Beg for Mercy

by Jami Alden

  Megan typed the phrase snuff film into her search engine, her stomach falling as hundreds of thousands of results popped up. She felt the couch cushions shift as Cole moved from the armchair to sit next to her. She clicked on a link for seeherscream.com.

  “You don’t want to see this,” Cole said, reaching out and flipping her laptop closed before the page could load. “The FBI has an entire team of people looking at this and tracking down whoever is behind the Web site. What makes you think you’ll find anything they can’t

  “They’re only looking for videos of the Slasher’s known victims,” she protested. “What if there’s a video of Evangeline’s murder too? No one else even knows to look for it.”

  Cole rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “Megan, you’re going to drive yourself crazy—”

  “Too late for that,” she snapped. “Sean’s going to walk into the execution chamber in four days if I don’t do anything. Without something tangible, he won’t file another appeal. I know it looks like I’m grasping at straws—believe me, I know how hopeless this probably is, but what else can I do, Cole?”

  Cole sat back against the cushions, wincing a little as his knife wound pulled. “Hell, you could come on my boat, let me take you out to the San Juans for the next month or so, pretend nothing else exists.”

  Though his tone was almost joking, the look in his eyes stopped her heart in her chest. She knew what was shining in those night-dark eyes, knew it because she felt it, too, growing harder to resist every second she spent in his presence.

  I never let myself think about it because it hurt too much.

  He felt it, too, the need, the yearning for something, anything to grant him the power to go back and change everything, to go back to the time before they fell apart and make sure it never happened at all.

  Tearing her gaze away from his was like ripping a scab off a fresh wound.

  For a brief second, she let herself entertain the fantasy of disappearing with him and shutting out everything but the two of them.

  It was so tempting.

  In the next instant, the fact that she’d so much as entertained the thought made guilt burn through the fantasy like acid. “Cole, you know that could never happen.”

  “Of course not. But is it so crazy for me to want to take you away, keep you from getting hurt any more than you already have been?” He reached out and threaded his fingers through hers, and Megan resisted the urge to lean into his strong, bare shoulder.

  But she couldn’t keep herself from squeezing his hand. “Then help me. You’re a detective. Assume there is a connection between the murders. Tell me how you would start.”

  Megan was killing him. Cole tried to steel himself against the pleading in her big green eyes, the clutch of her much smaller hand in his. He wanted to order her to forget about it, then fling her over his shoulder and carry her off somewhere he knew she would stay safe.

  But he was as helpless against that look as he’d been when she’d stormed into his office, asking for something, anything, to help exonerate her brother. The only time he’d resisted that plea was the night of Sean’s arrest, and it had haunted him ever since.

  He didn’t doubt Sean’s guilt this morning any more than he did that night; he was still convinced beyond a doubt that Megan was doing nothing but torturing herself. And yet he finally realized this was the only way for her to get through this tragedy.

  He’d spent the last three years wishing she could accept the truth and move on, make peace with what had happened so she could get on with her life. But he finally understood that there would be no peace, no moving on, until she exhausted all options, until she did everything within her reach to prove Sean’s innocence. If she was ever going to get over this—and frankly Cole had serious doubts that she ever would—it would only be if she knew in her soul that she’d tried absolutely everything, left no stone unturned in her quest to save her brother.

  Cole didn’t have much—hell, any—faith that he could save Sean from the needle, and despite Megan’s belief in her brother’s innocence, he wasn’t sure Sean deserved to be rescued. Yet he couldn’t deny the feeling gnawing at him, the hunch that, although all the facts about Sean’s case appeared to be right in front of them, in black and white, he couldn’t completely rule out Megan’s notion that maybe they didn’t have all of the answers.

  “I’d start with the basics,” Cole said. “Throw out everything you think you know from Sean’s case, and find out everything that was going on in Evangeline Gordon’s life at the time of her murder, see if there’s anything that connects her to the other victims.”

  “I’ve tried that,” Megan said impatiently. “I’ve asked everyone involved in the case, repeatedly.”

  Cole shook his head and pulled the laptop from her onto his lap. “You’ve been making a pest of yourself playing amateur sleuth,” he said as he brought up a Web browser. “Now, if it were me, and I weren’t suspended”—he couldn’t quite keep the trace of acid from the word—“I’d run all of the names through our system to see if anything comes up. But without that”—he typed Evangeline Gordon into the search engine—“you’d be surprised how much information ends up on the regular old Internet.”

  “I’ve already run searches on Evangeline and anything related to the other cases, and there’s never anything new.”

  Cole clicked on a link to a popular social networking site. Megan peered over his shoulder and shook her head. “That’s been up since before Sean’s trial. It’s a memorial page on FacePlace, set up by Evangeline Gordon’s college boyfriend.” Megan’s mouth pulled tight when she saw a post that read, Finally the monster will die, and another, My sweet Evangeline will finally be at peace.

  “Looks like he’s been posting a lot more since Sean’s execution date was set,” she said, snatching her laptop from Cole.

  She scrolled through pages of comments vilifying her brother and grew visibly more upset with every post.

  Cole reached to take the laptop back. “You don’t need to read this. Why don’t you let me—”

  “No,” Megan said firmly. “I want to see what he’s saying.” She finished reading the written comments and went on t>

  wrapped in the arms of her ex-boyfriend, who obviously adored her. “These are all old.” Her brows knit into a frown. “But these weren’t posted the last time I visited.” The new album was already several weeks old. Megan clicked through the first few, then froze. She leaned forward, squinting at the screen. “Holy shit,” she breathed, pointing at the screen, “that’s Bianca.”

  Cole leaned over her shoulder to look, his coffee cup nearly slipping from his grip as recognition hit him full force.

  Sure enough, there was a picture of Evangeline Gordon, arms flung high above her head as she danced. And there, a few inches away, only half illuminated by the glow of the flash, was the Slasher’s last confirmed victim.

  Chapter 16

  Craig Baranski, Evangeline Gordon’s college boyfriend, lived two

  and a half hours southeast of Seattle in Naches, Washington, a small town on the edge of the Snoqualmie National Forest.

  Megan was full of manic speculations about Craig and what the pictures of Evangeline and Bianca signified, but Cole’s answers were frustratingly terse. He was closed up tight, back to full-on cop mode as he did his own mental churning over the significance of the pictures.

  Megan tried to follow his lead, but after the first hour, she was sure that if Cole gave her one more “hard to tell,” with that inscrutable look on his face, she was going to punch him in the mouth.

  Still, she was grateful for Cole’s steady presence beside her. As they approached the door to the sporting goods store where Baranski worked, Megan braced herself to face Craig again. Her memory of him was still vivid. He and Evangeline had broken up before her murder, but the wiry, serious-looking young man had been in the gallery every single day staring at Sean with eyes that blazed with the fury of hell from behi
nd the lenses of his dark-framed glasses. The first time Megan crossed his path, he’d spit at her feet. During the trial, he’d been stonily silent, the only evidence of his grief the tears rolling down his cheeks as Evangeline’s death was recounted in gruesome detail.

  And judging from his recent comments, his hatred of Sean and Sean’s devoted sister hadn’t lost any of its intensity.

  Megan’s likely poor reception was the main reason they hadn’t called ahead of time. That and the fact that Cole wanted a cold read, wanted to see Craig’s raw reaction to their questions before he had a chance to prepare himself.

  She steeled herself as she reached for the door handle, drawing strength from the warmth of Cole’s hand at her back. “You don’t have to do this,” Cole said quietly, his hand staying the door. “You can wait in the car.”

  “Are you high? Of course I do. And I know you won’t let anything happen to me.”

  Shocking how good it felt to say that, even better to believe it. In this, at least, she could depend on Cole to have her back. She knew under his calm exterior that he was as curious as she was to know how neither the prosecuting attorney nor Sean’s defense team had ever unearthed those pictures.

  A little bell tinkled over the door as Megan pushed it open. “Be right with you,” called a voice. At this hour on a weekday, the place was empty. Megan did a slow scan of the store, taking in the array of fishing, backpacking, and hunting equipment. She walked slowly to the front of the store, her gaze drawn to the glass case under the cash register.

  “Pretty easy for him to get his hands on a hunting knife,” she noted.

  “Hmm.” Cole leaned over her shoulder for a closer look, and she felt a curl of heat at the subtle press of him against her back, the clean scent of his shampoo and shaving cream that teased her. “Evangeline was killed with Sean’s knife. Even he admitted to that.”

  That’s all it took for the warmth to drain away. Before she could respond, a man appeared in the doorway.

  “How can I—” The man’s voice stopped cold as his blue eyes locked onto Megan’s face. His friendly smile fled, and hot color surged across pale cheekbones. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Craig’s eyes blazed with anger so fierce she was afraid he was going to grab one of the hunting rifles from the rack and start shooting. Cole positioned himself in front of Megan and raised his hand. “You may not remember me. Detective Cole Williams.”

  Craig nodded. “You’re the one who arrested that fucker,” he said with a quick nod before he turned his fury back on Megan. “But what are you doing here with her?”

  “We saw your memorial page, Craig,” Megan began.

  “You can’t make me take it down,” Craig said. “It’s not libel if it’s true.”

  “That’s not why we’re here,” Cole said, his voice firm and steady. “There are pictures of Evangeline and another woman. Her name is Bianca, and there’s a picture of her in the album you posted a few weeks ago.”

  Craig shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, and I don’t have to answer your questions. Unless you have a warrant or some official reason for being here, you have to leave.”

  “Bianca is dead, Craig,” Cole snapped. “She was found last week in an abandoned trailer, raped, mutilated, and her throat sliced open.”

  Somehow Cole’s almost emotionless delivery made the facts that much more chilling. “We’re just trying to understand how she ended up there.”

  Craig’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down above the collar of his flannel shirt. He walked over to the door, flipped over the CLOSED sign, and turned to face them, his expression anguished. “Show me which girl.”

  Megan’s stomach knotted as they followed Craig to the back, where he had a desktop computer hooked up to a large monitor. He took a seat in the desk chair and clicked on the album Cole indiced. “Why did it take so long to post these pictures? It looks like everything else went up a while ago.”

  Craig’s voice shook. “I found these on an old data card that had gotten shoved to the back of my desk drawer. They were the last ones I had of her. I thought I’d lost them.”

  Cole quickly selected the three photos that provided glimpses of Bianca dancing with Evangeline. “Her,” Cole said, pointing to the dark-haired woman, her face partially cast in shadow, her arms raised above Evangeline’s head as she danced up behind her. “Her name was Bianca Delagrossa, but if you met her, you might have known her as Bibi.”

  Craig swallowed hard. “And she’s dead?”

  “Yes. Murdered. Did you know her?”

  Craig slumped in the chair, his face falling forward into his hands as he muttered, “Oh, Evie, Evie. I told her to stay away from that place, those people.”

  Goose bumps broke out on Megan’s skin as her gaze met Cole’s over the top of Craig’s head. “What are you talking about, Craig?” Cole said.

  Craig sat back in the chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “If she had just come home, like we planned, none of it ever would have happened.” He shook his head. “But she wouldn’t listen to me. I told her moving up there was a bad idea. We were supposed to come back here after graduation and get married, but out of nowhere she said she was moving to Seattle.” He paused, his eyes going red when he stared at the screen. “I didn’t know that other girl. She was just someone Evie liked to party with. I took that picture the last time I went up to visit her, right before…”

  “What was she doing that upset you?” Cole probed.

  Craig shook his head. “She never told me for sure. I just knew she was going out a lot, working and partying at that club.”

  “Club One,” Megan broke in.

  Craig nodded. “She worked there as a waitress, with that woman, from the trial.”

  “Talia Vega?” Cole asked.

  Craig nodded. “She said was doing some modeling on the side, but she never showed me any pictures.”

  Megan bet the only modeling Evangeline had done was on a certain Web site.

  “There was something else going on there. She kept talking about moving into another part of the club’s business where she could make a lot more money. But she couldn’t do it with me hanging around.”

  Megan thought of the blonde, Stephanie, working the guy in the VIP room, escorting him out the back to be whisked away to who knows where. “How do you think they were making the extra money, Craig?”

  Craig’s expression closed like a door had slammed shut. “She never said.”

  “But you have a pretty damn good idea, do’t you?” Megan pressed. “Why didn’t you tell the police about your suspicions? If you really thought she was getting involved in something like that, why not say something?” Megan said, her voice rising in frustration.

  “And let the press paint her as some kind of whore? Let your brother’s scum-sucking lawyer somehow make it seem like Evangeline deserved what happened to her?” Craig’s face turned purple with rage, and a vein throbbed in his forehead. “That monster butchered her. The police had all the witnesses, all the information they needed to prove it. I wasn’t about to let her name get dragged through shit.”

  His accusations hit her like blows, but Megan forced herself to brush them aside. After all this time, she should be used to it, hearing what people believed about Sean, but every time, it singed her like a brand. “Or maybe you were trying to cover your own ass. Maybe you were jealous, because Evangeline was seeing my brother. Maybe you even thought he was a john, that she was letting him fuck her for money after shutting you out. You kill her and frame him; now you’re going after the women who you blame for pulling her into this—”

  “Shut up!” He was up and out of the chair and had Megan slammed up against the wall before she had a chance to breathe. Cole was on him a second later, hooking his arms through Craig’s and pressing his hands against the back of Craig’s head. “I loved her!” Craig shouted, struggling against Cole’s hold. “I never would have hurt her. I tried to get her to come
home.”

  “You touch her again, and I will snap your arm,” Cole said, and shoved Craig back into the desk chair.

  Craig shot her a glare but didn’t make another move.

  “Now, other than Talia Vega and Bianca, did you ever meet any other people she worked with? Do you know if they actually solicited clients while they were working at the club?” Cole asked, easing his hold on Craig a degree as the anger seemed to drain out of the other man.

  Craig shook his head. “I only visited her a couple of times before she was killed. She never told me what was going on. It was all stuff I inferred. I overheard a couple of phone conversations, found a lot of cash around her apartment. She said she was just making good tips.”

  Megan swallowed back a surge of bile. Had Sean seriously stumbled into some kind of secret, high-end prostitution ring? None of this made any sense.

  Cole released Craig, who rolled his neck and pinned Megan with a hate-filled glare. “So what, now are you going to the press, talk about how Evangeline was a slut, tell the world she was asking for it in a last-ditch effort to save your brother?”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes,” Megan said grimly as she turned and walked out of the back room.

  Craig’s venomous voice followed her through the store. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t save him, just like no one could save Evangeline from that animal!”

  Rage twisted with determination as she stormed through the front door. She could hear Cole’s footsteps thundering behind her. Now she not only had Club One connecting the two latest victimto Evangeline, but they also had proof of a personal connection between Bianca and Evangeline. She prayed they were actually on to something, prayed the information wasn’t too little, too late.

  She slid into the passenger seat of Cole’s Jeep. One thing she was sure of. “I want to talk to Talia Vega,” she said. “I have a lot of questions for that bitch, and I’m not going to stop till she answers every last one.”