It did sound that way, which broke Stacey’s heart. Because it just wasn’t true. Hope Valley was a good place. A safe place. It was a far cry from the rest of the world. “You’re seeing the worst of the worst. There are many more good people here than bad. But we’re not exactly out there looking for them, are we?”

“It’s not like anybody in law enforcement spends their days tracking down the good guys,” said Dean.

“Too bad.” Mulrooney snorted. “If you ask me, going after Mr. Rogers beats chasing Jack-the-freakin’-Ripper any day.” He and Stokes exchanged a look. “Okay, back to the bar we go.”

Stacey thought for a long moment before she opened her mouth, considering what she and Dean had talked about the other night. About the possibilities, the profile. The chance that someone she knew very well might be a monster.

It didn’t seem possible. But she couldn’t deny it had to be checked out. And since she had to go to her father’s, and the other agents needed to fill the time until she could meet back up with them to call Warren in, they were the obvious ones to do the checking. “I have something else you might want to look into,” she murmured, not meeting Dean’s eye. She bent down and scrawled a name and an address on a piece of paper, handing it to Special Agent Stokes.

“You think this guy could be involved?”

Did she? Did she really? It seemed impossible.

Then again, someone murdering innocent victims and charging people for the privilege of watching it done had seemed completely impossible to her a week ago, too.

“I don’t know that I’d call him a suspect,” she admitted. “But he was at the bar the night Lisa disappeared. And his background and lifestyle make it at least possible. He’s worth a look, anyway.”

Dean glanced over Stokes’s shoulder at the piece of paper and read the name. He didn’t respond with any more than a brief nod. But the gleam in his eyes said he agreed.

Her brother’s best pal, Randy Covey, was worth checking out.

Wyatt had known it was a long shot. Brandon and Lily were brilliant at what they did, but knocking off an international Web site when they weren’t even certain where it was hosted was a tall order.

But somehow, deep down, he’d expected them to pull it off.

Knowing he’d catch heat, knowing he’d be criticized for risking the whole operation, knowing he’d be blamed if this son of a bitch Reaper went underground and hid in anonymity for the rest of his days, knowing all that, he’d wanted them to succeed.

They hadn’t.

They hadn’t.

He didn’t know who’d been more upset: Brandon because the failure was an insult to his abilities. Or Lily, because she was Lily.

Her reaction would haunt him in days to come. He didn’t know if he would ever forgive himself for hiring her in the first place, knowing her vulnerabilities.

Lily had already become almost obsessed with that perverted character who called himself Lovesprettyboys. For the same deviant to win the auction and make his sick choice had almost pulled the legs completely out from under the young agent.

“A boy,” he whispered, still not believing it. “He paid to watch someone rape and murder a little boy.”

There could have been no worse words for Lily Fletcher to read on that screen. None that would stab straight through her heart as viciously as if she were pierced with one of the scythes the Reaper used so joyfully in Satan’s Playground.

He’d tried to talk to her. She’d told him she didn’t need to.

He’d tried to send her home. She’d refused to go.

Instead, she’d been in her office with Brandon, each working frantically on their assigned tasks. Brandon tried to monitor any private communication between the killer and his customer. And Lily was trying to find the money exchanged between them.

She’d had no luck before. That didn’t mean she would give up. In fact, he now knew she wouldn’t give up until both of the real monsters from that virtual world were behind bars.

“Wyatt? Wyatt!” Brandon called from out in the hallway.

He jumped up from behind his desk and hurried out of the office, seeing the younger man rushing toward him. “You’ve found something?”

Brandon shook his head, turning on his heel and hurrying back down the hallway. “No, it’s Lily.”

Oh, God. What had she done? What had he done to her? Had her fragile psyche finally cracked under the strain of her family’s horror combined with this current one?

He skidded into the office Brandon and Lily shared. His heart pounding and his pulse roaring through his veins, he half expected to see her slumped at her desk.

She wasn’t. Instead, she sat upright, her fingers clicking wildly, her nose almost touching the monitor.

“What happened?”

“Shh!”

He remained silent, and so did Brandon, for a long minute or two. Then Lily froze. Her mouth dropped and she jerked so hard her glasses fell off her face. Putting her hands on the edge of her desk, she launched herself backward with a shocked cry, as if she couldn’t bear to see whatever it was she’d discovered.

“What?” Brandon knelt beside her. “Tiger Lily, what is it?”

She shook her head, looking up toward the ceiling, as if that held the answers. “I understand now. I see. I followed the spiderweb. Couldn’t stop thinking of the way he’d worded it. ‘Real.’ ‘No Credit.’ ”

“I don’t understand, Lily.” Wyatt walked over and put a hand on her slender shoulder, hoping the agent hadn’t had some kind of mental breakdown. She’d been honest about the psychiatric therapy she’d undergone after her nephew’s murder and her sister’s suicide. Had today’s horrifying discovery pushed her back over the edge?

“I couldn’t track the money,” she whispered.“Couldn’t find it; the trail went nowhere, thin and fragile as a spiderweb.”

She was starting to make sense. And his pulse gradually began to slow. “But now? What happened, Lily? Have you tracked it now?”

“No.”

Brandon looked up at him, shaking his head. “Maybe we should call someone.”

Brandon didn’t know. Nobody knew, except Wyatt, that there was no one to call. Lily was completely alone in the world. Her sister and nephew had been her last two surviving family members. Now they were both gone and she had absolutely no one.

“Lily,” he murmured, “tell me.”

She finally tore her gaze off the ceiling and met his stare directly. “I can find him, Wyatt.” The assurance returned. Steel oozed back into her posture, and the weak, haunted woman began to disappear right before his eyes.

“Good,” he said, his tone soothing, though he was confused by her mood.

“I can track the auction payment as soon as it’s made. Because this time, it will be made.”

Brandon slowly rose, obviously realizing his office mate wasn’t in the middle of a nervous breakdown. “What are you talking about? He’s always gotten paid, except for that very first murder, Lisa Zimmerman’s. Why is this one different?”

“Yes. Paid.” She pulled her eyes from Wyatt’s and looked back at the computer. The screen displayed a sequence of numbers, as well as some odd, coinlike symbols. “Paid in Faida.”

Wyatt didn’t follow.

“It’s an old medieval term,” she said, her voice growing hard. “It means blood money.” She nearly spat the words.

“What are you saying?” Brandon asked, even as Wyatt felt the truth begin to slide into his brain like an ugly, awful black mist. It filled every pore, every cell, and he closed his eyes, not wanting to believe it.

“It’s a game,” she said with a laugh devoid of anything resembling humor. “All a game, with Faida as the currency, as real as the money on a Monopoly board.”

Brandon still appeared confused. Any reasonable person would be. Because the horror, the awfulness of it, was almost beyond comprehension.

“The murders,” Wyatt said quietly. “He never got cash for any of them.”