Chapter Thirty Sage
Chapter Thirty
Sage
I open my eyes and stretch, still feeling the pleasure from last night lingering in my limbs. It takes me a moment to realize my hand is cuffed to the headboard.
“Travis,” I mumble, slapping the bed beside me to get him to free me. When I don’t touch anything, I look to my left and sigh. Not only is Travis gone, but his half of the bed is perfectly made. “I thought we were past this?”
With my free hand, I grab a pillow and chuck it at the made-up half of the bed, as if it might bounce back with an explanation. “At least leave a note next time, Houdini.” The pillow thuds to the floor with the same lack of remorse Travis apparently has for my wrist circulation.
I sit upright and look toward the bedroom door, which is closed.
He doesn’t normally close it in the morning when I’m here.
I know he likes to keep an eye on me because there’s still a part of him that doesn’t trust me with the information I have.
Frankly, I find it extremely annoying. Right now it’s his most glaring flaw.
“Travis!” My voice is raspy as I shout through the house. When he doesn’t come after a few moments, my mind starts to wander. What the hell is he doing right now?
He hasn’t been cuffing me to the bed, and after last night I don’t understand why he would do it now. Did I do something wrong?
I search my mind for anything that happened last night that might have upset him.
I disrupted his dinner schedule, but that’s really it.
As far as I’m aware, I didn’t do anything to upset him and warrant being restrained like this.
If anything, he was more relaxed last night than he’d been all day. I made sure of that.
The more I think about it, the more panic sets in. Travis is a dangerous man, and the possibility that he turns around and snaps and decides to break his own word about not hurting me is there, even if I haven’t wanted to acknowledge it in the past.
I shout his name a few more times and listen carefully for any sign of him in the house. I don’t hear anything. It doesn’t sound like he is in his office talking on the phone or in the gym exercising. It’s completely quiet—almost eerily so.
I don’t know how much time passes, but I sink back into the bed and stare at the ceiling, letting my mind roam. Eventually I hear the front door slam shut, and I jolt upright. “Travis?”
Footsteps approach, and Travis walks through the bedroom door shortly after. I’m only partly relieved to see him, but I force a smile on my face anyway. I jangle the cuff around my hand loudly, silently pleading for him to let me go.
“What’s going on?” I ask as Travis walks around the bed and fishes in his pockets for the key to the cuff. He sits down beside me and dangles it in front of my face.
“You looked so peaceful. I didn’t want to wake you up.” He unlocks the cuff, and I immediately grab my hand to massage my wrist. “I didn’t want to leave you alone to roam the house either. My hands were tied.”
“Well, that’s not true. My hands were tied.” I roll my eyes and stare at him, studying his face for any inclination of what he was doing. “Do you still not trust me?”
After everything we’ve been through, haven’t I proved that I’m trustworthy? I literally watched you kill a man, and I haven’t done anything to make you think I’m going to tell.
He must see the hurt and frustration on my face, because he lets out a soft exhale and offers me an apologetic smile. “I get what you’re feeling. I just had some things to do in town, and I was being cautious.”
My stomach churns at the idea of him being in town without telling me. I hope it’s not what I think. A moment of silence sits between us while I try to read him. It’s nearly impossible; there’s no emotion behind his eyes at all.
“You went to town? Please tell me you at least grabbed some coffee and breakfast,” I say, purposefully being lighthearted about the situation.
I know Travis doesn’t like it when I cry, but the more I think about him doing something I have explicitly asked him not to do, the more tears threaten to form.
He furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head. “That wasn’t part of my itinerary while I was in town. Why would I stop if it wasn’t planned?”
Your itinerary? So you had a plan in town. Got it.
“Okay, what were you doing in town without me, then? Why was it so important I had to be tied up here?”
Travis looks away from me and hesitates. That’s unusual. He isn’t exactly the type of person to regret the things he does. I can see there’s something he doesn’t want to tell me. My mouth turns bitter as I brace myself for what he’s about to say. It’s like my worst fear coming to life.
“I was in town doing some reconnaissance work on Nicole.” He looks at me with a blank expression, his voice completely emotionless. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d be upset. It made you cry so much before. I didn’t want you to feel that way again.”
I blink a few times and let his words sink in. He didn’t want to make me cry? So all this was just a big favor to me, wasn’t it?
I do my best to look away from him as I clear my throat so he can’t see the emotion on my face. I hoped he’d forgotten all about her. Maybe I was naive, but a part of me thought he would change his mind after he saw my reaction. I guess I was wrong.
“Travis, please don’t do this,” I beg, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. “She’s too young. She’s innocent. I could see it on her face. She has her whole life ahead of her. You can’t hurt her.”
Travis pulls his hand from me and looks away. I can practically feel the frustration simmering off him. I already know what he’s going to say.
I slap his arm lightly and narrow my eyes. “Come on, Travis. She looks like she’s one bad breakup away from a poetry phase and a ukulele. You’re going to ruin her Etsy-store dreams.”
“I don’t know how many times I need to tell you, but that’s not why I do this.” He looks back at me with anger in his eyes. “Whether she’s innocent or not, it doesn’t matter. You need to stay out of this.”
“Are you serious? Stay out of this?” I let out an incredulous laugh and shake my head. “I’m already too far into this. Staying out of it isn’t an option anymore.”
“I’ve been doing this for a long time. This is a well-oiled machine for me. If you can’t handle this, you can’t be a part of it. My methods have always worked in the past, and I’m not going to alter them because of you.”
My heart drops and my brain runs at breakneck speed, trying to think of a way to change his mind.
“People know her!” I sit up and lean forward with a glimmer of hope swelling in my chest. “People at the grocery store see her. People have to have noticed her. If she goes missing, it might raise some suspicions.”
“This isn’t my first kill,” he says with an exhausted huff. “I’m always completely secure. Nobody is going to notice, because I take every possible precaution.”
This is it. I can see how determined he is about this. I don’t know how I’m ever going to convince him not to do this. He won’t listen to me about pursuing bad people, and I can’t change his mind.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and Travis reaches for it before I can. Even though he “trusts” me, he still likes to make sure everything is on par and I’m not really ratting him out to the feds.
I watch his face as his lips pull into a tight line and his eyes slowly move from the screen to me. His eyes darken, and I feel a chill run through me. “What the fuck, Sage?”
I pull the phone away from him to see what he’s looking at. I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t understand what would set him off like this. I look at the screen and see a notification from the Citizens app of a new sex offender registered in the area.
“Are you capable of thinking, or is that something I have to start doing for you?” He jumps to his feet and paces back and forth in front of the bed, tossing me furious glares.
“I don’t understand.” I can’t help myself from cowering in front of him. I clutch the sheets on the bed closer to me and make myself seem small before him. He’s never looked at me this way, not even when we first met and I was constantly annoying him.
“Why the fuck would you make searches like this from an unsecured connection?” He rushes toward me, slamming his hands down on the mattress right beside me.
I jump back and press my spine hard against the headboard.
My skin is burning hot, and for the first time, Travis is terrifying me. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
His eyes are pointed furiously in my direction, and I can almost see an alternate reality where I’m one of his victims after all. There was a time when he wanted to kill me, and I think he does right now too. The very thought sends a shiver crawling through my body.
“I didn’t know,” I say in a meek, hushed voice. There’s no remorse in his eyes as he backs away and snatches my phone from my hand.
He walks away from me and lingers in the doorframe, looking back at me with a disappointed frown. “This is going to ruin me.”
As the door slams, I mutter under my breath, “Next time I’ll google murdery stuff on Incognito like a normal girlfriend.” I consider yelling it louder, but I’m not sure if sarcasm would defuse or detonate him right now.
I can hear him stomping around, heading to his office. Travis is acting like an animal with its foot caught in a trap. He’s desperate and lashing out. I never meant to do something to harm him, but he doesn’t see it that way.
Right now Travis is in self-preservation mode. He’s dangerous. I’m realizing the weight of the situation I’m in. If I don’t leave now, I might not have a chance to.