Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
DOM
San Diego feels like a cage wrapped in sunshine.
We've been here two weeks, and the apartment in Ten Park is everything we need it to be on paper. Two bedrooms, hardwood floors, big windows that let in the California light. The neighborhood is perfect, especially for Roxy. It’s artsy, bohemian, filled with galleries and coffee shops and young creatives who mind their own business.
Roxy set up her darkroom in the second bedroom. I took contract work with a construction company in La Mesa, framing houses and remodeling kitchens. On paper, we're James and Roxy Brennan, a married couple from Portland who moved south for the weather and the art scene.
On paper, we're legitimate, but in reality, I'm suffocating.
The work is fine. Mindless, physical, the kind of labor that keeps my hands busy and my mind quiet. The crew is decent, mostly guys who show up, do the job, and go home without asking questions. I blend in. Keep my head down and cash my checks.
But every night when I come home to the apartment, to Roxy working on her "legitimate" photography and art business of landscape shots, travel photos, the occasional portrait session, and her hand drawings of environments she is drawn to, I feel the void growing.
We're safe. We're invisible. We're exactly where we need to be. And it's killing me.
"How was work?" Roxy asks when I walk in on a Thursday evening.
She's at her laptop, sucking on one of her lollipops, editing photos from a shoot she did last weekend. Some couple's engagement photos at Balboa Park, I don’t know how she does it. Simple Minds, Don’t You Forget About Me, plays low in the background.
"Fine," I say, dropping my keys on the counter.
"Just fine?"
"Yeah."
She looks up at me, and I can see it in her eyes because she feels it too. The emptiness, the wrongness of this normal life we're pretending to live. We’ve become those people we hate.
"I sold three prints today," she says. "Landscape stuff, sunset over the ocean."
"That's good."
"Yeah."
Neither of us believes it.
I cross to the fridge and grab a beer, twisting the cap off with more force than necessary. The apartment is clean, organized, decorated with Roxy's aesthetic of colorful throws, vintage records on the wall, fairy lights strung across the living room.
It looks like a home, but feels like a prison.
"Dom."
I turn. She's closed her laptop, watching me with that intensity that first drew me to her on the Utah roadside.
"We can't keep doing this," she says.
"Doing what?"
"Pretending and playing house. Acting like we're normal people who moved here for the weather and the art scene."
"That's the cover, it’s what keeps us safe."
"I get that, but it's not sustainable." She stands, crossing the room to me. "We're too awake. Too alive. We can't just…exist like this."
"What's the alternative?"
"I don't know yet. But there has to be something. Some way to feed the urges without destroying the cover."
I set the beer down and pull her against me, my hands settling on her waist. She's wearing one of my old t-shirts with her black leggings, her hair pulled back in a messy bun. She looks soft and domestic and nothing like the woman who watched me kill a man and thanked me for it.
"We'll figure it out," I say.
"When?"
"Soon."
She leans into me, her forehead resting against my chest. "I miss it. The road. The hunt. The feeling of being exactly who we are. I find nothing inspiring anymore."
"Me too."
"So what do we do?"
I don't have an answer. Not yet. But I can feel something building, a pressure, a need, a hunger that domesticity can't satisfy. We're predators trying to live like prey.
And eventually, something's going to break.
The breaking point comes three days later.
I'm at the job site in La Mesa, framing out a kitchen remodel, when my phone buzzes with a text from Roxy.
R: Need you home. Now.
No explanation. No context, just urgency. I tell the foreman I'm sick and leave immediately.
The drive back to Ten Park takes twenty minutes, and every second feels like an hour. My mind cycles through possibilities, is it the police at the door, someone recognizing us, is our cover blown?
But when I walk into the apartment, Roxy's alone and she's in the darkroom.
The door is open, red light spilling into the hallway. I can hear music playing – The Cure, Disintegration, and the chemical smell of developer fills the air.
"Roxy?"
"In here."
I step into the darkroom and stop. She's surrounded by photographs, dozens of them, hanging from clotheslines strung across the small space. But these aren't the landscape shots or engagement photos she's been selling.
These are the real work.
Crime scene polaroids from our road trip. The dead fox from Utah. Roadkill documentation. Environmental decay. The trucker's rig where we killed Gary Hollis, photographed from a distance days after the murder.
All of our past secrets laid out in one room. It’s like a punch to the gut, mainly because what the hell is she doing, keeping these? But then another feeling of longing for us to go back.
"I couldn't do it anymore," she says without turning around. She's developing another print, her hands moving with practiced precision in the red light. "The fake work, turning into one of them with the lying mask everyday. I needed to see this again. To remember what I'm supposed to be doing."
I cross to her and look at the photographs hanging around us. They're raw, unfiltered, beautiful in their brutality.
"I can’t believe you kept these. Do you know how bad it would be for us if these were seen? How long have you been hiding them?" I ask.
"Since we got here. I packed them with my supplies, kept them in the back of the closet. I told myself I'd destroy them eventually, that they were too dangerous to keep."
"But you didn't."
"No. Because they're the truth. They're what I'm meant to create."
She pulls the print from the developer and hangs it to dry. It's a photograph of an abandoned building we passed somewhere in Nevada with the windows broken, graffiti covering the walls, the kind of decomposing that speaks to something deeper than physical deterioration.
"I've been thinking," she says, finally turning to face me. "About what you said, about finding a way to feed the urges without destroying the cover."
"And?"
"What if we don't have to choose? What if there's a way to do both?"
I study her face in the red light. She's vibrating with energy, with purpose, with the yearning I recognize because I feel it too.
"Explain," I say, crossing my arms across my chest.
"The art world loves edginess, crudeness. They love transgressive work, boundary-pushing photography, artists who document the underbelly of society. What if I built a legitimate career doing exactly that?"
"Documenting crime scenes?"
"Not active investigations, but the aftermath. The residue of violence, the places where death happened. I could search for inspiration the same way we hunted on the road, but this time more carefully. I could mix it with real life drawings, showing human emotion."
I'm listening now, really listening. Because that could work.
"You'd need a portfolio," I say. "High quality, professionally presented."
"I’m already ahead of you. I've been planning it." She gestures to the photographs around us. "Some of these could work, like the environmental shots and the roadkill studies. But I need more, like fresh work. Current scenes, especially in new locations."
"Which means hunting."
"Yeah."
"In San Diego."
"Yeah, we could also go to other parts of California."
The implications hit us both. We'd be returning to a darker place, to the pursuit, to the thing that makes us feel alive. But we'd be doing it here, in our new home, under our new identities.
Fuck, its risky. Dangerous, but necessary.
"We'd have to be careful," I say. "No witnesses or patterns or anything that connects back to us."
"Of course."
"And the work would have to be legitimate, something that could actually sell."
"It will be. I know what I'm doing."
I pull her against me, my hand sliding up to cup the back of her neck. "This is what you want?”
"It's what I need, what we need. A way to be exactly who we are while staying invisible."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"Then we run, like we always planned. But I think it will work. This may be the solution we have been looking for."
I kiss her, tasting the certainty, passion and absolute conviction. She's right, this could work. This could be the answer to the void that's been eating at both of us since we arrived.
"Okay," I say against her mouth. "We do it. But we do it my way. Carefully, with no unnecessary risks."
"Agreed."
"And if I say we pull back, we pull back. No arguments."
"Okay."
I tighten my grip on her neck, just enough to make her gasp. "Be exactly who you are, but under the radar. A legitimate career."
"All above board."
"Show me what you're planning."
She pulls away and goes to grab a notebook on the counter. Inside are sketches, notes, a timeline mapped out in her precise handwriting.
Portfolio: 25-30 pieces
Crime scene photography (after clearance)
Environmental studies
Human suffering documentation (diners, bars, public spaces)
Timeline: 6 months to first gallery submission
Target galleries: NYC, Miami, Berlin, Tokyo
"You've been thinking about this for a while," I say.
"Since we got here and I realized I couldn't just stop. This is who I am, Dom. This is what I do, and if I can't do it, I'll go insane."
I understand completely. Because I feel the same way. I miss the adrenaline, the control and uncertainty. I miss the blood.
"We start tomorrow," I say. "I'll get a police scanner and we'll monitor for crime scenes, accidents, anything that gives you material. But we're to remain ghosts. We document and leave, making sure we are not seen."
"Sounds good."
"And the work stays hidden until you're ready. No showing anyone, no posting online, nothing that could connect back to us before we're ready to go public."
"I understand."
I set the notebook down and pull her against me again, my hands sliding under her shirt to feel her skin. She's warm, alive, vibrating with the same energy I feel building in my chest.
"This is going to work. I’m actually excited," I say.
"Me too."
"We're going to build something real from our desires."
"Yeah, we are."
I lift her onto the counter, pushing between her legs. The photographs hang around us like dark flags, displaying the truth of who we are and what we've done.
"I love you," I say, my hand wrapping around her throat, gently squeezing, reaffirming who she belongs to.
"I love you too."
"And I'll kill anyone who tries to take this away from us. Anyone who threatens what we're building."
"I’ll watch as you do it."
I kiss her hard, possessive, tasting the future we're creating. Then I pull back just enough to look at her.
"Tomorrow, we start," I say.
"Fuck yes."
"You ready?"
She smiles, and it's the first real smile I've seen from her since we arrived in San Diego.
"I'm more than ready, baby."