After an hour, Sofia was losing patience as I continued to go over the same few rooms in the small house.
“When are we gonna admit you have nothing?”
She asks as I went through the dirty clothes on the ground. I said these were likely useless but I needed to find something. I didn’t want to lose the only reason she had to keep me alive.
“I just have to change my approach. What happened before she came here? Do you know?”
Sofia laid on the bed, ignoring the rotting appendage next to her. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment.
“My boss told me to get Roxane out of her territory. She was snooping around where she shouldn’t have been. I found her in Peterstown and we fought. She got a good shot on my leg and was able to get away. That was two days ago.”
She spoke about it off-handedly. Like it was a normal fact about her life. A few details definitely weren’t normal.
“She shot you in the leg? You don’t even have a limp.”
She shrugged.
“I know a good doctor.”
I decided to move past that statement. It was strange and needed to be addressed later if I survived this ordeal.
“So you found her and persued. She ran away and ended up here. She stayed the night then left later the next day.”
Sofia nodded along to the same story we’ve built over the last hour. Finally an idea hit me.
“How did she get away from you?”
Sofia finally opened her eyes and looked at me curiously.
“She ran on foot. I managed to cause her to crash her car.“
A realization hit me.
“There was no car parked outside but there was a driveway with tire tracks. She stole the car.”
Sofia leaned forward and angrily shouted.
“You’re fucking kidding me! Of course she fucking did. She could be in fucking Kentucky at this rate!”
I stepped away from the angry serial killer and shook my head.
“Not necessarily! She wouldn’t ransack this place just for some car keys. Those would be easy to find. She was also looking for something else.”
Sofia looked towards me with those angry eyes. There was a dark fire behind them that told me they would kill and desperately want to.
“Oh yeah? You haven’t been able to find anything else. God, you’re useless.”
She laid back down with a thud that caused the mattress to shake. I stepped back and tried to imagine myself as Roxane. She walked into this house killing both residents. She finds the car keys but needs something else before she can leave in the morning and it forces her to stay until late afternoon. I imagined her walking through the house tearing up everything in sight for it. I had edited 3d figures doing the same actions in my videos before. I tried to imagine how I’d animate it.
Trash was everywhere as she tossed aside cabinets full of belongings. Papers fly as the desk drawers are dumped and end up on the floor. Papers? I kneel down and look at a few of the papers on the ground in front of the desk; tax documents, a birth certificate, all very personal information. Why did she feel the need to dump these out? Was it something personal to those people she randomly found? It seemed unlikely.
As I was going through, something caught my eye. Among all the legal documents was a single piece of scratch paper. I picked it up. It had been crinkled into a ball, the only one among these documents. I unfolded it to find an itemized list of passwords. The wifi, bank accounts, and more. This wasn’t something you normally crumpled.
An idea formed. On the desk among the trash and clothes was a small Chromebook. I opened it up and was met with a password requirement. I looked down at the paper and wrote the password ‘rayandjane1971.’ The computer came to light with a single Google Chrome window open. I flicked over to the search history. ‘Yesterday: Google Maps - Lynchburg, Virginia.’
“You found something?”
I looked over my shoulder and found Sofia leaning over me from the edge of bed. Her grin was large and eyes seemed wild. Despite that, I couldn't help but think she was beautiful. And the distance between us was probably only a few inches. I found myself blushing at the serial killer’s pretty face. I tried to take a step away casually. To not show the effect it had on me.
“Uh, yeah! She was searching for their computer password. I hadn’t thought about it but there's not service out here. If she wanted to figure out where she was and how to get to wherever she’s going, she would need to find the password. Luckily, she didn’t delete her search history.”
Sofia hopped off the bed and fistpumped in the air.
“Hell yeah! I thought you were going to be some useless know-it-all. Turns out she was right about you.”
She turned around and pointed towards me. It was odd seeing her excited. The only smile I saw was that sadistic one she gave me. This one seemed more friendly, though I could not say what the exact difference was in appearance. Something behind her eyes told me that I didn’t need to be afraid of this one. She punched me in the shoulder. It was a friendly gesture not meant to harm but it definitely hurt.
“Consider yourself lucky Alan. I was starting to plan how I’d kill you.”
On second thought, I think that was my imagination.