Free Fear No Evil by Allison Brennan

endured.
    Damn bastard Trask knew she was watching.
    Power.
    The enormity of his power structure is what confused Kate. He’d had money at his disposal, even before his online porn sites began to flourish. His corporations paid taxes, filed reports, had a board of directors—all of which had been thoroughly investigated by the FBI and deemed legitimate. In fact, at one point her boyfriend, Evan, also an FBI agent, had told Kate she was chasing a ghost, that Trask didn’t exist. That the disappearance of the women she and Paige had been trying to find was unrelated to their jobs as porn stars. That April Klinger hadn’t been killed on screen. It had all just been an act, he said.
    She’d fought with Evan the week before the sting, before Paige was kidnapped.
    They had been in the living room of the small town house they shared near Quantico. She worked at headquarters, while Evan was a special agent in charge out of Washington, D.C. She was in Violent Crimes/Major Offenders, he was in Public Corruption. But he’d served in VCMO for years and had been a great sounding board for her and Paige when they’d been assigned a missing persons case related to the online pornography they routinely monitored for the VCMO unit.
    Kate paced as she verbalized her reasoning on the case. It was Sunday, a rare day off for both of them, and Evan had wanted to take his boat out. He was annoyed that she was still in work mode.
    “What if April was murdered during the play-acting?” Kate asked. “Maybe it was an accident. They didn’t mean to kill her. But if they reported it, a half-dozen agencies would be all over their ass, ready to shut them down. So Trask and his people covered it up.”
    Evan sighed, rubbed a hand over his face. “You interviewed every actor employed by Trask Enterprises and everyone said April was alive and well after the shoot.”
    “Then where is she? No one outside of their studio has seen her. She’s no longer working for them.”
    “The CEO, what’s his name, said she quit. Said she was going to Hollywood to do real movies.” Evan rolled his eyes.
    “The CEO is Roger Morton. You haven’t taken my case seriously since the beginning, have you?”
    “I’ve listened to you for months, helped analyze data, took my own time to interview witnesses. Don’t tell me I haven’t taken you seriously. You’ve spent more time watching online porn than spending time in bed with me. What am I supposed to make of that?”
    “That’s sick, Evan. This is my job. I need to find out what happened to April. Her grandmother deserves to know.”
    Evan walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, looked her in the eye. Evan had been good to her, ever since they’d met two years ago when assigned to the same special task force. Last year he had moved into her town house. He’d been tolerant of Kate’s obsessive personality, how she took her cases personally, and up until April Klinger went missing, she’d begun to share her past with him. He knew things about her no one else knew, things she’d lied about to get into the FBI Academy in the first place.
    “This is all about you, isn’t it, Kate?”
    She froze. The last thing she’d expected of Evan was bringing up her past, especially now. Especially like this.
    “It has nothing to do with me. You once told me you admired my dedication. If it weren’t for me being such a pit bull with evidence, we’d never have found the Williamette Strangler two years ago. You said that yourself.”
    “I know, but—”
    “I feel that there’s something here. I can’t prove it yet. But I know there is. Something about her eyes—don’t you see it?”
    She pulled out a file and shoved a picture of April under his nose. It was her eyes that told Kate she was dead. The split second of film before the tape was cut.
    She didn’t know what was sicker: strangling April to death while having sex, or running the segment on the website for months after the murder. It was