Chapter Thirty-Three Travis
Chapter Thirty-Three
Travis
My eyes slowly open to a dark room. It takes a moment for everything to come back to me, and I immediately reach over to nudge Sage and wake her up. My head is still foggy, but I have every intention of chewing her out. The only problem is that she’s not there beside me.
The zip tie around my wrist is intact, but hers has been cut off.
The spot she normally sleeps in is unmade and wrinkled, cold, as if she’s been gone for a while.
I stagger to my feet, momentarily convinced that I’m in a lucid dream—or possibly a Target clearance aisle, because why else would my head feel like it’s stuck in a cotton candy machine?
I trip over the comforter I yanked with me in my sudden rise, face-planting onto the floor with the grace of a drugged giraffe.
This is not the morning-after vibe I was going for.
As much as I want to run through the house searching for her, I have to take it easy. If I move too fast, I might risk injuring myself and delaying this entire process even more.
The pocketknife I keep on the side of my bed is gone too. I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but somehow I am. With Sage’s complete and utter obsession with me from the beginning, I never thought she would have something like this in her. I don’t like the unknown.
I’m careful to plan every aspect of my life to avoid the unknown. Sage being out on her own, feeling as if what I’m doing is wrong for the first time, invites a lot of possibilities I can’t predict.
With her gone, I’m expecting the police to break down my front door at any moment and take me away. All I can hope for is that Sage knows what’s good for her and doesn’t tell them about me. While I don’t want a police investigation, I do have the resources to help me around things like this.
My car is still in the garage, which means Sage more than likely left on foot. She’s hitchhiked before in the past, and I doubt she’s going to change her ways right now, especially when she’s fleeing so haphazardly. She didn’t even take all her belongings with her.
If she’s on foot, she can’t have gotten far. It’s the middle of the night, and the woods are rather desolate. There’s only one place she could have gone: Ryan’s cabin.
I know I need to catch her quickly, but driving right now would be a mistake. I can barely walk without feeling like the ground is pulling me toward it. The last thing I need is to crash my car in the middle of nowhere, waking up in a hospital room with police officers asking me what happened.
Sorry, Officer, I was just out to kidnap my girlfriend . . .
The air feels fresh against my skin, and it invigorates me enough to force some of the haziness in my head aside.
Walking to Ryan’s cabin takes longer than I would like, and I have to stop intermittently to brace myself against trees and shake off the dizzy spells.
The first time I ever had marijuana was when Sage gave me the brownie without my knowledge, and I know now that I took two doses when I finished her soup last night alongside my own.
My cannabis tolerance is virtually nonexistent.
Eventually I spot Ryan’s cabin in the distance and feel a wave of relief wash over me as I notice the lights are on. Sage is here. That’s at least one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore. I’ll find her and take care of the situation before she does something drastic.
I start thinking about what I’m going to do as I approach the cabin from the shadows. Obviously I have to bring her back to my house, but with me being as high as I am and her presumably sober, there might be some complications.
Even though I’m under the influence, I think I can still overpower her.
She’s small, and she doesn’t exercise. Even with a knife in her hands, I can still best her.
Unless she took a surprise self-defense course last week.
Or has secretly been watching YouTube knife-fighting tutorials.
My luck, she probably has a black belt in spite and a PhD in making me regret things.
The problem is that I promised her I wouldn’t hurt her.
I don’t like to go back on my word, but I fear she’s giving me no choice.
Maybe I can just lock her in a room until she learns her lesson.
Maybe I could tie her to the bed and leave her there.
I just need to know she isn’t going to do anything stupid.
I freeze as I approach the backyard. The curtains are wide open, and I can see the inside of the cabin as clear as day. Ryan’s here.
From the window in front of me, all I can see is his profile and a gun in his hand, pointed at something. Using basic deduction skills, if Sage was on her way here, then logically he would be pointing his gun at her.
I feel the adrenaline kick in, sending a burst of energy through my limbs as I run toward the house to get a better view.
When I get closer, I’m careful to be quiet.
The likelihood of me having to go in and break the situation up is pretty high, and I’ll need to catch Ryan unawares since he has the advantage with a gun.
I tiptoe to one of the windows and peek through, taking inventory of the entire scene. Ryan is standing with a gun pointed at Sage, who is standing completely naked in front of him. She’s trying to cover herself nervously, and Ryan is saying something I can’t quite hear.
Rage simmers in my veins, and I don’t spare a moment waiting. Sage might be a problem, but she’s my problem. Someone like fucking Ryan doesn’t get to put her in danger. I’ll end him for this.
I go to the window I sneaked in through the first time I wanted to kill Sage—the first night we slept together and I realized there was something different about her. It brings back some complicated memories, but I push them down.
Now isn’t the time to take a stroll down memory lane.
Thankfully the window in the bathroom is still unlocked.
Sage was a fool for unlocking all the windows in a strange house in the first place, and Ryan must not have taken proper inventory of the cabin when he came back.
Lake Lure might be a relatively safe area—aside from being home to yours truly—but you never know who’s going to visit in the night.
In Ryan’s case, I’m going to make him regret this.
I’m as quiet as ever as I sneak through the house, careful to stay in the shadows, making my way toward the living room. While I’m in the hallway, I freeze to listen to the situation. Ryan’s ranting and raving about something while Sage whimpers quietly to herself.
“You made it all too easy, really.” Ryan laughs as he waves his arm around. “You even asked me if I knew him, and I lied. Just a word of advice—in the future, don’t be so trusting. Who am I kidding? You don’t have a future.”
He takes a break from his rant to laugh at his own bad joke while Sage whispers the word please over and over again.
“Why would I spare you when he didn’t spare Amelia?” My blood runs cold. Ryan’s voice is emotional, like he’s teetering on the edge and about to fall.
Amelia? That’s who the person following me around was looking into. Does all of this come back to Ryan?
“Do you know how hard it is for a guy like me to land a girl like that?” There’s a moment of silence, and I imagine Sage shaking her head.
“It might look like I have it all, but I don’t.
Not anymore, anyway. When he killed her, he took everything from me.
She was beautiful. Young, with strawberry-blond hair, and the most beautiful blue eyes you’ve ever seen.
I was taken with her immediately, but unfortunately for all of us, so was your fucking boyfriend. ”
My eyebrows draw together in confusion. Amelia wasn’t with anyone before I killed her.
I inch closer to get eyes on him just in time to see his fist slam into the wall. Sage is shivering in front of him and holding an arm over her breasts and covering her groin with her hand as much as she can. Neither of them sees me, and that’s for the best.
A part of me wants to take advantage of the situation and lunge at Ryan right now, but I need him to continue. I need to know how he found out I’m the one who killed Amelia.
“They never found the body, you know. No body, no crime. After searching for two years, the police gave up entirely. Amelia’s parents are dead and gone.
She didn’t have any siblings, and all her friends have long since forgotten about her.
But I haven’t.” He steps closer to Sage and grabs her arm to push it away from her breasts.
“The police told me she ran away. Got cold feet before the wedding. But I found her journal where she talked about Travis. He pretended to be her friend until she let her guard down, and he killed her.”
Shit. How did I miss a fucking journal?
“Please, just let me go,” Sage pleads with tears streaking down her face. “I don’t have anything to do with that. Travis means nothing—”
Ryan interrupts her with a condescending laugh.
He points to the fireplace mantel and some trinkets resting on top.
“I have cameras. I’ve seen just how much he means to you.
I rented out my cabin and sent you to his address, hoping he would kill you and I would catch him in the act.
Instead, you did something even better. You gave me a more fitting chance of revenge.
You did that for me. I suppose I should thank you. ”
Ryan slowly moves closer to Sage as she backs away, and I know I can’t wait any longer. If he lays another hand on her, I’m going to blow up. I move toward him as quietly as I can out of the hallway, tiptoeing around broken glass to ensure I don’t make a sound.
My eyes are glued to Ryan like a hawk hovering above a field mouse.
Sage’s eyes flicker to me, and Ryan notices.
Unfortunately for him, it’s too late. I’m already behind him with my hands on either side of his head.
He tries to flail against me, his finger pulling the trigger, and the gun goes off, shattering a window.
I break his neck, and he goes limp before I let him collapse to the ground. I stare at him for only a moment to make sure he’s dead before my eyes search for Sage to make sure she’s okay. She runs into my arms, and her entire body shakes as she sobs against me.
Not exactly how I pictured our reunion. Less violins and heartfelt confessions, more corpse on the floor and broken window draft blowing directly up my ass.
My muscles go stiff, as I’m still not used to comforting someone this way. I came here angry at Sage, with every intention of letting her know that. But right now all I can do is try to comfort her, however difficult that may be.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her close. “It’s going to be okay,” I whisper in her ear, not knowing how true that is.