Instead of using the stick, I weighed my carrot options. I’d already alluded that I could show them a screening of the Kork tapes, in return for keeping my face hidden, but I didn’t intend on following through on that unless forced to. Offering these creeps serial killer trophies would be like giving matches to a pyro.

  Back in my younger days, I used to be able to get perps to open up by being a little flirty. But, truth told, I’d forgotten how to flirt. I’d been with Phin for too long, hadn’t felt attractive lately, and wasn’t sure I was emotionally equipped to handle the rejection if my feminine wiles were rebuffed. Plus, these guys were downright repulsive, and I wasn’t that good of an actor.

  Which left me without recourse. At least, with these weirdo twins.

  Fortunately, I had friends in the know.

  I seated myself in front of Harry’s laptop and whipped out my cell phone. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hey, Val. It’s… Jill.” I’d almost said Jack.

  Val Ryker was a former colleague who now resided in Wisconsin, doing consulting work for the Sheriff’s Department in Baraboo.

  “Jill, how’s things?”

  “Peachy.”

  “Really? That good?”

  “That good. You?”

  “Peachy.”

  Nice. Apparently both of our lives sucked.

  “I’d love to catch up, but had a work question. Tell me everything you know about darknet.”

  “Easy. I know nothing.”

  “Great. Gotta go.”

  “Good catching up.”

  I disconnected, then stared at my phone, trying to think if I had any other friends. I knew some actual spies who no doubt had darknet experience, but I had no way to get in touch with them. And if I did, I’d probably shoot one of them on sight. Her name was Chandler, and she was the reason we’d left Herb and Tequila behind in Baja.

  Just before I began loathing myself for having shitty interpersonal skills that left me friendless, I remembered Tom. I found his number.

  “Tom, it’s… Jill.”

  “Hey, Jill. Been a while.”

  Tom Mankowski once worked under me on the CPD. Last I checked, he was still recuperating from a serious injury.

  “How’s the rehab?”

  “Slow. But it isn’t boring, because of all the pain.”

  “Nice.”

  “Am I slurring? Because I’ve got a Duragesic patch on each leg. Pro tip; you never think you’ll miss jogging, until you can’t jog.”

  I had only visited Tom once since the shooting, and I sensed both the pain and the painkillers in his voice. One more regret for the regret-pile.

  “Tom, what do you know about darknet?”

  “You were never one for small talk, Loot.”

  Loot was short for Lieutenant, my old job. Tom was smart enough to not call me by my first name on the off chance anyone was listening, but apparently that savvy didn’t extend to his nickname for me.

  “Small talk is great for cocktail parties and strangers on a plane ride. I need help.”

  “I know my way around darknet. What do you need?”

  “Can you guide me through an Uncensored Hidden Wiki search?”

  “Are you in front of a computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tom directed me to download the Tor browser, but I didn’t need to because it was already on Harry’s laptop screen. After opening up the application, I saw that Tor wasn’t much different than Google, Bing, or Safari. I typed “uncensored hidden wiki” into the text box, and a search engine called DuckDuckGo gave me several pages of hits.

  “You’re looking for a URL that’s a bunch of random letters and numbers and ends in dot onion,” Tom told me.

  “There are a few of them.”

  “Okay, first thing to know is that about seventy-five percent of darknet is broken or bullshit. Scams and garbage and links that don’t work. About twenty percent is legit markets. Well, legit in that they aren’t rip-offs, but they are illegal. Stolen credit card numbers, fake passports, counterfeit currency, drugs, and H/P/A/W/V/C services.”

  “Which is?”

  “Hackers, phreaks, anarchy, warez, virus, cracks. You can hire guys to do DDoS attacks, spam and harass people, hack passwords, phish, spread trojans; upstanding stuff like that.”

  “Nice.”

  “Now the last five percent of darknet, that’s where the really bad stuff happens. All the illegal pornography, human trafficking, rape and assassination services, sex tours, firearms and munitions—and we’re talking big shit like rocket launchers and land mines.”

  I spent a good portion of my life looking for bad people hiding among the good. Now it seemed they had a whole section of the Internet to themselves, where they didn’t even need to hide.

  “Lovely.”

  “Thank the US government. They wanted a way to do all of their covert, nasty shit without being traced, and then they got pissy when civilians used the same technology to do covert, nasty shit without being traced.”

  “Where would I find a serial killer who calls himself the Cowboy? He mentioned darknet.”

  “A serial killer? I thought you were… uh… retired.”

  I bridled, just a little. “Are you retired?”

  “I’m on a medical leave of absence.”

  “So, when you’re ready for duty again, are you going back to the Job?”

  “Joan and I have talked a lot about this. I… I’m going to pursue a different career path.”

  “That’s good,” I said, honestly. “I wish I’d gotten out sooner. But can you say, for sure, that nothing would ever get you to take a case again?”

  “I don’t want to get into a war of ideologies, Loot, but retired is supposed to mean retired.”

  “And what if something from the past, something like an old case, came back? Would you run and hide? Or would you face it?”

  After a pause, Tom said, “I see what you mean.”

  I found the uncensored wiki page, and it came up on a random page, showing part of an article called “Seducing the Reluctant Nine-Year-Old.”

  I winced. “This wiki site is disgusting.”

  “Try searching for your guy.”

  There was a cowboy link. But it was for a sex position that involved more than one species.

  “Nothing. Where else can I try to find him?”

  “You can try Torbook. It’s a deep web social media site.”

  “Got a URL?”

  “Hidden Wiki should have a link.”

  “Okay. Can you hang on while I check?”

  “Sure. I’m waiting for my Honeybeast Slayer to regenerate her licorice tail.”

  I blinked, not understanding. “Is that code for something?”

  “No. It’s Zombie Sugar Jackers 2: SmackPack SnackPack. It’s a social media game. My life has been reduced to opioids and phone apps.”

  “I read about that game. Supposed to be more addictive than cocaine, and drives people to bankruptcy.”

  Tom didn’t answer.

  “Tom? You there?”

  “Sorry, I got attacked by the Butter Scortcher and had to buy a Gumdrop Torpedo upgrade.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Something about cocaine?”

  “I said I read an article that the game you’re playing—”

  “Hold on,” Tom interrupted. “Rival clan attacking my Caramel Crop. Gotta buy a Cotton

  Candy Shield.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Do they also sell a Pavlov bell?”

  Tom didn’t reply, but in the background the jovial beeping continued.

  Losing my friend to Zombie Sugar Jackers 2, I navigated the treacherous and ugly waters of the hidden wiki on my own and managed to find Torbook. The homepage demanded I create an account before proceeding.

  “Tom?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “It wants me to put in an email and password.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Tom?”

  “Shit! The FrucTortise ate my ChocoStalk harvest.”

  “Tragic,” I deadpanned. “What am I supposed to do on Torbook?”

  “The harvest takes three days to replenish unless I boost it with Vanilla Brownie Fertilizer. But I’d have to use my last Kiss-A-Lanche. You know how much a Kiss-A-Lanche costs? It’s not like I’m made of Gummy Gold.”

  “Are you listening to yourself talk?”

  “Blame the morphine. I think I’m addicted.”

  “You sure you aren’t addicted to something else?”

  “I have crutches. Don’t judge.”

  “Torbook log in?”

  “Just make up an email address. That’s what everyone does. Ah, shit, the goddamn FrucTortise is in my Sugar Silo.”

  I typed something made-up into the text boxes, and was rewarded by being able to access the main site. It looked a lot like Facebook, to the point where it must have been stealing the design code. There were a few ads; buying marijuana, buying stolen credit cards, trading bitcoin. I did a quick search for Cowboy and got over a thousand hits.

  Remembering the Cowboy’s comment on Harry’s blog, I searched for Cowboy+teeth.

  That gave me just one hit. And I immediately knew it was the one I wanted, because the avatar picture was of a black Stetson hat with human teeth glued on the hatband.

  It didn’t look fake. It looked real.

  Staring at it, I knew it was real.

  Part of me didn’t want to view the profile. I’d carefully—and finally—structured my life so I wouldn’t have to deal with psychos like this. As Tom had said, I was supposed to be retired. No more chasing predators. I should have been hiding from them, not seeking out the latest.

  But if there was even the slightest chance Herb and Tequila were still alive…

  I moused over the hat and was ready to—

  “Dammit!” Tom’s yell was so loud I flinched. “I need to go up a level before I can upgrade my Smiley-Smiley Spell Factory.”

  “I think I can take it from here, Tom. Thanks for your help.”

  “Sure. Anytime, Loot. Hey, if you want to join my Sugar Clan, I can send you an invite.”

  “Thanks, but I pass.”

  “We can both get double Gummy Gold once you spend your first fifty dollars.”

  “Goodbye, Tom.”

  “Goddamn it! The goddamn FrucTortise is back!”

  He hung up.

  I clicked.

  The Cowboy only had one message posted on his wall. An unnamed Onion link.

  There were three pictures in his photo album.

  The first two were of corpses, parts of their heads missing. Gunshot wounds.

  The last was of a half-naked man, his wrists bound over his head.

  My breath caught.

  “Tequila,” I whispered.

  I managed to keep my rage below the simmering point and didn’t punch the screen, but I was so upset my whole body shook. Fighting against anger for top of the emotional dung heap was bone-piercing guilt, and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

  Tequila is alive.

  All these months.

  And I’ve been doing nothing.

  “Do you know him?”

  Heckle and Jeckle had snuck up behind me, peering over my shoulders.

  I didn’t reply. Instead I clicked on the onion link that the Cowboy had provided. The page took forever to load, and then a crude homepage appeared, red font on a black background.

  “Snuff-X,” I read. “You guys know it?”

  “No,” they said in unison.

  I clicked on the ENTER button, and then the page filled with rows and rows of small pictures. Pictures of…

  “What the hell is wrong with people?” I whispered.

  Every thumbnail was of a human being. And each human being was either bleeding, screaming, or dead.

  “Whoa,” said Heckle.

  “Whoa,” said Jeckle.

  I spent thirty seconds trying to recognize Tequila or Herb in the terrible images, didn’t find them, and then checked out the sidebar which had sign-in boxes. As I’d done with Torbook, I made up a user name, password, and fake email address, and then I logged in.

  Jesus. If hell had a website, it was Snuff-X.

  Whoever ran the site was kind enough to make it easy to search for whatever deviant behavior your sick little heart desired. Want to watch children get raped? There were eight different channels. Dogs and cats being dismembered? Five channels. Torture? Pick your favorite type. There were subsections devoted to branding, whipping, electrocution, beating, and waterboarding.

  Just to see what happened, I clicked on an image of a man with a towel over his face, having water poured on him, because a blinking icon next to it said LIVE.

  Rather than show me the stream, a pop-up obscured the picture. It was asking for BTC.

  “Bitcoin,” said Heckle.

  “It’s a cryptocurrency,” said Jeckle. “Decentralized, peer-to-peer, anonymous.”

  I’d heard of it. “You’re supposed to mine bitcoins, right?”

  “You can mine them by verifying the blockchain using the SHA-256 hashing algo,” said Heckle.

  “You can also buy bitcoin,” said Jeckle. “There are brokers.”

  I didn’t want to pay to watch some poor bastard get waterboarded. I closed the pop-up, and found a search box. I typed in COWBOY.

  The first hit was The Cowboy Channel. The image was the same black hat, banded with human teeth. The description was as follows:

  I’m a slaver, and the slaves need constant punishment. This includes fish-hooking through their chins with wire, and pulling out their teeth when they disobey. If they lose too many teeth, it’s execution time.

  Keywords included tooth extraction, torture, piercing, execution, hunting humans.

  The Cowboy had 14,261 followers.

  “He’s got a live feed,” said Heckle.

  Nearing my vomit threshold, my eyes sought out the blinking word LIVE, and there, grimacing in a still shot—

  “Oh… Jesus…”

  Herb.

  My best friend, Herb Benedict.

  Emaciated. Bearded. A wire jabbed through his chin. Strung up by his wrists.

  I’d never seen anything more horrible.

  To witness someone so dear to me, being abused, was worse than if I’d traded places with him.

  That it was happening, right now, and I couldn’t do anything, was maddening.

  I was the one who left him for dead. I was the cause of his agony over the last few months…

  I’ve had a long-standing idea on how to stop war. Every time a soldier died, everyone up the chain of command got a half-dollar-sized brand on their chest. How eager would the President be to send young people into battle knowing that he’d get an agonizing, permanent scar for every single one who didn’t come home?

  Looking at Herb’s picture, that’s what I felt. Like I deserved to have a branding iron, held to my flesh, once a day for every day he’d been missing.

  “Bitcoin again,” said Jeckle.

  “0.002742,” said Heckle. “About twenty bucks to watch live.”

  “How do I pay?” My voice came out somewhere between a whimper and a croak.

  “Got your wallet?” asked Jeckle.

  I reached for my purse, fumbled for my wallet, and Heckle and Jeckle barked their mean little laugh.

  “Your bitcoin wallet,” said Heckle. “It’s an app.”

  “I… I don’t have that.”

  They exchanged a look, then Heckle took out his cell. Over my shoulder, he did something with the computer involving his phone camera and QR codes.

  “Done,” he said.

  Nothing happened on the monitor.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “It can take a little while to verify in the blockchain.”

  I stared at Herb’s frame-captured picture. “How long?”

  “A few seconds. A few minutes.”

  “Litecoin is faster,” said Jeckle. “But this site doesn’t accept Litecoin.”

  I wanted to hit something. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to puke. I wanted to be drugged up, knocked out, put under, so I wouldn’t have to face this horrifying situation.

  Then the screen flickered, and Herb’s picture became a live movie.

  Standing next to Herb was a figure in black. Black pants. Black shirt and vest. Black boots.

  A black Stetson, human teeth mosaiced around the hatband.

  The Cowboy.

  I couldn’t see his face. He was wearing one of those bandana masks that covered up his nose and mouth. There was a design printed on it, making him look like he was a zombie.

  “We’ve got an audience,” the Cowboy said. His tone was odd. Devoid of emotion, and something else.

  Gender. The voice was completely neutral, not traditionally male or female.

  “Smile for the people watching.”

  Then the Cowboy yanked the wire connected to Herb’s chin, opening up my friend’s mouth.

  I whimpered.

  After securing the wire to a clamp in the floor, the Cowboy went to a wall of tools.

  I couldn’t watch.

  I had to watch.

  Behind me, I was vaguely aware that Jeckle was recording the screen with his camera.

  The Cowboy selected a pair of pliers.

  Keeping my eyes open was torture.

  But it wasn’t nearly as bad as what poor Herb endured.

  YURI

  After the train stopped, the driver—an old comrade from Belarus named Dimitri—called on the intercom. Yuri reached across his desk and pressed the button to answer.

  “Da?” He winced. “Yes?”

  The intercom transmitted a weak radio signal, and there weren’t any towns within fifty square miles. But you never know who might be listening in. Yuri tried to avoid speaking Russian and Belarusian since coming to America. But in moments of fatigue, or stress, he sometimes lapsed.

  “We have problem.”

  Unlike Yuri, Dimitri couldn’t shed his accent, and often omitted words when speaking English.

  “What kind of problem?”

  “Bank 6 not charging to capacity.”

  “Is Bank 6 connected to solar or the turbines?”

  “Turbines. Wind good, blades spinning. It battery.”

  “How long?”