"Fade To Black" - читать интересную книгу автора (Parrish Leslie)

4

You’re ugly. You’re damaged. Who would want you?

“Shut up,” he whispered, not even looking away from his computer screen. He’d heard the words too many times to feel anger or fear, and merely brushed them away like he would have a pesky fly.

But the voice wouldn’t shut up. The voice never shut up. Awake or in his dreams, it taunted, it ridiculed, it bit with teeth as sharp as the incisors of a hound from hell. Only… he no longer felt the bite.

Hideous. Evil. Nasty.

“Go away; I’m busy.”

It didn’t go away, so he reached for the volume button on the front of his laptop. He jabbed at it ruthlessly, until his index finger bent backward and almost snapped. That might have been interesting, just to see how it would feel and how he handled the sensation. Better than most, he suspected. Better than any woman, that was for certain.

Pain had interested him for a long time. How to take it, how to deliver it. He’d done some experimenting over the years-starting small, with rats or strays that wouldn’t be missed. And he’d found that when a creature was frightened enough, it almost didn’t even seem to notice when it was dying. Or maybe it was merely grateful for the release.

Much like Lisa. And all the others.

He himself hadn’t been tested that far yet, but he’d certainly experienced the acrid bitterness of terror and the cloying taste of physical agony. So he understood how some pain simply ceased to exist when a mind drifted to other places in the sheer, primal need for escape.

Would it do so if the pain were self-inflicted? He’d often wondered.

He pushed his finger against the button again. Hard, until the metal bit into his skin and left an indentation. The joint bent backward, the tip turning bright red, the knuckles ghostly white.

He could snap it. Easily.

“Not now,” he whispered. He was busy now. He could test that another time, as he’d tested the feel of fire licking the soles of his feet or blades scraping across his belly.

Now there was only this. The sounds emerging from the fully enabled speakers grew louder, filling the room, filling his ears, filling his brain.

Filling his soul.

He relaxed in his chair, one world falling away, another spreading out before him, full of unexplored places and exciting opportunities.

No hateful voices greeted him, and none followed. Just friends speaking their cyber chatter. Some people would listen and hear only gibberish. But he understood it perfectly, even without reading the flood of text messages that appeared the moment he arrived in the playground. Welcome, where have you been? Come see my latest project. Take me. Choose me. Hurt me.

We’ve missed you.

His friends were all here, waiting for him in the only world he wanted to inhabit. Here he was somebody. Here he was never called useless or ugly. Here they respected him, were in awe of him. Feared him.

Because here, everyone knew who he really was. And what he was capable of.

When? someone asked. More took up the cry. When will you show us more?

He checked the date-nearly five weeks since his last premiere. And then he considered his finances-very low. How he’d managed only one auction every couple of months at the start was beyond him.

It was time. He had things he wanted to buy, places he wanted to visit, and he didn’t have the means to do it.

Besides, his palms were beginning to itch. Right hand meant money coming in, left meant money going out, according to the old saying. But to the Reaper, both meant only one thing.

Time to kill someone.

Dean wanted to get right to work on the search for the murder site. Though they suspected it had been a long time since Lisa had died, and the odds of their finding anything were minimal, this was the first real break they’d had in the case. All the other bodies had been found in dump sites, the original location of the killings unknown.

That the lead came courtesy of the sharp eyes of a small-town sheriff with a great ass did not escape him.

“Enough of that,” he muttered, not even wanting to go there in his head when it came to Stacey Rhodes. No matter how attractive she was-physically and mentally.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he told Wyatt. “Just wishing we could get right on the search.”

But they couldn’t.They’d spent the past two hours with the sheriff, laying out a search grid and making plans to start first thing tomorrow. Not only because it was late in the day, but also because they lacked the manpower. Even with the help of the sheriff and her deputies, there weren’t enough of them to search hundreds of acres of woods.

Besides, neither he nor Wyatt knew a thing about the deputies on her staff. For all they knew, the guys who worked for her could be small-town old-timers who’d been in their jobs for decades. Given the emptiness of the sheriff’s office, and the casual, laid-back atmosphere inside, they weren’t expecting a top-notch crew.

Stacey Rhodes was top-notch enough all on her own.

“Rather a remarkable woman, Sheriff Rhodes, wouldn’t you say?” Wyatt asked as he drove them down the main street, in search of the town’s only hotel.

Dean flinched, wondering if he’d been wearing an I’m-thinking-of-a-hot-female expression. Then again, any man with an ounce of blood below the waist and a brain cell in his head would be thinking about the woman whose office they’d just left. “Oh, yeah.”

“Good of her to arrange for us to get a block of rooms on such short notice.”

The sheriff had called the owner of the inn, getting him to offer government rates on their rooms. Dean and Wyatt were alone now, but Mulrooney and Stokes would show up tonight, Fletcher and Cole in the morning. With all of them, as well as Stacey and the deputies she vouched for, they could begin the search for the scene of the crime tomorrow. Jackie Stokes was bringing all her forensics gear, and they’d have the state police on standby with a cadaver-sniffing dog, just in case they got lucky.

Dean doubted they’d get that lucky. Finding the site would be enough of a stretch. They knew the Reaper dumped his bodies far from his kill zones, so they almost certainly wouldn’t find remains. If they could find where he’d killed her, though, there might be some surviving evidence. Doubtful after more than a year’s worth of weather and animals and natural decay, but it was more than they’d had twenty-four hours ago.

“If we find the crime took place on federal land, it’ll make things easier. But even barring that, I get the feeling the sheriff will be highly cooperative,” Wyatt said.

Dean was about to respond when he saw Wyatt flip on the blinker and turn into a small, gravel parking lot. “God, I didn’t even see the place,” he said, gawking out the window at the rambling, single-story building before them.

It was an inn only by the loosest definition of the word. A long, low strip of rooms with a sagging roof and paint-stripped doors that ended an inch above the jamb, the Hope Inn was in serious need of renovation, or a few gallons of gasoline and a match. “Think this is really the only option? What about Front Royal?”

“Too far away.” Wyatt shrugged. “When in Rome…”

“But you’re not the one who’s probably going to be stuck here for days.” His boss was heading back to D.C. tomorrow, once the rest of the team was in place.

“Getting stuck here for several days would be a good thing,” Wyatt reminded him, his voice quiet, getting his point across immediately. Because having to stick around would mean there was something to stick around for. Like evidence, or definite leads.

“I know. I just wish I’d packed a few more things. A tent and a sleeping bag, for starters.” Dean had brought an overnight bag, just in case, but he wasn’t used to sleeping in anything but his skin. And he had the feeling he wasn’t going to want that skin coming into contact with anything in one of those rooms: bed, sheets, shower, nothing.

“I have some calls to make.” Wyatt parked outside the small, dingy office. “Why don’t I check us both in, take care of my calls, and you can go scout around, see if there’s anyplace decent to grab a bite for dinner.”

Sensing that Wyatt generally ate four-star, he didn’t even want to imagine the man sitting in the local diner ordering the meat loaf special. But he didn’t argue. Obviously Wyatt wanted privacy for his calls. “Not a problem.”

Knowing his boss wasn’t just calling back to the office to update the team, he took no offense. Wyatt had other fires to control. The powers that be had him on a tight leash and a choker collar. He was always second-guessed, having to explain himself the way no other supervisory special agent in his position ever had to. Superiors continually asked questions, many of them because they wanted the wrong answers. Any excuse, any chance to mess with Wyatt, who’d brought down one of their own, and they’d use it.

It had taken balls of steel for Blackstone to expose the man who’d been the deputy director’s right-hand man for the lying, crooked scumbag he really was. Especially since the lying, crooked scumbag had once been Wyatt’s mentor.

And, man, had Wyatt paid for it. Officially, they’d given him a commendation. Unofficially… a lot of people would like to give the whistle-blower his ass on a plate.

“You can take the car if you need it,” Wyatt said, “then come back for me. Though I don’t imagine driving is going to improve the selection.”

“Probably not,” he agreed as they exited the car. No need to drive in a town no bigger than his fist. “I’ll walk. If I’m not back by the time you’re done, give me a call.”

Before he left, Dean glanced at his watch. Five thirty. Screw it. He loosened his tie, tugged it free, and tossed it into the car, then unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt. He’d lose the jacket, too, if he didn’t have his sidearm strapped to his hip.

Wyatt did not follow suit, which didn’t surprise Dean. Wyatt would wear the whole damn FBI ensemble, head to toe, until he closed the door of his hotel room for the night.

Not Dean. Despite the hour, the heat remained monstrous, and he was ready for relief. He even found himself wondering if the no-tell motel had a pool. And if there was any chance in hell that pool didn’t contain rare, disease-causing bacteria.

Heading across the street toward the center of town, he noted the quickest way into and out of the parking lot, the access to it from the woods beyond. He estimated the distance to the sheriff’s office, and the number of intersections along the way. He might have been half joking with that serial-killer-in-a-small-town crack, but the thought had been in the back of his mind from the moment the sheriff had ID’d the victim.

The two-inch-wide strip of creamy, soft skin around the sheriff’s middle had been on his mind, too.

Ever since she’d stood and stretched her arms above her head back in her office, he’d been unable to shake Stacey Rhodes’s image from his brain. God knew the scenario had been all wrong to think about how attractive she was. Yet even the reason for his presence here hadn’t been enough to stop him from appreciating that combination of strength and softness evident in every move she made. He found the stubborn jut of her jaw as attractive as the femininity of that loose strand of hair. He’d wanted to see her handle the Glock she wore so comfortably on her hip as much as he’d wanted to taste the slight sheen of sweat shining on her throat in her hot office.

“Man, you need to get laid,” he muttered as he turned a corner and headed down the block. Going without sex since his divorce had been a bad idea. Celibacy was making women he had no business thinking about look way too good to him.

He needed the kind of woman who wouldn’t care about his last name the next morning, nor he about hers. A bar hookup was the required response for any recently divorced guy whose wife had remarried. At least, so his twice-divorced brother said.

Stacey Rhodes was no bar tramp. The prickly yet soft small-town woman probably knew not only any potential lover’s last name, but the names of his parents and grandparents, too.

Tugging his thoughts off the sheriff and back onto his job, where they belonged, he continued to scope out Hope Valley. It took ten minutes to traverse the ten or so square blocks of it. On foot. Meaning if someone were driving through and looked down to squirt ketchup on a carryout burger, they’d probably miss it.

The town had a few small restaurants-bars serving burgers, and an Internet café. But he opted for the diner. He didn’t choose the place because of its proximity to the sheriff’s office, or his curiosity about whether she ever stopped in for a bite after her shift ended. At least, that was what he told himself.

Once he stepped inside, however, his gaze shifted to the right, and his stare locked on the woman sitting at the first booth. The strawberry blond woman with the moist lips and the moist throat, and the look of almost guilty surprise on her face. And he knew that even if their hotel had been four-star, with room service, he would have come here, on the off chance that she would, too.

“Sheriff Rhodes,” he said, his voice low, for his ears only.

She heard anyway. “Special Agent Taggert.”

She’d come here on purpose. He wasn’t a profiler, didn’t do any behavioral analysis stuff. But he knew that as surely as he knew the sound of his son’s voice.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d show up,” she said, admitting as much.

Any other woman he knew would have danced around that admission all night. Or avoided making it altogether. Not this one. She was in-your-face truth and nothing but. He shouldn’t have expected anything else.

Knowing the empty seat opposite her was for him, he took it without an invitation. “If we’re going to do this, you might as well call me Dean.”

She nibbled her lip, that full lower lip that had trembled the tiniest bit earlier today when she’d first seen those pictures. “Going to do what?”

Any number of possibilities flashed across his brain, but he settled for the most basic. “Have a drink together. Work together.” Do anything else two unattached adults who are attracted to each other do together.

Suddenly realizing he’d made a huge assumption, he cast a quick glance toward her left hand. Because he had no idea whether Sheriff Rhodes was unattached or not. He’d just wanted her to be, so he hadn’t even considered the alternative.

He saw no ring. And suddenly his heart started beating again. Dean might be a lot of things, but a home wrecker he wasn’t.

“Okay. And I’m Stacey.” She glanced past him. “Where’s your boss?”

“Making some calls back at the hotel.”

“You get settled in okay?”

He grunted. “I didn’t stop to introduce myself to the bedbugs.”

Her lips might have twitched the tiniest bit. “Sorry. The closest chain hotel is several miles away. There is a very nice B and B a mile outside of town, but I know they have a wedding scheduled there for this weekend and every room is booked.”

“Think I could pass for the best man?”

“Unlike your boss, you don’t look like the tux type.” She actually smiled, visibly relaxing for the first time since they’d met. Her wide mouth seemed made for smiling, and her green eyes twinkled, negating the tiny lines of worry on her brow.

She’d been incredibly attractive before. Now she was damn near beautiful.

“You’re right,” he admitted. “Wyatt’s the Dom Péri gnon of our team. I guess I’m the Mad Dog 20/20.”

Laughter spilled across her lips, husky and soft all at once, so natural it could never have been forced. Hearing it gave Dean the first real flash of pleasure he’d had all day.

“I know the inn looks bad from the outside, but I promise the place is very clean. The owners can’t afford to renovate, but they make sure the rooms are spick-and-span.”

His hopes rose. But he still intended to reserve judgment until he actually had a chance to check out the inside of his room for himself.

About to tell her that, he was startled by the sound of glass breaking nearby. He and Stacey both jerked their heads reflexively, though he imagined they’d see nothing more than a waitress standing in the middle of diner plate wreckage.

Instead, he saw a man, pale and wiry, standing in the midst of the broken dishes on the floor. No waitress was in sight, and the glass and plate, complete with half-eaten sandwich, seemed to have slipped off his own table.

“Oh, great,” Stacey muttered, her voice soaked in dislike.

That tone, accompanied by the flash of anger that appeared in the stranger’s eyes when he met Dean’s, made him wonder if the dishes had slipped after all. When the man cast a glare of barely disguised anger at Stacey, he wondered even more. “Problem?”

“Not on my part.”

Dean sat up straighter, assessing the dish-killing stranger.With curly, dingy brown hair, and his tall, skinny, pale form, he most resembled a used Q-tip. The man, realizing Dean was staring, finally tugged his attention off Stacey. Grabbing some cash out of his pocket, he thrust it at the waitress, who’d come running to clean up. Then he stalked across the broken glass, beelining toward the door, not casting another look in their direction.

“Please don’t tell me he’s your ex,” Dean murmured, knowing the unusual exchange had been a personal, not a professional, one.

“He’d like to have been,” she acknowledged. “His name’s Rob Monroe. I had to let him down hard when he didn’t take the hint that I wasn’t interested.”

“Gee, can’t imagine what’s not to like.”

She snickered a little. A cute snicker. “Aside from the fact that I think his mommy still makes his bed and his daddy the mayor tells him what time to be home every night? I can’t imagine.”

Dean groaned at the very thought, even while tempted to ask her what did interest her. He was so not the smooth type who played those kinds of games with women, however, and didn’t know the language. He had no clue how to find out if she was feeling the intrinsic pull that he had since the moment they’d met. He only knew that when she’d laughed a few moments ago and her eyes had twinkled with genuine good humor, his heart had skipped a beat. Or ten.

“I saw you scoping out the town.”

Back to business. She obviously didn’t want to talk about her unwanted admirer, ignoring him just as she’d ignored the altercation with her brother earlier.

He wondered how a man might react to being so easily put out of this beautiful woman’s mind. And suddenly he felt the tiniest hint of sympathy for the angry Mr. Monroe.

“Didn’t take long to explore all of Hope Valley, did it?” she asked.

“No.”

“Two-stoplight heaven-that’s us.” She lifted her glass and sipped what appeared to be strong iced tea. Not exactly the beer he’d like to have at the end of a long, shitty day, but it looked refreshing.

A polyester-uniformed waitress approached and mumbled, “Getcha somethin’?” After Dean pointed to Stacey’s glass and asked for the same, she stuck her pencil behind her ear and ambled away.

Once they were again alone, Stacey continued. “I watched you from my office window. It’s dinnertime, and I figured if you were looking for a place to eat, you’d eventually end up here. There are a few restaurants on the outskirts-a pretty good steak place and a Waffle House. But they’re not walkable, and this is.” She shrugged and sipped again. “So I decided to come over here and wait for you to show up.”

He glanced at his watch. Dinnertime at six o’clock? Only in small-town USA. Most nights, like every other worker in D.C., he didn’t get home before seven. “I was just taking stock, picking someplace to eat while Wyatt makes his calls.”

“Whatever the reason, I’m glad you came.”

Her tone told him she had more to say, and that it wasn’t personal. While Dean had seen the guarded looks she’d sent his way earlier, and knew his interest in her was returned, he also knew she wanted to talk business. She might have loosened her uniform jacket and taken her hair out of its bun to hang down her back in a long ponytail, but she was still on the job. He doubted there was ever a time somebody in her position wasn’t.

“I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“I’m not surprised.” In the brief time since he and Wyatt had left her office, he imagined a whole slew of questions had entered her thoughts. Earlier, hit with such shocking news, she’d gone along with them, had let them take the lead. She hadn’t had a chance to think of the ramifications.

Now she’d thought about them.

He imagined the vivid pictures in her head would haunt her for a long time, each one raising a thousand questions. They certainly did for him.

How such things could happen, how he could watch such things happening on the same day he could find himself warmed by the laughter of a near-stranger, was beyond him. But he thanked God for the laughter, for the simple pleasure of bidding his son good night, arguing baseball with his brother, or hearing the latest news about his sister’s kids. Simple pleasures were the only things that kept anyone in his line of work sane.

“This case is a lot bigger than what you’ve let on so far.”

Oh, she had most definitely been thinking. “Yes.”

“How much haven’t you told me?”

Mindful of the chattering customers all around them, Dean leaned over the table, keeping an eye out for the return of their waitress. The last thing he wanted was for the rumor mill to get started any sooner than it had to. And while their waitress had been a mumbler, he had no doubt her jaw would move a lot faster if she had good gossip to relate. “As it pertains to Lisa? Not a lot.”

The intuitive professional across from him wasn’t put off. “And that which does not pertain to Lisa?”

He met her eye. “More than any sane person would ever want to know.”

She held his stare, unblinking, for a long moment, processing his words. Finally, Stacey glanced away, studying her own hand, which was wrapped around her drink. Good thing the diner was the old-fashioned type and used thick, heavy glasses. Were she clutching a foam cup, that tight grip would easily have crushed it.

“More videos?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve watched them all?”

“Unfortunately.”

She continued staring toward the table. “All the same?”

He could have downplayed it, but didn’t. “Most are worse.”

“My God.” She lifted her eyes again. They were bright, moist, not necessarily with tears, but definitely with emotion.

They fell silent, hardly noticing the clink of tarnished silverware against chipped white plates and diner-issue coffee mugs. The chatter continued at tables all around them, waitresses greeting newcomers each time the door opened, someone calling out, “More coffee, please?” every few seconds. Meat loaf specials were consumed out of congealing platefuls of gravy, and every person at the lunch counter grumbled about the heat. The world continued to turn for everyone else in the place.

But not for her. Not for them.

“How can you stand it?” she finally whispered.

“I can stand it because I know that I’m going to catch the bastard who’s doing it.”

She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands up and down against them as if she was cold, despite the warmth of the day. That didn’t surprise him. This was some cold shit they were dealing with.

What did surprise him was the way her movements emphasized the slenderness of her hands. She was so utterly strong and capable, but had beautiful, feminine hands with long, graceful fingers, as delicate and fragile as her neck and throat. He imagined she’d be as good at playing a piano as he suspected she was at firing a weapon.

He shook his head, tugging his thoughts away from where they’d quickly gone-to what else she might be really good at doing with her hands-because they were crazy. Insane. He was noticing way too much about the woman, from her hair to her hands, her voice, her slim-but-curvy body. Not to mention that quick brain and intuition.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

Her brow shot up. “What?”

“Sorry.” He shook his head, cursing himself for opening his trap. “It’s just… you seem to be really good at what you do. I’m surprised you stay here.” What could this tiny town have to offer someone so bright, strong, and attractive?

“I like it here,” she said, maybe insisting a little too hard. “It’s my home.”

“Sorry.”

“As for what I do,” she added, “it’s family tradition. My father and my late grandfather held the job. It’s expected that a Rhodes will be sheriff of Hope Valley.” Her attention shifted to her mug, as if there were more to it, though she didn’t elaborate.

He suddenly thought of her brother. Her angry, scarred brother, who hadn’t followed family tradition. But he didn’t bring that up. She’d wanted to pretend they hadn’t overheard the ugly fight back at the station, and he wouldn’t call her on it.

“Family expectations, yeah, I hear ya.”

“Yours?” she asked.

“My dad’s a steelworker; Mom’s a hairdresser. From the time I was old enough to understand the spoken word, I knew they’d never forgive me if I didn’t go to college and make something of myself.”

She smiled, at least a little, that pretty smile that hadn’t gotten much use since he’d arrived in town, as if she were grateful for the detour out of their dark conversation about the case. “They must be proud.”

“I guess. Yours, too. Is your father aware of…?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. But I might talk to him about it. He took care of this town for two decades. He might be able to help.” She didn’t say, You have a problem with that? The message came through in her cool, defensive tone.

“Smart,” he replied, knowing he didn’t have to warn her to be cautious. She was too good to be anything else. “Let me know if he has any thoughts.”

A quick flash of appreciation appeared in her eyes, and she visibly relaxed again. “I won’t give him the graphic details. I don’t think my father or grandfather ever envisioned the job including something like this case,” she murmured, her eyes gazing past him, looking at something in the distance. Perhaps the ghost of Lisa Zimmerman, which he suspected would live in her mind for a long time.

“Nobody envisions something like this coming into their life.”

“What about you? I guess you see this kind of thing pretty often.”

“Not this kind of thing. I was working Violent Criminal Apprehension until a month ago.” He watched the waitress return with his tea, waited until she’d left, then added, “I thought I’d try cyber crimes to get away from some of the darkness.”

Another of her small, rueful smiles appeared. “How’s that working out so far?”

“Not exactly like I’d planned. I think I slept better tracking down average, everyday thugs.” Unable to contain the sudden flare of anger that made his voice shake, he admitted, “But I won’t rest until we’ve stopped this guy.”

Her green eyes held understanding. Of course they did; she wanted him stopped, too, even having known about the case for only a few hours. Anyone who witnessed what the monster was capable of would be chilled at the realization that he was still out there walking among them. She just hadn’t figured out-not yet, anyway-that he might be walking a whole lot closer than she thought.

“I don’t get the Cyber Division angle,” she said. “This perp’s not an embezzler or Internet fraud slimebag. I thought the… what’s it called, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime? I thought they handled this type of thing.”

“NCAVC normally does. But we’re a new type of Cyber Action Team. Every other one in the U.S. is on standby to respond to traditional cyber threats all over the world. Us? We respond only to Internet-related murder.”

“Makes sense, I guess, in this day and age. With your background in ViCAP, a couple of IT specialists, you bring in a range of experience.”

“Yeah, we’re a mixed bag of specialties. Stokes, who you will meet tomorrow, is a forensics genius. And Wyatt’s been trying to get a behavioral analyst to come over to join us, so far without much luck.” Dean didn’t always understand all that psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo those BAU guys spouted, but they usually got enough things right to make it worth including them in ongoing investigations. Especially investigations into serial murder. “In the meantime, he’s found one who agreed to look at this case and come up with some kind of profile. But I don’t know if they’ll ever actually give us one full-time. That’d be making things too easy on us.”

She appeared confused. Anybody who wasn’t on the inside of the bureau probably would be. Because the machinations and competitiveness-and even spite-when it came to Wyatt didn’t make a bit of sense.

Before he could even begin to explain, however, they were interrupted. “Hey, there, Stacey! How’s my best girl? You been missin’ me?”

Dean jerked back, shocked that he’d been so focused on his conversation with the woman sitting across from him that he hadn’t even realized someone had stopped beside their booth. Glancing up, he noted a beefy, thick-chested guy, probably in his late thirties. He wore dusty jeans and a lightweight flannel shirt with the sleeves torn off to reveal strong arms, the right one paler than the left. His round face, made rounder by a receding hairline of puffy curls, was soft and jolly-looking.

But a longer glance revealed the stranger’s deeply lined brow. And though he smiled down at Stacey, his eyes darted quickly about, nervous as an addict making a buy.

Or maybe Dean was imagining it. Because he didn’t like anyone-least of all a guy who looked like the Web ster’s definition of a blowhard-talking to the capable, smart woman across from him as if she were a cute waitress without a brain in her head.

“Hey, Randy,” Stacey said, obviously forcing a smile to her mouth. Dean had known her less than a day, but he recognized the effort she was making to appear normal. He saw it in her clasped fingers on the table, in the stiffness of her shoulders and the tiniest tremble of her jaw as the muscles in her cheeks tried to keep her lips curved up.

Strong fingers. Capable shoulders. Well-defined jaw. Nicely shaped lips.

He shifted in his seat.

“Been wondering how you’re doing. Meaning to stop by and say hello to your dad, too. Just doing a lot of long-distance interstate runs this summer, delivering electronics to the big box stores. Heaven forbid folks don’t have their new wide-screens and Blu-rays in time to catch the new fall shows next month.”

“I’m sure Dad would love to see you,” Stacey replied. She gestured toward Dean. “This is Dean Taggert. Dean, meet Randy Covey. My brother’s partner in crime.”

The stranger chuckled, obviously not hearing the steel in her voice.

Noting that she did not introduce him by title, Dean again appreciated the woman’s common sense-a rarity among some of the local cops he’d worked with, or so it often seemed. But there had been no need to ask Stacey to keep his identity, and the reason for his presence in Hope Valley, a secret.

The burly man extended a thick hand, pumping Dean’s with quickness and courtesy. “Nice to meet you. New in town? You stealing the prettiest little peace officer this side of the Mississippi?”

Mulrooney. That was who the newcomer reminded him of. Or he would have, if he were sarcastic and crude rather than aw-shucks friendly.

Give Dean sarcasm and crudeness over jovial friendliness any day. “Just visiting.”

“Randy lives out by my dad’s place. He’s an old friend of the family.”

“Old is right,” the man said, sounding rueful. “Me ’n’ Stacey’s brother, Tim, kept this one from getting into too much trouble growing up.” He suddenly glanced toward the door, where a young man hovered. “Son, say hello to the sheriff.” Randy extended his arm toward the guy, who was probably around nineteen or twenty. Meaning Randy had probably gotten pretty lucky as a teenager.

The kid didn’t much look like his brawny father. He was tall, lean, with white-blond hair and vivid red craters gouged into his cheeks from his losses in the acne wars. Despite the heat of the day, he wore long, oversize jeans that dragged the ground, which would probably reveal four inches of baggy boxer shorts if he weren’t also wearing an oversize jersey that fell to his knees.

“Hi, Seth.” Stacey smiled at the boy.

“Hey,” he mumbled. He shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders, his feet shuffling. Typical son, trying to remain invisible and pretend he wasn’t related to Randy, who was, as all parents did, somehow embarrassing him.

God, he hoped Jared did not grow up to be like that. And that his ex didn’t get her wish and make sure Dean wasn’t around enough to help raise him the right way.

“Well, we better rock ’n’ roll outta here,” Randy said. “We’re gonna be in hot water for being late for supper. If Mama finds out we stopped here for some onion rings first, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Not quite sure whether the man was referring to his wife, or really talking about his mother, Dean murmured good-bye, then watched the duo leave the diner. “Mama?” he asked once they were gone.

Stacey rolled her eyes. “Randy’s wife walked out on him when Seth was little. Randy moved back in with his mother, who helped raise the boy. It’s a shame, really. Last year Randy was dating a good friend of mine, Angie, who runs the new Internet café. But I don’t think Mama liked that. She’s a sour old thing.”

“How about yours?” Dean asked, suddenly wanting to see that smile again. “Did she like that her sweet little girl took over as sheriff?”

Instead of a smile, he got a snort. “I was never a sweet little girl.” She glanced down, stirring her iced tea with her straw. “Dad did his best, but he never managed to drill many feminine qualities into me.”

He would argue that point. Noting the softness of her hair, the innate elegance of her movements, the huskiness of her voice that called to some deep part of him, he’d challenge anyone to call this woman anything but feminine. Strong, independent, yes. But still every inch a woman.

“My mother died when I was a baby, so it was just me, Dad, and my brother.”

He opened his mouth, trying to come up with whatever kind of lame condolences people offered when they found out about the loss of someone else’s parent. Not that he usually knew what to say to that sort of thing. Did anyone?

But before he could even find the right words, Stacey said, “About the case.”

So much for personal stuff and sharing. Which, frankly, relieved him. He wasn’t good at that. And the fact that she didn’t appear to expect him to come up with something inane to say made his opinion of her go up even higher.

But it also made him wonder, did she ever allow herself to be vulnerable? How many rooms did she have in her subconscious to tuck away all the emotion she didn’t allow herself to deal with?

“We’re talking about a serial killer, aren’t we?”

He could have thrown up defensive walls, given her the not-at-liberty-to-talk-about-it line. But something told him he didn’t need to go that route, not with Sheriff Rhodes. She was tough. More important, he had the feeling they were going to need her. She’d proven her worth earlier by pointing them in the direction of the crime scene. And if this small town was like every other one he’d ever been in, she’d know every person here and could prove invaluable at narrowing down potential suspects.

“Yes, we are.”

Her lips moved and her eyes drifted shut for a moment as she compartmentalized that information. Anyone in charge of the law in a town this size would react to having a nationally sought-after serial killer operating in her jurisdiction. For someone who knew the victim personally? Well, she was in for a rough time, no doubt about it.

“What do you have on him so far?”

“Not much. Most of what we know is from the videos.”

“Can’t even imagine them,” she whispered.

“Believe me, you don’t want to try.”

Dean’s jaw stiffened as a flood of images from the Reaper’s sick home movies flooded his brain. There was so much darkness to this case that even he, an experienced professional, had found himself having a few nightmares in the past few nights. Nightmares involving those poor women, sometimes with the faces of his sister or mother replacing one of theirs. There had been even worse ones involving his son, though thank God none of the crimes had involved children.

She obviously read the viciousness of it in his silence. Because, for some reason, she reached over, extended her hand, and brushed it across the back of his. The touch was brief, devoid of anything more than simple human-to-human understanding. But it made his hand thrum for a full minute after she’d pulled hers away.

“How many victims altogether?” she eventually asked.

Flexing his hand, then fisting it on his lap, he got down to business. He ran down the pertinent details, giving her surface information that he’d share with any law enforcement official helping with the case, because that was what she was. Nothing more.

Something told him he’d need to remind himself of that throughout his stay here.

She listened in silence, her eyes occasionally closing, emitting a soft sigh of dismay here or there. He didn’t get into details, especially not in-depth descriptions of the horrors playing out there in cyberspace to the twisted masses. But even the simplest explanation was enough to cause nightmares.

“So all the other bodies have been found. Lisa is the only one missing,” she finally said when he’d finished.

“Correct.”

“But no other victims were from around here. Lisa was our only missing person, and we haven’t had a murder in this area since my grandfather was sheriff.”

“Lucky you.”

She nodded absently. “This guy was likely some stranger who wandered in off the interstate, saw Lisa getting drunk in Dick’s Tavern, followed her as she stumbled out, and acted on the opportunity. Then he took off for his next town, next crime. Maybe he hid the body because it was his first murder, and he wanted to give himself time to make sure he could get away with it.”

Dean said nothing. There were holes in Stacey’s theory. He didn’t point them out to her. She’d work it out in her own head, and reach the conclusion that would shock her even more. Her mind was quick and astute; she had spotted that unusual flash on the video and had known it meant something. She’d soon realize she’d seen something else equally as important.

“But a stranger couldn’t have known what a perfect victim Lisa would be, that nobody would really take her disappearance seriously,” she whispered, gazing into the air over Dean’s shoulder, though, in truth, probably looking at nothing that existed here in this diner. She was visualizing that night. “Everybody at Dick’s Tavern had been around at least a few times before. No newcomers. Dick confirmed that for me himself.”

That made the thing she had missed even more important, though she couldn’t realize that yet. Dean, however, immediately saw it was important, one more tidbit to confirm what he and the rest of the team already suspected. More than suspected: From the moment a bureau lipreading expert had told them what Lisa Zimmerman had said to her killer before her death, they had known.

“And he had to be someone familiar with the area to know a place to take her where he could have a big enough clearing to move around, use spotlights, move his camera, all without being disturbed.”

“Yes,” he murmured.

The wheels in her brain clicked almost visibly. She’d grasped it. Her shocked gasp confirmed as much. “We’re not talking about some stranger off the interstate.”

Dean shook his head.

“The suspect was familiar with this area. He probably even spent some time around here beforehand.”

“It goes further than that,” he explained, knowing it was time to fill her in on what else they’d been able to learn from the video of Lisa’s gruesome death.

“What?”

“At one point, she looks at him in shock and says, ‘You?’ ”

Her jaw dropped. She understood. But he made it absolutely clear anyway.

“The Reaper personally knew his victim. And she most definitely knew him.”

After he’d finished his twenty-minute-long phone call with the head of the Cyber Division, Wyatt considered joining Taggert and the very capable Sheriff Rhodes at the diner. Dean had texted him, not wanting to interrupt his calls, saying he’d run into the sheriff there and thought they could manage a somewhat decent meal.

Frankly, though, having heard everything his boss had to say about the endless machinations going on behind the scenes, and the grumbling about jurisdiction over this Reaper case, what he most wanted was a hot shower and a cold martini. He seldom drank, and never on the job. And even if it was technically after hours, being here in Hope Valley, Virginia, was being on the job. So a hot shower would have to do.

Ironic, really. His first supervisor, the man who’d given him the good advice against ever getting too comfortable with a martini glass while working for the bureau, was the same man Wyatt had helped bring down last year. His former friend had been right in the thick of evidence tampering, witness manipulation, coercion. The kind of corruption that went against everything Wyatt stood for and every reason he’d joined the bureau.

He lifted an imaginary glass and sadly murmured, “Thanks for the tip, old friend.”

Shrugging out of his jacket and loosening his tie, he glanced at the room. Simply furnished, it held the most basic of hotel accommodations. He’d traveled enough to have predicted the number of drawers in the dresser and to visibly assess the comfort of the bed. He’d wager there was a Gideon Bible in the top drawer of the nightstand, and that somewhere within was a hand-drawn phallic symbol left there by a bored former occupant.

Fortunately, though, the whole place looked-and better yet, smelled-very clean. No greasy dust coated the slats of the air vent above the bed. No visible stains marred the worn carpet, and not a smudge of dirt or mildew darkened the bathroom tile. All in all, things could have been much worse.

Deciding to ask Dean to just bring him back a sandwich, he reached for his cell phone. But before he could even lift it and dial the number, it rang in his hand. “Blackstone,” he answered.

The slightest hesitation and the quick, almost surprised inhalation told him even before she spoke that Lily Fletcher was calling. He smiled just a little. Lily, the newest member of the team, hadn’t quite gotten used to him and never appeared to know how to act. Had he ever been so young and untried? So enthusiastic and eager to please?

Once. And look where it had gotten him.

“It’s Fletcher, sir. Sorry to bother you; you’re probably at dinner or something.”

He sighed. “Please, Lily, call me Wyatt-especially on the phone and after hours.”

“Sorry.” A sudden hollow sound and subsequent knocking told him she’d dropped the phone and was fumbling to pick it back up.

His smile widened. He could almost see her at her desk, her petite form swallowed up in the oversize office chair they’d scrounged up for her from some old storage closet. Her blond hair would be mounded on top of her head, the small, wire-framed reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Behind those glasses her eyes would be shining with intelligence or moist with heart-felt emotion-the latter not the best trait to have in this line of work, but no matter how often he warned her to remain detached, she was helplessly enslaved to her feelings.

Actually, those feelings had been one reason he’d brought her over to his team. She’d recently suffered a personal tragedy, the loss of her nephew and her sister. Almost desperate to get out of a closed-in office and into the field, if only to rebel against the impotence every crime victim felt, she’d asked for a shot, and he’d given it to her.

So far, he hadn’t regretted it. Her personal history hadn’t interfered with her job. Though he couldn’t deny that whenever office conversation turned toward child abuse, like some of the sick goings-on at Satan’s Playground, Lily Fletcher went whiter than any of the monuments gracing the city where they worked.

“Sorry, I dropped the phone,” she mumbled a moment later.

Of course she had.

Before she’d dropped it, her desk phone would have been tucked in the crook of her neck so she could leave her hands free. The slim fingers would be flying across the keyboard as she coaxed miracles from the machine, just like Brandon Cole often did.

And that was the other reason he had hired her, despite her lack of field experience and her tendency to get too involved. The woman was as brilliant as Cole, but she played by the book. Brandon Cole did not. Frankly, Wyatt needed them both for exactly that reason. “It’s all right.”

“Listen, Brandon asked me to call you. Hold on; I’ll put you on speaker.”

He held, then heard, “Hey, boss! Hear you may have ID’d the first victim?”

“It appears so. You got the message that I want you and Lily here tomorrow?”

“Yeah, uh, about that.”

“Yes?”

“Not sure we should leave. Something’s happening, boss.”

“What is it?’

“Hold up. I might have…”

Containing a sigh of irritation, he waited, hearing the clicking of keys in the background. As if realizing he was growing impatient, Lily explained, “He’s trying to get back into the Playground.”

“Bastards went underground again a couple of hours ago,” Cole added.

Damn. In the week since Brandon had brought Satan’s Playground to their attention, the group had changed servers twice. Brandon kept following them, like a child following a trail of bread crumbs, all over cyberspace. He wouldn’t find anything as sweet as a gingerbread house at the end of his journey, and the evil waiting on the other side was darker than any children’s tale could conjure up.

Finally, he heard a triumphant whoop. “Got you!”

“He’s back in,” Lily explained.

“I heard.”

Brandon jumped into the conversation. “Okay, here’s why I wanted to talk to you. It looks like the unsub is gearing up for a new auction.”

“It’s only been a month since his last one.”

“I know. He’s accelerating.”

Never a good thing. “When will it take place?”

“I’m not sure,” Brandon replied. “I haven’t been able to break into the actual auctions yet; I don’t even know whether they’re real-time or silent. But I started seeing chatter about it right before the site went dark.” More clicking. “I guess everybody gets excited when the Reaper gears up for his next kill.”

Breaking into the auctions was on top of Brandon ’s priority list. If they could get inside and find a way to trace the money trail, they’d be able to nail somebody, either the auction winner or the Reaper himself. Right now, they wanted the killer very badly. But every member of his team also wanted to bring down the twisted clients who paid to have their evil fantasies carried out.

“How soon will you know?”

“I’ll stay here all night if I have to.”

Wyatt nodded, closing his eyes and rubbing at the corners of them. They hadn’t expected this additional pressure, not so soon. The first auctions had been two or three months apart, the last few narrowed to about six or seven weeks. Now, barely a month. “What are the chances of disrupting the auction? Doing something to crash it?”

“Only if you want these sickos to know we’re watching them,” said Lily.

“Then they’ll close up shop and dive into a hole so deep it’ll take months to find them again,” Brandon added.

Damn. A cold rush of helplessness spread over him and Wyatt sank to the bed. All the other auctions had ended in someone’s horrible death, which had been put on display at Satan’s Playground within seventy-two hours. Meaning they had only days now, not weeks, in which to find the unsub and stop him.

Or else have front-row seats to another brutal, sadistic murder.