Chapter Thirty-One Travis
Chapter Thirty-One
Travis
How the fuck could I have been so stupid?
I’ve gone so long without being caught, and I let one stupid girl into my life, and she’s going to lead investigators directly to my door. What the fuck was I thinking?
Just to really drive home my idiocy, I stub my toe so hard on the desk leg I nearly see stars. Naturally, I screamed, not out of pain, but in existential frustration. The universe didn’t respond. Probably too busy laughing.
Since the moment I met Sage, she has been disrupting my life. Why the hell did I think this part of my life would be protected from her? Letting her in was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I should have killed her when I had the chance.
It takes a while for me to regain my focus after our conversation.
I know she’s upset with me for pursuing Nicole, but she doesn’t understand me, no matter what she tries to tell herself.
I hardly get to choose my victims. I met Nicole, and she took priority in my mind.
Abandoning this now, on the heels of missing out on Kevin, will leave me unsatisfied and frayed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s set off some kind of alert with her searches, though. This is why I don’t cherry-pick my victims the way she wants me to. Now there is vast room for error. I just can’t trust her.
After a few minutes of trying to calm down, I storm back into the bedroom and drag Sage from the bed and back to my office. “I don’t want to hear a word out of you,” I say as I sit her down across from me.
She slinks down in the chair and stares at me with wide, watery eyes. There’s no doubt in my mind she’s going to try to play up every emotion she possibly can to get me to go easy on her. She doesn’t deserve that, not after the danger she’s put me in.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asks in a small, nervous voice. I ignore her, focusing on her phone and laptop on the desk in front of me.
I hook them up to my desktop computer and immediately scan both devices for malware.
Someone like her, with absolutely no technological savviness, probably has vast amounts of malware on her devices without even knowing it.
Sometimes it can be harmless enough, but more often than not, there’s some sort of malicious intent.
While I wait for my programs to run, I check out her desktop, which has a background image of a glittery unicorn eating pizza in space. Even her folder names are chaos incarnate—“Taxes?,” “Definitely Not Porn,” and “Super Secret Stuff (Don’t Open Travis).” I almost throw the laptop out the window.
She is so careless about everything. What she probably doesn’t know, and could very well be my downfall, is that the US government has trackers on just about every website you can think of.
Most of this is just keyword-based monitoring, looking for people searching specific strings of information.
Vigilantism is something they look out for.
With Sage searching sex offenders in the area, bringing traffic to different databases, and looking at individual sex offenders’ information, she has probably set off a chain reaction of red flags.
To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Sage is using a vanilla Chrome with a few useless extensions and no VPN. What makes this so much worse is that the IP address is registered to my Wi-Fi. All the government agencies that got pings alerting to her searches are going to immediately look at my address.
Why did she leave me such a mess to clean up?
The first thing I do is scrub her internet history entirely, deleting all her browser searches, cookies, and cache files.
Afterward, I delete and reinstall Google Chrome as a safety measure.
There are probably better browsers for her to be using, but if there are red flags raised, and she suddenly switches to a hardened and much more protected browser, that’s only going to raise more of them.
I install a VPN for her. If there’s anything I know about Sage, it’s that she’s stubborn. As much as I want her to give up on this sex offender thing, I know it’s not that easy. If she does those ridiculous searches again, it won’t be linked to her IP address.
The next part is a little bit tricky. I have my own ways of getting information, but hacking into government databases is beyond my pay grade.
Plus, I might be a certified tech genius, but they have the best in the world on their payroll.
The only thing I can do is make a honeypot—something to divert their attention away from Sage and her ridiculous searches.
It’s not hard to create a bot that searches the same things as her and throws the IP address somewhere else in the state. If red flags keep getting raised, they’re likely to think Sage’s searches were just a fluke.
The last step in the plan is plausible deniability.
If all this fails, though I doubt that is going to be the case, we need an excuse for why Sage made those searches.
I can’t exactly have her telling the government she was trying to turn my attention from innocent victims to sexual predators to kill.
Even if by most standards we’d be doing the world a favor, the judicial system would beg to differ.
“I need you to film a video of yourself talking about all the sex offenders in the area,” I tell Sage, not bothering to look at her while I type away on my computer.
“Make it look like you were doing some kind of research in the area because you’re planning on settling down here.
As it turns out, there are too many sex offenders in the area for you to be comfortable. ”
She steps off to grab her camera, and I keep my eyes on her the entire time. She sets it up in the hallway—where I can see her—and records a brief video, forcing a smile on her face once again. This time I can see that it’s fake.
When she’s done, she sits back down across from me with a defeated sigh.
I stop what I’m doing and stare at her for a moment.
A dull ache in my chest begs me to sit next to her and pull her in for a hug, but I fight against it.
Just like the tears in the grocery store bathroom, this is my fault.
Right now she’s not acting like the Sage I know.
She’s not being optimistic or overly bubbly and cheerful. She feels deflated because of me.
For what it’s worth, I wish that things could be different.
If I didn’t have to worry about the things I do, both of our lives would be much easier.
But I can’t change who I am, regardless of how many times I’ve tried to ignore these urges.
This is what’s best. This is what I know and what I can handle.
I can’t let Sage ruin me. I refuse to give up everything I’ve worked for because of her foolish actions. But I don’t know what I’m going to do with her after all this. She’s impossible to rein in.
Time flies while I get to work and make sure all our bases are covered. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, the US government can’t be fooled in one either—unless you have access to highly classified software and aren’t afraid of Homeland Security breaking down your door.
Sage stays put while I work, and I’m thankful she isn’t pestering me anymore. However, I can sense the growing unease surrounding her.
“How about I make us some dinner?” she asks after a while.
She holds a hand over her stomach with a pained expression on her face, as if to silently tell me she’s starving.
I let her cook last night when I shouldn’t have, but a wrench has already been thrown into all my plans for the day.
What could letting her cook again really hurt?
“Fine. But I’m coming with you,” I say as I grab her laptop and phone.
Sage doesn’t hesitate to jump to her feet and start walking toward the kitchen.
I follow as quickly as I can, careful to keep a close eye on her.
On the off chance she decides she wants to fight back against me, I need to make sure she doesn’t grab a weapon from the kitchen.
I doubt it will happen, but she does really care about me not targeting Nicole.
If the thought crosses her mind and she thinks the only way to save her is to hurt me, I have to stop it.
She gets to work at the counter, chopping vegetables and preparing the dish while I sit at the kitchen island and continue covering all her tracks. I look up from the screen only when I hear the knife slicing vegetables to make sure everything is up to par.
While she’s cooking, my body tenses when she grabs the knife a few times. I don’t know if it’s the way she drags it across the cutting board or just the energy she’s giving off, but it makes me worry. I could easily overpower her if it comes to it, but I don’t want to hurt her. We’ve come so far.
After a while the aroma of sizzling bacon catches my attention.
It smells delicious, though very heavy in calories.
It’s lucky I haven’t eaten anything yet today—otherwise I’d have to decline.
Whatever she’s making is thick with cream, cheese, and fatty bacon.
It makes my stomach growl just thinking about it.
“What are you making?”
“Potato soup.” She doesn’t look at me when she answers, and I feel a little bit guilty. My reaction is going to put a strain on our relationship, and I almost wish I could take it back.
“I’ve never had that before.” I close her laptop, satisfied that my work is done for now, and watch her finish cooking.
“This is my mom’s recipe. Well, almost. She doesn’t usually add bacon, but I think it helps the flavors.” Her voice is flat and monotone. She can barely even look me in the eye.
She finishes stirring the giant pot on the stove and grabs two bowls from the cupboard, filling them to the brim with soup. “Do you think you can grab us some wine? I think red will work.”
I walk to the wine cabinet and look for a merlot before grabbing us both wineglasses and bringing them to the table. Sage is already sitting with both bowls in front of her, dolloping a bit of butter on each of them.
Great, more empty calories.
I sit down and pour us both a drink. We begin eating without saying a word. Of course, like everything Sage cooks, this is delicious. A part of me wants to say something to her about it, but by the sullen look on her face, I don’t think she wants to talk.
She’s barely eating, more so just turning the soup over and over in the bowl. She takes only a few bites here and there. I feel bad. Neither of us says a word as I finish my bowl entirely.
“Do you want mine? I’m not going to finish it, and I don’t want to throw it away.” Sage sighs, pushing it over to me. “I guess I don’t have much of an appetite after all.”
She looks down at her lap with a frown, and my heart aches even more. I accept the bowl and start eating it. I wouldn’t normally have more than one serving of food, but I also don’t normally go twenty-four hours without eating.
When I’m finished, Sage grabs both bowls and rinses them off before putting them in the dishwasher along with the wineglasses. “I might just go to sleep early, if you don’t mind.”
I still don’t want her out of my sight, and I wouldn’t normally go to sleep right after dinner. But today is not a normal day. Besides, I’m tired too. My entire schedule changed after finding Sage’s searches, so I might as well go to bed early and have a proper night’s rest before tomorrow.
“Let’s go.” I grab her hand and lead her to the bedroom, careful to be more delicate with her than I was earlier today. She’s emotional and exhausted from it, and I don’t want to make things worse.
Both of us climb into bed, and I grab a zip tie to wrap around both of our wrists.
Sage looks disappointed that I’m doing this, but she doesn’t say anything.
She just rolls over and faces away from me.
Honestly, if I were her, I’d roll over too.
If someone zip-tied me every night, I’d at least demand a turndown service and a mint on the pillow.
I almost collapse in bed, surprised at how exhausted I feel.
I suppose it’s from the stress of thinking I could get caught.
I take a few deep breaths and close my eyes, relaxing against the mattress.
Sage is breathing softly, and I listen to the sound of her exhales, as if meditating with them in my ears.
My mind is foggy, and my tongue feels thick. I open my eyes in the dark room, almost having to force my lids open because they’re so heavy. They fall shut on their own, and a memory comes to the front of my mind.
The last time I felt like this was by Sage’s hand, when she drugged me without my knowledge. Before I can reach over and ask her what she did, I slip away to my slumber.