Darknet by John R. Little Read Free Book Online Page A

Cindy’s mind, but that’s what Tony wanted to watch).
    Suddenly he looked at her and said, “If you ever leave me, I’ll kill you both.”
    There was no emotion in his words. He was just stating a fact. He then turned back to the ball game. The Yankees were leading 3-0 in the fifth.
    Cindy didn’t react, but she never forgot, either. She believed.
     
    * * *
     
    “Are you there? I can help you.”
    She still found it hard to believe she was talking to a murderer.
    “Who are you?” she typed.
    “You can call me the Manipulator. I can make things happen to make your life better.”
    “How?”
    She felt stupid asking, but she didn’t know what else to say.
    “I’ll take care of your problem. Whoever he or she is, I can have them eliminated. They’ll never bother you again. You have my word.”
    “What good is your word when I don’t know who you are?”
    “The only way this can work is anonymously. Surely you know that. It’s why you came here.”
    “Yeah . . .”
    “My rates are very reasonable. You pay half up front and the other half when you’re happy with the results.”
    “How much?”
    “Assuming the victim isn’t a politician or other public figure, twenty grand. Ten now, ten later.”
    Cindy stopped and stared. Is that what somebody’s life is worth? $20,000? She knew that her bank account held only a tiny bit and so she’d have trouble affording that . . . but that was just her trying to fool herself. She would get the money.
    “I don’t think I can do it.”
    There was a long pause before she got the next reply from the Manipulator.
    “I know how you feel. I do. You think about how easy it would be to send the money and how it causes another person to be . . . gone. It’s like you’re playing God and deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.”
    Yes , Cindy thought. That’s exactly what it’s like .
    “But,” continued the anonymous stranger, “what’s YOUR life worth? How much life is he sucking away from you? How much has he hurt you? How much will he hurt the people around you?”
    She stared at the comments. How did he seem to know so much?
    “How do you know it’s a ‘he’?”
    A smiley face appeared on the screen. “It’s always a ‘he.’”
    Cindy typed, “Give me a minute to think.”
    “Take all the time you want.”
    She got up and walked out to the backyard. She felt so conflicted and didn’t know what to do. Above her, she saw the full moon beaming down as if it wanted to know what she planned. She wished she had an answer.
    She stared out to the darkness and listened to the occasional chirp of an insect. Her mind was a flurry of images. Tony mostly, but also Avril.
    After about ten minutes, she walked back inside and sat in front of her computer.
    “Are you still there?”
    “Yes.”
    “You kill people. Let’s call it what it is.”
    “Okay. If that’s the word you want to use, yes, that’s what I do.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m wherever you need me to be. I know you’re in the United States, and so am I.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    “I’m in the northwest.”
    “Okay.”
    “What if I asked you to kill two people?”
    “Two?” There was a pause, as if Cindy had thrown off whatever the Manipulator had thought he’d figured out.
    “Yes.”
    “Who are they?”
    “Me and my daughter.”
     
    * * *
     
    Cindy was biting her lip as she stared at the computer. It was out there now. At least half of it. She didn’t wait for the stranger to answer before she added, “But what I want is for you to fake our deaths. I want you to pretend to kill us but then take us away to start a new life somewhere else.”
    “Well, that’s a new one. Every day there’s surprises in this business.”
    “Well?”
    “I can do that. It’ll take a lot of planning, but there’s less risk for me, so I’ll stick to $20,000. That’ll cover both of you. We’ll arrange a boating accident and they’ll never recover