Page 21 of Time Traveling Space Bastards
I woke up alone, and I was a little disappointed about that because apparently Saki gave amazing snuggles, but not mad about it. I mean, I should probably be in there trying to figure out how not to get murdered instead of sleeping, but that was probably the best three hours I’d ever slept in my entire life.
When I joined them in the living room, they were all crowded on the ugly couch I found on the side of the road and I knew they were talking about me because they stopped when they saw me. I didn’t make a huge deal about it. It was probably alien business. They needed me to write, but I wasn’t one of them. Torrek fucked me within an inch of my life, but he never made any promises to me.
So, why was there like this homing beam drawing me straight to him? I tried to resist, but I was like I needed to touch him. And I’d never needed anyone before. They tended to let me down or have me committed, so I kept my distance. And even when I was with someone before I ghosted them, I wasn’t like this. I didn’t even get stupid if a guy didn’t respond to a text.
So, what the fuckity-fuck was this?
Torrek just opened his arms with a ‘come hither’ look and I ran straight to him like I hadn’t been a self-respecting commitment-phobe for nearly a decade. He pulled me into his lap and started that rumble again and instead of being terrified and wanting to run away, I was just…content and settled in.
“We don’t know who kills you and I haven’t figured out how to save your life, but I’m working on it.”
“I had to get through some firewalls, but I think I found something,” Enix said.
“You’re pretty amazing. I hope these guys tell you that enough.”
“They do. One of the numbers on your phone belongs to a senator’s son. His father disowned him when he was eighteen because of his behavior and pretends like they aren’t related, but he sends him a stipend on the condition he never mentions they are related and doesn’t behave in a way that comes back to bite the senator. As soon as they realized who he really was, they contacted the senator and buried it. The entire investigation is compromised and I don’t know how much of what’s in the police records is actually true.”
“What? I never ghosted a senator’s son. If someone was violent or weird, I could figure that out pretty fast.”
“His name is Owen Harper.”
“Owen? We bonded over the fact that we both hated our parents, but we never talked about why. It was one of the things I liked about him. We could just listen to each other rant and agree with everything without needing an explanation. He might have done some bad things when he was younger, but he wasn’t like that when I met him.”
“Hrm, spoiled politician’s son whose daddy swooped in to cover up your murder?” Omi said. “He didn’t grow up like you. Most men like that expect to be the one who leaves and don’t take it well when they are the ones left. He could have completely changed when you disappeared and ignored him.”
“She’s right. I’m surrounded by men like that. My brother is like that. It’s fairly well known on our planet if he sets his sights on a woman, she just has to tolerate him until he’s done with her because he’ll retaliate if she leaves first.”
“So, we should just find Owen and kill him,” Torrek said.
“No one is killing Owen! I still don’t think he was the one who killed me. I mean, it all works out on paper, but I was the one who fucked him for two months and he’s not like that anymore.”
Torrek flipped me over like I didn’t shop in the plus-sized section, gave me a little love tap right on my ass, and then yanked me right into another bear hug.
“Don’t discuss fucking other males around me,” he growled.
“If you spank me every time I do, I’m going to go into a graphic list of all my conquests.”
“Minx. We can do that after we save your life.”
Kuka cleared his throat.
“It might not have been Owen, but Owen compromised the investigation. After they decided Owen looked good for it, instead of proving Owen didn’t do it like they were supposed to, they shelved the investigation. We need to consider that everything Enix found in your police file was put there to protect a politician’s son instead of solving your murder.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to call Owen, but we can cyber stalk him and see if he’s holding a grudge.”
Just because I didn’t have social media didn’t mean a lot of people didn’t post their business publicly. Torrek let out that little growl again when I shifted on his dick to grab my laptop. Yeah, I loved that little growl.
The first thing I did was plug Owen’s name into a search engine. If he’d gotten in trouble before, Daddy must have paid to make it go away because I couldn’t find anything. He was pretty low key unless he was ranting about his family. Owen wasn’t one of those guys who wanted to get super serious really fast, either because that was one of my red flags. He also didn’t get weird if he wanted to hang out and I didn’t.
I found his social media and pulled it up. He kept his posts private, but I could see what he was tagged in if it was public.
“I don’t think he wants to kill me. It looks like he’s got a girlfriend now and he’s happy. She’s gorgeous and thin. Why would he be hung up on me?”
“It’s hard to access because there are so many firewalls on it. Someone involved in the investigation tried to look into Owen on the side and ended up getting demoted for her troubles. She tried to bury her notes where no one at work could find them, but they caught her anyway. Owen didn’t have an alibi. He refused to say where he was the night you were murdered. He was the only one who couldn’t say he was definitely somewhere else that night and have someone else confirm it.”
“That’s suspicious. He always could have asked the new girlfriend to lie.”
“No. If I die on a Thursday, then it makes sense. Owen could never do anything on Thursday and he never said what he was doing. I never pressed because that was his business, but he never wanted to talk about it.”
“What if he murders women every Thursday, and that’s his kill ritual? Is that a thing on this planet?” Kuka asked.
“We don’t have as many serial killers as we used to, but yeah, it’s a thing. If he was dropping bodies every Thursday, I would have heard something about a serial killer and the police would be issuing a warning to lock our doors. And they tend to kill the same. The police would have known by how I was found that I was a serial victim.”
“Yes, of course. I just really hate Owen because you used to fuck him,” Kuka said.
“We all hate Owen,” Enix said.
Maybe there was an alien foursome in my future.
“Well, we’ve got a time machine,” Omi said. “If you can aim it right, we can go back a few weeks and figure out what Owen is actually doing on Thursday night. If it’s killing women, then you all get your wish and get to murder Owen.”
“Seriously? I get to travel back in time? I was hoping to do Ancient Greece my first time but just going back a few weeks to give my ex an alibi for my murder also works.”
Beggars couldn’t be choosers. I learned that shit a long time ago. Maybe we could still do Ancient Greece if we figured out the cluster fuck that was my life before they went home.
I didn’t want to think about them leaving.