She moved around the left side of Travis and lifted the knife above her head. Travis used his last strength to turn his head and look at her. Their eyes met, and Ness held his gaze for several seconds before bringing the blade down with force. It pierced the tissue in his chest and penetrated his heart muscle. Travis’ eyes widened with the initial shock but then slowly faded until there was no life left in them any longer.
“Good job,” Eddie said quietly. Ness’ hands started shaking now.
“Breathe through the emotions. You’re going to experience many different ones, but you can deal with them later. Right now, we need to clean. Don’t worry about the body itself, but anything else that we’ve touched and places that we’ve walked need to be vacuumed and wiped down,” Eddie said walking to the utility closet. He opened it and removed the vacuum cleaner.
“How did you know he had a vacuum cleaner?” Ness asked.
“It’s something I always make sure of. Even though we’re wearing protection, we might still leave trace amounts of DNA on our crime scenes. Vacuuming helps lessen the chances of the police finding anything that they can use. You can never be too careful.”
Eddie and Ness spent the next hour cleaning possible areas that they may have contaminated, and then they packed everything back where they originally found them. Ness picked up Travis’ phone from the sofa and walked to his body. She placed his thumb against the phone—it unlocked instantly. She went into the settings of the phone and changed the unlocking process to a pin that she would remember instead of his thumb print—that way she could access the phone whenever she needed to, and she needed it for the next part of her plan.
“What are you planning on doing with that?” Eddie asked, looking concerned.
“I’m going to need it to keep tabs on Nathan and Jarrod. I don’t know if they have access to this apartment, and if I can kill them before news of this gets out, then we can still be able to stay a step ahead of them.”
“Fair enough. It is risky, but it does have merit. No one is going to stumble across this body tonight,” Eddie seemed impressed with Ness’ ingenuity. “Check the hallway,” Eddie said pointing to the door.
Ness walked to the door and listened for a few moments before opening it. She popped her head out into the corridor: “It’s clear.”
“Let’s go,” Eddie said, picking the duffel bag up and heading for the door. They turned the lights off and locked the door behind them. They disappeared out the fire escape and into the night.
15
The Ford Contour pulled into the garage at 397 Riverview Road, and Eddie closed the garage doors. They got out of the car and started stripping their clothes down to their underwear. Ness thought it would be strange stripping in front of Eddie, but sex wasn’t his obsession; his gaze didn’t even wander over her body when she came around the car. He took the clothes from her, and he walked to the furnace, which he turned on high before throwing the clothes in. The clothes were engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds—even the rubber from the boots melted and ignited under the intense heat.
“Go and shower in the bathroom upstairs. Scrub well,” he said, tossing a pair of disposable booties to her. “Put those on before walking through the house. I’m going to vacuum the car before I come inside,” Eddie said, grabbing the vacuum cleaner from a closet in the garage and going to work on the car.
Ness walked through the kitchen and up the stairs after she grabbed her clothes from the living room and climbed into the shower. There was a new sponge waiting for her inside with an iodine scrub. Ness spent the next 20 minutes scrubbing as well as she could until her skin started feeling raw. She grabbed the towel that was set out for her and dried herself before getting dressed. She left her hair wet because it was a warm night, and she just tied it into a messy bun. She walked out the bathroom and could hear the shower running from Eddie’s en suite bathroom in his bedroom, so she went downstairs. She saw that Eddie had left Travis’ phone for her on the dining room table and grabbed it, sitting down in the leather recliner by their ongoing chess game. She went through the messages and saw that there weren’t any from Nathan or Jarrod, so she was off the hook for the time being. Ness leaned forward and saw that Eddie had played his queen piece to d4.
“Alright.” Ness whispered and pushed her queen to d5. She heard the water turn off upstairs, so she picked up Travis’ phone and started going through his messages and social media posts. She didn’t want to make the mistake of ignoring an important message and someone unexpectedly letting themselves into the apartment. It appeared that practically all of Travis’ communications revolved around Nathan and Jarrod. There didn’t appear to be any long-term girlfriends that he had, so Ness’ main focus would revolve around his two friends.
“Find anything interesting on there?” Eddie asked as he came down the stairs.
“Porn . . . lots of porn. But nothing of
