Winnie’s mouth opened and closed twice. Her lips quivered, her jaw, too. She blinked rapidly, the thin lashes doing little to get rid of gathering tears. As if the idea that she might have friends, people who cared about her, who might help her, were almost too much to grasp. Finally, though, she cleared her throat and jerked her head up and down once. “Yes. There is.”
Stacey waited.
“Find my daughter so I can bury her. And catch her killer.”
Stan Freed stood on the sagging front porch of the crummy little house he hated and watched that bitch of a sheriff and the nosy FBI agent get into her squad car. His hands gripping the railing, he forced himself to remain there, nodding his thanks as they backed out of the driveway. That was the normal thing to do.
Above all, Stan liked things to appear normal.
It was only once they were well down the block that he let go and saw the impression the wooden railing had made on the insides of his big hands. Splinters protruded from the puffy flesh of his palms and his fingertips. He hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t felt any pain. He’d been too focused on grabbing something, needing to remain in control. Keep cool. Stay normal.
Everything would be fine if he didn’t lose his head, kept things going the way they had been. The cops couldn’t prove a thing. Winnie knew better than to shoot off her yap, even if she did know something, which she didn’t. And the only other person who knew a damn thing was dead and rotting. So there was no reason to panic. No way could that little bitch reach out from the grave and ruin his life now, after all this time.
Lisa. How he’d loved her. How he’d hated her. She’d been so beautiful, so perfect, an angel.
Then she’d grown up to be so hard, so ruthless, a whore.
He’d wanted to give her the world once, and she would have taken it. She might have pretended otherwise, but she had loved him, too. And she’d wanted him. It was her nature; she’d liked what they did in this house when her mother was at work or asleep.
Until she got older and began whoring herself out to other men. She’d started resisting, calling him names, acting like she hadn’t been into it all along. And had laughed in his face just a few days before she’d disappeared. Good riddance.
“ Stanley?”
He stiffened at the grating sound of his wife’s whiny voice. God, how he hated it. Hated her. Hated everything about this place, where he’d been trapped for eleven years. If only he’d found out exactly how much-or how little-insurance money she’d gotten after her first husband’s death before he’d married her, rather than listening to rumors. His life could have been so different.
“ Stanley, please…”
“Quit whining, woman,” he snapped as he spun around and entered the house. He slammed the door shut behind him with enough force to shake the frame. “Just quit your goddamned whimpering and let me think.”
She’d been standing in the front hall, still wearing that ugly rag, her face red and splotchy from the tears she’d shed over her no-good daughter. And suddenly, he couldn’t even stand to look at her.
“I’m going to work,” he growled, heading toward his room.
She reached for his arm. “No, please.”
He threw off the touch, backhanding her across the cheek for good measure. And she shut up. Like usual. “Have my lunch ready in a half hour.”
He didn’t bother turning around to see whether she’d hop to it and obey him.
Because she knew what would happen to her if she didn’t.
8
IT specialist Lily Fletcher was sickened to her very soul by the things the Reaper had done to his victims. Naturally empathic-one reason she’d been warned she’d never make it in the bureau-she’d had a hard time getting their faces out of her mind since the day Brandon had discovered that first video. She’d said prayers for them in private moments, promised them justice, and grieved for their loved ones dealing with such tragedy and pain.
She understood tragedy and pain. She understood them much too well.
Maybe that was why, as she dug deeper into Satan’s Playground trying to find any cyber string that might lead to their unknown subject, she found herself unable to tear her attention away from that menacing, skeletal figure who called himself Lovesprettyboys. The small, cartoonish avatar cast off such malevolence, it was as if he’d been dipped in evil and formed out of hatred and vice.
He had invaded her thoughts and sabotaged her peace of mind, becoming the focus of all the anger and anguish that had been building in her for so long. The Reaper terrified her. Lovesprettyboys revolted her. And she wanted them both gone, out of the world, far away so they could never hurt another woman or another child. No one would ever convince her that tall, thin monster hadn’t abused children in real life, the way he did in the Playground.
Which was, perhaps, why he’d become her side project. Stopping him would never change what had happened to her own family. But she had to do it anyway.
“Sir?” she asked as she knocked on Wyatt Blackstone’s door late Saturday afternoon. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”
He beckoned her in, not looking up from the papers, saying, “Wyatt, please.”
She had a hard time with that, calling him by his first name. Not just because she wasn’t used to supervisors who were so much a part of a team, but also because the man intimidated her like crazy. The supervisory special agent was everything an FBI agent should be, from the top of his handsome head to the bottom of his shined shoes. Intelligent enough to keep up with even Brandon, street-smart enough to hold his own with Dean Taggert. Wyatt was out of her league in every way. She was often left tongue-tied around him.
“Anything new?” he asked when she took the seat on the other side of his desk.
“I’ve found a few accounts that look promising. I’ve contacted someone at Treasury to get information about some transfers, but I won’t hear back until Monday.”
“I am afraid our unsub probably works weekends,” he mused.
She had no doubt he was right.
“Good work.”
“Thank you, sir.” She fell silent, looking at her own clenched hands in her lap, wondering how to broach the subject that had driven her to seek him out.
“Is there something else?”
Taking a deep breath, she hoped her voice remained steady and didn’t betray how personally involved she was. “I was wondering… I know the Reaper is our primary target here, but some of the other things going on in that site are keeping me up nights.”
“The pedophiles.”
“One in particular,” she admitted, not surprised that he had immediately known where she was headed. Blackstone had been very kind during her interview, when he’d asked how she was coping with what had happened to her family a short eighteen months ago. She’d been incapable of lying about the rage she still felt toward the man who’d brutalized her nephew and the anguish over her sister’s resulting suicide. So yes, of course he understood her personal demons.
“The Cyber Division has a unit devoted to catching those monsters, Lily.”
“They don’t know about him,” she snapped back. There was such a mine-is-bigger-than-yours attitude pervading this building that she had no doubt Blackstone was keeping this case close to his chest.
But he immediately proved her wrong. “Yes, they do.” Her jaw falling, she realized she’d completely misjudged him. “You mean you-”
“Of course. You can’t possibly think I would keep Satan’s Playground a secret from the rest of the division in some kind of we-found-it-first foolishness.”