Page 16 of Devil Inside: Green

I shake my head laughing. “Let’s go, smartass.”

Danni turns around, walking for the sliding glass doors. We don’t have to check out here. Everything is taken care of at check-in. She’s idling by the front entrance waiting for me when I get out to the parking lot. She pops the trunk so I can drop my shit in there, and once again, I slide into the passenger seat.

We hit up a Starbucks before taking off again. “Any ideas, Preppy?” I ask, popping a bite of my blueberry muffin into my mouth.

“Sloth is harder to figure out, I’ll admit. But while you were out shopping last night, I went over his kill sights in North Carolina.” She picks up the atlas sitting on the center console, shoving it into my hands. I flip it open to North Carolina’s pages. She has cities circled again with the dates of his kills under each. “I looked up the definition of ‘Sloth’ because I needed to know if it meant something different than I thought.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s basically the absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion. So I figure we’re looking at mental health facilities? For people who suffer from depression. Maybe drug rehabilitation centers?”

“Do you have any idea how many mental health facilities and drug rehabs there have to be in the state of North Carolina?”

She frowns, throwing a hand out at me. “Then what’s your idea, there big guy? At least I’m trying.”

“You’re trying, all right.”

“There’s no reason to be an asshole. If you have something better, now is the time to offer it up. I’m open to new ideas. The others are physical sins. It’s not my fault Sloth doesn’t fit the same mold.”

She’s right. I close my eyes, clench my jaw, and breathe out long and slow. The smell of her lotion is driving me nuts.g It’s like almonds and vanilla. I’m tired and frustrated. I never put depression with Sloth. She put real thought into this one. This ugly thing eats away at my insides, trying to escape. What gets out causes me to turn into a complete dick with her. The more time I spend with her, the more I like her. It compounds every damn moment we spend together. So again, what do I do? I keep asking the question, yet nothing changes. Nothing gives. Something’s got to give sooner or later.

We have a basic direction. Danni thinks that he’s going to strike next somewhere around Greensboro or Durham. Asheville is too close to the Tennessee border and Knoxville, where he’s made a kill already. He already hit Wilmington and Charlotte sits too close to the South Carolina border. There’s nothing that says he has to stick to bigger cities, but I feel like in this case, she’s right. If he plans to hunt someone with drug or mental health issues without getting to know them first, then he’ll need to stick to the areas where they’d stick out more.

Neither of us speaks for the longest time. Stewing in our own thoughts. I want to say something, anything, to get her to talk to me again, but nothing comes to mind.

When we get closer to Greensboro, she can’t get over into the lane she needs to exit and we’re going to speed past the city if she doesn’t.

“The fuck are you doing?” I snap. “The signs say exit on the right. Get into the right lane.”

“I’m trying,” she says, looking for an opening to get over a lane. The traffic is crazy for this time of day. Or maybe it’s not. Hell if I know. I’ve never been here before. She clicks on her blinker, but as she tries to transition into the next lane, another car pulls a bitch move, speeding up to take the spot. Danni wrenches the wheel to jump back into our original lane and the car swerves wide, almost hitting a pickup on our other side.

“You trying to get us killed?”

“That’s my nefarious end goal. How’d you figure it out so fast, brainiac?”

“If you didn’t know how to drive on the highway close to a city, then you should have said something.”

“I know how to drive in cities, asshole. I’m from Austin.”

“Then what’s the problem? Get over so we can get off the interstate.”

“Quit backseat driving. You’re acting like a bitch-boy.”

“Oh—I’m the bitch-boy?”

She’s getting us killed and that’ll be another damn beautiful woman I couldn’t save.

“Now—” I shout.

She jumps into the next lane exactly as I demand, but there’s a semi almost on us. With nowhere else to go, she swerves, hitting the gravel on the shoulder because she just about misses the exit. It leads us to a damn country road. There has to be a town nearby for an exit to exist.

“Pull over.”

Danni’s chest heaves as she fumes. It radiates off her—all that anger. She takes a smaller road, one that doesn’t look like it gets much action, and pulls over to the side, throwing the car into park.

Oh—it’s on.

7

---