Allison Brennan: Fear No Evil

Just thinking of all he’d lost, the money he’d been forced to spend to stay in hiding these past five years, enraged him. He’d taken care of Paige Henshaw, but Kate had slipped away. The bitch. He couldn’t wait to someday get his hands around her little neck.

But for now, he’d let pretty little Lucy think whatever she wanted. And she thought he was Trevor Conrad. Although it really didn’t matter if she knew his real name; she’d be dead in two days.

“All clear?” he asked Ollie as he went on deck.

The sun had set, and its dim light was fading fast. The evening breeze this far north was cold, but he didn’t put on a jacket. He enjoyed the sensation, the freshest air in the world empowering him. He’d always felt at home here.

“Yes, sir,” Ollie said.

“Dock next time you come around. Is the house ready?”

“Yes. Denise did a terrific job.”

“I knew she would.”

He had planned on killing Denise years ago, but she was so perfectly submissive she had ended up becoming a necessary partner. Special Agent Paige Henshaw had died in her place. It was better that way. Denise would do anything Trask asked, though it wasn’t as much fun pretending to rape a woman as it was to take a woman who didn’t want him.

Paige. She’d been satisfying, though because of her arrogant partner tracking her to the cabin, he’d had to rush her kill, resulting in a loss of more than a million dollars.

He’d lied to Lucy Kincaid: it was always about the money. The rest, well, that was just plain fun.

This island had become his sanctuary five years ago when he’d had to go underground. His network had temporarily fallen apart and he had tried, unsuccessfully, to find that bitch who’d fucked him. But Special Agent Kate Donovan had her own problems and she’d disappeared herself.

How does it feel to be on the run, Kate? Someday I’ll come for you. You can’t hide from me forever.

Killing Lucy Kincaid would be fun.

Killing Kate Donovan would be ecstasy.

JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT the alarm sounded.

Kate leaped from the cot, sliding her feet into boots before they touched the frigid cement floor. She strode to the computer bank that filled an entire wall of her barren room. She didn’t need additional lighting. The computer screens provided enough illumination for her to use the keyboard.

Typing in her personal codes, she watched the computer security program she’d enhanced identify the latest webcam that had gone live.

She didn’t get her hopes up that it would be Trask. For the past five years she’d been running and watching, always on the lookout for him. She was keeping strong, staying smart. After Paige, he’d killed two others, and they, too, weighed on her conscience. If only she’d taken him down when she’d had the chance.

But now she had better technology, more equipment, and time. After finding this hiding place two years ago, she was no longer running. That gave Kate an edge. She didn’t have to watch her back as vigorously.

Her alarm went off at least twice a day, sometimes more. She ran through the protocols she’d set up to triangulate the signal, not missing a step. The methodical process kept her heart rate steady, her mind engaged.

She knew that if she could find the signal quickly, it wouldn’t be Trask. He was too good.

Feed not found.

She sat up straighter, flipped on the coffeepot to reheat what was left from earlier in the day. Her resources were at a premium, drinking stale coffee part of the routine. Her blond hair and blue eyes stuck out in Mexico, so she didn’t make the daylong trip to Monterrey often. She didn’t want to have to disappear again. Besides, between government factions both good and bad, and the bands of criminals and drug smugglers, the whole area was dangerous-except here. This mountaintop observatory was an ideal place to monitor Trask’s movement. High enough to get rid of chatter, to tap into national security networks, to monitor every live webcam she found the feed for. Remote enough that she and ancient Professor Fox didn’t get visitors or tourists.

She usually bribed one of the local kids to bring her supplies. Sometimes they left with her money, but sometimes they came back for an opportunity to look at the stars.

Sometimes she looked at the stars as well, on nights when she didn’t feel that everything she did was hopeless. That Trask was going to kill again, another woman was going to suffer a violent, miserable death so Trask could rake in millions of dollars from the perverts who jerked off to the rape and torture and slaughter of women.

Kate wanted to kill him with her bare hands, wanted to make Trask suffer like he had made, by her count, nine women suffer. She would use a knife or a gun or any other weapon at her disposal. He needed to be dead .

She pushed her emotions to the back of her mind and tried her second protocol.

Feed not found.

She poured lukewarm coffee into her mug, dumped in a spoonful of sugar, and stirred, watching the strings of numbers, each representing a satellite frequency and corresponding land-based server. Legitimate webcams would route the information to the satellite and then to specific servers around the globe. They used the same system, so they were easy to identify.

Trask, like most cyber criminals, piggybacked on legitimate transmissions and repeatedly bounced the data he sent from server to satellite to server so that it was virtually impossible to track where the feed originated. By the time law enforcement tracked it-which could take days, if they found the physical location at all-the suspect could disappear. Or, like Trask, they might use a randomly generated protocol that made it impossible to track, unless federal law enforcement had a warrant. And even a warrant didn’t always help. Criminals often set up a false signature behind the feed so that it looked like it was coming from somewhere else.

Kate was no longer concerned with things like warrants. What she was doing was highly illegal. And her goal was not putting Trask in prison.

Feed not found.

She hesitated a moment, then logged on to the dummy account she’d created five years ago to monitor Trask. If someone at the Bureau was watching in real time, they might be able to track her. So it was imperative that Kate get in and out fast.

Her dummy account profile was that of a wealthy Texas businessman. She had a credit card with no limit, though the cost of watching a woman die was twenty-five thousand dollars. She’d used it once before, but she’d been too late.

Five years ago, Kate and Paige had been assigned to April Klinger’s disappearance. She had run away when she was seventeen. A private investigator her grandmother hired had discovered that April was an online porn actress. He had found one filmed segment that disturbed him, and he had brought it to the FBI’s attention.

It looked like April had been murdered, and the rape-fantasy scenario and her death had been posted online. Downloads of the segment numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

Problem was, they had no body-dead or alive. The FBI investigation led to Trask Enterprises, run by the slimy Roger Morton. He denied that “Trask” the person even existed.

Trask Enterprises had its tentacles in many so-called legitimate Internet pornography sites. The corporation was set up to rake in the money with willing participants and hundreds of thousands of regular-paying customers. At anywhere from $9.95 to $29.99 a month, sexual deviants could watch live sex, fantasy role-playing including rape, men and women stripping, and more. No longer was pornography a male-only spectator sport. During Kate’s tenure on the sex crimes task force of the Violent Crimes/Major Offenders unit-VCMO-she had investigated numerous claims, most of which ended up being consensual sex, advertised for the world to see.