He had loved her.
The Reaper had had direct, personalized requests before. He’d been offered bribes, had been accosted right in the middle of his playtime, had fielded personal e-mails filled with promises and pleas.
He’d never accepted.
The thrill of what he did was in the control it gave him. Other than someone else deciding how he would do what he did, the rest was in his hands. And the how was incidental. Only the doing mattered. Only the blood. The anguish. The terror. The pain.
All that was in his control. As was the identity of his prey.
So when others had reached out, offering to pay him to kill a man, or a brunette, or a specific person someone wanted out of the way, he had always refused. He wouldn’t be manipulated or controlled. He would never sacrifice the pleasure he gained from killing his favored victims to please anyone else.
At least, he thought he wouldn’t. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d never foreseen a situation like this one, where he might actually be forced to do so.
He’d had enough of being forced. Enough of being powerless. And the rage over Warren Lee trying to make him that way again had him ready to erupt in ferocious retribution.
He was a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Ready to land right in Lee’s lap.
“Calm. Control,” he whispered, feeling his heart race and his breath grow hot.
He counted to ten, forcing the helpless anger down into his gut, where it had lived, seethed, and taken root years and years ago. He could get through this. Even if he had to, just once, go out of his way to accommodate someone else’s desires.
Possibly sick desires. One potential client, a big fan from the start, had been particularly interested in choosing a very specific type of victim. He not only wanted to name the age, sex, and physical description; he’d insisted on seeing certain acts. Followed by the brand of death he preferred.
And he’d offered an absolute fortune to see it done.
The very idea had repulsed the Reaper. He wasn’t some sicko like that guy. Talk about weird.
The offers had been easy to refuse because, before, it hadn’t mattered. The money hadn’t mattered. He had certain needs. The auctions and drive-in ticket prices allowed him to meet them. All was well.
Now, though, with Warren Lee evading him, hiding out in his fenced fortress, almost certainly armed and watching every one of his security monitors around the clock, he wasn’t going to be able to meet them much longer.
It was Wednesday night. He had three more days to come up with the cash to pay Lee’s blackmail. And so far, his efforts to get at the man by lurking in the tree studded forest along his property in the middle of the night had been useless.
Spotting Lee’s security cameras hadn’t proved a challenge. He’d easily avoided that danger. Hidden by the thick woods of the state park, he stayed out of visual range, only a shadow drifting through the softly blowing leaves. Sitting high in a tree overlooking Lee’s land, he kept his night-vision binoculars close to his face, watching for any movement, any sign of life. Lee hadn’t come out of his house on the previous two nights. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t tonight.
He only needed one shot. Just one.
But he doubted he’d get it. Warren Lee knew who he was. Lee also, therefore, knew he was up against someone who knew how to handle a gun. He couldn’t be stupid enough to think he could threaten blackmail and not face retribution.
Then again, people were stupid.
He could have taken out the security cameras and gone in for a frontal assault. But Lee would be expecting that. The moment security went down, he would go on high alert. The vet supposedly had weapons that would make a terrorist jealous.
No, this was his only option, short of staking out Lee’s driveway by day, following him, and forcing him off the road somewhere. But the potential to get caught was much too great. He had to control the situation. He had to be in charge of the where and when.
Here. And soon.
“You won’t come out in the darkness. But I’ll stay here until morning if I have to,” he whispered, his lips barely moving.
In daylight, the risk of exposure would be great. With the coming of dawn, one of the park guards or some family on a campout could spot him or his truck, which he’d pulled off the road into a well-hidden clearing. They might hear a shot and come to investigate. Or they might just see him driving out of the park and remember his face or his vehicle.
The sheriff and the FBI had already been nosing around out here. If Lee turned up dead, they’d immediately connect the cases. Any chance sighting by a witness could screw him up. He needed to avoid being seen at all costs.
Still, he had to try.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t earn the money to pay Lee off, as disgusting as he found the idea. He just wanted the satisfaction of blowing away the man who’d blackmailed him. “Blowing away isn’t good enough,” he told the night. “What I wouldn’t give to show you what drawing and quartering is like. Let you watch while your guts spill out.”
Nice fantasy. But there was no time.
He had tonight, just this final night. Because if he was going to have to come up with the money, the wheels had to be set in motion by tomorrow. He needed to advertise, get things rolling. After that, things would be tight.
Thursday, the auction.
Friday, the kill.
Saturday, the payoff.
And he’d get his revenge on Warren Lee sometime afterward.
It could work. But he hoped it didn’t have to go down that way. He’d much rather deal with the man right now.
Which was why he settled more comfortably into the crook of the limbs, unblinking, relentless, with the binoculars at his eyes and the scoped rifle in his hands.
13
Lily had made a promise to her boss that she would remain focused on the Reaper case until the murderer was caught. And she meant to keep that promise.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t begin to pave the way toward catching the online sexual predator who haunted her dreams almost as much as the Reaper did. While she’d spent nearly every hour racking her brain, trying to figure out why there was no money trail from the several online auctions the unsub had held, she’d also made a few phone calls.
Including one to the special agent who’d investigated her nephew’s murder.
Knowing her history, the head of the other CAT had tried to refuse her help. She’d remained calm, pointed out all the advantages. And finally, considering she was already hip-deep in the Playground and knew everything about the place, he’d relented.
She hoped they caught Lovesprettyboys soon. But if they didn’t, if he was still out there once the Reaper had been stopped, she would be part of the team going after him.
It wasn’t justice for little Zach. Or for her sister. But it was something.
“Oh, my God,” she heard Brandon mutter from the desk beside hers on Thursday morning.
She immediately swung around in her chair, wondering what had instilled that note of shock in his voice. His usually exuberant mood had disappeared earlier this week, after what had probably been their fifth eighteen-hour workday in a row. Now they were both stretched to the breaking point, frazzled and desperate to help Blackstone and the others.
“What is it?”
“I don’t believe this.”
She slid her chair over next to his, looking at his monitor, not sure she wanted to see. Fortunately, there was no hideous video of a murder on display. Just a cyber sign in Satan’s Playground. But it completely stopped her heart.
“Another one?” she whispered, utterly horrified. “Already?”
He nodded, speechless.
“My God. It hasn’t even been a week.”
“He’s out of control. Accelerating wildly.”
The Reaper was ready to kill again. His ostentatious sign outside the “town hall” where he held his auctions said he was hosting another one. In mere hours.
Lily’s stomach tightened
, and she pressed her fisted hand against it, trying to will away the emotion, the revulsion. The panic.
Taking a deep breath, she got her mind back into the game. She examined the screen again, focusing on the cyber billboard. Reading it closely, she leaned in to read the small print at the bottom.
“What does that mean? That line about it being special. About getting real?” Because if the monster hadn’t been real enough already, she didn’t even want to think about the further horrors he might conjure up.
Brandon frowned, obviously puzzled by it, too. “We’d better call Wyatt.”
Lily reached for the phone on Brandon’s desk, quickly dialing their boss, who was right down the hall.
He was in their office less than sixty seconds later, pale and tense, visibly exhausted. And equally as stunned. “Something’s wrong. He’s getting sloppy and far too ambitious. He’s been careful until now; he must know we’re onto him.”
“Impossible,” Brandon said. “Lily and I have covered our tracks; they don’t know we’re watching.”
“Brandon’s right,” she said, meaning it. “We’ve been bouncing off servers all over the country, revolving IPs every single time either of us goes in. We’re piggyback ing on long-existing members, leaving no footprints that we were there. No way do they know we’re as deep inside as we are.”
That would be very deep. Brandon had been watching every move the cyber Reaper made, going back into the site’s history to trace every interaction he had with other members: who he was “friends” with, who he’d purchased things from, who his victims had been, and where he lived in that incredibly detailed imaginary world.
Lily, meanwhile, was following the spiderweb-thin thread from each auction, which she hoped would lead her to the money and its final recipient.
“He knows,” Wyatt explained, “because he knows we’re looking for the first victim’s body.”
“Someone in that town…” Lily murmured.
“Yes.”
The scrolling red line running across the bottom of the sign had been repeating itself over the past few minutes, the word special flashing out its message like a dark, evil heartbeat. Now, though, it changed.
All three of them leaned closer, reading the text. New experience! Never before witnessed! All restraints are off!
“Like the guy ever restrained himself before?” Brandon muttered.
You wanted more? You’re going to get it. For the right price, you get the how and the who. But be ready to pay; this one won’t come cheap. Qualified bidders only.
No credit.
“He’s playing. Having a great time for himself,” Brandon said. “Writing his own ads, like he’s selling some damned piece of real estate. No credit, for God’s sake.”
No credit. Lily let the words replay in her head, trying to untwist those spiderwebs that led in so many different directions, and find a clear path to the unsub.
Wyatt, who’d been standing behind them, watching and deep in thought, suddenly spun around and thrust his hand against the door, sending it flying closed with a loud crack. His hard, lean form shook, and anger consumed his handsome face. “Damn him. Damn him.”
She’d never seen him lose control. Never heard him raise his voice. Never witnessed a personal reaction from the man at all; he was always calm, reasonable, and in control. Now he looked ready to hurt someone.
“When?” he snapped.
Obviously just as shocked by their boss’s out-of-character display, Brandon kept his voice low. “He posted it at around eight a.m. our time, and said within hours.”
Lily had a thought. “We could…”
“What?”
Swallowing, still unused to this side of him, she said, “We could try to interfere with the auction, somehow disable the site temporarily to prevent it from happening.”
“Without them knowing why?”
She exchanged a quick look with Brandon, who said nothing. “We could try exploiting their security patches; they might be outdated. Or DNS poisoning.”
“Oh, that’s subtle,” Brandon said.
“We can try,” she insisted, then turned back to Wyatt, knowing he was the one who would have to be convinced. “There are ways to take it offline and make it look like just a random technical difficulty.”
“Which, even if it worked,” Brandon pointed out, “would merely postpone things.”
“Giving us a little more time to find him,” Lily argued.
Brandon nodded, conceding the point, then made another one. “He’s never let anyone choose the victim before. If the Reaper means the winner can be specific about who he wants killed, maybe we could catch him by staking out the intended victim.”
Wyatt’s jaw clenched, and his dark blue eyes glistened with frustration. “We’d never find out who it is in time. We haven’t been able to trace a single dollar to this guy going back a year and a half. You really think we’re going to be able to intercept communications between the Reaper and the winner to get the name of the victim in a matter of hours?”
Lily glanced down, murmuring, “I’m sorry.”
“Save it. We don’t have time.”
She took no offense. The man couldn’t possibly be any more stressed. She found it amazing that he was still able to function, given everything this case had done to the team. They’d put in long days; he’d put in longer ones. They’d dug deep to find creative strategies for catching this guy; he’d dug deeper. Plus Wyatt had the added strain of being jerked around on the puppet strings held by supervisors who probably wouldn’t even care that more victims would die, as long as Wyatt was humiliated.
Oh, yeah, everybody knew. And the more she worked with the man and his team, the more she resented it. Wyatt was the kind of agent everybody wanted to be, and the kind everybody wanted to work for. Including Lily.
“So what are we going to do?” she asked, her heart racing as she remembered the team being in this position less than one week before.
Then, the consequences had proved horrific for a teenage girl.
Would they have to sit back and let this vicious psychopath take some other unsuspecting victim and extinguish her life?
Wyatt hesitated, considering. Then he yanked open the door, snapped, “Take it down. Take the whole goddamned site down,” and stalked out.
Dean was on his way back to Hope Valley before noon on Thursday. Knowing the Reaper intended to host another auction so quickly had put the entire team on high alert. They were counting on Brandon and Lily to find a way to get the site offline for at least a day so they could try to find the man and stop him.
Their failure didn’t bear thinking about. Especially because signs pointed to the unsub spinning out of control. “It’s too soon,” he muttered, alone in his car. Serial killers were never so deadly as when they began to melt down and decided they had nothing to lose by giving in to their darkest urges as many times as possible.
Something had spooked the unsub. Which just convinced Dean even more that the Reaper lived in Hope Valley and knew the FBI had been all over the town last weekend.
He dreaded telling Stacey. She had no idea the stakes had increased so dramatically, and he wanted to relay the news in person. Considering she had probably been making herself bleary-eyed watching the surveillance footage from the mall every waking hour since he’d left her yesterday morning, he didn’t expect to find her in the mood to receive more bad news.
She can take it. She’s a pro.
Yes, she was. A pro who was too good to be wasting herself in a job that would never fulfill her. He understood her original choices; he just thought it was time for her to reevaluate them. Not that he could say that to her. The lines on their sort-of relationship were carefully drawn. If he tried to go there, he had the feeling she’d shut him down completely.
Maybe later, when this was all over. God, please let it be over.
They had hours now, not days. So, not wanting to waste time tracking her down, he called her when he hit town. To
his surprise, she told him she was at home.
One thing was sure: Their reunion at her door would not be as sensual as their good-bye had been yesterday morning. After spending Tuesday night in her bed, making love to her the way he’d wanted to Saturday, it had taken pure will to walk away again. With the exception of the two hours he’d spent with Jared last night, he’d wanted to be nowhere but back here.
Not that he was about to tell her that. Stacey had made it pretty clear Saturday night that they were having a fling. He didn’t think she’d be happy if he told her that last night, before falling asleep, he’d mentally replayed every minute of the night before. That sounded like a little more than she was bargaining for. Hell, it was more than he was bargaining for.
“Hi,” she said when she opened the door to him. She wore her uniform, though her blouse was unbuttoned to her collarbone. Her hair was piled loosely on her head, her face pale, as if she’d been dealing with a headache.
He meant to keep it cool and professional during work hours, but something within him demanded the right to touch her, to taste her. Stepping inside, he didn’t even say hello before reaching for her. He tugged her close, wrapping his arms around her.
Their mouths met in a slow, warm kiss that demanded nothing yet promised the world. The kind only two people who’d shared incredible intimacies, and knew how good things could be, were able to fully savor. She tasted so sweet, and felt so right in his arms, that he couldn’t even remember why he’d bargained for anything but the real deal with this amazing woman.
Though their lips finally parted, they stayed close, her forehead against his. In silence, they exchanged warm exhalations, and through their clothes he felt the pounding of her heart begin to slow. His, too.
They put off the world for one more moment, reconnecting before having to dive back into the nightmare. Dean allowed himself to enjoy the warmth of her skin and the curves and valleys of her body pressed so tightly against his before regretfully letting her go. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I left yesterday,” he admitted.
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