Fear No Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

to her when she had told them it might be a trap. But Merritt was as headstrong as she was about bringing Paige’s killer to justice. He’d jumped the gun. Was that Kate’s fault? She’d warned them.
    It was just Kate now. Her versus Trask. She wasn’t about to jeopardize any more lives. If Merritt and the others had been killed, their deaths would have been on her conscience, no matter what she’d tried to do to protect them.
    The center screen showed that Roger and the goon had wrestled the girl—Lucy—to the floor. She was positioned on the ground, tied to metal hoops protruding from the beige carpet. The camera panned over her breasts and face.
    His voice, Trask or Conrad or whatever name the bastard was using now, came over cyberspace clearly.
    “Only thirty more minutes to enjoy the free show. If you’d like to continue after that, log on to my secure server and use your credit card to purchase the entire forty-eight hours for only fifty thousand dollars.”
    He’d doubled his prices.
    “Once you register, you’ll be able to vote on how our lovely guest will be treated. Isn’t Lucy just perfect? Fiesty. And I have it on very good authority that she’s a virgin.
    “For your enjoyment, and for a limited time, you can download highlights from our past shows for a small fee. Simply click on the box in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.”
    Kate swallowed. She didn’t want to see them, but she had to force herself.
    She clicked on the box and bought the compilation, saving the server information to analyze, though she knew he would keep this particular server at a location far from his hideout.
    The video was ten minutes long.
     
    Play.
     
    Meghan was first. Her humiliation of being stripped and put on all fours. Kate knew Meghan had been told that if she cooperated, she’d be spared.
    She had cooperated but hadn’t been spared.
    Trask didn’t show Meghan’s death. Kate didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.
    She dreaded the thought of watching Paige be stabbed to death, but her guilt would force Kate to watch if he showed it. She hadn’t seen Paige’s death; she had been just minutes away in the woods, desperately trying to reach her in time. She had failed. She’d only seen the aftermath, touched her partner’s blood, smelled her fear.
    Trask didn’t show Paige. Of course he wouldn’t, Kate thought. Paige had been his one mistake, and hers. He couldn’t show her death again because of who she was, an FBI agent who most certainly didn’t consent to the so-called fantasy rape role-playing. Her death connected him to the murder game, and he couldn’t pretend there weren’t people still looking for FBI Agent Paige Henshaw.
    Rayanna was next. There she was on-screen, her chest marked by cigarette burns. Her eyes terrified, her lips quivering, her expression fighting with the need to give in. A knife came down toward her, her mouth opened to scream…
    Cut. One of Trask’s men was raping another victim. Joanna. They’d spliced the tape, making it appear that Joanna enjoyed her assault. It was all part of Trask’s tightrope walk: to make everything appear somewhat legitimate.
    Other girls flashed by, Angela and Carol and Christy. Over time the photography improved, but Trask’s cruelty was the same. He’d started in snuff films—DVDs—but technology had given him a boost with webcams and untraceable downloads. Kate didn’t know how many young women Trask had actually murdered before Paige, filming their agony to share with other sickos, but he’d been at his grisly task for years. She may have only identified a fraction of his victims, and they had so little evidence they’d never been able to build a solid case. That’s why she and Paige had come up with their plan five years ago. The plan that had ended in death and failure.
    The “sample” ended. Kate slapped the tears off her cheeks. She had no right to cry. No right to suffer for the women who had died at his