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Roseline willed him to keep resisting, even as she frantically redoubled her efforts to pin down the video’s origin point amid its endless spoofing and encryptions. Callan typed notes by her side, copying down every detail so it could be analyzed later.
The Game Master’s tone turned ice cold. “You try my patience. I offered you a peaceful resolution, yet you cling obstinately to misplaced loyalty and delusions of justice. So be it.”
He stepped into the camera frame, his face concealed by a horrifying masquerade mask. In leather-gloved hands, he held a wickedly curved dagger.
Roseline’s pulse thundered in her ears. They were out of time. She had failed to halt this horror show before it spun out of control.
Turning to the viewers still flooding the chat box with their clamors for violence, the Game Master asked politely, “My friends, how shall we begin?”
Roseline forced herself to keep watching as the anonymous audience voted for which torture methods to use on Moretti. When the knife sliced into his skin, and Moretti released an agonized howl, bile rose in the back of her throat.
Beside her, Callan looked equally stricken. Jaw tight with restrained fury, he reached to grip Roseline’s hand.
She welcomed the comforting contact, clinging to the lifeline of his fingers threaded through hers. If only she had uncovered the Game Master’s trail sooner, they could have intercepted him before this barbarity played out. Moretti’s blood was on her hands now, too. The burden of that guilt and helplessness threatened to crush her.
Who else would the Game Master murder? Who else would die at his hands?
Seeming to sense her despair, Callan stroked his thumb across her knuckles.
For the next agonizing minutes, they tracked every possible electronic breadcrumb as Moretti screamed and begged for mercy while the audience clamored for intensifying brutality. When the Game Master withdrew a handgun and placed it against Moretti’s temple, Roseline squeezed her eyes shut, unable to witness the end. Callan wrapped an arm around her, sharing her anguish. The echoing gunshot over the speakers signaled the grisly finale of Moretti’s life.
In the abrupt silence that followed, Roseline straightened and withdrew from Callan’s embrace. As the video feed ended, she typed commands to harvest all possible metadata from the live stream before it could be scrubbed. They had recorded as much traceable data as possible, but it remained disturbingly little given the Game Master’s technical prowess at obfuscating his trail.
Shoulders rigid with anger, Roseline initiated forced encryption on her monitoring software so no other data could be accessed remotely. She should have taken these aggressive protective steps earlier. Now, another life had been lost thanks to her overconfidence.
That mistake would not be repeated, and she would find the Game Master.
He would meet his justice.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Callan paced back and forth across the small confines of Roseline’s office. Witnessing Moretti’s brutal murder had filled him with a visceral rage and a disgust that shook him to his core, even with all his years of police experience.
The viciousness and cruelty of the Game Master was like nothing he had ever seen before, even if directed to the lowest of the criminals. Callan had thought he was hardened against violence after working homicide cases in his old city up north for years. But this…
This was on a whole other level.
The image of Moretti strapped helpless to that chair, bleeding and battered from dagger gashes, was seared into Callan’s mind. He could still hear the sickening sound of a bullet entering Moretti’s skull, shot by the Game Master.
Callan could still see the light fade from the man’s eyes as his life ebbed away, and to make matters worse, he could still perceive the repulsive cheers and demands of the online audience, clamoring for more cruelty, more blood. It set him on edge, unsettled his stomach, and made every shadow into something ominous. It made him want to put his fist through the wall.
Taking a deep breath, Callan forced himself to uncurl his fingers and exhale. He couldn’t give in to the anger and disgust churning inside him. He had to keep it together, for the investigation and for Roseline’s sake.
Roseline sat rigidly at her desk, face pale and eyes wide. She stared, but Callan could tell she wasn’t seeing anything in her office. Her rapid, shallow breathing and white-knuckled grip on her mouse betrayed how shaken she was by the horrific live stream they had witnessed.
Callan moved to stand beside Roseline’s chair, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. He could feel faint tremors running through her delicate frame.
He kept his voice soft, soothing. “I know that was rough to watch. Don’t be afraid to take a break if you need to process everything.”
Roseline gave a minute shake of her head, blond hair swaying against her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she said. But her voice lacked its usual firmness. “I’m fine,” she repeated, as though trying to convince herself she was.
Callan squeezed her shoulder once more. “It’s all right if you’re not fine. What we saw was appalling. Inhuman. Don’t feel like you must power through this unaffected.”
Roseline turned her head slightly to meet his gaze, crystalline blue eyes clouded with pain. “I’m too busy to take a break,” she insisted. “Every second we delay gives that monster a chance to strike again.”
She took a steadying breath before continuing. “My program finished running comparative financial analyses on Garofalo and DeLuca. I need to examine the data it compiled. It might reveal more victims in that sadist’s crosshairs, and we can’t let him do this again.”
Callan studied Roseline’s delicate features, noticing the dark smudges under her eyes and the tight set of her full lips. As always, he admired her strength and determination, but he didn’t want her to run herself into the ground either.
