Kate was packing up her equipment when her computer beeped.
Dillon and Quinn both crossed over and watched as she retrieved a message.
There was no return e-mail or identification.
“It’s him,” she said.
Kate:
You took my lead actress, so I had to find an understudy. Click here. The show must go on.
Trask.
She glanced up at Dillon and Quinn. They both nodded. She clicked the link.
The digital video had been set up in the corner. Adam Scott didn’t try to hide his face. A woman with short blond hair had been tied to a bed. She was pleading. Scott wrapped his hands around her neck.
Cut.
The next shot was him raping her, putting his hands around her neck again.
Kate frowned. “A glitch?”
“No,” Dillon said. “He edited the video.”
“Why?”
Dillon watched closely. Something was off about the tape. It was only five minutes long. At the end Scott gave out a primal scream as he pummeled the dead girl’s body.
Cut.
“I need to see it again,” Dillon said.
Kate played it again. Dillon watched closely. “Stop.”
She froze the frame. “I don’t see anything.”
“There.” He pointed to the lower right-hand corner, where Trask was mounting the girl.
“I still don’t see anything.”
“Can you enlarge that frame?”
Kate typed on the keyboard. The frame enlarged four times.
“I don’t see anything.”
“He’s soft. He can’t rape her. Now run the film enlarged.”
They focused on Scott’s shrunken penis. Now the digital splicing was obvious. He had deleted parts of the video, probably those showing how he’d managed to get himself hard enough to penetrate her.
“He might have said something he didn’t want us to hear,” Dillon surmised, “or done something to himself to enable penetration. But he never climaxed.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s a guess, but he has no condom on. When we find the victim forensics will be able to tell. But it was really the rage on his face. He was angry that he couldn’t climax. This girl wasn’t giving him what he needed. Either because it’s not live, or because he has severe sexual dysfunction. Or both. Maybe having the show live gives him the sense that he’s playing a part. And”-Dillon clicked on the original message-“look how he signed his name.”
“Trask,” Quinn and Kate said in unison. “But he knows we have his real identity,” Quinn added.
“Trask is his public persona. It’s who he thinks he is, or who he wants to be,” Dillon said. “Adam Scott is weak. Adam doesn’t fight back. Adam was abused. Trask hasn’t been abused. He’s in charge.
“You’re not giving me some crap about a split personality,” Quinn muttered.
“No. Adam is fully aware of who he is. For him, it’s image. He needs to think of himself as strong, successful, virile. That’s Trask. I think his sexual dysfunction is growing because we know who he really is. While we don’t know enough about his childhood to figure out what caused this, he doesn’t know that. He assumes we know everything.”
Dillon looked from Quinn to Kate. “You’re not safe, Kate. Not until he’s caught.”
“He can’t get to me,” she said.
“Did you get a good look at that woman?” Dillon asked.
She nodded. “She looks just like me.”
When Kate Donovan walked into the Seattle field office heads turned. She entered with her head held high, her pride intact, but inside she was scared. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Jeff Merritt since the day Paige had died, when he’d told her he’d track her down to the ends of the earth.
There was nothing he, personally, could do except bring her in front of OPR. They would launch an investigation-one she knew had been going on for years-into the op that had gotten Paige and Evan killed. She didn’t know what they believed or what they knew. Even if they believed her that Paige had told her they had backup, Kate had broken protocol by not briefing the backup squad herself.
She had trusted Paige.
She had run five years ago because she was scared and angry. Mostly scared. And Jeff had been wild-eyed, overcome with grief she knew all too well. She had watched Evan die in front of her.
She’d intuitively believed that the only way to clear her name was to find Trask-Adam Scott-and prove that he was the brutal killer she knew him to be. She’d done that over the years, but still Merritt wanted her head.
Because Paige had died and he blamed her as much as Adam Scott. He didn’t know the truth. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him at the time, but he wouldn’t have believed her anyway. How could she have ruined the reputation of her dead partner? It had seemed so much easier to run and work outside of the law.
But now? She just wanted it to be over.
Quinn let Dillon stay with her in an interview room. “I’ll be here the entire time.”
She shook her head. “Merritt won’t allow it.”
“Then I’ll be right outside.”
Again, she shook her head. Dillon frowned.
“I can’t let you do that. You need to go home with Lucy.”
Dillon took her hands, squeezed them. “Lucy is in good hands. Carina is with her. She’s going to be overwhelmed as it is when she sees everyone. And we haven’t told her about Patrick. We didn’t want her to know until she regained some strength.”
“Dillon, I’m not going to walk out of here tomorrow or the next day. Merritt is going to find a way to detain me. I don’t know what tricks Quinn has up his sleeve, but it’s going to take time. And I’m going to have to face the Office of Professional Responsibility at Quantico.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“You face the OPR, you tell them everything, and they clear you.”
“You have an active fantasy life.” But she smiled.
“Are you going to ask for your job back?”
She blinked. She hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know.”
“Whatever you decide to do, do it for you. Not because of me, or Paige, or Adam Scott. Make the decision that is best for you.”
She thought about what she wanted. She really didn’t know. For so long she’d been alone with her computers. She’d learned so much, taught herself, much of it illegal-like hacking into private corporations and the government. She would have to tell the OPR everything about what she’d done. She had no idea what they would do. Maybe they would clear her of charges on Paige’s death, but what about the crimes she’d willingly committed in her pursuit of Adam Scott?
“I could go to e-crimes,” she said. “If they’ll have me. I had an offer from them five years ago to transfer out of the VCMO unit. Don’t know if it’s still open, but I’m a lot better now than I was then.”
She frowned.
“What?”
“Adam Scott was even better. He manipulated me through the computers. He knew exactly what I knew. Maybe I’m not as good as I thought.”
