Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

That made the thing she had missed even more important, though she couldn’t realize that yet. Dean, however, immediately saw it was important, one more tidbit to confirm what he and the rest of the team already suspected. More than suspected: From the moment a bureau lipreading expert had told them what Lisa Zimmerman had said to her killer before her death, they had known.

“And he had to be someone familiar with the area to know a place to take her where he could have a big enough clearing to move around, use spotlights, move his camera, all without being disturbed.”

“Yes,” he murmured.

The wheels in her brain clicked almost visibly. She’d grasped it. Her shocked gasp confirmed as much. “We’re not talking about some stranger off the interstate.”

Dean shook his head.

“The suspect was familiar with this area. He probably even spent some time around here beforehand.”

“It goes further than that,” he explained, knowing it was time to fill her in on what else they’d been able to learn from the video of Lisa’s gruesome death.

“What?”

“At one point, she looks at him in shock and says, ‘You?’ ”

Her jaw dropped. She understood. But he made it absolutely clear anyway.

“The Reaper personally knew his victim. And she most definitely knew him.”

After he’d finished his twenty-minute-long phone call with the head of the Cyber Division, Wyatt considered joining Taggert and the very capable Sheriff Rhodes at the diner. Dean had texted him, not wanting to interrupt his calls, saying he’d run into the sheriff there and thought they could manage a somewhat decent meal.

Frankly, though, having heard everything his boss had to say about the endless machinations going on behind the scenes, and the grumbling about jurisdiction over this Reaper case, what he most wanted was a hot shower and a cold martini. He seldom drank, and never on the job. And even if it was technically after hours, being here in Hope Valley, Virginia, was being on the job. So a hot shower would have to do.

Ironic, really. His first supervisor, the man who’d given him the good advice against ever getting too comfortable with a martini glass while working for the bureau, was the same man Wyatt had helped bring down last year. His former friend had been right in the thick of evidence tampering, witness manipulation, coercion. The kind of corruption that went against everything Wyatt stood for and every reason he’d joined the bureau.

He lifted an imaginary glass and sadly murmured, “Thanks for the tip, old friend.”

Shrugging out of his jacket and loosening his tie, he glanced at the room. Simply furnished, it held the most basic of hotel accommodations. He’d traveled enough to have predicted the number of drawers in the dresser and to visibly assess the comfort of the bed. He’d wager there was a Gideon Bible in the top drawer of the nightstand, and that somewhere within was a hand-drawn phallic symbol left there by a bored former occupant.

Fortunately, though, the whole place looked-and better yet, smelled-very clean. No greasy dust coated the slats of the air vent above the bed. No visible stains marred the worn carpet, and not a smudge of dirt or mildew darkened the bathroom tile. All in all, things could have been much worse.

Deciding to ask Dean to just bring him back a sandwich, he reached for his cell phone. But before he could even lift it and dial the number, it rang in his hand. “Blackstone,” he answered.

The slightest hesitation and the quick, almost surprised inhalation told him even before she spoke that Lily Fletcher was calling. He smiled just a little. Lily, the newest member of the team, hadn’t quite gotten used to him and never appeared to know how to act. Had he ever been so young and untried? So enthusiastic and eager to please?

Once. And look where it had gotten him.

“It’s Fletcher, sir. Sorry to bother you; you’re probably at dinner or something.”

He sighed. “Please, Lily, call me Wyatt-especially on the phone and after hours.”

“Sorry.” A sudden hollow sound and subsequent knocking told him she’d dropped the phone and was fumbling to pick it back up.

His smile widened. He could almost see her at her desk, her petite form swallowed up in the oversize office chair they’d scrounged up for her from some old storage closet. Her blond hair would be mounded on top of her head, the small, wire-framed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Behind those glasses her eyes would be shining with intelligence or moist with heart-felt emotion-the latter not the best trait to have in this line of work, but no matter how often he warned her to remain detached, she was helplessly enslaved to her feelings.

Actually, those feelings had been one reason he’d brought her over to his team. She’d recently suffered a personal tragedy, the loss of her nephew and her sister. Almost desperate to get out of a closed-in office and into the field, if only to rebel against the impotence every crime victim felt, she’d asked for a shot, and he’d given it to her.

So far, he hadn’t regretted it. Her personal history hadn’t interfered with her job. Though he couldn’t deny that whenever office conversation turned toward child abuse, like some of the sick goings-on at Satan’s Playground, Lily Fletcher went whiter than any of the monuments gracing the city where they worked.

“Sorry, I dropped the phone,” she mumbled a moment later.

Of course she had.

Before she’d dropped it, her desk phone would have been tucked in the crook of her neck so she could leave her hands free. The slim fingers would be flying across the keyboard as she coaxed miracles from the machine, just like Brandon Cole often did.

And that was the other reason he had hired her, despite her lack of field experience and her tendency to get too involved. The woman was as brilliant as Cole, but she played by the book. Brandon Cole did not. Frankly, Wyatt needed them both for exactly that reason. “It’s all right.”

“Listen, Brandon asked me to call you. Hold on; I’ll put you on speaker.”

He held, then heard, “Hey, boss! Hear you may have ID’d the first victim?”

“It appears so. You got the message that I want you and Lily here tomorrow?”

“Yeah, uh, about that.”

“Yes?”

“Not sure we should leave. Something’s happening, boss.”

“What is it?’

“Hold up. I might have…”

Containing a sigh of irritation, he waited, hearing the clicking of keys in the background. As if realizing he was growing impatient, Lily explained, “He’s trying to get back into the Playground.”

“Bastards went underground again a couple of hours ago,” Cole added.

Damn. In the week since Brandon had brought Satan’s Playground to their attention, the group had changed servers twice. Brandon kept following them, like a child following a trail of bread crumbs, all over cyberspace. He wouldn’t find anything as sweet as a gingerbread house at the end of his journey, and the evil waiting on the other side was darker than any children’s tale could conjure up.

Finally, he heard a triumphant whoop. “Got you!”

“He’s back in,” Lily explained.

“I heard.”

Brandon jumped into the conversation. “Okay, here’s why I wanted to talk to you. It looks like the unsub is gearing up for a new auction.”

“It’s only been a month since his last one.”

“I know. He’s accelerating.”

Never a good thing. “When will it take place?”

“I’m not sure,” Brandon replied. “I haven’t been able to break into the actual auctions yet; I don’t even know whether they’re real-time or silent. But I started seeing chatter about it right before the site went dark.” More clicking. “I guess everybody gets excited when the Reaper gears up for his next kill.”