Allison Brennan - Fear No Evil

The position made him uncomfortable. Dillon was used to being in control of any given situation. People came to him-cops, prosecutors, doctors-for his advice and opinions. He had the respect and admiration of everyone he worked with, his family, and his friends. He was good at his job, his vocation, his ability to crawl into the mind of society’s most sick and depraved and find justice for their victims.

And until now it had never touched him. Until now he’d believed he was providing a service. After someone had been killed, he helped find the killer by thinking like the killer. Before there was another victim, before the killer struck again.

He’d never been responsible for finding a victim alive. His analysis largely came from the kill itself, looking at the body scientifically, the life and death of the victim, understanding the victimology, determining through an almost empathetic process-the antithesis of science-what human makeup had done such an evil act. Then peering into the shadows of the victim’s life, narrowing suspects using logic and experience. Forensic psychiatry was as much a social discipline as a scientific one.

His inadequacies came crashing down. The sheer enormity of what faced them over the next thirty-six hours, that they might not be able to save Lucy, that only through her death might he be capable of finding her murderer.

“Connor,” he said quietly, “can I have your backup weapon?”

At first Dillon thought his brother was going to balk. Connor knew Dillon was a novice with fire-arms.

But he handed it over, butt first. “Safety’s on,” he said.

Dillon hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. He’d prefer to use words and diplomacy to finesse any tense situation.

But an arrogant, remorseless killer had Lucy, and if talking couldn’t save her life, a gun just might.

The dress Lucy wore was identical to the one April Klinger had worn during her final show. It seemed fitting, Trask thought, to have Lucy wear it. They had a lot in common. Not so much the way they looked-April had been petite, curvy, and blond, while Lucy was tall, lithe, and brunette-but Lucy was a dancer, Trask knew that from their months of online conversations. Twelve years of ballet. So was April, until she ran away from home after her grandmother told her she was sending her to drug rehab.

Trask had liked April, and had used her drug addiction to keep her compliant. He liked April because the girl hated what she did. Her fake rapes were popular because she wasn’t faking most of the time. She was feisty. Still, her drug addiction kept her in line, kept her coming back every week for another live show.

He remembered when he killed her. As with Monique, he hadn’t planned it exactly, but once his hands were around her neck, he couldn’t stop himself.

For years, he’d been distributing snuff films through Achilles Distribution. Nervous, because mailing them was dangerous. Still, that was how he learned to hone his sixth sense, to discern what mail drops were monitored by the feds, and whom he could trust. When the Internet bloomed, he created Trask Enterprises. No longer did he need to risk exposure by mailing the films-he could have customers download them.

But snuff films were dangerous because someone died, and while most of the women he killed were society’s throwaways-prostitutes, drug addicts, runaways-there was always the chance someone would be looking for them.

With the Internet, the niche market for snuff films was irrelevant. Millions of people would pay him ten dollars a month to watch sex on their computer. He made even more money selling the downloads.

He’d carefully planned the show. April would play a dance student. Her instructor would call her in for after-class lessons. Denise had always played the lesbian role well. They’d have a little lesbo action, whet the viewers’ appetite, then three men would burst in and rape them both.

Trask knew it’d be a bestseller.

But as he watched April dance, he grew hard. In the porn industry, sex was business. It took a very special woman to make Trask feel anything. Unless of course she was chained and fighting him, then he had no problems.

He let Denise and April go at it, let them titillate the audience, but he stopped the three actors from storming in.

He walked onstage instead, a mask on, naked.

One look in April’s eyes and she knew.

“No.”

He took her every way he wanted, her fighting egging him on. The act that wasn’t an act. And then she was beneath him. His hands went around her neck. And just like Monique, he knew that only in April’s death would he achieve pure ecstasy.

The fact that the entire scene was being filmed turned Trask on even more.

He wished his father could watch. See what he had created. Women would no longer dominate him; he was in control. He would always be in control. He had the power, the money, the brains to have his pleasure and not pay a hypocritical legal system that thought what he did was illegal.

His father, who had stolen his inheritance, who had humiliated him, who had told him he would be nothing.

Trask was something. He had more power than his pathetic father had. He had money, three times the wealth of his family-and growing. He was somebody . People feared him.

Then April was dead.

Trask watched Lucy dance, the anticipation building. He turned to Roger, who stood next to him. “I want the vote to go my way.”

“But everyone likes the blood,” Roger whined.

Trask glared at him, fists clenching and unclenching. “My money, my show.”

As Kate watched, the girl danced. The filmy white gown shifted and shimmered, revealing her naked body beneath. Lucy was elegant, poised, as if she’d danced her entire life. And maybe she had. If it weren’t for the anger on her face, the terror in her eyes, Kate would have thought Lucy was dancing because she wanted to.

Kate knew better. Trask had ways of forcing women to comply. And most women did what he demanded in order to save their lives. Not that it helped, in the end.

Kate stared at the data that had just come in. She didn’t believe it could be that easy to find Lucy. One minute, nothing. The next minute, the coordinates of the feed.

She searched the Internet for the coordinates to see if she saw anything from satellite photographs. The area was off the coast of Baja California, south of San Diego, where Lucy had been abducted. A string of islands, some with structures, some natural. Kate bit her lip. Was this a trick? Another ambush like two years ago?

It was too easy. She hadn’t done anything different from when Rayanna had disappeared, but she hadn’t found Rayanna’s location until an hour before she was killed. And the FBI hadn’t arrived for three hours after that.

Something was off. She should send Quinn Peterson the data, let him make the decision. Because if she was wrong and Lucy was on that island off Baja California, Kate would never forgive herself for not acting to save her.

But she wanted Trask. And she wasn’t confident that he was on that island.

Trust your instincts.

If only she had trusted her instincts before, Evan wouldn’t have died. She had believed Paige, maybe blindly. Jeff Merritt had told both of them to back off of Trask. Then the next day Paige said Merritt had agreed to their plan and was providing backup. Despite some initial doubts, Kate had believed Paige because she had wanted to. She hadn’t trusted her instincts and Paige had ended up raped and butchered.

Dammit!

She didn’t think Trask was there. But she couldn’t ignore the evidence, even after being wrong before. She typed a message to Quinn.

Either Lucy is here, or Trask has put out another trail of bread crumbs for me-or you-to walk into his trap. I’m sending out all my data and methodology. This one is in your hands.