Chapter 23 Ever #2
“He just wants to talk to you,” she said as though she’d completely forgotten that this man had kidnapped me, tied me up, and tortured me once upon a time.
“Come on, Shelby, it’s cold out here. Bring her inside so we can get going on our little talk and get some dinner afterward,” Travis ordered as though he were a mob boss and Shelby was his henchman.
I couldn’t let them take me back inside.
If they dragged me back in there, I wasn’t coming out alive again.
Shelby yanked on my arm, trying to make me take a step toward the open door, and consumed purely by the will to live, I balled my hand into a fist and punched her square in the nose, taking off when she let go of me.
The snow had covered my yard in a coating about an inch deep.
A beautiful sight if you’re looking out your window with a mug of hot chocolate in your hand, but not so much when you’re trying to outrun a man with plans to murder you in the comfort of your own home.
Had I not been clad in footwear that wasn’t designed with traction in mind, I may have made it a respectable distance across the yard before being caught.
But as it was, I slipped and fell a couple of strides into my getaway, only just scrambling to my feet when Travis caught up to me.
With one swift hit to the back of the head, he impaired me enough that I was in too much of a daze to put up a fight, and my body collapsed to the snow-covered ground.
Travis grabbed my legs and pulled me across the lawn onto my porch and through my front door, which he then slammed shut and locked before propping my body up on the recliner.
“You promised me you weren’t going to rough her up, only talk,” Shelby said, her own voice cracking, betraying the fear she was now feeling.
“I thought you trusted me, Shelbs,” Travis said, pulling a knife from a sheath at his side. “I thought you wanted to be the Bonnie to my Clyde, riding off together in the sunset.”
“And getting shot to death by police,” I said. My head still throbbed, but my thoughts were starting to become less jumbled. For instance, I remembered that between the chair cushion and the frame of this recliner, my recliner knife was being stored for occasions such as this.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said as my fingers reached between the body of the chair and the cushion, finding the handle to my knife. “The only person he cares about is himself. He’s never cared about you or me.”
“Shut the fuck up.” A blow to the side of my face with the handle of the knife Travis had unsheathed whipped my head back. “You won’t talk until I tell you to, unless you want me to start carving up that pretty face of yours.”
Travis took the knife and teasingly traced my jawline with the dull side of the blade, lightly at first, before he pricked my skin just enough that I felt the fiery sting of the blade puncturing my chin like the poke of a needle.
At my side, my hand slowly freed the hidden knife, keeping it just out of sight.
“That’s what I thought.” He smirked. “And that’s the Ever I remember. Perfectly compliant with whatever I ask her to do.” He pressed the side of the blade against the side of my face, running it down across my neck. “I told you that I would find you again, didn’t I, darling?”
“But was it really you who found me?” I asked, looking over his shoulder to see Shelby’s shoulders slump. “Because I think you had a little help.” If I kept him talking, I could distract him long enough to pull the knife out.
“Your coworker is quite the mastermind. Finding me online at the Department of Corrections, writing me letters, sending me…photos.”
“Travis.” Shelby hissed. It wasn’t like Shelby to feel shame over anything she did, which really underscored the level of embarrassed she must be.
Good.
I raised an eyebrow. “Impressive she could get those kinds of photos through. You do realize that prisoners’ mail is opened and inspected, right?”
For someone who could be so smart, Shelby was a little on the dense side sometimes, and the way her face fell told me that she hadn’t realized Travis wouldn’t be the only person seeing her in whatever form of undress she mailed.
Even if one of the staff members at the prison hadn’t seen her photos, Travis would have happily shown his cellmate or anyone else he came across.
Hell, he’d probably been using Shelby’s image as currency.
She’d likely be better served never traveling to the state of Oklahoma to avoid being recognized.
“It’s not just the photos. Shelbs, do you want to tell her why she wasn’t notified about my release?”
“No, Travis. I do not, and you shouldn’t, either.”
I glared at Shelby, wondering at what point during our fake friendship it was that she’d begun contacting Travis and conspiring with him to hold me hostage in my own home.
“She logged into your computer at work and sent an email to Victim Services pretending to be you, changing your contact number and email address and then deleting the sent email and blocking the old email from Victim Services.”
I flashed back to the morning I caught Shelby in my and Loche’s office. She had to have known something would be coming that would inform me about Travis’s impending parole.
Travis chuckled at what had to be the fury etched on my face as I processed just how I could have allowed myself to have been duped by a woman who thought Legally Blonde was a documentary.
“Look, babe. She’s speechless.” Travis looked behind his shoulder to talk to Shelby, inadvertently giving me the opportunity I was waiting for. With Travis preoccupied, I pulled the knife out and rushed at him, missing the vital parts of his body and nicking his arm when he dodged my blade.
Even though I’d missed hitting something vital, my attack was still enough to take him off guard and make him stumble into Shelby, giving me enough time to run to the back door and throw it open.
A burst of cold air rushed at me with knives of its own, but I didn’t have time to dwell on whether or not I was going to get frostbite as I ran through my snow-covered yard to whatever neighbor would open their door for me.
By this time, Travis had already recovered and was hot on my heels.
“I didn’t realize the kitty had claws,” he said, running out my back door.
Snow had piled up quickly and had seeped into the flats I’d worn for the trial. A numbness, only brought on by extreme cold, had already crept into my feet, making running awkward.
“I’ve always had them. I just use them now,” I called back at him, making the mistake of looking over my shoulder.
There was no way around the fact that Travis had longer legs than me, and the speed at which he was making his strides was going to enable him to catch up to me in a matter of seconds.
If I was going to have a chance, I would have to get help somewhere fast, but the closest house to me that wasn’t abandoned was still a half a block away, leaving me with only one option: letting out a blood-curdling scream.
“Music to my ears,” Travis called out to me.
I increased my speed, running as fast as I could, but I knew even that wasn’t going to be enough to outrun him.
With any luck, it would buy me more time for someone to look out their window, see the source of the scream, and call the police.
What I should have bargained for, though, was my innate ability to trip over just about anything in my path and my foot finding something hidden in the snow, catching it, and me tripping, tumbling to the ground.
The impact of my body striking the ground knocked the knife out of my hand, causing it to fly in the air and hit the ground, where it was swallowed by snow.
Get up or die, my brain screamed at me. Legs shaking, I leapt up to feet I could no longer feel and tried to take off again, only to be thrown back down to the ground by Travis, barreling into me, striking my back with what felt like his elbow.
Dazed, I rolled onto my back to see him crouched over me.
His legs were positioned on each side of my body; his knife was positioned in his hand, hovering over my heart.
“You put up an impressive fight. I thought this was going to be easy. But you know what,” he leaned in closer to my face, whispering in my ear, “I kind of liked hunting you.”
“Fuck you,” I said, trying to free myself. Between his legs caging mine together, my shoulder where Travis struck me having gone limp, and the cold stinging my extremities, he easily fought me off.
“I’d love to for old time’s sake, but unfortunately, I’m in a hurry.”
“You’re not going to get away with this. They’ll know you murdered me.”
“Who? Who even knows I’m here aside from Shelby, who’s so far up my ass she could give me a colonoscopy?
She isn’t going to rat me out. In fact, when someone stumbles on your body, she’s going to tell the police that you had a propensity to let masked strangers into your house.
They’ll stop investigating your death before they even start. ”
“Loche will find you. He’ll know.”
“Is that his name, then? Yeah, I don’t think a man who walks around too afraid to show his face will say shit to the cops.”
“He will. He’s more of a man than you are.”
I knew I’d sealed my death certificate with that statement, but at least I could go out knowing I’d pissed off Travis before I died. Petty should be etched on my epitaph. “You know what, I’ve had enough talking. I’d say goodbye, but none of it was actually good.”
Travis lifted the knife, preparing to drive it into my chest, and all I could do was close my eyes and brace myself for the inevitable. But instead of the sensation of the sharp, pointed tip of a blade piercing my flesh, I felt Travis’s body being violently thrown off of mine.
“Ever,” Loche’s voice breathed life into my body, and I opened my eyes to see him crouched over me, concerned. “I’ve got help coming. Just hold on, okay?”