Chapter Five
Kelly
I'm stuck again.
Not on the husband this time—Travis fixed that problem, even if he doesn't know how much.
The husband is creepy now in all the right ways, charming on the surface with these little cracks showing through that the wife notices but doesn't let herself examine.
No, the problem now is logistics. The wife needs to find evidence, something concrete that proves what her husband is, but I can't figure out where he'd hide it.
I've been staring at my laptop for two hours, typing sentences and deleting them, getting up to make coffee and then forgetting to drink it.
The mug is sitting next to me, cold, with a film forming on top.
Outside the window, the sky is the same gray it's been for days, and I'm starting to understand why people in places like this get seasonal depression.
The husband is careful. That's the whole point.
He's been doing this for years and no one suspects him because he doesn't make mistakes.
So where does someone like that keep his secrets?
Not in the house—too risky. Not at work—too many people around.
A storage unit feels cliché, and a safety deposit box is too hard to access for dramatic purposes.
I need him to hide things somewhere the wife would never think to look. Somewhere that's technically accessible to her but that she'd have no reason to check.
My phone buzzes. Nicole again.
How's the masterpiece coming?
Slowly, I type back. I'm trying to figure out where a serial killer would hide evidence and I'm coming up empty.
That's a concerning Google search history you're building.
I haven't Googled it yet. I'm trying to figure it out logically first.
Kelly. You're writing a thriller. Google "where do serial killers hide trophies" like a normal person.
That feels like cheating.
It's called research. Writers do it all the time.
She's probably right. But something about Googling the answer feels like admitting defeat. I want to figure this out myself, want the solution to come from the story instead of from some Wikipedia rabbit hole.
I close the laptop and lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.
The kitchen is quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the house settling.
I've gotten used to these sounds over the past two weeks, learned to read them like a language.
This creak means the wind shifted. That groan means the temperature dropped.
The house is old and vocal and full of opinions.
Through the window, I can see the cottage.
Travis's truck is gone—he left early this morning, before I was even up.
I've noticed he keeps a schedule, out by six or seven, back by mid-morning, then sometimes gone again in the afternoon.
Whatever he does for work, it involves a lot of coming and going.
I should stop paying attention to his schedule. I should stop noticing when his truck is there and when it isn't, stop listening for the sound of his engine in the driveway, stop thinking about the way he laughed at dinner the other night when I called him a fixer-upper.
I should do a lot of things.
I grab my cold coffee and dump it in the sink, then stand there looking out the window at the backyard.
The garden is still dead, but I've been thinking about planting something when spring comes.
Tomatoes maybe, like my grandmother used to grow.
Or herbs, something practical. The raised beds are still there, just waiting for someone to care about them again.
That's when I see Travis's truck pull into the driveway.
I watch him park in his usual spot by the cottage, watch him get out and grab a bag from the back seat. He's wearing athletic clothes today—joggers, a hoodie, sneakers instead of his usual boots. His hair is damp, like he just showered somewhere that isn't here.
He looks up and sees me in the window.
I should look away. Pretend I wasn't watching. But I don't. I just lift my hand in a small wave, and he waves back, and then he's walking toward the main house instead of the cottage.
My stomach does something annoying.
I meet him at the back door, trying to look like I wasn't just standing at the window tracking his movements like a creep. "Hey."
"Hey." He's slightly out of breath, like he walked fast to get here. "You busy?"
"Extremely. I've accomplished almost nothing today."
The corner of his mouth twitches. "The book?"
"The book." I step back to let him in, and he ducks through the doorway, bringing cold air and that clean soap smell with him. "I'm stuck on a plot thing. It's driving me crazy."
"What kind of plot thing?"
I hesitate. The last time I told him about my book, he solved a problem I'd been wrestling with for months. Part of me wants to see if he can do it again. Part of me feels weird about using him as a sounding board when I barely know him.
But he's looking at me with those steady dark eyes, waiting, and the words come out before I can stop them.
"The wife needs to find evidence that her husband is a killer," I say. "But he's careful. He's been doing this for years and he doesn't make mistakes. So I need to figure out where he hides things—trophies, mementos, whatever—somewhere she could access but would never think to look."
Travis leans against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms. He's quiet for a long moment, thinking.
I watch him think, which is its own kind of experience.
His face doesn't give much away, but I'm starting to learn the signs.
The slight furrow between his eyebrows. The way his jaw tightens when he's working through something.
"He wouldn't hide it in the house," he says finally.
"Right, that's too risky."
"And not at work."
"Too many people."
"What about her stuff?"
I frown. "What do you mean?"
"Her stuff. Her car, her storage, her spaces.
" He's looking at me now, focused. "You said she'd never think to look there.
But what if that's exactly why he chose it?
He hides his secrets in her things because she already knows what's in them.
She's not going to dig through her own car looking for evidence.
She's not going to inventory her own storage unit.
He's using her blind spots against her."
I stare at him.
"Think about it," he continues. "It's the perfect hiding spot. If anyone finds it, it's in her possession. She looks guilty, not him. And she'd never suspect because why would she search her own stuff? She trusts herself. She trusts that she knows what's hers."
My mind is racing. The husband hides his trophies in the wife's car.
In her gym bag. In boxes in the garage that are labeled with her name, her old college stuff, her grandmother's china.
Places that are technically hers but that she hasn't touched in years.
Places she'd walk past every single day without ever thinking to open.
"That's really dark," I say slowly.
Travis shrugs. "You wanted a careful killer."
"No, I mean—" I shake my head, trying to organize my thoughts. "It's perfect. It's exactly right. But it's also really dark. He's not just hiding from her, he's implicating her. He's setting her up without her even knowing."
"That's what makes it scary."
He says it simply, like it's obvious. Maybe that's been the problem all along. I was trying to make the husband sneaky when I should've been making him cruel. The hiding spot isn't just practical—it's a betrayal layered inside a betrayal.
"How do you do that?" I ask.
"Do what?"
"Just... see the answer. I've been stuck on this for days and you solved it in thirty seconds."
Something flickers across his face, there and gone. "I think about hiding a lot."
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn't. Just stands there with his arms crossed, looking at me like he's said more than he meant to.
"Okay," I say slowly. "That's not ominous at all."
He almost smiles. "I didn't mean it like that."
"Sure you didn't."
"I just meant—" He stops, runs a hand through his hair, and for the first time since I've known him, he looks uncomfortable.
Not closed-off, not guarded, just genuinely unsure how to explain himself.
"I know what it's like to have parts of yourself you don't want people to see.
So I think about where you'd put those things. How you'd keep them separate."
The kitchen is very quiet. I can hear the refrigerator humming, the wind outside, my own heartbeat in my ears.
"Everyone has those parts," I say carefully.
"Yeah." He meets my eyes. "But not everyone knows how to hide them."
I don't know what to say to that. I don't know what he's telling me, if he's telling me anything, or if I'm reading too much into a conversation about a fictional serial killer. But something has shifted between us, some wall coming down that I didn't even know was there.
"I should let you work," he says, pushing off from the counter. "Sounds like you have some writing to do."
"Wait." I reach out without thinking, my hand landing on his arm. He goes still, looking down at my fingers against his sleeve. "Stay. For a minute. I'll make coffee—real coffee, not the cold sludge I've been ignoring all morning."
He should say no. I can see him thinking about saying no, weighing whatever is waiting for him at the cottage against whatever this is, this thing building between us that neither of us has named.
"Okay," he says.
I make coffee. He sits at the kitchen table, in the same spot he sat during dinner the other night, and watches me move around the kitchen.
I'm aware of his eyes on me the whole time—when I reach for the mugs in the cabinet, when I pour the water into the machine, when I lean against the counter waiting for it to brew.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"You can ask."
"That's not a yes."
"It's not a no either."
I turn to face him, crossing my arms. "What do you do in the mornings? When you leave early. Where do you go?"
He's quiet for a moment. I watch him decide how much to tell me, watch the calculation happen behind his eyes.
"I work out," he says finally. "There's a gym. In town."
"A gym."
"Yeah."
"That's where you are every morning from six to ten? At the gym?"
"I like to stay in shape."
It's not a lie. I can tell that much. But it's not the whole truth either, and we both know it. He's giving me the surface of something, the version that's technically accurate but missing all the important parts.
I could push. I could ask what kind of gym, what kind of workout, why he comes back with his hair wet and his clothes changed like he's been doing more than lifting weights.
But I think about what he said a few minutes ago—about having parts of yourself you don't want people to see, about knowing how to hide them—and I decide to let it go.
For now.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks, like he expected more of a fight. "Okay?"
"You'll tell me when you're ready." I turn back to the coffee maker, which is sputtering through its final cycle. "Or you won't. But I'm not going to interrogate you about your gym habits."
"Most people would."
"I'm not most people." I pour two mugs and carry them to the table, setting one in front of him. "Also, my grandmother trusted you. That note she left—she said you were a good one. And my grandmother was a lot of things, but she wasn't wrong about people."
Travis wraps his hands around the mug but doesn't drink. He's looking at me with an expression I can't read, something complicated moving behind his eyes.
"She was wrong about some things," he says quietly.
"Like what?"
"Like thinking I deserved her kindness."
I sit down across from him, close enough that our knees almost touch under the table. "Maybe you should let other people decide what you deserve."
He doesn't answer. Just looks at me, this long searching look that makes me feel like he's seeing all the way through me, past the surface stuff to something deeper.
Then he picks up his coffee and takes a sip.
"This is good," he says.
"I know. I'm very talented."
He almost smiles again, and I feel that same little thrill I felt the other night.
Oh, I think I’m about to fall hard.