Chapter 4 #2
But ignoring things isn’t in my nature. It never has been.
So instead of sleeping, I crack my knuckles and boot up my laptop.
I want to know who it was Willow killed, and why she felt it was necessary.
My digging and hacking skills are rusty at best. It’s been a decade since I really and truly had to put these skills to use. But old habits die hard, and I was taught by some of the best there is. I start diving into the dark corners, and they’re still waiting.
Step one: figure out the guy’s name. Which would be worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack, but I remember the bastard’s face.
So, I start with traffic cams. Las Vegas has more cameras than sins.
I slip into the system through a backdoor.
It’s way too easy for how outdated my skills are.
Local businesses thankfully know nothing about protecting their cameras.
Within minutes, I’m staring at grainy Halloween footage, pulled from the vape store three doors down from Willow’s shop.
And there’s Willow—cat ears bobbing, cheap tail swinging—as she leads her victim into the belly of her trap.
I rewind, squinting at the screen, and hit pause at the best point.
Freeze frame. Zoom. Enhance. I wish the picture were clearer, but it’s not as bad as it could be.
Step two: facial recognition. I shouldn’t be able to access this, but what the public doesn’t know is just how many companies and businesses use facial recognition software.
And Las Vegas businesses have plenty of reasons to utilize the technology.
It’s ugly. It’s dirty. But with only twenty minutes’ worth of work, I’m into a system that looks like it will do the job.
Scan, scan, scan. And finally, just four minutes later, there’s a beep that makes my heart trip. Match found: Travis Bell.
Hell yeah. I’ve still got it.
I start with Google. It’s easy enough to pull up the public stuff.
He’s an attorney, a high-powered one, at one of the big firms here in Vegas.
He’s the kind who attends charity galas; there are pictures of him shaking hands with important people.
He even has a wife, though from the looks of it, they live two entirely different lives, him here in Vegas, her off in Miami.
Everything online gives a clear vibe: it’s a life curated to look like success.
But I start digging deeper.
It’s the kind of digging you only do when you’ve got the stomach for it. The kind of digging I promised myself I was done with.
But sometimes old skills come in handy.
The deeper I go, the filthier it gets.
Deep in their system, there are HR reports—redacted, sealed, labeled “handled internally.” I find four anonymous forum posts from women calling him out—the partner who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and then so much worse.
The man is a sick bastard who has trapped women in back rooms and had his way.
He’s made threats. He’s extorted with photos.
There are half a dozen police reports that went nowhere, stamped with the lazy shrug of “no evidence to support claims.”
The further I dig, the more my stomach turns. My fingers curl into fists as vile anger turns my muscles taut.
Shit. Willow didn’t kill a man. She cut out a cancer the system just let keep growing.
She isn’t a heartless monster that just kills for fun. She’s a damn hero.
She’s not profiting off it, at least I can’t find any evidence that she’s being paid by any of the victims to put an end to this asshole. She’s using that blade for balance, slicing the scales until they even out.
It’s brutal. Messy.
I know one doesn’t just turn into a serial killer vigilante for no good reason. Plenty of people get hurt and then they just focus on healing. There’s a reason Willow does what she does. I have enough common sense to know that.
It’s insane that I feel fucking relieved right now. Finding out your online crush/obsession kills bad guys for fun is a little startling. It should have sent me running.
But if she has to kill people as a hobby, at least I know she’s doing the world a favor.
She’s not just beautiful. Not just sarcastic and sharp and impossible to look away from.
She is justice Herself. A goddess worthy of devotion, and I’m already obsessed.
Willow is on her way to kill someone.
How could it be anything else? She left the house in black jeans and boots, a look that practically screamed predator chic. No makeup, no sparkle—just that calm, purposeful stride of someone about to ruin a bad man’s evening.
My pulse is hammering against the steering wheel as I tail her truck down the road. I mean, she has half a dozen cinderblocks in the bed of her truck. What use would she have for them other than sinking bodies? And who would just drive around with them sitting in there?
Every red light is the biggest annoyance of my damn life. Every turn she takes spikes my adrenaline higher. My brain won’t shut up:
Who is she hunting tonight? What did that bastard do? Am I supposed to stop her? Or am I supposed to let her? Hell, do I… help her?
That thought makes me grip the wheel tighter. Because part of me—the sick, unfixable part—knows I’d be good at it. Too good.
She takes a left. My stomach drops.
This is it. This is where she picks up her next vic. Perp? I’m about to follow her back to her shop and watch the daggers come back out and—
She pulls into the parking lot of a grocery store.
I blink. Stare. For a second, I honestly think my brain has glitched out. My adrenaline is still blasting like I’m in a car chase, but there she is, parking neatly between a minivan and a Prius like she’s just here to pick up some steak and potatoes.
I slump back in my seat, heart still jackhammering. “You’re a fucking idiot,” I mutter to myself.
I watch Willow slide out of the truck, and then sit a little straighter when the driver’s door to the Prius opens, and Opal steps out.
Floaty dress, hair down, a dozen bracelets on each wrist. She looks more like she’s about to shoplift a crystal than buy groceries.
Willow smiles at her baby sister, and there’s something easy and protective about it. Then they head inside together.
I should go home. Leave them to their milk and eggs. But my feet are already moving before my brain decides otherwise. Hoodie up, head down, I follow them into the store.
Which officially makes me a stalker. I know it. I accept it. I’ve made my peace with it.
And I’m disturbingly okay with it.
Because watching Willow do something as mundane as pushing a shopping cart feels like watching a lion drink from a water bowl. It doesn’t fit. It shouldn’t exist. And I want to see every second of it.
I keep my distance, ducking behind displays like some half-assed spy. I nearly knock over a pyramid of toilet paper at one point, catch the top few just in time, and hiss at myself like an idiot.
Meanwhile, Willow is… just grocery shopping.
Like a normal human. Tossing spinach and chicken breasts into the cart with surgical precision.
And, kind of to my surprise: protein powder.
I didn’t really notice it at first, but after watching her drive off with that body to take care of on her own…
Willow is actually kind of ripped. I confirmed it by watching half of her videos again, for the eleventh time.
At first glance, Willow looks like a very average woman, thin, pretty.
At second glance, she looks like she’s training to play a sword-wielding romantasy lead.
I watch her and Opal debate cereal. Willow suggests granola. Something that has fiber.
Opal grabs Lucky Charms.
I smirk at that.
And that’s when it hits me—how absurd all of this is. Me, crouched behind a tower of twelve packs of Coke cans, watching a woman I should probably report to the police, but instead want to know everything about her, down to the brand of cereal she buys.
I’m watching a serial killer shop for cereal, and I’m enthralled by every damn second of it.
I’m not going to fix this about myself.
I don’t want to.
And the more I see, the more I’m convinced: I need to know all of her. Even if it kills me.
Twenty minutes later, I hang back as Willow and Opal exit the store. They both load the groceries into the back of her truck, and then I hustle back to my car when Willow climbs in her vehicle and rolls toward the exit.
It’s… unnerving how familiar all of this feels. Tailing someone. Stalking them. Picking apart their life. Not letting them out of your sight. I haven’t done this kind of thing in years. I left this behind. I burned that version of myself to ash.
And yet here I am, shadowing a woman who murders predators like she’s checking items off a to-do list.
I like it.
I like watching her. I like seeing where she goes, what she does, how she tilts her head when she’s thinking, how she chews her lip when she’s annoyed.
I like knowing she’s not perfect—that she can’t decide on cereal, that she taps the steering wheel to whatever song’s on, that she never answers a text right away when they come in, but she’s always aware that they’re there.
She’s methodical. Careful. But she’s human.
And I can’t stop thinking about her.
Every warning bell in my head is blaring. Every instinct says to walk away, to delete the videos, to scrub what happened out of my brain and pretend she never existed.
But I can’t.
Because in a city built on illusions, she’s the only thing that feels real to me.
My resolve, my rules, my carefully constructed life—it’s all crumbling, brick by brick. And I know exactly how this ends.
Not with me walking away.
But with me walking straight into her fire.