Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

Before he could rise to leave, the door to Stacey’s office burst open. A wide-eyed young man, probably in his late twenties, erupted into the room, swinging an arm that was encased in a cast from the wrist to just above the elbow. “Is it true? Was Lisa murdered?” he bellowed, not even appearing to notice that three FBI agents and one annoyed-looking sheriff had all leaped to their feet and gone on alert at the unexpected interruption.

Stacey put a hand on the younger man’s arm. “Mitch, calm down.”

“I heard you were out in the woods looking for her body.” He thrust his good hand through his sandy blond hair, then noticed the others in the room. His face reddened, but he didn’t back out with an apology. Instead, his chin thrust forward, his expression going a shade grimmer. “It’s true. They’re FBI, aren’t they.”

“Yes, they’re FBI.” She released the man’s arm, watching him closely.

She probably wasn’t watching him as closely as Dean, Stokes, and Mulrooney were; however, it wouldn’t be the first time a perp had insinuated himself into a police investigation. Many serial killers had been well-known to the police before they’d been caught. And this guy had obviously known the victim very well, judging by his obvious dismay.

“And yes,” Stacey added, “we’re looking for Lisa’s remains.”

The truth of it seemed to deflate the young man, because he staggered back, his shoulders hitting the closed office door. He bent over at the waist, clutching his middle. “Oh, my God. She’s really dead.”

“Who is this?” Dean finally asked.

Stacey kept her eyes on the newcomer, giving him a frown of warning. “This is my chief deputy, Mitch Flanagan.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to be surprised. Her chief deputy? A guy in a cast with no sense of professionalism, since he’d burst in on a closed meeting? A guy who, judging by his behavior, had been involved with their victim? He and Jackie exchanged a quick glance, and he knew he wasn’t the only one in the room who wanted to know more.

Stacey returned her attention solely to Flanagan. “Were you friendly with Lisa?”

His mouth opened, no sounds coming out. Then he nodded. “We were close.”

Damn. Lovers. Stacey looked shocked. “How long had that been going on?”

“Nothing was going on. Not in that way.”

Doubtful. Or at least, not for lack of trying on this guy’s part.

“But we were friends. She could talk to me, and I was trying to help her.” He rubbed a hand over what Dean suspected were tearstained eyes.

Or maybe Flanagan just wanted them to look that way.

God help him for a cynical bastard. He just didn’t trust anybody, especially not immediately after meeting them. Which, he supposed, made his instinctive reaction to Sheriff Stacey Rhodes that much more surprising.

“I want to help with the search.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Stacey, come on, you need my help.”

“You’re on medical leave and I want you home.” Her eyes narrowing, she added, “I mean it, Mitch. Stay out of this. If you were personally involved with Lisa in any way, the last place you can be is in the middle of this investigation.”

“Who wasn’t personally involved with her in this town?” the guy said, suddenly sounding angry. Angry enough to incite Dean to take a step forward, sending a hard look in the younger man’s direction.

“Fine.Whatever.” Swinging around, Flanagan grabbed the doorknob. But before he twisted it and stepped out, he muttered, “Just tell me when you find her.” Looking back over his shoulder, he offered one more pleading glance at his boss. “Please.”

She nodded, saying nothing as her deputy stormed out as quickly as he’d burst in.

“Well, that was exciting,” Mulrooney said with a lazy smile, sounding anything but excited. It took a lot to get the big man’s juices flowing, and Dean suspected he wasn’t even fully conscious until he’d had at least three cups of coffee. Nice to know some things were still normal in this very un-normal place and situation.

“You’ll need to find out just how close those two were,” he told Stacey.

She frowned, not liking it one bit. “I know.”

Her shock hadn’t been feigned; she apparently hadn’t had any idea her chief deputy had been involved with the missing woman. It had visibly shaken her. He understood why. Stacey was pretty damn confident in her own abilities, and not knowing something she must now see as obvious had to burn.

“Okay, enough for now. Can we get out of here?” Dean asked. But before he could take one step toward the door, his cell phone rang. “Damn it.” Then, recognizing the number on the caller ID, he put a hand up to tell the others to wait. “Taggert.”

“It’s Wyatt. I’m sending you a file and you need to look at it.”

“Good Lord, not another one,” he muttered. Glancing at Stacey, he pointed to her desktop computer, and she nodded her permission.

“It’s another kind of file; not a video.”

Thank heaven for small favors. But hearing the obvious tension in his boss’s voice, he knew whatever Wyatt was sending was bad. Dean sat in Stacey’s chair and faced the desktop, accessing his e-mail. “What is it?”

“ Brandon found the auction. It’s already over.”

Damn. They’d thought they had a few days, at least, before the next seventy-two-hour countdown started. His pulse throbbed in his temple and his fingers curled tightly on top of the keyboard as he kept refreshing the screen, wanting the thing to hurry up. Yet somehow, not ever wanting to have to see it at all. “When?”

“Looks like it went down yesterday around noon.”

The words stunned him, every muscle in his body clenching reflexively. “The unsub’s already got almost twenty-four hours on us? How could this have happened?”

He saw the others react to the news. With his few words and his visible frustration, they already knew as much as he did. Stokes and Mulrooney both sat back down across from him, leaning over Stacey’s desk, tense and completely at attention.

Wyatt continued. “ Brandon thinks the site owners are paranoid about being compromised, especially as more and ever more illegal activity is turning up there, child pornography and the like. So the security has gotten more intense. There was some Reaper chatter; then the site went black with a ‘Be Back Soon’ message scrolling across, followed by a line of gibberish.”

“Code for the members to find their way back in?”

“Perhaps. Or information on how to get into the invitation-only auction. It’s open only to the members who like that sort of thing and who can afford to pay for it.”

Dean would love to think that was a small group. But his gut told him it wasn’t. With a whole world full of deviants the possibilities boggled the mind.

“When Brandon got back in this morning and saw more chatter that it was over, he went deep and finally found a transcript. Have you got it yet?”

Refreshing the screen, he saw the e-mail. “I’ve got it. It’s opening.”

Wyatt waited, saying nothing.

When the screencap appeared, Dean resisted the urge to dive to the bottom of it to find out what they were up against and started at the beginning. He read quickly, feeling his stomach heave at the excited chatter between Satan’s Playgrounders with handles like Twistedsister, Thebutcher, and Marquisdesade. One persistent bidder whose name hinted at his true proclivities, Lovesprettyboys, tried to persuade the Reaper to let him choose the victim, but had been shot down. The others seemed content to merely toss out suggested means of death. Things so sick Dean wondered just how far the depths of the human mind could reach.