Red by Kate Kinsey Page A

Internet.”
    “But you fucked him.”
    “Yes, I fucked him,” she shot back. “You know the last name of everybody you ever fucked?”
    Hanson frowned and shoved his hands into his pockets. The phone on her belt erupted into a familiar ringtone, a song he knew but for a moment could not place. Then it came to him. Rick James. “Superfreak.” He almost smiled. Gina always liked irony.
    She held the phone up, looking at the screen. Her lips tightened, but she said nothing as she returned the phone to her hip.
    “You need to answer that?” Hanson asked.
    “Later.”
    “So how do I find this Paul?”
    “The kinky community—the ones that socialize—is pretty small. People that hang around long enough come to know most of the same people, even though they might not ever know their real names. But there is one place you can find them all.”
    She stood up, and Hanson followed her down the hall to the tiny room she used as an office. She sat down at the desk, touched the mouse, and the screen sprang to life.
    “What’s this?” he asked, watching over her shoulder as she typed rapidly.
    “It’s a computer.”
    The screen came up black and gray—
    “I know that,” he said. “Smart ass. What’s this site?”
    “It’s FetLife. It’s like Facebook or MySpace for perverts.”
    She was navigating so fast it was hard for Hanson to keep up.
    “There’s also Alt.com, Collarme.com—those are the biggest. Those sites have memberships in the hundreds of thousands.”
    “You’re shitting me.”
    “I shit you not,” she said. “In the olden days, people had to use personal ads in adult magazines. Now we’ve got the Internet, and you’re never more than a few clicks away from talking to other perverts.”
    “So, Paul has a profile here?”
    “Under his screen name, yes. If he hasn’t deleted it yet. If he’s heard about Robyn’s death, he may have panicked and trashed everything—”
    “Then just give me his screen name, I’ll call the site and get his—”
    She hit a key and the screen went dark. She spun around in her chair and looked up at him.
    “If I do this for you, you have to promise not to go Big Brother on these people.”
    “He could be a murderer, for Christ’s sake!”
    “Paul’s not a killer.” She waved a hand dismissively. “He’s an oversexed little shit who lives in fear of his wife—”
    “Then he’s a party of interest, possibly a witness.”
    “And he’s more likely to cooperate if you don’t go charging in with both barrels blazing.”
    He said nothing for a long minute, considering.
    “I’m serious, Hanson. I wanna help you catch this guy, but I also want to protect my own people—”
    “ Your people?”
    She sighed.
    “Well . . . Yes. My people. Promise me.”
    “All right, I promise to try it your way first. Is that good enough?”
    She shrugged and turned back to the computer.
    “It may take a day for him to read this and e-mail me back.”
    “Superfreak” rang out again. This time she didn’t even look at her phone, just ignored it completely.
    “You’re still connected to . . . them?”
    “I mostly lurk these days. I haven’t gone to the club in over a year.”
    “But you’re still doing pro work? Is that why your phone keeps ringing?”
    “Yes.” She stared at him. “You want to bust me for it?”
    “That’s not what I meant—”
    What did he mean? He wasn’t sure. Looking at her confused him and he wondered if coming here was a massive mistake.
    “I don’t fuck my clients.” She looked at him steadily, her chin jutting forward as her left eyebrow arched ever so slightly. “I dominate them. For money, yes. I provide a valuable service. And since I don’t particularly want to wait tables or do data processing for minimum wage, I do it for a living now.”
    “It’s still illegal.”
    Actually, sexual domination’s legal status was a little fuzzy, but Hanson was suddenly feeling pissy.
    “Fuck you. So is anal sex in some states, but