Fear No Evil

TWO

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.

But this case sent Kate’s instincts into orbit, and when witness after witness turned up dead or missing, she knew she was on to something. Or someone.

Trask.

She and Paige had managed to get to one person inside Trask Enterprises, a terrified woman named Denise Arno. They had promised her immunity, anything and everything, to set Trask up.

But something happened that night in the warehouse. Kate still wasn’t sure why their backup was missing, or how Trask discovered that Denise had turned on him. But suddenly it was Paige, Kate, and Evan against five well-armed men, and poor Denise was presumed dead.

After that failed operation, Trask and his sidekick, Roger Morton, went underground. But Kate had seen him-the man behind Trask Enterprises. They could no longer be public in their pornography operation because the FBI wanted both Trask and Morton for questioning in the death of two agents. Roger Morton himself had even been captured on camera raping Paige.

Still, five years later, they had enough money, shell corporations, false names, and real people to keep all the balls in the air while they stayed in the shadows. Kate knew Trask was still behind many of the major sex sites out there, pulling in millions of dollars, all to pay for his one big show every year.

Her computer beeped, bringing her attention back to her computer. She looked at the screen. It was him, Trask. The countdown had already begun.

47:35:09.

She took only small pleasure that it had taken less than twenty-five minutes to isolate his feed.

The first four hours were free. After that, the audience had to pay to keep watching.

It cost twenty-five thousand dollars to watch the psychological and physical torture of a young woman. Watch her fear grow. Watch her be raped.

Watch her be killed.

An added bonus to those who paid was a “best of” series of highlights from previous rapes and kills.

Rapes that were under the false disclaimer of “fantasy role-playing.” Kills that Trask claimed were staged. But Kate knew the difference between fake blood and real blood. She knew the difference between the eyes of the living and those of the dead.

The first four hours cost nothing, to draw in the perverts and give them a taste of what was to come. Encourage them to mortgage their houses, cash in their retirements, steal from their friends and family to pay for the privilege of actually watching a woman die.

The room where it happened was usually plain, devoid of identifying features. Wood paneling, like in the cabin where Paige Henshaw had died. Little or no natural light.

Trask’s latest victim looked college age and was very beautiful-Trask preferred to kill pretty girls. This girl was still clothed, her face both terrified and strong under the glare of two spotlights from behind the camera. Kate stared into her eyes. This one was a fighter. She would not give in.

Kate ran to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. She puked until there was nothing left, and still dry heaves wracked her body.

Trask was back and he had another victim. Forty-eight hours and this defiant girl would be dead.

Correction, forty-seven hours twenty-two minutes and ten seconds.

Kate sat back at her computer terminal and brought up her secure e-mail server. She sent a message to the only person she still trusted in the FBI.

HE’S BACK. CLICK HERE FOR THE FEED.

K.

She hesitated just a moment. There was always a chance the authorities could find her. Extradite her and bring her before the Office of Professional Responsibility-the FBI version of Internal Affairs. Losing her job was the least of Kate’s concerns. She’d been running for five years; she had no job to return to. It was losing her freedom, being prosecuted for the botched operation that resulted in her lover, Evan, and her partner, Paige, being killed.

Her former boss, Jeff Merritt, had threatened her before she went after Paige alone all those years ago. “It’s your fault Paige was kidnapped. If she dies, it’s on your head and I will make sure you end up locked in prison for life.”

For five years she had quietly sent the FBI everything she had learned, but every lead had turned into a dead end. Two years ago she’d been close, but Trask had set up a trap and a team of top federal agents had nearly lost their lives, further setting Kate’s former boss against her. He wanted her head, and Kate knew he’d gladly sever it from her body.

But could she do nothing? It wasn’t her fault that the previous locations she had isolated had become dead ends. Trask was a computer genius. Even when she thought she’d uncovered all his tricks, he came up with new ones.

What else could she do except analyze every trick he used and keep looking for him through the vast Internet? There were millions of satellite transmissions, but only one was his. One would lead to him. She’d been close many times, but he was always a step ahead. When she slept, she heard him laughing at her failures.

Kate stared at the live feed. Watched as the dark-haired beauty was tied to a chair. Watched the camera zoom to her face. The fear in her young eyes, the strength of her profile. A knife at her neck, menacingly wielded by a man Kate didn’t recognize. She captured his image for analysis.

The sound suddenly came on, loud, vibrating. Music. Then it was cut off, replaced by Trask’s voice, low, proper, formal. “Meet Lucy. Watch her for free until the countdown hits forty-four hours. Then click on the link for a secure business transaction. Isn’t she lovely?”

Lucy gasped, her breath coming fast, louder, her body shaking. The onscreen creep moved the knife away and Kate watched a small trail of blood flow from the poor girl’s neck. Down to her jacket.

“Let me go!” Lucy screamed.

Laughter was heard in the background.

A disclaimer scrolled along the bottom of the screen:

“Kill the Whore” is fantasy rape role-playing. All players are actors. No one is seriously hurt during the production of this special.

Kate hit Send. Then she grabbed her coffee mug and threw it against the far wall.