Page 91 of EverGreene
“No, we won’t be doing that,” she answered me flatly. “God, Ever, you’re always so dramatic.”
My heart sank to my stomach. Shelby. Travis must have found me through her.
“Please,” I pleaded. “Whatever he said to you is a lie. We’re both in danger. You have to believe me. This won’t end well for either one of us.”
“Shelby knows who to believe. Don’t you, baby?”
The way Shelby’s face melted when ‘baby’ came out of Travis’s mouth was enough to tell me how far gone she was and just how screwed I was.
“Travis James,” I said out loud. “Travis is Jimmy.”
“I figured since you opted to use your middle name as an alias, I would, too,” Travis replied.
“Shelby, no,” I whispered.
“He just wants to talk to you,” she said as though she’d completely forgotten that this man had kidnapped me, tied me up, and tortured me once upon a time.
“Come on, Shelby, it’s cold out here. Bring her inside so we can get going on our little talk and get some dinner afterward,” Travis ordered as though he were a mob boss and Shelby was his henchman.
I couldn’t let them take me back inside. If they dragged me back in there, I wasn’t coming out alive again. Shelby yanked on my arm, trying to make me take a step toward the open door, and consumed purely by the will to live, I balled my hand into a fist and punched her square in the nose, taking off when she let go of me.
The snow had covered my yard in a coating about an inch deep. A beautiful sight if you’re looking out your window with a mug of hot chocolate in your hand, but not so much when you’re trying to outrun a man with plans to murder you in the comfort of your own home. Had I not been clad in footwear that wasn’t designed with traction in mind, I may have made it a respectable distance across the yard before being caught. But as it was, I slipped and fell a couple of strides into my getaway, only just scrambling to my feet when Travis caught up to me. With one swift hit to the back of the head, he impaired me enough that I was in too much of a daze to put up a fight, and my body collapsed to the snow-covered ground. Travis grabbed my legs and pulled me across the lawn onto my porch and through my front door, which he then slammed shut and locked before propping my body up on the recliner.
“You promised me you weren’t going to rough her up, only talk,” Shelby said, her own voice cracking, betraying the fear she was now feeling.
“I thought you trusted me, Shelbs,” Travis said, pulling a knife from a sheath at his side. “I thought you wanted to be the Bonnie to my Clyde, riding off together in the sunset.”
“And getting shot to death by police,” I said. My head still throbbed, but my thoughts were starting to become lessjumbled. For instance, I remembered that between the chair cushion and the frame of this recliner, my recliner knife was being stored for occasions such as this.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said as my fingers reached between the body of the chair and the cushion, finding the handle to my knife. “The only person he cares about is himself. He’s never cared about you or me.”
“Shut the fuck up.” A blow to the side of my face with the handle of the knife Travis had unsheathed whipped my head back. “You won’t talk until I tell you to, unless you want me to start carving up that pretty face of yours.”
Travis took the knife and teasingly traced my jawline with the dull side of the blade, lightly at first, before he pricked my skin just enough that I felt the fiery sting of the blade puncturing my chin like the poke of a needle. At my side, my hand slowly freed the hidden knife, keeping it just out of sight.
“That’s what I thought.” He smirked. “And that’s the Ever I remember. Perfectly compliant with whatever I ask her to do.” He pressed the side of the blade against the side of my face, running it down across my neck. “I told you that I would find you again, didn’t I, darling?”
“But was it really you who found me?” I asked, looking over his shoulder to see Shelby’s shoulders slump. “Because I think you had a little help.” If I kept him talking, I could distract him long enough to pull the knife out.
“Your coworker is quite the mastermind. Finding me online at the Department of Corrections, writing me letters, sending me…photos.”
“Travis.” Shelby hissed. It wasn’t like Shelby to feel shame over anything she did, which really underscored the level of embarrassed she must be.
Good.
I raised an eyebrow. “Impressive she could get those kindsof photos through. You do realize that prisoners’ mail is opened and inspected, right?”
For someone who could be so smart, Shelby was a little on the dense side sometimes, and the way her face fell told me that she hadn’t realized Travis wouldn’t be the only person seeing her in whatever form of undress she mailed. Even if one of the staff members at the prison hadn’t seen her photos, Travis would have happily shown his cellmate or anyone else he came across. Hell, he’d probably been using Shelby’s image as currency. She’d likely be better served never traveling to the state of Oklahoma to avoid being recognized.
“It’s not just the photos. Shelbs, do you want to tell her why she wasn’t notified about my release?”
“No, Travis. I do not, and you shouldn’t, either.”
I glared at Shelby, wondering at what point during our fake friendship it was that she’d begun contacting Travis and conspiring with him to hold me hostage in my own home.
“She logged into your computer at work and sent an email to Victim Services pretending to be you, changing your contact number and email address and then deleting the sent email and blocking the old email from Victim Services.”
I flashed back to the morning I caught Shelby in my and Loche’s office. She had to have known something would be coming that would inform me about Travis’s impending parole.
