Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

“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 .