Page 33 of Wrong Cabin, Right Time
“I’m not planning on killing you anymore.”
“Anymore?” I’m shaking now, and he can see that, which makes me angry. The man just told me he was planning on killing me, and now I’m cowering in fear. I have no doubt that feeds into whatever fantasy he’s had.
For the first time, I see emotion on his face. Annoyance.
Travis sighs and shakes his head, walking toward me as my body tenses. “You’re cutting into my sleep schedule now. We can talk about this in the morning.”
He opens the garage door and walks over to the tarp. He dismisses me as casually as someone calling to check in about a spreadsheet.
Travis walks back out with zip ties in his hands and puts his hand on my back to push me into the hallway. My head is spinning, and I can’t make sense of any of this. Not only did I just find out Travis, the man I have been obsessed with—and sleeping with—is a serial killer. But now he’s leading me to his bedrooms again.
With zip ties.
I stop when we approach the guest room, and he shakes his head, leading me toward his room. “You’re sleeping with me tonight.”
We approach his bed, and he wraps a zip tie around my wrist, the other around his, and links them together. Both of us lie down on his mattress, and I stare up at the ceiling, trying to think of the most rational thing for me to do right now. Attempting to escape without a solid plan would be plain stupid, and knowing Travis, he would track me down before I could make it across state lines.
I scratch the idea of a getaway off my what-to-do-next list while trying not to think about Travis being so close to me.
I wanted to spend the night with him, but this isn’t exactly how I imagined it.
Travis rolls over and closes his eyes, his entire body relaxing almost instantly as he falls asleep. I look at the zip tie on my wrist, realizing I’ll have to get comfortable with it. I’m resigned to just staring at the ceiling all night, but my mind is working like unpaid overtime.
Travis’s admission of previously wanting to kill me remains in the forefront of my thoughts. Maybe he was joking or simply misspoke? No, that doesn’t seem like Travis. My brain is probably just trying to make me feel better, but I’d like to believe Travis kills only bad people. Like a sexy vigilante.
Holding on to that idea for comfort, I try to come up with new scenarios of the future.
I have to figure out a way to survive this. Hours have passed when an idea forms in my head. It’s a bad idea, a really bad one—but it might be the only one I’ve got.
Chapter Seventeen
Travis
My alarm clock rings, and my eyes jolt open, the memory of Sage finding out the truth about me still lingering in my mind. I promptly reach over to stop the ringing, tiredness making me sluggish. I’m annoyed that I’m tired too. I grab the alarm clock and throw it on the floor. It shatters on the hardwood, and I make a mental note to leave a one-star review later.
How dare this clock shatter in my time of emotional need?
Sleep is yet another thing Sage has disrupted in my life. If it wasn’t for her snooping around, I never would have gotten the motion-sensor notification on my phone that disrupted my slumber last night.
Ugh, if I wanted random surprises in my life, I’d adopt a cat.
She’s still beside me, and I know there’s a conversation we need to have. I’m simultaneously impressed by her and disappointed in myself that she could find me out. I’ve killed thirty-eight people so far, and besides the person who is seemingly digging into Amelia’s disappearance, nobody has ever discovered evidence linking me to their deaths. How did Sage, of all people, put the pieces together?
I look at her, surprised to see she’s awake and staring at me. I expected to see fear or anxiety in her eyes, but I don’t. She and I aren’t made the same way. My mind is vastly different from hers. I try to putmyself in her shoes and see what she might feel like after I confessed to being a killer. I just can’t do it. I expect she felt betrayal, fear, and stress. But her face doesn’t show any of that.
“I’ve been thinking about ...itall night,” Sage says. She takes a deep breath and looks at me with an annoyingly earnest gaze. “I’m in.”
“In . . . what?”
“I’m going to help you kill this guy,” she promptly replies. She sits up and looks at me with a half smile on her face. She must be mistaken, because there was no invitation for her help. This isn’t a fun activity to do with friends. I’m extremely meticulous, and I won’t lower my standards for her to join me.
“I never asked for help,” I say, sitting up and glaring at her. “I’ve killed thirty-eight people so far, and I’ve never needed help.”
I study her face as I give her my number, and she gives no indication of being alarmed by it. She hears that I’ve killed that many and isn’t fazed. Even I know that’s not a normal reaction.
Sage might just be in worse shape than I am.
I turn away and open my bedside drawer, pulling out one of the knives I have stashed away there. I flick it open and turn around to show it to her. I hope to see her eyes wide with fear, but they’re not. I use it to cut the zip ties around our wrists.
