FADE TO BLACK - Thrilling Romantic Suspense - Book 1 of the BLACK CATS Series

by Leslie A. Kelly

  Escape. That had been his goal. She’d known it then and she knew it now.

  It had worked. He’d proved a whole lot of people wrong. He’d kept up his grades, never gotten into a day’s worth of trouble. And by his senior year, most people were almost able to forget his last name.

  As far as she knew, he’d left his parents’ home the day after graduation and had never gone back. He’d pulled together enough money and academic scholarships to go to college and get a degree. And her father had hired him right afterward. Stacey had promoted him to chief deputy a year ago. She’d never regretted her choice. Now, though, she had to wonder.

  Because she needed her people to be honest with her. And he hadn’t been.

  “Hey, Mitch,” she said as he stepped out of his car, careful with his broken arm. His cast, which Dean suddenly had her questioning, was scrawled with a few signatures and some graffiti, probably from the other deputies, all of whom looked up to him.

  He was liked. He was sociable. He was smart.

  So why on earth had he gotten himself mixed up with Lisa Zimmerman and then covered it up?

  “Hi, Stace.” He glanced toward the other side of the car, where Dean stood, watching in silence. “He’s back?”

  She nodded as Dean walked over to join them. “I don’t think you officially met the other day,” she said, quickly introducing them.

  Mitch flushed, then shook Dean’s hand, obviously embarrassed by his unprofessional behavior. “Is there news?”

  “No.” Few people knew the FBI was investigating other murders in connection with Lisa’s. She intended to keep it that way. If her subordinates wondered why the FBI was involving itself in a local case, they’d just have to keep wondering.

  “You still haven’t found her?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you’re certain she’s dead?”

  Dean stepped in. “We’re certain.”

  Seeing the dazed, empty look in Mitch’s eyes, Stacey reached out and put a bracing hand on his shoulder. “We need to talk about this.”

  “I know.” He glanced at Dean, as if wondering if the other man had to stay, but Stacey wasn’t going to let Mitch off the hook just because he was her friend. The case was much too important for that. Realizing as much, Mitch shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “How long had you been seeing her?”

  “About six months,” he admitted. “I pulled her over one night for speeding.”

  Wonderful.

  “She was upset. Crying. She looked a little banged-up. I thought maybe one of those rough guys she went out with had knocked her around.”

  She knew what he was going to say before he said it.

  “I found out later it was that bastard stepfather of hers. He …” Mitch’s face turned red, and obvious rage tightened his entire body. “I really considered killing him.”

  “I didn’t hear you say that,” she muttered with a frown, even though she understood the sentiment.

  Vilifying Stan wouldn’t help, however. They already knew he hadn’t murdered Lisa. Maybe her spirit, yes—he had probably killed that. But hell would have to deal with him. There was nothing she could do to the man now unless Winnie stepped forward to charge him with her own abuse.

  “Tell me you’re investigating him for Lisa’s murder,” Mitch said, still tense.

  “He’s been ruled out.”

  He pounded his fist against the hood of his car. “You’re sure?”

  “He’s got a solid alibi, Mitch. He might be a twisted degenerate, but he didn’t kill her.”

  His shoulders slumped, as if he’d wanted Stan to be guilty. Like Stacey, he had to want justice for the man who’d abused Lisa all those years.

  “Go back to what you were saying. What happened with you and Lisa?”

  “We started getting together. Not around here—we’d go up to Front Royal and grab some coffee or catch a movie. She was talking about cleaning herself up, maybe trying for her GED. Doing something with herself. I wanted to help, so we’d meet once in a while and go over some stuff.”

  The reformed bad kid tutoring the lost girl. There was something inherently sweet in that. If she’d known about it, she probably would have encouraged them both, even while urging Mitch not to get his hopes up too high.

  She hadn’t known, however. Mitch had kept his secrets well. “You fell for her?”

  He nodded, defiant. “She wasn’t what everyone thought she was. She was pretty and funny and smart.”

  “And an addict,” Stacey said, not unkindly. “I suspect you were in over your head.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes, but held on to his control. “One day she said she wanted to stop seeing me. She’d hooked up with some ex-con, started using heavily again. I couldn’t get her to quit.” He frowned. “I thought for a long time she’d skipped town with him, until you mentioned that he was in jail down in Georgia at the time.”

  “Let’s talk about the night she disappeared.”

  “I went out to Dick’s to pick up my brother.” He cast a quick, nervous glance between Stacey and Dean. “He’s not really a bad kid.”

  “Yeah, he is,” Stacey snapped. Seeing the sadness in Mitch’s expression, she grudgingly added, “But maybe there’s a chance for him.”

  “You gotta understand. I was the buffer when he was little.”

  A physical buffer. He’d been the wall between their father’s fists and his younger brother.

  Maybe that was what had drawn Mitch to Lisa. Had he felt some deep, intrinsic need to protect her from her own abusive situation, when he’d once been too young to protect himself and felt guilt over abandoning Mike?

  “Once I left, I swore I’d never set foot in that house again.” His face reddening, he muttered, “Our mom’s not interested in anything that doesn’t come out of a bottle. Mike has nobody.”

  Having nobody to stand up for him hadn’t kept Mitch from breaking free. But she didn’t point it out. The guy knew it already; he just didn’t want to give up on his troubled sibling.

  She got that. Wow, did she ever get that.

  “I’m trying to reach out to him,” he admitted. “Trying to get him to come stay with me once in a while. The old man’s going to a NASCAR race later this week. I had been planning on picking Mike up, bringing him to the station. Letting him spend some time with some of the decent people around here …” Mitch’s voice trailed off. “I guess that’s not a good idea now, though.”

  With an active murder investigation? Definitely not.

  “Let’s get back to that night, Mitch.”

  “When I showed up at the bar, Mike was about to get his butt kicked. He doesn’t like being laughed at. My brother was trying to pick a fight with a bunch of hard-drinking bikers who got a kick out of a kid thinking he could intrude on their turf.”

  The teen was lucky he hadn’t gotten pulverized.

  “I was hauling him out when I saw Lisa.” He swallowed visibly and leaned back against his own car, as if his legs had weakened. “She was dancing on top of the pool table. Moving like … like she was, you know, wanting to have sex with any guy there. I asked her to leave and she just laughed at me. So I pulled her down.”

  “Bet that didn’t make her happy.”

  “No. She scratched me, kicked me. Told me to mind my own business.” His voice lowered, thickened. “Told me she was sick of being around somebody who didn’t know how to have any fun and to leave her the hell alone.” Closing his eyes, almost whispering now, he added, “It wasn’t until after I left that I realized she was crying when she said it.”

  “But you did leave.”

  He nodded miserably. “Yeah. I took Mike home, then drove around for a while to try to get my thoughts together.”

  “By yourself?”

  Another nod. Stacey hid a frown, wishing Mitch had gone somewhere with lots of witnesses who could give him an alibi.

  Did she think he was the Reaper? No way. But she was standing beside an FBI a
gent who had to be mentally building a case against the guy with every word that came out of Mitch’s mouth.

  “I didn’t want to give up on her, though, especially once I remembered those tears on her face. So I went back.”

  Oh, hell. “Back to Dick’s? What time?”

  “I dunno, around closing.” He hunched forward, as if physically ill. “The place was crazy and packed. One of the waitresses said Lisa had just left, though she didn’t see who she was with. I probably didn’t miss her by more than minutes.”

  More information nobody at Dick’s had bothered to volunteer. So much for doing one’s civic duty. She could only again surmise that Mitch’s position as her chief deputy had kept people’s lips glued shut.

  “If I’d been there earlier maybe she wouldn’t have left with him.” He sounded on the verge of tears. “Maybe I could have stopped her from going with someone bad who wanted to hurt her.”

  “Going with him?” Dean asked, his tone sharp. “How do you know she voluntarily left with someone?”

  Mitch slowly straightened. “Well, I just figured it. That was the last time anybody saw her, and Freed’s car was there. She had to have left with someone. Obviously the wrong someone.”

  He didn’t speculate that she’d been taken. Then again, Mitch didn’t know anything about the Reaper, or the fact that he forcibly kidnapped his victims.

  For all his intelligence and his background, he was still, at heart, a pretty innocent guy. She hoped, for his sake, that he never learned the true details of Lisa’s murder. Because, having seen his eyes and heard his voice, she didn’t doubt one thing.

  He had loved her.

  THE REAPER HAD gotten direct, personalized requests for his special brand of services before. He’d been offered bribes, had been accosted right in the middle of his playtime, had fielded e-mails filled with promises and pleas.

  He’d never accepted.

  The thrill of what he did was in the control it gave him. Other than someone else deciding how he would do what he did, the rest was in his hands. And the how was incidental. Only the doing mattered. Only the blood. The anguish. The terror. The pain.

  All that was in his control. As was the identity of his prey.

  So when others had reached out, offering to pay him to kill a man, or a brunette, or a specific person someone wanted out of the way, he had always refused. He wouldn’t be manipulated or controlled. He would never sacrifice the pleasure he gained from killing his favored victims to please anyone else.

  At least, he thought he wouldn’t. Now he wasn’t so sure. He’d never foreseen a situation like this one, where he might actually be forced to do so.

  He’d had enough of being forced. Enough of being powerless. And the rage over Warren Lee trying to make him that way again had him ready to erupt in ferocious retribution.

  He was a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Ready to land right in Lee’s lap.

  “Calm. Control,” he whispered, feeling his heart race and his breath grow hot.

  He counted to ten, forcing the helpless anger down into his gut, where it had lived, seethed, and taken root years ago. He could get through this. Even if he had to, just once, go out of his way to accommodate someone else’s desires.

  Possibly sick desires. One potential client, a big fan from the start, had been particularly interested in choosing a very specific type of victim. He not only wanted to name the age, sex, and physical description, he’d insisted on seeing certain acts. Followed by the brand of death he preferred.

  And he’d offered an absolute fortune to see it done.

  The very idea had repulsed the Reaper. He wasn’t some sicko like that guy. Talk about weird.

  The offers had been easy to refuse because, before, it hadn’t mattered. The money hadn’t mattered. He had certain needs. The auctions and drive-in ticket prices allowed him to meet them. All was well.

  Now, though, with Warren Lee evading him, hiding out in his fenced fortress, almost certainly armed and watching every one of his security monitors around the clock, he wasn’t going to be able to meet them much longer.

  It was Wednesday night. He had three more days to come up with the cash to pay Lee’s blackmail. So far, his efforts to get at the man by lurking in the tree-studded forest along his property in the middle of the night had been useless.

  Spotting Lee’s security cameras hadn’t proved much of a challenge once he’d known to look for them. He’d easily avoided that danger. Hidden by the thick woods of the state park, he stayed out of visual range, only a shadow drifting through the softly blowing leaves. Sitting high in a tree overlooking Lee’s land, he kept his night-vision binoculars close to his face, watching for any movement, any sign of life. Lee hadn’t come out of his house on the previous two nights. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t tonight.

  He only needed one shot. Just one.

  But he doubted he’d get it. Warren Lee knew who he was. Lee also, therefore, knew he was up against someone who knew how to handle a gun. He couldn’t be stupid enough to think he could threaten blackmail and not face retribution.

  Then again, people were stupid.

  He could have taken out the security cameras and gone in for a frontal assault. But Lee would be expecting that. The moment security went down, he would go on high alert. The vet supposedly had weapons that would make a terrorist jealous.

  No, this was his only option, short of staking out Lee’s driveway by day, following him, and forcing him off the road somewhere. But the potential to get caught was much too great. He had to control the situation. He had to be in charge of the where and when.

  Here. And soon.

  “You won’t come out in the darkness. But I’ll stay here until morning if I have to,” he whispered, his lips barely moving.

  In daylight, the risk of exposure would be great. With the coming of dawn, one of the park guards or some family on a campout could spot him or his truck, which he’d pulled off the road into a well-hidden clearing. They might hear a shot and come to investigate. Or they might just see him driving out of the park and remember his face or his vehicle.

  The sheriff and the FBI had already been nosing around out here. If Lee turned up dead, they’d immediately connect the cases. Any chance sighting by a witness could screw him up. He needed to avoid being seen at all costs.

  Still, he had to try.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t earn the money to pay Lee off, as disgusting as he found the idea. He just wanted the satisfaction of blowing away the man who’d blackmailed him. “Blowing away isn’t good enough,” he told the night. “What I wouldn’t give to show you what drawing and quartering is like. Let you watch while your guts spill out.”

  Nice fantasy. But there was no time.

  He had tonight, just this final night. Because if he was going to have to come up with the money, the wheels had to be set in motion by tomorrow. He needed to advertise, get things rolling. After that, things would be tight.

  Thursday the auction.

  Friday the kill.

  Saturday the payoff.

  And he’d get his revenge on Warren Lee sometime afterward.

  It could work. But he hoped it didn’t have to go down that way. He’d much rather deal with the man right now.

  Which was why he settled more comfortably into the crook of the limbs, unblinking, relentless, with the binoculars at his eyes and the scoped rifle in his hands.

  CHAPTER 13

  LILY HAD MADE A PROMISE to her boss that she would remain focused on the Reaper case until the murderer was caught. She meant to keep that promise.

  That didn’t mean, however, that she couldn’t begin to pave the way toward catching the online sexual predator who haunted her dreams almost as much as the Reaper did. While she’d spent nearly every hour racking her brain, trying to figure out why there was no money trail from the several online auctions the unsub had held, she’d also made a few phone calls.

  Including one to the special agent who’d investigat
ed her nephew’s murder.

  Knowing her history, the head of the other CAT had tried to refuse her help. She’d remained calm, pointed out all the advantages. Finally, considering she was already hip-deep in the Playground and knew everything about the place, he’d relented.

  She hoped they caught Lovesprettyboys soon. But if they didn’t, if he was still out there once the Reaper had been stopped, she would be part of the team going after him.

  It wasn’t justice for little Zach. Or for her sister. But it was something.

  “Son of a bitch,” she heard Brandon mutter from the desk beside hers on Thursday morning.

  She immediately swung around in her chair, wondering what had instilled that note of shock in his voice. His usually exuberant mood had disappeared earlier this week, after what had probably been their fifth fifteen-hour workday in a row. Now they were both stretched to the breaking point, frazzled and desperate to help Blackstone and the others.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  She slid her chair over next to his, looking at his monitor, not sure she wanted to see. Fortunately, there was no hideous video of a murder on display. Just a cyber sign in Satan’s Playground. But it completely stopped her heart.

  “Another one?” she whispered, utterly horrified. “Already?”

  He nodded, speechless.

  “My God. It hasn’t even been a week.”

  “He’s out of control. Accelerating wildly.”

  The Reaper was ready to kill again. His ostentatious sign outside the “town hall” where he held his auctions said he’d was hosting another one. In mere hours.

  Lily’s stomach tightened, and she pressed her fisted hand against it, trying to will away the emotion, the revulsion. The panic.

  Taking a deep breath, she got her mind back into the game. She examined the screen again, focusing on the cyber billboard. Reading it closely, she leaned in to read the small print at the bottom.