Chapter Twenty-Seven Travis
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Travis
Several days pass, and I feel the itch coming back.
It’s not strong enough to disrupt my daily life, but it lingers.
If I’m quiet for too long, I start dreaming about killing.
I think about the thrill of the chase, finding someone and watching them.
Waiting for them to show me their routine so I can properly stalk them from a distance.
I have some time before I need to find a victim, but I always keep my eyes peeled. You never know when the perfect person is going to fall right into your lap.
“Is there anything you want to eat?” Sage asks as she throws together a grocery list on her phone.
“I normally alternate between veggie lasagna, chicken and broccoli, and salmon with quinoa and brussels sprouts.”
She flashes me a dirty look as she shakes her head. “Maybe now that I’m here, you can try to change up your food habits. You can be a little less rigorous every now and then, right?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“I don’t know—Thai curry? Tacos?”
“You mean food that doesn’t come with a low glycemic-index rating?”
She rolls her eyes and pulls out her phone. “You are a nutritional war criminal.”
“I’m just saying, if kale was a person, I’d marry it. Stability is sexy.”
She throws a baby carrot at me from the fridge drawer before she stares at me with hopeful eyes, and I reluctantly nod.
“I’ll keep my schedule the same, with the exception of Saturday and Sunday.”
She smiles wildly and immediately starts searching for recipes on her phone.
I’ve made a lot of adjustments in my life for Sage, and it’s hard.
Some of them come more naturally, but some have the potential to upend my life.
Something as simple as letting her cook me dinner two nights a week is a relatively small sacrifice to keep the peace in the house.
I figure if I give her freedom for these things, she can leave me to my own devices and allow me to keep my schedule intact otherwise.
Plus, if she’s going to be making an overly complicated dinner, that gives me time in my office to focus on my kills. Stalking Eli and killing him with Sage was interesting. She didn’t force her ideas on me—she let me take the reins. But now she wants to be a team. I didn’t ask for that.
We drive into town to buy some groceries and household supplies.
Sage has a list, so I give her my platinum card, and she eagerly runs inside ahead of me to grab whatever exotic ingredients she needs for her ideas.
I follow behind with a faint smile on my face at how excited she gets.
It’s hard to admit, but she is fighting her way into my heart.
“Excuse me,” someone says nearby. Turning, my eyes widen as the perfect victim walks toward me.
She’s young, probably nineteen or twenty, if I have to guess.
Her clothes are tattered and stained with dirt and sweat.
Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but I can see how matted and unkempt it is.
“Do you have any change to spare? I’m trying to buy a bus ticket home. ”
I freeze for a moment as I stare at her.
She offers me a kind smile, and I do my best to force one on myself.
I wasn’t expecting to find a victim so soon, but sometimes fate has other plans.
The itch is strong, practically pulling me toward her like a magnet.
It’s begging for me to do it now. To wrap my hands around her throat and strangle her.
I fight back against it and reach into my pockets to dig around for change.
I grab my wallet and open it, finding a few bills inside.
I’ve been approached by countless homeless people peddling for money; almost none of them are really looking for bus tickets home.
But on the off chance she is, I don’t want to give her much money.
Maybe a few bucks, but none of the $100 bills in my wallet will work.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t have anything on me right now.” I flash her an apologetic smile and look toward the door of the store. “What’s your name?”
“Nicole, and I don’t mean to be any trouble—”
“Nonsense!” I keep smiling at her and shake my head fervently to let her know she’s not a bother. “Are you going to be around here for a while? I can get some when I leave and bring it back to you.”
She smiles and looks nervously over her shoulder toward an alleyway across the street.
“They don’t really like me staying around the grocery store.
It makes the customers feel weird.” She laughs nervously and looks down at the ground.
“I’m just across the street, though. Again, I don’t want to be too much—”
“Don’t worry about that.” Putting my wallet back in my pocket and thinking about how good it’ll feel to slice through her throat. “If you’re over there, I’ll come find you when I’m done shopping.”
I wave goodbye, throwing on the kindest persona I possibly can.
All I can think about is how incredible this is.
She’s exactly what I’m looking for. She’s young, so I assume she must be some kind of runaway.
If her story is accurate and she’s just trying to get money to go back home, her family is not in touch with her.
It will be weeks, possibly even months, before someone notices she’s gone.
I can taste the excitement on my tongue as I walk into the grocery store. Sage is lingering by the door with her eyebrows wrinkled, and I can already read what she’s thinking.
“Friend of yours?” She grabs a basket and waits for me to reply.
“I think she would be perfect for a project of mine,” I whisper, raising an eyebrow.
She inhales sharply but turns around before saying anything. We walk through the store, and she silently fills the basket with ingredients while I walk behind her, fantasizing about the kill.
At the end of an aisle, a salesperson is handing out samples of some kind of fish sauce. Sage grabs a sample cup, gives it a suspicious sniff, and recoils. “This smells like Poseidon’s armpit.”
I chuckle. “You’re the one insisting on ‘flavor.’”
We turn a corner, and I nearly knock over a tower of avocados stacked like a Jenga death trap.
“This store is a lawsuit waiting to happen,” I mutter, catching a rolling avocado with the toe of my shoe.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she says without looking up from her list.
The store isn’t busy, but there are a few customers straggling around and throwing items haphazardly into their carts. Sage seems to take inventory of each of them as she leads me through the aisles toward the back of the store, which is completely empty.
“You can’t hurt that girl,” she whispers. Her eyes are sharp and adamant, but I’m almost shocked by her reaction. With how excited she was with Eli’s kill, I would assume she would be happy that I found another. “She doesn’t deserve to die.”
“How do you know that?” I inch closer and lean down slightly so the two of us can converse more discreetly. “Neither of us knows anything about her. She could be just as bad as Eli.”
She rolls her eyes and drops the basket on the ground to cross her arms in front of her. “She’s just a kid. She doesn’t even look like she’s old enough to buy alcohol. You can’t go after someone like her. There are countless other people who deserve to go.”
I clench my fists and sigh, shaking my head.
“Don’t put this on me. The vigilante idea was all yours, not mine.
This isn’t about who deserves to go. It’s about who I choose to vent the energy inside me.
It’s always in me. I have to get it out, and I can’t always wait until we find the right person. ”
Sage is silent as she sees how resolute I am. With each word, I feel myself growing more frustrated with her. After everything we’ve done, I thought I could expect her to be more understanding of the risks involved.
“I have a choice. I can either find some anonymous person nobody’s ever going to miss and kill them, or I can find someone else who I track down and interact with, which will lead to me getting caught,” I continue, gritting my teeth as I speak.
“Regardless of how you’re looking at it, someone’s going to die either way.
I’m not a hero, and you’re not going to make me one. ”
She looks away from me, and for a moment I feel bad about snapping. I know she has good intentions, but that’s not my responsibility. She’s already come into my life and changed it so much; I am not willing to budge on this. This is who I am. She knew this before she got involved.
“Let’s get out of here.” I turn around and storm out of the store before she says anything else.
My anger is boiling over, and I can’t risk the two of us having an outburst in public, not when so much is on the line.
I expect Sage to follow me. Normally, when I tell her to do something, she does.
But when I get to the car, I turn around and she’s not there.
It feels like the ground has been pulled out from under me. She’s always there. I’ve gotten used to her following me around like a puppy dog all day long. It’s part of my new routine, and her not being there is yet another way she has disrupted it.
That’s not even mentioning the fact that she knows everything about my kills. She knows the names of the people I have tracked down, where I’ve killed them, and where I keep their ashes.
I open the driver’s-side door just to slam it shut as I storm toward the store entrance once again.
How could I be so fucking stupid? Never in my life have I been trusting with anyone, save my sister when we were children.
Why would I give such sensitive information to someone I barely know?
If I don’t do what Sage wants, is she just going to rat me out to the police?
Of course they would believe her. She can make up any lie she wants, and they’ll believe her. She has that ability to charm people. She can tell them I forced her to help me, that she was a victim just like everyone else I’ve killed. I can’t have that.
I briskly walk through every aisle, trying to find her. She’s not hard to spot with her vibrant pink hair. But no matter where I look, she has practically vanished. I feel my frustration starting to boil over. On top of that, I’m worried she’s run off to someplace I’ll never find.
The last place I look is the bathroom. Thankfully, the store is empty enough that nobody else is in the ladies’ room aside from Sage. She grips the counter as her shoulders shake with every sob she lets out.
I freeze. I’ve seen her cry only once before, under much different circumstances. It stirs something in me that I don’t recognize. My heart aches, and I feel like it’s pushing me toward her. It’s unfamiliar, and I don’t know how to act.
“You’re crying,” I say as I slowly inch toward her. She looks at me with blotchy red eyes and a scowl on her face. She’s never looked at me like this.
My brain is completely still, refusing to cooperate with me.
I know how to put on a facade to seem like I’m the same as everyone else.
The only problem is that facade works only for typical situations like what to say to a clerk at a grocery store checkout.
Not how to console a crying woman in a bathroom.
I hold my hand out and place it on her shoulder. My entire arm feels heavy, like I’m doing the wrong thing and forcing my body to go against itself. Sage looks at it, then back at me, and rolls her eyes.
“Is this . . . helping?” I ask, my hand awkwardly hovering in midair like I’m waiting for a high five from a statue.
“You look like you’re malfunctioning,” she says, sniffling.
“That checks out.” I retract my hand and wipe it on my pants like it caught feelings.
“Do I pat your head now? Or fetch tissues? I’ve seen people offer tea during emotional events.”
“Unless it’s laced with bourbon, I’d pass,” I retort.
“Noted for next time. Bring booze and avoid touching.”
“I’m sorry.” I pull my arm away and step closer. “I don’t know how to respond to emotional outbursts from other people. This is all new to me.”
“How about I give you some pointers, then?” Sage says as she whips her head around and glares at me. “When somebody reaches out to a person they care about and tries to connect with them and be a part of their life only to be rejected, they might react this way.”
My body stiffens, and I take an inadvertent step back as I study her face.
I never thought her suggestion was coming from a place of caring about me.
My assumption was that she wanted to have fun.
She liked the high she got from being involved in Eli’s murder, and she wanted to feel that again.
I thought it was childish. Even the idea of being some kind of vigilante hunting down sex offenders felt foolish to me.
But now I see things from her side a little better.
Looking back, I realize how I was wrong. She was coming from a place of caring about me, someplace real.
Her face softens when she sees my reaction, and her shoulders slump.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I look behind me at the bathroom door and think about the possibility of someone else coming in and finding us here.
This conversation should not be had in public, so we have to get home.
“I see where you’re coming from, and I shouldn’t have shut you out the way I did.
I promise I’ll think about your idea, but only if we can leave right now. ”
She agrees and follows me out of the bathroom. We forget just about everything we even came to town for and climb into the car to go home. Our grocery trip was completely derailed, and now that part of my day has been ruined.
I can sense that Sage feels triumphant. She stares out the window, the passenger-side mirror revealing a faint smile on her lips. She thinks that she’s won this argument, but I’m not so sure she has.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ll let it go for now.
But as we drive, my eyes linger on the roadside Nicole pointed to, and I can’t help but wonder what it’ll be like to follow her.
I’ll genuinely take Sage’s advice into consideration.
It’s not a bad idea—it’s just not what I’m used to.
But I have to keep in mind that my safety is paramount.
I can’t sacrifice that just to appease her.