site apparently voided Fontanne’s link within hours of his death making the news, and it took me a whole day to find another way in.”
“I can’t believe the jackass would post something like that—” Gunnar suddenly stiffened. “Did he post pictures of his victims?”
There were several seconds of silence. “Ah, not anything identifiable, like no faces or even distinctive tattoos or birthmarks. I did see . . . there were photos of victims tied to beds and tables and . . . other places.” Another breath. “But most of the photos were of arms. It’s always the underside of a right forearm that has a small, freshly made . . . brand.”
Gunnar stopped breathing again. It wasn’t enough to just rape them? The fucking bastard branded his victims? On their forearms, where the victims would see it every day for the rest of their lives, he realized. “Holy hell,” he said, fighting to get back on firmer ground. “Do you know if it’s done the same way on people as it is on cattle?”
“I checked into it, and human body-branding is done fairly much the same way, and it’s actually starting to gain popularity as the new tattoo. He apparently branded his victim, snapped a photo, then immediately posted it to the site.”
“Did your research on body-branding show what it involves? The bastard would need something portable that would heat up easily and fairly fast.”
“All it takes is for the symbol to be carved into a small piece of metal. It could even be a piece of jewelry, like a ring. He’d only have to heat it up with a cigarette lighter.”
Gunnar closed his eyes on a silent curse, finding he was damn close to puking out his own guts. He’d dealt with any number of arrogant criminals, crazed terrorists, power-hungry idiots, and assholes in general, but none as sick as this bastard. No wonder Katy reacted so strongly to him managing the situation—meaning her—on the paramedic call. And then, to her way of thinking, he’d judged her, which had to have felt like a betrayal.
He sighed, overcome by the need to make things right on some level. “Can you do something to shut down, or better yet get rid of, that vlog site?”
“I’m already on it.”
“Can you find out who any of the victims are?”
“I tried, but no. For as arrogantly boastful as this guy seemed, he was very careful about posting anything that could identify him or his victims.”
Gunnar silently sighed, not sure what he would have done with that information anyway. At least those poor people had their privacy. And a guy like Hanson standing guard. “Good work, man,” he said, ending the call.
He gently set his phone on the truck’s console, scrubbed his face for a good five minutes trying to erase the images roaring through his mind, then closed his eyes and dropped his head to the steering wheel. Christ, what kind of sick, unconscionable freak made a sport of targeting specific people to rape? And think about all of those victims, right now walking around with the mark of their rapist on their forearms. Talk about scarred for life; could a brand be surgically removed? Chemically peeled? Or would it require a series of skin grafts? Then again, maybe it could be disguised with a tattoo, or the symbol could at least be altered with more branding.
Gunnar sat up and gave his face another good scrubbing, then stared out the windshield at Bottomless and thought about Katy’s belief that she was somehow responsible for Fontanne’s death. The bastard had been lugged off the mountain three days ago, the subsequent autopsy revealing an aneurysm had ruptured in his perverted brain, thus making him suddenly keel over dead two hundred meters from the summit.
And Katy was—had been—a paramedic. But to the best of his knowledge, she didn’t have X-ray vision, so there was no way she could have known Fontanne had been on the fast track to hell.
She had, however, told Shiloh that she could see—in her mind—what was wrong with people, much like he could see angels. Which, in Gunnar’s book of how the world worked, was about as likely as him being a mythical warrior from Atlantis who traveled through time killing demons—whatever the hell those were—with a sword.
Even though he’d seen a lot of strange things that defied science during his real-world travels, Gunnar couldn’t decide if he was having the mother of all dreams or if he needed to be locked up