Killer One ✓

Chapter 20

Travis.

"So," I said softly above the sound of the tires whizzing over the concrete highway, "Are you married yet?"

Finn snorted from his spot in front of me.

Unlike Annabeth's car, Ben's had two perfectly working doors to get into the backseat. So that meant in the off chance that I didn't feel good, I had not one but two options to get out of the car as soon as possible. I was lying down along the length of Ben's backseat, my feet bent at the knees to fit but it was comfortable. I was horizontal which was the important part. Down here on the seat, I couldn't really see the lights or trees go by us so it helped a little with my stomach.

My leather jacket was bunched up underneath my head and I had fallen asleep early into the drive to wherever we were going now. I wasn't sure how long I'd been sleeping for but the sky was beginning to brighten up. The sun would be rising shortly.

I had woken up just a moment ago and the car had been quiet. I could see Lacey in the passenger seat from where I was lying but couldn't tell if she was sleeping or not. I hoped she was.

"Did you ask her?" Lacey spoke, as if she could hear my thoughts and was on a mission to prove me wrong. She turned her head slightly to look at Finn.

My gut clenched as I looked at Lacey's profile because there was a time that I had definitely believed that she had been killed by Vik. It had made sense after all. She was the small bit of happiness in my life and everything else had gone down the drain so it wasn't crazy to consider that she had been taken from me, too. But she hadn't been taken. Instead, she was walking around with a distant look in her eye. She hadn't even flinched when Cameron took care of Vik for me. She said that her and Ben had killed Lucky. I still didn't know exactly how they did that but I was afraid that Lacey was living with the demons of this whole thing, of Scully, of Lucky.

I felt guilty because she was out of this life for a while but had come back for me. If it wasn't for me, she might still be living in her apartment and living a normal life.

But now she had two men to her name that I knew of and who knows what else she'd seen when I wasn't around them while in the jail cell. I had been keeping my distance from her for that exact reason. I didn't want to be something she had to take care of. I didn't need her for that. I could handle my own things without piling my baggage onto her newly acquired problems. If she wasn't looking after me, she could focus on getting sleep, eating, taking care of herself. I had no doubt that she would put those things aside to help me out and I didn't want that.

On top of all of that, I couldn't go long without thinking about the people that Vik had me kill night after night. I didn't know who they were and I never would. They were absolutely no one to me and had never done a thing to me but now they were dead. And I couldn't erase the moments from my memory like I wanted to. I just had to live with it now and I deserved that.

"No," Finn said. "She was too upset about where you guys were and everything with her dad."

I had almost forgotten that Annabeth was half of the reason that Scully was out of the picture. He was a bad man but I wasn't sure how someone dealt with being part of the reason that your dad died in front of you.

"Yeah," Lacey agreed and looked out of the front windshield. "I suppose that doesn't exactly set the mood."

Finn laughed lightly, which was the entire reason that I wanted to ride with him in the car instead of Annabeth. Lacey had clung onto him like a koala when we first found Finn and that was when it really hit me that even though she soldiered on and did what she had to, she was still Lacey and this type of life wasn't normal to her. She hadn't made much of a fuss at all during the walk away from the jail so I had originally suspected she was just in her own head about Lucky and trying not to freak out. But as soon as I saw her shaking as Finn held her in his arms, I realized she had been keeping a lot in.