Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

“What?” Brandon knelt beside her. “Tiger Lily, what is it?”

She shook her head, looking up toward the ceiling, as if that held the answers. “I understand now. I see. I followed the spiderweb. Couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d worded it. ‘Real.’ ‘No Credit.’ ”

“I don’t understand, Lily.” Wyatt walked over and put a hand on her slender shoulder, hoping the agent hadn’t had some kind of mental breakdown. She’d been honest about the psychiatric therapy she’d undergone after her nephew’s murder and her sister’s suicide. Had today’s horrifying discovery pushed her back over the edge?

“I couldn’t track the money,” she whispered.“Couldn’t find it; the trail went nowhere, thin and fragile as a spiderweb.”

She was starting to make sense. And his pulse gradually began to slow. “But now? What happened, Lily? Have you tracked it now?”

“No.”

Brandon looked up at him, shaking his head. “Maybe we should call someone.”

Brandon didn’t know. Nobody knew, except Wyatt, that there was no one to call. Lily was completely alone in the world. Her sister and nephew had been her last two surviving family members. Now they were both gone and she had absolutely no one.

“Lily,” he murmured, “tell me.”

She finally tore her gaze off the ceiling and met his stare directly. “I can find him, Wyatt.” The assurance returned. Steel oozed back into her posture, and the weak, haunted woman began to disappear right before his eyes.

“Good,” he said, his tone soothing, though he was confused by her mood.

“I can track the auction payment as soon as it’s made. Because this time, it will be made.”

Brandon slowly rose, obviously realizing his office mate wasn’t in the middle of a nervous breakdown. “What are you talking about? He’s always gotten paid, except for that very first murder, Lisa Zimmerman’s. Why is this one different?”

“Yes. Paid.” She pulled her eyes from Wyatt’s and looked back at the computer. The screen displayed a sequence of numbers, as well as some odd, coinlike symbols. “Paid in Faida .”

Wyatt didn’t follow.

“It’s an old medieval term,” she said, her voice growing hard. “It means blood money.” She nearly spat the words.

“What are you saying?” Brandon asked, even as Wyatt felt the truth begin to slide into his brain like an ugly, awful black mist. It filled every pore, every cell, and he closed his eyes, not wanting to believe it.

“It’s a game,” she said with a laugh devoid of anything resembling humor. “All a game, with Faida as the currency, as real as the money on a Monopoly board.”

Brandon still appeared confused. Any reasonable person would be. Because the horror, the awfulness of it, was almost beyond comprehension.

“The murders,” Wyatt said quietly. “He never got cash for any of them.”

“Not a penny.” Obviously seeing the still-confused look on Brandon’s face, she shook her head and laid it out with bald, horrific bluntness. “Don’t you get it? None of the other auctions were payable in dollars or euro or yen or anything tangible. They were strictly Faida.” She shook her head in utter disgust.

Brandon lowered himself into his chair, at last getting it. But Lily made it eminently clear anyway.

“He slaughtered those women for credits in this hellhole of a game. He did it for play money.”

Transferring funds. Real funds. It made him very nervous.

But the Reaper had no choice. He needed the money by Saturday. Though he still hoped to get Warren Lee before the deadline, he had to be prepared for every possibility.

Which meant cash.

Maybe because he’d often wondered whether this day would come, whether he might someday need more money to survive in this, his unhappy life, he had already opened an online account using a stolen name and social. Amazing how easy it was to set up those offshore accounts without ever walking into a bank or having to produce ID. And so easy to find out how to do it on the information highway.

Once he proved he had the kid, his buyer would make a substantial deposit into the foreign account. A few clicks of the keys later, and he’d have it in his real one, ready to be used to pay off one filthy blackmailer.

It could be tracked. Eventually. But only if someone was looking for it.

Nobody was. Nobody knew about him. Because if the feds had infiltrated the Playground, the site would be long gone by now. The administrators were good, better than any dumb-ass FBI agents. They had security layers deeper than anything he’d ever seen, and Satan’s Playground would have been nothing but a fond memory if there had been the slightest breach.

No, it wasn’t because the Playground had been discovered that the FBI had come around looking for Lisa’s body.

It was because of Warren Lee.

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out before. The blackmailer hadn’t gotten curious about the cops searching the woods near his place. It had been the other way around. Lee must have called in an anonymous tip specifically to jack up the heat for his blackmail plan.

The realization had both comforted and infuriated him. He’d been happy to realize he wouldn’t have to give up his playtime. And furious at the manipulation.

“I’m gonna get you, old man,” he said, his hands tightening on the steering wheel of his truck.

Yes, discovery might come eventually. He’d deal with it at that time. If his secret activities ever did come to light, and he thought the police really knew anything about Satan’s Playground and his alter ego, it wouldn’t matter that they could trace it. Because he would never be taken, never tried.

No one would ever lay physical hands on him again.

But that was a long way off, hopefully to be worried about only in the distant future. Now he just had to get through these next few days, as difficult as they were going to be. He had to allow himself to be manipulated one last time.

“And then never again,” he told himself as he trolled the playground. A mundane, boring real one. It was small, with just a few creaky swings and a jungle gym, in a small town between home and Leesburg.

He’d swung past it twice in the past hour. Only twice. He couldn’t afford to be remembered once a kid went missing. This was riskier than anything he’d ever done. He was much too close to home for his liking. But he had no time and no choice.

Funny how fate favored him. Because while he usually never had any peace unless he locked himself away and disappeared into his Playground, the house would be empty for at least the next few days. Meaning he could do what he had to do in private, with no chance of being caught. He’d snatch a boy, drug him, take him home, and spirit him down into the basement. Into his private rooms.

No one around to see. No one around to hear. No one around to stop him.

It was perfect. As if some entity were offering silent approval and support for what he did and wanted him to continue.

He just had to find the kid.

So far he’d seen no prospects. People weren’t very trusting with their children these days. Mothers sat on benches overlooking the park, feeding slobbery babies and calling out, “Be careful,” to their brats. Part of him wanted to move on to the next viable location for finding a vulnerable victim, an arcade or a public swimming pool or a park.

Another part wanted to drive right the fuck over to Warren Lee’s house and put a bullet in the back of his head.

It was a flip of a coin. Whichever came first. Kill a kid. Kill a blackmailer.

No-brainer, really. But he couldn’t risk failing. He had to cover both bases.

He’d swallowed his distaste for the whole thing, knowing it had to be done. That didn’t mean he was going to enjoy it. Or even that he planned to do everything the buyer wanted. He wasn’t raping a little boy. Only a sick weirdo would do something like that.