44. Sage
FORTY-FOUR
SAGE
Brock:
You killed me. You buried me. You blocked me. But I’m still breathing down your neck. Feel that? It’s just the beginning.
Istare at the screen until the words blur.
Same number. Brock’s number. The one I’ve blocked several times now, and it doesn’t matter because you can’t block a spoof.
The block goes through, my phone confirms it, and then another text slides in anyway—same name, same number, same dead man lighting up my screen like he never left.
Every time I think I’ve shut the door, it opens itself.
[Delete]
I toss the phone on the nightstand and press my palms into my eyes until I see stars.
The anger is a living thing now. It sits in my chest like a second heartbeat, hot and restless, growing louder every time a new text lights up my screen and I have to pretend it doesn’t.
Pretend to the guys that the silence from Brock’s number is holding.
Pretend to myself that deleting is the same as dealing with it.
It’s not. Deleting is just swallowing the scream. And I’m so full of swallowed screams I can feel them pressing against my ribs, looking for a way out.
Tonight, I’m giving them one.
I make Milo come four times.
The first is fast—fucking in the kitchen, an explosion of need that has him groaning into my neck, apologizing between laughs, blaming it on the fact that I wore the knee socks again.
The second takes longer, slower, him on his back and me riding him while he traces patterns on my thighs and tells me I’m ruining his life in the best possible way.
The third is in the shower, my back against the tile, his mouth doing things that should be classified as a felony.
The fourth is back in bed, lazy and tangled, more rocking than thrusting, both of us half-asleep already, his forehead against mine and his voice a whisper, I love you, kitten. I love you so fucking much.
By 11:30 p.m., he’s out.
Facedown in the pillow, one arm hanging off the mattress, breathing with the deep, boneless rhythm of a man who has been thoroughly, strategically emptied.
His hair is a disaster. There’s a hickey on his collarbone that I don’t remember giving him, which means I was operating on instinct, which means it was good. It was all good.
And I feel terrible for what I’m about to do.
Not terrible enough to stop, though.
I slide out of bed one inch at a time. The mattress shifts and Milo mumbles—kitten or come back or possibly garlic knots—and then he’s gone again, sinking deeper into whatever dream he’s having.
I pull on jeans, a dark hoodie, boots. The knife goes in the right boot, hilt flush against my ankle, the weight of it grounding me the way it always does.
The choker stays on the nightstand.
I look at it for a moment. The cameo pendant, cream and blush against black velvet. Holden’s gift. Milo’s tracker. A leash disguised as jewelry. I agreed to wear it because I love them and they’re terrified and sometimes love means letting people track you like a FedEx package.
Not tonight.
I tear a page from the notebook on the desk and write in the dark:
I’m fine. I’m safe.
I’ll be back before morning.
Please don’t panic.
I love you.
— S
I fold it and slip it beneath the choker. Then I stand there for a few more seconds, watching him sleep. His back rises and falls. His lips are parted. He looks young when he’s like this, all the sharpness smoothed away, the comedy and the chaos and the constant motion stilled for a brief moment.
I wait a beat longer. He doesn’t stir.
Then I leave.
The hallway is dark. The other four are out on the football-cluster operation. The house is a shell of empty rooms with Milo sleeping at the center of it, and I’m the thing slipping out through the crack.
I take Micah’s keys from the hook by the door because his hatchback is the least recognizable vehicle in our fleet. The engine turns over quiet and I pull out of the driveway with the headlights off until I’m in the clear.
Then I drive.
Dale Stine. Forty-six. Long-haul trucker. Six women at rest stops along the US-101 corridor, three reported, none prosecuted. He’s Knox’s personal project, the folder he keeps separate from the Odin packets, the one Holden slid away when I looked at it too long.
I took it the next morning. Slid it into my tote while Knox was in the shower and Holden was making coffee. I hid it among my things and studied it in the bathroom with the door locked, memorizing routes and rest stops and the specific pattern of a man who targets women traveling alone.
Stine drives a Peterbilt 389 with a custom sleeper cab.
He runs a regular route—three days out, two days back, every week like clockwork.
His stop tonight is a truck plaza off the highway about forty minutes south.
He always parks at the back of the lot, away from the cameras, away from the other rigs.
He always goes inside for a meal, then hits the bar across the road. The one right next to a seedy motel.
I know this because Knox’s notes are meticulous. Times, dates, physical descriptions of the women he approached. Knox wasn’t just tracking a target—he was building a prosecution file that no prosecutor would ever see.
The truck plaza appears out of the dark like a low-slung island of fluorescent light. I park Micah’s car at the far end, between a minivan and a U-Haul. Kill the engine. Check my face in the rearview.
I look young. That’s the point. Shirt open enough to show cleavage, hair loose, a cute scarf tied around my neck and a little makeup I put on in the driveway. I look like a girl on a road trip who wandered into the wrong bar—just like every woman in Knox’s file.
The bar is across the two-lane road from the plaza—a cinder block rectangle with neon beer signs in the windows and a parking lot full of pickups.
Inside, it’s exactly what I expected: dim lighting, country music, sticky floors, the dense smell of fried food and stale beer.
A few clusters of locals sit at tables. A couple plays pool.
And at the far end of the bar, alone, nursing a beer the size of his fist—Dale Stine.
He’s bigger than the photo. Thick neck, thick hands, gut pressing against a flannel shirt that’s seen better decades.
His trucker cap is pushed back on his head, and he’s watching the room with the lazy, patient scan of a man who’s done this enough times that he doesn’t rush it.
He doesn’t need to. He knows how the night goes.
He’s written this script a hundred times.
I sit three stools down. Order a vodka cranberry. Don’t look at him.
It takes less than five minutes.
“Traveling alone?”
His voice is flat. Midwestern. The kind of voice that sounds friendly on a surface level and empty underneath.
“Just passing through,” I say. Let my voice go soft. A little tired. A little lost. “My car’s making a weird noise, so I pulled off to deal with it in the morning.”
“That’s smart. Safer than driving on a bad engine in the dark.” He signals the bartender. “Let me pay for that drink.”
I let him. The drink arrives, and he waits until the bartender turns away before his hand passes over the rim. Quick. Practiced. I only catch it because I’m watching him in the mirror behind the bottles.
When I turn back, he’s smiling.
I wrap my hands around the glass and lift it to my mouth, letting the cranberry touch my lips without swallowing. Think about the knife in my boot.
He asks where I’m headed. Tells me about his rig, his route, his dog back home. He’s good at this—the performance of harmlessness. He touches my arm when he laughs. Lets his knee brush mine. Leans in close enough that I can smell the beer on his breath and the sweat underneath.
Halfway through the drink I’ve been pouring into the bar mat every time he looks away, I let my eyes go glassy. Blink slow. Sway on the stool.
“You okay, sweetheart?” He’s got his hand on my elbow now. Steadying me. So helpful.
“I think . . . I’m just woozy is all. Drink hit me harder than I thought.” I let my words slur at the edges. Not dramatic. Just enough. “I should probably go back to the motel. Get some rest.”
He stands up, slow, the way men do when they’re about to block the exit and want you to feel it but not see it coming.
“You walkin’ over to the motel by yourself?
” He says it like a question, but it’s not.
He’s already dropped some bills on the bar, pulling his jacket on with that practiced shrug, grabbing his keys and a battered cell phone.
“Yeah, it’s just next door, I’ll be—”
“I’ll walk you.” He touches my back, just above the waistband. “Can’t be too careful. Lotta weirdos out these days.”
He’s steering me before I can answer, guiding me with that polite, unbreakable gentleness unique to men who always get their way. The parking lot is puddled with light, blacktop glistening from an earlier rain.
The walk takes less than a minute. The motel is the kind of place that doesn’t ask questions—single-story, exterior doors, a parking lot shared with the bar so nobody has to drive.
He keeps his hand on the small of my back the whole way.
Guiding. Proprietary. Room 9. He inserts the key and holds the door open for me like a man with manners.
I stumble inside.
The room isn’t anything special. Stained carpet, polyester bedspread, a TV bolted to the dresser. It smells like industrial cleaner and cigarettes and something stale underneath that no amount of disinfectant will ever reach.
I let my body go heavy as I sit on the edge of the bed, then tip sideways onto the mattress like the last of my coordination has given out.
One arm draped across my stomach. The other hanging off the side, close to my boot.
I let my eyes flutter closed. Let my breathing slow.
Let myself become what he thinks I am—a girl who drank the drink he spiked and is now passed out.
He locks the door. The deadbolt clicks.
I hear him move. The creak of the floor. The rustle of his belt. The bedsprings dipping as he sits beside me. His hand on my knee, testing. When I don’t react, it slides higher.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Just rest. I’ll take good care of you.”
His weight shifts. He leans over me, one hand braced on the mattress beside my head, the other pushing my shirt up. His breathing is heavier now. That wet, excited panting of a man who thinks the world has handed him another gift. His fingers hook into the waistband of my jeans.
I open my eyes.
For one perfect second, I see it—the flash of confusion, his brain trying to reconcile the unconscious girl with the wide-awake woman staring up at him. His mouth opens.
I pull the knife from my boot and drive it straight into his left eye.
The sound is wet. Specific.
“You bitch!”
He reels back, screaming. A raw, animal shriek that fills the room and bounces off the thin walls. His hands fly to his face, but I rip the blade free before he can take it with him.
I don’t freeze. I don’t hesitate.
I’m off the bed before he finds his balance, driving the knife into his shoulder, his chest, his gut. Blood pours through his fingers and splashes across my hands. My shirt. My face.
I laugh.
It comes out bright and wild and nothing like the sound a person is supposed to make in this moment.
“You fucking psycho! What the fuck is wrong with you?” he howls.
“What’s wrong with me?” I laugh again. “You’re the rapist, motherfucker. And you finally targeted the wrong girl.”
I lift the knife and he swings blind. His fist catches the side of my head and the world tilts, stars bursting behind my eyes. Then he comes forward—all panic, rage, and weight—catching me around the middle and driving me backward.
My back hits the floor and the air leaves my lungs. The knife is gone from my hand—there, on the carpet, two feet away, matte black blade slick red.
He’s on top of me before I can reach it. All that trucker weight, knees pinning my thighs, one big hand closing around both my wrists and shoving them above my head. Blood pours from his ruined eye onto my face. Warm. His other hand claws at my jeans, popping the button, dragging at the zipper.
“No—get OFF me—”
“You’re gonna wish you’d never—” He’s panting, half-blind, fingers digging into my waistband. “Gonna take my time with you, you crazy little bitch—”
I buck. Kick. My boots find no purchase on the carpet, heels skidding. He’s too heavy, built like the front end of his Peterbilt, and the hand around my wrists is a shackle. Not again. Not again.
Never again!
The anger comes back like a wave. White. Roaring.
I stop fighting the hand holding my wrists and let him think he’s won that war. He leans into it, shifting his weight forward to yank my jeans down—and I twist, wrench one hand free, and my fingers close around the knife’s grip like it was made to be there.
I scream.
“Motherfucker!”
I don’t hear it. I feel it, tearing out of my chest, and the blade is already moving. Into his side. Out. In. His throat. His chest. Out. In. In. In.
This is for them.
For the women at the rest stops.
For the women who reported and were ignored.
For every woman who thought she was safe.
This is for me.
Never again.
I’m not even aiming anymore. I’m just stabbing, screaming, his blood hitting my face in hot arcs, his body jerking with every impact, and underneath my screaming there’s a sound he’s making—wet, bubbling, wrong—
I stop.
The knife stays raised. My arm trembling.
His one good eye is open. Staring at me. Wide with horror. It blinks. Once. His mouth works, blood bubbling at the corner, and nothing comes out but a sound like a tire deflating.
“Dale,” I whisper. “Can you hear me?”
The eye doesn’t answer.
Is he dead? I don’t know. His chest might be moving. It might not. There’s so much blood I can’t tell—it’s on the carpet, the bedspread, my hands, my clothes, soaking through to my skin. I can’t tell if the pulse hammering in my ears is mine or his.
Then he rocks forward.
“Oh no—no, no—”
I drop the knife and reach up to catch him, both palms flat against his chest, pushing. Squelching. He’s two hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight and gravity doesn’t negotiate. He tips like a felled tree and lands on top of me, full length, crushing me into the carpet.
The air leaves my lungs in one hot gust.
His face is against my neck. His blood pools beneath us, sticky and warm. I shove at his shoulders, his chest, his hips—nothing moves him. My legs are pinned. My ribs are compressed. Every breath I manage is shallow and smells like copper and him.
Okay. Okay.
I just killed a man. Again. But this time there are no five masked men to pull me off him. No Knox to make a body disappear. No Holden to control the scene. There’s just me, a dead rapist using me as a mattress, and a motel room that looks like an abattoir.
“Fuck,” I wheeze at the ceiling. “The guys are going to be so mad at me.”