The Pact (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 17) (10 page)

With Imagine, Ben was going to be the first gamer to create a live web experience with real footage. A kind of gamer slash movie thing. It had taken time to set up. No one would ever be able to trace it back to him, but it had all the elements of the best games like World of Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo 2.

“Even if they track me, I’ll be dead by then.”

Ben’s game would have the hot girls, the murder and mayhem, the intrigue, and the wonder. Everything Peter Jackson did for the Lord of the Rings, but better. Ben’s game would be similar to World of Warcraft, played online for a fee. That was one of the reasons behind stealing Anton’s personal files and making him murder a random girl. Once Ben had that footage, it would be the murder mystery part of the game. He needed explosions and he got that with the dojo downtown in his own city. Not seven blocks from his home on Shuter Street, his personal private military contractor, The Clock, blew up Aaron’s dojo with Aaron in it. Nothing could be more deserving for Ben because Aaron Stevens had once taught Ben’s stepdad martial arts. John Ashcroft was once a married man. After Aaron beat John to an inch of his life, he was never the same. Aaron went to court over that, but John being the better man, had all the charges dropped against Aaron. John lost his first wife and daughter over the ordeal and ended up with Ben’s mother. John treated Ben like a man. But now John was gone. Before the stepson Ben Wilson died, he needed to make sure Aaron Stevens paid with his life, and he’d done that. John Ashcroft deserved that at least. Even though what Aaron did to John changed him, Aaron had never paid his debt and Ben was the debt collector on John’s behalf.

Ben knew the moment and time when he would die and that day was coming soon. When his company released the online game called LEGACY: PAIN PACT, Ben would be dead. Once the game went live, no one would be able to contain the exposure. Covering his tracks now while adding live footage and add-ons for the game was utterly genius. He loved his own brilliance. He loved playing God.

He had always been told he had an IQ greater than his body weight.

Making ordinary people perform
extra
ordinary tasks was something people have been doing to each other for centuries. The Romans did it. The Greeks raised Olympians. Today, the government sent ordinary men to fight wars that funded a war machine and made others rich while touting the veteran as a war hero. And why not?

Depravity equaled revenue.

People equaled shit.

All he was doing was riding the shit wave in and cashing out at the end of the day.

“Shit wave,” he mumbled. “I like that.”

Ben emulated the government. He wanted to make people like Anton Olafson—a criminal who should spend decades behind bars for what he had done to preteen boys—kill others and get caught doing it so Anton would never be released from prison. In the end, Anton got what he deserved, and Ben got the game of a lifetime just before he died. Later, Anton could blab all he wanted that he was coerced, but no one would believe him. There would be no evidence to prove someone else made him do it. In fact, there would be plenty of evidence for the police to go through when Ben forwarded Anton’s private file to the Danish authorities. And with Anton’s daughter dead in Toronto, Anton’s life would be over.

Ben snapped his fingers as an idea slammed into him.

“A girl that resembled Clara. That would make sense. A life for a life. Bingo.”

Ben typed on the keyboard as he set up the next stage in Anton’s game. As soon as Anton looked at his phone, he would see the new instructions.

All of Ben’s forays into Anton’s electronics were hidden. Any electronic doors he opened, he closed and his presence disappeared as his digital fingerprint vanished.

There had been others before Anton. He had one woman film herself having sex with ten different men until he released her from the PAIN PACT. She went back to her husband, who she had been cheating on prior to Ben’s involvement, and received a package in the mail a month later in her husband’s name. All the proof he needed to secure a solid divorce. Maybe next time she would think about her actions and not cheat on the man she committed to.

Another man Ben terrorized with his PAIN PACT before Anton was an American living in Vancouver. A tax evader. Ben had found him by mistake. He’d been searching through the files of a private security company in Vancouver when the man’s name came up in a file on a missing person’s case. Ben checked the man’s personal files, hacked his computer and noticed glaring financial discrepancies. In an hour’s work, Ben found over two hundred thousand dollars in unclaimed income. He was pretty sure he had figured out why the man’s relative was missing as the relative had also stumbled upon this financial discrepancy.

Since his computer designed game centered on human depravity, Ben had needed someone to maim and kill domesticated pets. The guy in Vancouver took it one step further and left clumps of soft dog food throughout a busy dog park. The food was laced with poison and ended up killing over a dozen animals in one day. Overzealous, the American living in Vancouver did this several times before getting caught, more than Ben had asked of him, and even tried to blame it on some computer guy that was blackmailing him. As expected, no one listened to his plea and Ben got all the footage he needed.

During the process, Ben felt nothing. He never had. When his mother, Margaret Wilson died of cancer, he felt nothing other than the loss of not having his lunches made for him anymore. Her demise turned out to be a good thing. Ben was her only son, so Margaret bequeathed everything she owned to him. The paid-off house. The money in the bank. Everything. All his. At least until he died of pancreatic cancer.

Oh what joy. What bliss.

He opened another Mars bar and bit the tip off. One more week of depravity and his game would be ready to launch. People would pay for the privilege of playing LEGACY: PAIN PACT. They would perform computer tasks to level up. At each level the game worsened with more bloodshed, more action, just like any Call of Duty game, except Ben’s game would be like watching a TV. The murders would be real. The killing would be intense, the explosions not faked. A snuff game.

A camera across the street from Aaron’s dojo had recorded the explosion. Ben had hacked into the camera’s feed minutes before ten in the morning, recorded what he needed, then severed the feed and removed all evidence of ever being in their system.

And to think he’d started as a lowly hacker, checking out people’s photos in search of lewd activity to get off on. What he found was depravity at every turn. For the most part, more than half the people he hacked had something in their computer system that would be deemed illegal by today’s laws.

He concluded that since most people were criminals, he would make them pay for their bad deeds by performing something for him while recording it. That recording would be their downfall, Ben’s windfall. Amassing a compilation of strangers’ recordings meant nothing unless he could put them to use, hence the realistic gaming experience idea. In the meantime, he enjoyed orchestrating people’s lives from his chair, surrounded by five computers.

“Because I love playing God,” he whispered to himself.

The Mars bar dwindled fast. He washed it down with a Coke, then tossed the wrapper on the floor. Jessica used to clean for him, but he stopped letting her after they broke up. She was too emo for him. Too gothic.

Once she was dead, the last person alive that would see him would be her brother, Homicide Detective Shawn Bryant. A noob. Shawn was the man who had teased him and called him names when they were in school years ago. Names like dweeb, dork, twerp, dolt, geek, and nerd. Soon the big detective would see the vengeance a nerd got. Soon the dweeb would rise and crush the noobs and everyone they love.

Killing Jessy would bring the homicide division of the Toronto police. They would summon Detective Bryant. And Ben would get his revenge and end his life at the same time because he refused to be killed slowly by pancreatic cancer. Not like his mother did. That was no way to die, all withered up in pain and moaning for pills.

He jumped when someone knocked on the door downstairs.

Grocery delivery? Today?

He checked the date again and bounced his knee up and down.

“Right, it’s Tuesday.”

Jessica’s birthday. It had to be her.

He flicked on the camera at the front door and stared down at Jessica’s pitch black hair.

“Bingo.”

She waved with one hand, a large bag swinging from the other. He leaned into the microphone.

“Go away,” he said.

Her smile widened in the camera. He watched as she set the bag down on his front step and proceeded to open it.

He was going to have to let her in. People would see her, notice what she was doing and he wanted the least amount of attention to the property as possible. Shuter Street was right in the heart of downtown Toronto. People walked by constantly.

“Go away,” he whined into the mic a second time.

She raised something for him to see. It looked like a Star Wars R2D2 lunch bag.

“Shit wave, she brought me presents. It’s her shit birthday. Dammit.”

Jessica set the R2D2 down and brought something else up to the camera. It was a Mine Craft foam sword. No way he could refuse her entry now.

“Come on in,” he said into the mic.

She inserted her key. On camera, she grabbed the bag and stepped inside. The house, mostly hollow, echoed her entrance from downstairs. He heard the door shut, the deadbolt click into place.

There was no way he could shut everything down before she entered his office, which used to be his mother’s master bedroom. It was large enough to house his extensive computer station. On the other side of the room, a sixty-inch TV was mounted on the wall and connected to a PS4, the Internet and a new Apple TV. This was basically the only room he used in the house, except of course the attached bathroom, but he only used that when he had to. Without Jessica in his life anymore, he showered less than once a week.

One button shut down all his monitors, leaving the computers on to continue tracking.

He started for the door, already conscious of his smell. What did it matter? Jessica wasn’t his girlfriend anymore. He could do what he wanted and shower when he wanted.

“Why is she here anyway?” he whispered to himself.

“Because it’s my birthday,” she said from the other side of the bedroom door.

He started, having not heard her come up the stairs. Damn she was fast.

A quick swipe through his greasy combed-over hair did nothing. It fell back in place, tickling his forehead. After adjusting his T-shirt, he saw the yellowish food stains and wondered how long he’d worn the same clothes. It had been over a week since his last shower and he had hotdogs that day. With mustard.

Shit wave, I haven’t changed in a week.

The Anton business had riled him up. Manipulating Clara Olafson to come to Toronto under false pretenses had been a challenge. He had been so smooth, he thought she was falling in love with his online persona.

She wasn’t feeling the love now
, he thought.
Unless The Clock was giving her a licking that kept on ticking.

He barked out a laugh and stepped from the master bedroom to meet Jessica in the hallway. Just as before, she honored the rule that no one ever entered his office. Ever.

Smart girl.

Although it wouldn’t save her life.

He despised her now for what her brother had put him through. If only she knew that Shawn and Ben had history. If she did, it would probably save her life because she would never come back.

They’d had sex a few times, but Jessy was awkward, shy. Claimed to have issues with someone seeing her body. They had to disrobe in the dark. Ben was a visual person. He wanted to see her, feel her.

But then, nothing worked right with Jessy. Even breaking up with her didn’t work. She was just fucked that way.

“I see your emotions on your sleeve,” he said.

It was his way of talking about her going emo. She didn’t mind discussing it when he was kind and gentle.

The usual Jessica was overjoyed and jubilant, an absolute contrast to the way she looked. The black hair, black nail polish, and black boots led one to believe she was Goth. But Jessy hated Goth. She claimed she’d rather be an emo than Goth.

“I’m not okay, Ben,” Jessy said, tilting her head sideways. The small mouth and large blinking eyes almost made her appear ready for a stint in an asylum. “But you know me. I smile and laugh through it all.”

She was one of those people that spoke with a contained laugh in their voice. Like she was always on the verge of busting a gut.

“I know, Jessy. You’re a happy girl. I can tell by looking at you.” He gestured at the bag. “What’s in there?”

“Gifts for my birthday.”

“For you?”

“No, for you, silly.”