“ Brandon found the auction. It’s already over.”

Damn. They’d thought they had a few days, at least, before the next seventy-two-hour countdown started. His pulse throbbed in his temple and his fingers curled tightly on top of the keyboard as he kept refreshing the screen, wanting the thing to hurry up. Yet somehow, not ever wanting to have to see it at all. “When?”

“Looks like it went down yesterday around noon.”

The words stunned him, every muscle in his body clenching reflexively. “The unsub’s already got almost twenty-four hours on us? How could this have happened?”

He saw the others react to the news. With his few words and his visible frustration, they already knew as much as he did. Stokes and Mulrooney both sat back down across from him, leaning over Stacey’s desk, tense and completely at attention.

Wyatt continued. “ Brandon thinks the site owners are paranoid about being compromised, especially as more and ever more illegal activity is turning up there, child pornography and the like. So the security has gotten more intense. There was some Reaper chatter; then the site went black with a ‘Be Back Soon’ message scrolling across, followed by a line of gibberish.”

“Code for the members to find their way back in?”

“Perhaps. Or information on how to get into the invitation-only auction. It’s open only to the members who like that sort of thing and who can afford to pay for it.”

Dean would love to think that was a small group. But his gut told him it wasn’t. With a whole world full of deviants the possibilities boggled the mind.

“When Brandon got back in this morning and saw more chatter that it was over, he went deep and finally found a transcript. Have you got it yet?”

Refreshing the screen, he saw the e-mail. “I’ve got it. It’s opening.”

Wyatt waited, saying nothing.

When the screencap appeared, Dean resisted the urge to dive to the bottom of it to find out what they were up against and started at the beginning. He read quickly, feeling his stomach heave at the excited chatter between Satan’s Playgrounders with handles like Twistedsister, Thebutcher, and Marquisdesade. One persistent bidder whose name hinted at his true proclivities, Lovesprettyboys, tried to persuade the Reaper to let him choose the victim, but had been shot down. The others seemed content to merely toss out suggested means of death. Things so sick Dean wondered just how far the depths of the human mind could reach.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Mulrooney said.

Dean didn’t turn around; he merely pointed to a trash can and kept reading. All the way to the bottom, to the winner’s final bid. And his choice.

“Good God,” he whispered.

“Taggert?” Wyatt’s voice asked from the phone. “Do you see?”

“I see.”

“We’ve got to stop him.”

“I know.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” Stokes snapped, as she, too, read the final few lines.

Mulrooney was more blunt. “Fucking medieval.”

Good description. Barbaric, horrific. Though, considering the viral popularity of some online videos, like the ones of the overseas assassinations of Americans by terrorists, not necessarily something nobody had ever heard of.

Stacey, who was seated on the corner of her desk, out of eyesight of the screen, asked, “What is it?”

Dean didn’t answer. He merely turned the monitor so she could read the words for herself. She did so, then paled, closing her eyes and turning away.

“Lily’s trying to track the payment,” Wyatt said, meaning all three of them were in the office this early on a Saturday morning. Good to know the whole team was so anxious to catch this guy.

“You can see the winning bid was thirty-five thousand,” Wyatt added. “He can’t move that much money around the Internet without somebody noticing him. This is the closest to real time we’ve ever gotten, and she’s making the most of it, focusing first on trying to find accounts that lead to anywhere in Virginia.”

Another voice suddenly came through the phone. “There he is! I see the bastard.”

Recognizing Brandon ’s voice, Dean asked, “What’s he got?”

“Hold on,” Wyatt replied. A low rumble of conversation followed, until Blackstone came back on the line. “He’s in the Playground right now.”

“The Reaper?”

“Yes.”

“I see you,” came Brandon ’s voice from the background. “Why don’t you come out from under that cape, you little prick.”

Unreal. They were watching a cartoon version of the sadistic killer freely strolling through his cyber world and couldn’t lay a finger on him. “Can he trace him?”

Wyatt seemed distracted. “Why is it going in and out? Are you losing him?”

“Shit! Oh, no, you don’t!” Brandon shouted, frustration making his voice throb.

Wyatt snapped into the phone, “I’ve got to go. We’re doing what we can; I think we’re going to lose him again. One thing we know at this point: The Reaper is online, playing in the Playground, right this minute. If you’re going to conduct interviews this morning, you might keep that in mind.”

“Got it,” Dean said, ending the call. He tucked the phone away and related the information to the others.

“So let’s go knock on good old Mr. Lee’s door, tell him we’d just like to chat, and see if he’s online,” Mulrooney said. “I bet he’s got some high-powered security equipment out there, run by a state-of-the-art computer.”

The idea had merit, but he saw by the look on Stacey’s face that she genuinely believed they’d be wasting their time. And frankly, they didn’t have time to waste.

He trusted her. He hadn’t known her long, but he already had faith in her instincts, and if she thought they’d be barking up the wrong tree, he intended to take her at her word. “Let’s stick with the original plan,” Dean said.

He glanced at the computer screen again, unable to keep his eyes off the final words, the sick desires of the winner. And the Reaper’s agreement.

God, he hoped they found this guy before he grabbed his next victim.

He enters the Playground through the south gate.

The palette of odd colors is familiar, welcoming. The eerie, gray-streaked blue sky casts a perennial storm cloud over the preternaturally cheerful Playground. The grass is too green. The sun too yellow. The images too surreal, at odd angles, with unnatural curves and sharp edges.

It’s Dalí’s version of Sesame Street .

Only if you look closely can you see the writhing forms of anguished souls carved into the base of the tree holding the tire swing. At first glance, the yawning opening beneath the sliding board, which falls away into a pit of flame and torture, appears to be only a shadow. The metal rings hanging from a jungle gym seem simple gymnastic playthings-until you notice the screaming man hanging from them, begging for mercy as a fire is lit beneath his feet.

As always when he comes to the Playground, peace washes over him. Happiness fills him from his core to the tips of his fingers and the very ends of each strand of hair on his body.

Ahead of him, the morning crowd is thick and buoyant as the weekend begins and earthly workweek identities fall away. Possibilities abound; excitement ignites the air. Convention and morality and mundane laws simply do not exist in this world. Nothing is taboo, nothing sacred.

No one ever says no. No desire is too dark to fulfill.

Here is a woman being beaten by a long, spiked whip. There a man is led around on a leash like a dog. A crowd encircles a duo taking turns raping the brunette they have pinned to the ground.

And a tall, skeletally thin man draped in expensive clothes takes yet another child by the hand and leads him through an elaborate gate marked PRIVATE.

Then, at last, they notice his arrival. All fall silent. Watching him. Waiting for him. They part like the sea spreading for some biblical being.