Darknet

by John R. Little

  “Slow down! You’re not making any sense, for shit’s sake.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the couch. “Sit and just tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  She could smell beer on his breath and his eyes were glassy. That was never good.

  Cindy tried to calm herself, wishing she could avoid telling Tony everything . . . but she knew there was no choice.

  “I tried to hire somebody to kill you,” she said. She tried to keep her tone neutral, as if she was saying she was just cooking him an omelette. “It was a horrible thing, and I’m so sorry. But, then he started blackmailing me. He wants so much money, but then when I didn’t pay him, he kidnapped Avril. He has her locked up and it’s all my fault. I caused her this . . .”

  She couldn’t help herself as the tears started to roll down her face. She couldn’t talk anymore, just shaking her head in shame.

  He’d probably hit her any second, and for once she knew she deserved it. She slumped over and lay down on the couch, sobbing, just wanting this nightmare to be over.

  Tony didn’t say anything until she rubbed her face on the couch and turned back to face him.

  “You fucking hired somebody to kill me?”

  Cindy couldn’t believe that he was more worried about that than Avril’s kidnapping, but she nodded and whispered again, “I’m so sorry. Please, help me find our little girl.”

  “You think you’ve had a hard life with me, is that it?”

  “Tony, forget that for now! We can deal with that later. We need to rescue Avril!”

  “Easy for you to say, you ungrateful little bitch.”

  Then he hit her.

  He didn’t bother getting the sack of oranges this time. He used his fists and he beat the living shit right out of her. By the time he was done, she was a bloody mess lying on the floor, unconscious.

  * * *

  When she woke, she could barely move. Her knees both screamed with pain, as did her ribs. She felt that at least one of her ribs must be broken because it hurt so much to breathe.

  She swallowed the blood that swam in her mouth and felt two loose teeth. One other one was missing altogether. Her eyes were swollen and there were so many other pains that she didn’t even want to begin to count them.

  “Go clean yourself up.”

  It hurt to lift her head to look at Tony. He was sitting in the nearby armchair holding a beer. There were two empty bottles on the table beside him.

  It seemed impossible to think, so she had no idea how long she’d been unconscious. She glanced over at the clock: 3:15 a.m.

  “NOW! We have to talk, but you’re a mess. Go clean yourself up and get back here.”

  Cindy clenched her mouth and somehow managed to get her body working enough to let her stand. He’d never hurt her this badly before, and she was almost afraid to go look in the mirror.

  When she did, she barely recognized herself. She looked like a Halloween monster, covered with purple and green welts, with dried blood sticking to her face.

  The image staring back at her was even worse than the mess that had been made of Avril’s face. Thinking of Avril forced her to think clearly. She needed to help her.

  She wet a face cloth and carefully blotted the blood on her face. It didn’t look like she was still bleeding, and she didn’t want to open any of the wounds. The cloth started white but quickly was changed to a dark pink. She ignored it and ignored the pain running through her body and ignored the monster sitting in the living room. Her only thoughts were to help Avril. For that, she needed Tony, although she wasn’t completely sure how he could help. There just was nobody else who could.

  The blood washed away down the drain. She took off all her clothes and stood naked in front of the mirror. She wasn’t ever a vain person but she knew she had a pretty enough body. Until now.

  Her entire mid-section was full of dark bruises. The only blood was whatever had fallen from her face along with one cut that seemed to go diagonally from below her left breast to her right hip. It wasn’t deep and it cleaned up easily, but everything hurt.

  She had to stop a couple of times and sit on the toilet. Otherwise she would have fainted.

  Her head hurt but she didn’t try to do anything with that. She could feel bruises, and when she pressed the back of her head, her hand came away with more blood.

  I deserve all this, she thought. This is all because of me.

  The other thought that she held onto was that maybe now he’d gotten the violence out of his system, he’d actually try to help.

  Maybe.

  She had to believe that. If he was still going to hit her more to get back at her, well, Avril would be lost.

  The medicine cabinet had several different kinds of pain killers. She grabbed both Advil and Tylenol, swallowing two of each.

  She sat one last time on the toilet to gain her bearings and then walked to their bedroom to get her housecoat. She wanted to close the door and lock it, to hide from the monster, but she knew she couldn’t.

  Cindy went back and sat on the couch, at the farthest end from the chair he sat on. She didn’t say anything, just tried to stare at him.

  He stared right back, anger in his eyes. She refused to budge, continuing to look right back at him.

  “Who has her?”

  Her mouth ached when she spoke, and her voice sounded like she was munching on wool. “He calls himself the Manipulator. Says if we give him $500,000, he’ll let her go.”

  “Five hundred thousand? Are you fucking nuts?”

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  He glared at her. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

  “I know that. Don’t you think I see our money disappearing? Where’s it all go, Tony?”

  He just shook his head. “We can’t count on winning the lottery, you know.”

  Cindy knew what was coming and all she wanted was for him to keep his mouth shut.

  “You need to ask them.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “You’re gonna let your daughter die over some stupid problem with your parents?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “I know they have lots of money. Right now that’s all I need to know. They have the money to save their grand-daughter and you fucking need to get it from them.”

  Cindy shook her head, knowing he’d never understand.

  “There has to be another way.”

  “Like what?”

  She didn’t have an answer. That’s what she needed him to help figure out, but that didn’t seem to be happening. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the ceiling. Everything hurt.

  Chapter 17

  August 4

  Tony McKay was sitting on a log in a park near Puget Sound. It was deserted this time of day.

  He was smoking a cigarette, something he rarely did, but today he felt he needed it. He’d left the stupid bitch alone in the house to stew about Avril, because he needed time to get away and think about what he should do next. He didn’t much care about Cindy’s thoughts on the matter.

  His eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t slept much the past few nights. Cindy had told him about Avril being kidnapped, and then the fight started, and even after it was all over, he argued with her about what to do next, and then it was four in the morning. How that happened he still didn’t know.

  She had tried to convince him to call the police, at which point he had just about lost it.

  “Why are you so fucking stupid?” he shouted. “You think that guy out there isn’t watching everything you say and do? Do you want him to kill our daughter?”

  “Don’t say that. You know I want her back.”

  “Then for God’s sake, stop with the stupid ideas. If he knows you’re getting the cops involved, why would he keep her alive?”

  Of course she had no answer for that.

  Tony held his lottery ticket in his hand, rubbing it for good luck. He wanted the cash. More than a million bucks was between his fingers. The money wou
ldn’t be used to save Avril, but he wanted to be sure he didn’t lose the ticket or something like that. Even smart people have been known to make mistakes.

  He picked up his phone and typed an e-mail.

  * * *

  So far today, in three hours, Deb had had four customers enter the store, four nightmares waiting to happen. The chime that shouted when the door was opened was like the call of an executioner.

  Today, all four men who entered were regulars, though, and they knew she wouldn’t be able to talk to them. They wandered through the store, one looking for guitar strings, one looking for music, the other two just browsing at anything new. Deb handled the cash perfectly and forced herself to smile.

  Even though she knew they were safe, the customers scared her. After reading books and studying on the Internet for years, Deb still couldn’t overcome the invisible force that encompassed her, instilling fear into her whenever somebody spoke to her. Sometimes she hated herself for never breaking down the barriers. Everybody else managed to talk to people . . . why couldn’t she?

  Ding.

  The sound of an e-mail arriving stirred Deb from her reverie and she sat at her desk and clicked on the Gmail icon.

  She actually had three new pieces of e-mail. Two were from online stores, but the last was from Tony.

  She smiled and clicked it open.

  “Need to see you. Your place at six o’clock. Big news.”

  The message was signed with a happy face.

  She hit reply.

  “I can’t wait to see you. It’s been too long.” She smiled as she thought of them making love two days earlier. “I miss being with you and can’t wait to hear the big news!”

  She sent the e-mail and went to pour herself a cup of coffee from the rear of the store. It was only a little after noon, but now she really wanted it to be quitting time.

  * * *

  Tony McKay arrived only five minutes late. That was actually good for him, because he often made her wait half an hour or more. Once he’d made a date to meet Deb and hadn’t shown up at all. She never asked why. She’d learned not to do things like that.

  When she swung her door open to him, he was grinning from ear to ear. He carried a six-pack of beer even though he knew she always kept a good supply for him.

  “Party time!” he shouted.

  “Yay!”

  She almost jumped up as she grabbed his head and pulled it close so she could kiss him.

  Maybe today he’ll tell me we’re going out on the town. Maybe it’s the day he’ll tell me he loves me. Maybe it’s the day he wants to talk about a future together.

  Deb wasn’t completely sure what big news constituted to Tony, but those would be wonderful choices.

  Tony broke the kiss and closed the door. He took her hand and walked over to the couch.

  “You doing good, babe?” he asked. “You miss me and everything?”

  She nodded, her lips curling up. She loved how happy he looked. Sometimes it seemed like his smiles weren’t as genuine as they should be, like the corners of his mouth were being pulled up by invisible wires, but today she saw none of that.

  “What’s going on?”

  He nodded but didn’t answer right away. Instead he popped the cap on two beers and handed her one.

  “To the future.”

  For a second, she mis-heard and thought he’d said, “To our future,” and she just about peed her pants, but then her mind corrected what she’d heard. Still good.

  “To the future,” she repeated.

  He drank half the beer before telling her what he wanted.

  * * *

  Maria de Fatima Delgado lay in her bed. She had her laptop sitting on her lap. It was a planned day off for her and she was taking advantage of it. Maria got four weeks of vacation each year, but she rarely traveled and preferred to take the occasional day off here and there.

  She’d been awake in bed for 90 minutes doing something she hadn’t planned. She had woken with an insane curiosity about the areas of the Internet that Cindy had been looking at, and she couldn’t help herself. She clicked through to download her own copy of Tor and she started browsing.

  Maria avoided the uglier areas, but she was drawn to the site that advertised itself as the most exciting live sex show anywhere on the Net.

  She didn’t have to pay, didn’t have to identify herself (of course, since DarkNet loved anonymity), and she had no idea that her own web camera was being hijacked as she masturbated, watching two women performing oral sex on each other. She only planned on watching a moment, but then she couldn’t take her eyes away and certainly couldn’t hit the escape key to get back out of the site.

  She felt a stirring in her own pussy and found her hand touching herself there. Soon, her panties were gone and she was pushing a finger inside herself, feeling the wetness, and then she didn’t have the slightest intention of stopping.

  The video of her orgasm was stored away with hundreds of others for future voyeurs to watch at their leisure.

  * * *

  After taking the ferry to the San Juan Islands and driving twenty minutes, Cindy McKay parked her car in front of her parents’ home. This was the very last place she wanted to ever go, but she had no choice.

  It was three days after that terrible beating from Tony. Most of the bruises had receded and what was left she covered with makeup. Her missing tooth would only show if she smiled, which wasn’t likely

  She was tempted to tell her parents what had happened to her, but today wasn’t about Tony.

  Somebody had kidnapped Avril and her parents were the only people she knew who had enough money for the ransom demand.

  $500,000.

  Cindy’s mom and dad lived in a large house on the San Juan Islands, a ferry-ride from Seattle. They did have a lot of money, about 6.5 million dollars, but they had no intention whatsoever of a single penny of that money ever going to Cindy.

  For that matter, none of it would go to Cindy’s siblings, either.

  They sat at their kitchen table and planned a vacation together. It was going to be one last trip to Europe, probably including Italy (where they went on their honeymoon all those years ago), and possibly France and Germany, although other countries were still open for debate.

  The trip would be a relaxing three-month tour, and after that . . . well, Jennifer Jameson was starting to forget too many things. She’d been diagnosed with medium-term Alzheimer’s disease last month, and neither she nor her husband wanted to see her fade away into a puddle of lost memories. They’d agreed that the Europe trip would be their last time together. They hugged each other a long time when they plotted out how Dave Jameson would put a bullet in his wife’s head while she slept and then do the same for himself.

  Their will had every penny being donated to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

  * * *

  $500,000.

  Cindy still felt like it was an impossible amount. If this didn’t work, there was only one option remaining, and that was an even worse choice than her parents.

  The house was built in the sixties, but it still looked in pristine condition. It was a 13,000 square foot rancher with a back lot that stretched seemingly forever. Her parents hired enough staff to be sure that their home always stayed in perfect shape.

  She wondered how long it would take them to piss away $500,000 just on the upkeep for the house. From where she sat in her seven-year-old Mazda, she could see two gardeners along with a maintenance man working at the side of the house. She wouldn’t be surprised if there were others she couldn’t see, let alone the several indoor staff.

  Dad had earned the money in the lumber industry. He had started as a logger but was always keen to take the next step in the ladder until he ended up as CFO of Weststate Industries. He once let slip (way back, while Cindy was still in school and her parents didn’t hate her quite as much) that his salary and benefits worked out to eight million a year.

  She couldn’t fath
om that amount of money then and she still couldn’t. Allowing for inflation, that had to be equivalent to at least twelve million now . . .

  Cindy took a deep breath and climbed out of her car, locking it with her clicker, and then walked up the long stone path to the front door.

  With each step, she felt like she was undertaking a death march.

  The door opened and a woman answered. She was of some indeterminate age between thirty and sixty, wore a small black and white cap and a white gown. She didn’t smile nor say hello. She just moved back from the door and said, “Your parents are waiting for you.”

  “Of course they are.”

  She’d had to phone for an appointment. She knew if she hadn’t, they’d pretend not to be home, just to piss her off. Part of her was surprised they hadn’t left a message with the ageless servant: “So sorry, but your parents changed their mind. They decided to blow you off and suggested I tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  In spite of the circumstances, Cindy felt a slight smile on her face as she thought of that. It quickly disappeared.

  “Hello, dear.”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Come sit down.”

  The old man didn’t stand. He was sitting on the black leather couch, in the same spot she remembered him sitting all those years ago.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “I’m over here, dear.”

  Cindy turned to see her mother following her into the den.

  God, you’re so old. Cindy tried not to stare, but her mother was hunched over and walking with a cane. Her face was scarred with wrinkles and her hair was white. The last time they’d seen each other, her mother could still play a short game of tennis and her hair was chestnut brown. Dyed, but brown nonetheless.

  Her father said again, “Come sit down,” this time more forcefully. Mom sat beside him and appeared exhausted from the effort of just walking into the room.

  This might be the last time I ever see you, Cindy thought.