truth begin to slide into his brain like an ugly, awful black mist. It filled every pore, every cell, and he closed his eyes, not wanting to believe it.

“It’s a game,” she said with a laugh devoid of anything resembling humor. “All a game, with Faida as the currency, as real as the money on a Monopoly board.”

Brandon still appeared confused. Any reasonable person would be. Because the horror, the awfulness of it, was almost beyond comprehension.

“The murders,” Wyatt said quietly. “He never got cash for any of them.”

“Not a penny.” Obviously seeing the still-confused look on Brandon’s face, she shook her head and laid it out with bald, horrific bluntness. “Don’t you get it? None of the other auctions were payable in dollars or euro or yen or anything tangible. They were strictly Faida.” She shook her head in utter disgust.

Brandon lowered himself into his chair, at last understanding. But Lily made it eminently clear anyway.

“He slaughtered those women for credits in this hellhole of a game. He did it for play money.”

T
ransferring funds.
Real funds. It made him very nervous.

But the Reaper had no choice. He needed the money by Saturday. Though he still hoped to get Warren Lee before the deadline, he had to be prepared for every possibility. That meant cash.

Maybe because he’d often wondered if this day would come, if he might someday need more money to survive in this, his unhappy life in the dirt-world, he had already opened an online account using a stolen name and social. Amazing how easy it was to set up those offshore accounts without ever walking into a bank or having to produce ID. And so easy to find out how to do it on the deep web that existed below the Internet.

Once he proved he had the kid, his buyer would make a substantial deposit into the foreign account. A few clicks of the keys later, and he’d have it in his real one, ready to be used to pay off one filthy blackmailer.

It could be tracked. Eventually. But only if someone was looking for it.

Nobody was. Nobody knew about him. Because if the feds had infiltrated the Playground, the site would be long gone by now. The administrators were good, better than any dumb-ass FBI agents. They had security layers deeper than anything he’d ever seen, and Satan’s Playground would have been nothing but a fond memory if there had been the slightest breach.