Killing Ruby Rose (10 page)

I fell back, disgusted and disoriented.

Until I remembered the baby-faced gangster—who’d said he’d kill us all before he went back to prison.

I looked up and he was already running past fallen boxes and debris—toward Alana. He was going to play his last card and use her to bargain for his freedom.

I pushed myself up with renewed strength and chased after him, ignoring the splintering pain attacking my spine. I leapt over Rick’s body and willed my drugged body to run faster than the pudgy threat. He couldn’t fight me while I had a gun, but he could stomp on Alana’s head or whip out a knife and stab her a few times before I got off a shot. I already knew he was going down swinging—or stabbing.

“Just wait, I don’t want to kill you!” I yelled after him. I don’t think he heard me, or believed me, because he ran faster. In my mind, I begged him to stop, to act rationally, to give me his phone so I could call for help, and to try his chances again at the failed justice system that allowed him to be on the street in the first place. Or just make a play for the exit.

“I won’t shoot you if you leave!” I screamed while gasping for breath. “Please don’t do anything stupid!”

My fears were confirmed the moment I saw him pull something metallic from his boot and go for Liam’s lifeless body.

I stopped running to take aim—for the shoulder this time. I couldn’t shoot a man in his back, and I didn’t want to kill him.

Then I heard my dad again:
You don’t have a sight on this pistol. You’re too far away, and it’s too dark. If you miss, he’ll kill Liam. You have to do it.

The truth seemed to sting my eyes. I pinched them shut for a millisecond to clear my vision and regain my resolve. Then I corrected my aim, took the shot between his broad shoulder blades, and held my breath for impact.

In midstrike, he dropped the dagger, dropped to the ground, and dropped off the face of the world forever.

A full minute must have passed before I allowed myself to exhale, because dizzy didn’t begin to explain the fainting sensation welling up inside me. I looked down to the weapon in my hand. Its custom-polished stainless nickel-plate finish shined up at me, and I noticed for the first time that it was a Glock 30, .45-caliber handgun. The kind Dad had carried as his off-duty weapon. The one he carried with him during SWAT operations as a backup. I turned over the heel to check for an engraving. There it was—his initials: J. R.

I dropped the gun like it was a hot coal. If this was my dad’s gun, it must’ve been taken off of his body by whoever killed him. I didn’t even know it was missing. This couldn’t actually be Dad’s. No, it couldn’t be.

He spoke to me urgently this time:
Rue. It’s not over. They called someone. Pick up that gun. Never drop your weapon.

“Nice work,” a foreign male voice whispered in my ear, as arms clutched me from behind. “You just saved me a load of money.”

My heart sank as I realized my mistake. Maybe my fatal mistake.

I couldn’t see the new threat’s face, but I could see Liam’s and he was finally conscious. I wondered how long he had been awake and if he’d seen me kill the monster lying dead over his legs. By the wild look in his eyes, I was sure he had.

“No!” he screamed through his gag, trying to fight the bonds and get the dead body off him.

“Oh, I see,” the scratchy voice breathed into my ear. “We have a boyfriend. Must’ve gotten in the way. I don’t really deal in the boy market, but I’m sure we’ll make do.”

Instinct took over again, and I thrust my elbow into his ribs, twisted so his grip loosened, and—with every ounce of force I had left—slammed both hands down onto his wrists to break free. Now that I was facing him, I could go for the “sweet spots.” I faked a kick to sweet spot number one—the groin—and got him in sweet spot number two—the eyes. I clawed at his face with my fingernails, and he screamed, “
Kuradi lits! Kuradi lits
!
” Which sounded like he was saying, “Karate tits!” or “Karate lips!”—but probably meant something very different in his language, and nothing friendly, for sure.

With his hands now guarding sweet spot two, I promptly went for number one, releasing the kick of all kicks to the only place that matters. It connected with a crunch, and a guttural groan.

Followed by a protracted slide and click.

I didn’t make that sound. A cold circle of metal pressed against my temple.

“Try something and I shoot,” a different voice beside me warned.

“Ruby, don’t move,” Liam called out, panic in his voice. Somehow he’d loosened the gag enough to speak. “Don’t fight.”

Before I’d be able to swing around and make a play for the gun, my life would be over.

I dropped my throbbing head and listened for the answer. Where was my dad’s voice now?

Gone. Just like my life in a few moments.

A backhanded knuckle-slap to my face cut me out of my ridiculous search for the voices in my head.

“Insolent brat,” the first man spewed through his forest of facial hair. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a handgun—relieving the other man of gun-pointing duty—and stroked the side of my face with the barrel. “Your spirit will be broken soon enough.”

“No,” I said, coiling my springs. “I won’t let you. I’d rather die than be handed off to one of your disgusting buyers.” I tasted another round of fresh blood in my mouth and looked for the gun I’d so stupidly dropped. It was my one and only chance to survive.

“Please,” Liam pled from the floor. “Ransom us. You don’t have to sell anyone. My dad is filthy rich. He’ll pay you whatever you want. I swear. You’ll get far more that way.” I didn’t know Liam’s dad was rich. He had to be lying. But it didn’t matter—this was good. Liam was distracting them. Maybe I could find that gun in the dark and—

Thump
. The violent sound caused me to turn. The second guy, with his stupid ’80s mullet, was standing over Liam, kicking him in the side. With his hands tied behind his back, Liam couldn’t defend himself. He was coughing and grimacing for air. The Mullet was going to break Liam’s ribs or puncture a lung.

“Don’t touch him!” I screamed. “Stop that—”

“Or what?” the first man breathed in my face. His oniony breath alone was nearly enough to kill me. “You’ll use
this
against us?” He held my own father’s
gun to my head.

I didn’t know which I was more pissed about: making the stupid mistake of dropping that gun or getting my innocent friends involved. Maybe if I had gone to save that girl on Ninth Street, this whole night wouldn’t have happened. Maybe involving Alana and Liam was Mr. D. S.’s way of punishing me for my disobedience. Either way, I blamed myself. And who said dying would be so bad anyway? At least I’d be with my dad again.

As The Mullet made his way back over to me, I knew I had to act soon. I couldn’t wait until they tied me up again. I had to die fighting
now
.

I took one last look at Liam suffering on the ground and Alana still in her unconscious ignorance, and I said good-bye in my mind. I could only hope my friends would put up a fight, too, if they could. Then I turned all my energy back on the first guy—the leader. I could disarm him, use him as a shield, and maybe get off a couple of shots before The Mullet could react. It was a long shot, but I had to do it if there was even the smallest chance it would save my friends.

I slouched my shoulders and heaved a huge sigh of defeat. Part of me meant it, and part of me faked it to lure the men to let down their guard. It worked—a smile formed through the dirty-nasty beard of the first man, and he relaxed just enough for me to make my move.

As I was about to spring, a small green dot appeared on his face. As though Tinker Bell herself had flown in to distract me, the light flickered before it steadied itself on his forehead. Before my brain registered what it was, the dot turned a burgundy-red and the man’s body flew backward. He’d been shot in the head, just like LeMarq.

I spun, expecting The Mullet to blow me away, but before he could even raise his gun, he had two rounds firmly lodged in his chest.

For a moment I froze, not comprehending what had happened. Then adrenaline and relief coursed through me like an injected drug. Until it occurred to me that whoever just shot these guys might go for me next.

I looked down at the pool of blood near my feet and saw Dad’s gun. As I reached for it, a strong arm wrapped itself around my body while a hand pressed a damp cloth over my nose and mouth. The harder I fought against the crushing strength, the faster I lost my own. The scent on the fabric stung my senses and made my eyes water.

My world quickly spun out from under me. Swirling. Darkness. Pain. The last thing I saw was Liam, still on the ground, soundlessly calling out my name.

CHAPTER 10

Either my face was dangerously close to a shallow pool of water or I was drooling. Or both. Gross.

I finally opened my eyes, and wiped my face with my sleeve. Wasn’t heaven supposed to be all white and sparkly? I looked around for those pearly gates, some fat little cherubs, or some other heavenly clichés.

I sat up to make sure I wasn’t in hell. This habit of waking up confused and bruised was getting old.

It didn’t look like hell, though my back still hurt pretty hellishly. At least there was no fire, no brimstone. Not that I would even recognize brimstone if I saw it.

I was on top of an ocean cliff, lying in the middle of an isolated rugged bluff. The powerful surf crashed below me. The waters were angry, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe this was some kind of symbolic in-between.

A foghorn from a boat in the distance bellowed a deep belching sound. But in the weak light of dawn, I couldn’t even see a vessel.

“Ruby!” a female voice called out. “Ruby, I’m over here.”

I spun around—Alana!

She was lying on the ground behind me, twenty feet away. Still bound. And Liam was next to her, unconscious again.

I scrambled to my unsure feet and made my way up the slight incline and over the jagged sandstone rock to my poor, traumatized, lucky-to-be-alive, unlucky-to-know-me friends.

“Alana, I’m coming,” I said, stumbling and falling on my already sore wrist. How did we get here? “I’m just a little dizzy…”

“It’s OK, take your time,” she said with a shaky voice. I could tell she’d been crying but was trying to be brave. “I don’t want you falling off the cliff and leaving me and Sleeping Beauty over here for the vultures to peck on.”

I finally made it to Alana and fell to her side. “I’m so sorry—this is all my fault.”

“Would you just shut up and get something to cut off these ties?” She blew some wet strands of hair out of her eyes.

“Of course, I’ll find something.” I scanned the cliff top for a rock shard, a seashell
…
“Holy mother of…” I whispered.

On a small ledge twenty feet away sat a pair of heavy-duty stainless steel cutters. But that’s not what stopped me short. It was the gun—my dad’s nickel-plated Glock—sitting next to them.

“What is it?” Alana propped up her head to look.

I hesitated for too long, wondering why someone would want me to keep the murder weapon.

“Ruby! What is it?” Alana yelled at me.

“Some scissors. There are just some scissors over there.”

“I’ve been lying here an hour, screaming at you and Liam to wake up, and there’s an effin’ pair of scissors over there?”

I ran over to the ledge and grabbed the shears. Making sure Alana was looking the other direction, I quickly tucked the gun into the back of my pants before I went to cut her free. As she rubbed at her raw skin, I crawled the few feet over to Liam to check his pulse before I cut his ties. His heart rate was scary slow, but he was alive.

“Liam, can you hear me?” I rolled him over so his head was in my lap. I brushed his shaggy hair off his eyes, willing them to open. “Please wake up.” His face was clean and fresh, no more bloodied lip. Like someone had dunked his head in the ocean, or carefully wiped away any evidence of the beating.

“Is he all right?” Alana asked, now standing on wobbly legs.

“I think so.”

“Who did this to us? Where are we? And where’s my damn phone?” She started patting herself down like if she concentrated hard enough, her cell might miraculously appear in one of her skimpy pockets.

“Sit down, Alana,” I ordered. “You’re going to fall and break something.”

“Did we get roofied? Is this some kind of sick practical joke?” she asked, refusing to obey. Her skinny little flamingo legs looked like they’d give out any second.

“No, this isn’t a joke. Just sit for a minute.”

“Why’d you say this is all your fault? What did you do to get us punked like this?” She began pacing, making me want to yank her to the ground for her own good. “If it’s the football players who did this, I am going to
kill
them—”

“I told you, nobody’s punking us.” I cut her off, not comfortable with her talking about killing anyone. “It’s not the football players.” I turned my attention back to Liam.

There was no way to explain to Alana what had happened. She’d obviously seen nothing and never woke up to witness the carnage. She thought we just got dumped on the cliff. She hadn’t even seen the blood on my shoes yet. I looked down, expecting to see my poor Hermes stained red with evidence of another crime scene, but instead it looked like I was wearing a brand-new pair of two-hundred-dollar designer sandals on my feet. And my hoodie, which no doubt once showed signs of blood spatter and gunshot residue, was clean. My brain couldn’t process the amount of detail this guy had taken care of—

“Man, my mom and dad are going to be pissed,” Alana said. Like her parents being angry was the biggest thing to fear at this point. She was so clueless. “How the crap are we getting home? I don’t even know where we are.”

Liam twitched in my arms. “Liam, wake up,” I said, willing him to come back to me. “C’mon, wake up.”

I thought of Dr. T’s Emerson quote—truth and repose. Liam couldn’t have both. None of us could. The truth was that a killer was holding him. And when he woke up, when his repose ended, that’s what he would see when he looked at me—the truth. I was a killer.

I did what I had to do to save my friends and survive, but one death had been hard enough to take. Now there were four more. As I held Liam, I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking or my breathing to steady. I began rocking, trying to calm myself and dispel all the memories. Damn, I needed some Swiss chocolate right now.

Liam grimaced and his body tensed up. He was coming back.

“I’m right here,” I said, touching his face. Intense relief rose in me. A profound sense of gratitude as I held him, knowing he was OK. I never meant to let myself feel this strongly about him—about anyone.

He finally opened his eyes, and they found mine.

They were a bloodshot blue this time. Not much sparkle at the moment.

“Are we alive?” he asked with the rasp of a whiskey-drinking smoker.

“I don’t know how, but yeah,” I said.

He blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes like he was trying to unsee something. “Where’s Alana?”

“I’m right here,” she said, snarling. He turned to see her standing with her arms crossed, clearly not as over the moon as I was to see him awake. “If your buddies think this is some hilarious prank, they’re wrong!”

“Prank?” he asked, not to her, but to me. I knew what he was really asking,
She doesn’t know?

“Alana thinks we were roofied and dropped off here by your jock-head friends as a joke,” I said with bulging eyes.
Don’t tell her that I’m a raging sociopathic teen serial killer!

“Oh.” Liam let out a huge huff of breath. “
Ohhhh
,” he said again, but this time with a scowl as he held his sides. Then I remembered those kicks to his unprotected ribs.

“Do we need to get you to the hospital?” I asked.

“Hospital?” Alana’s voice raised an octave. “What kind of friends are these guys? Is this some kind of hazing crap?”

“No, no hospital,” Liam said, slowing his breathing.

He turned his back to Alana long enough for me to mouth to him, “I don’t know what to tell her.” My instincts warned me not to divulge anything she didn’t need to know. Her loyalty to me could only go so far. Plus, I didn’t want to scar her any worse than necessary. Maybe, for her own sake, the less she knew, the better. Like he could read my mind, Liam nodded.

“No, this is a football injury,” he lied. “I must have been lying on it wrong. It’s a bruise from last week’s game.”

I wasn’t sure why he was playing along. I couldn’t understand this guy. Always protecting me. I didn’t even need to explain, and he was going along with my insanity.

“Well, can you walk?” Alana asked. “We need to find a way out of here. Maybe I can get home before my parents get up and decide to ground me for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, I can walk.” He clenched his jaw and stood up with a swift grace. “I finished a game once with a dislocated shoulder. This is nothing.”

“I’d be impressed if I hadn’t just been drugged, kidnapped, and left to die on a cliff by your team of varsity a-holes,” Alana said as she stalked away from the cliff’s edge, presumably looking for a way to get out of here.

As soon as she turned her back, I whispered to Liam, “Thanks for lying.”

“She really didn’t see anything?” he whispered back, with a shaken look like
he
hadn’t missed a thing.

“I guess not,” I said softly, watching Alana. “Unless she’s blocking it out because it’s too awful.” My shoulders bowed, remembering all over again what I had done.

“It was the same guy, Ruby,” Liam whispered, taking my hand. Goose bumps raised all the way up my arm. “The one I saw watching you at the art fair.
He
drugged you with whatever was on that cloth at the warehouse. But he was dressed differently, like a special ops guy or something. Like Jason Bourne. Dressed in all black. I wasn’t sure at first because he wore some kind of helmet, but right before he drugged me I saw his face.”

I wobbled a little, as though a California tremor had just shaken below me. He steadied me as best he could and said:

“He looked me right in the eyes. He didn’t say anything, but it was weird. He wasn’t…” Liam paused and his eyes glassed over like maybe he wasn’t really awake.

“He wasn’t what?” I snapped my fingers in front of his face.

“He wasn’t evil looking,” Liam said with a question mark all over his expression. “His eyes were
…
I don’t know
…
not intent on killing me. Not intent on killing you. It was weird.”

I couldn’t comprehend this. The motives of this Mr. D. S. evaded me time and time again.

“I think we should go to the police—” Liam said before I interrupted with my knee-jerk reaction to hearing “police.”

“NO.”

“Ruby, hear me out,” he said.

“No. I don’t know what
I
am going to do,” I said, pulling away my hand. Not because I didn’t desperately want his help, but because I felt guilty. I never should have involved him in this. He had a future. People who loved him and would be devastated if he was locked up for the rest of his life for two counts of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of obstruction of justice, and who knows how many counts of seriously poor judgment for fraternizing with the known criminal Ruby Rose.

“Don’t pull that on me,” he said, taking my hand again, and this time tilting my chin up so I was forced to look him in the eyes. Those resilient eyes now turning a clear pale blue—almost the color of the horizon behind him. “We’re in this together.”

“No,
we’re
not,” I said, not pulling away, just clarifying. “
You
didn’t do anything.
You
didn’t pull the trigger.
You
didn’t help me get away.
You
are not responsible for anything. This is my problem, not yours.”

“I’d have pulled the trigger if I’d had the chance!” His voice raised above a whisper.

“Shhh,” I quieted him. “Yeah, well, you didn’t have to.”

For a long minute, he stared at me. I’d tried to warn him. I’d tried to keep him away. Sheesh, I’d practically broken his wrist telling him to keep his distance.

“No one should have to go through this alone,” he said, not backing down. “Whoever is doing this to you, to
us
, isn’t going to stop. He’s playing some sick, twisted, bullshit game with you, and you need my help.” Suddenly, against my will, I was in his arms again. And I wasn’t at all comfortable there at the moment. Last time I’d been there, I was drugged, caged like an animal, forced to kill two men, and dumped on a cliff.

I wanted to pull away. But I didn’t.

“Sorry to interrupt your little
moment
,” Alana called down from above, “but you might want to see this.”

My guts fell like I’d just hit an unexpected drop on a roller coaster. What was it—a dead body? Evidence of what I’d done? My heart beat unnaturally fast as I scaled the cliff’s steep face.

I almost burst when I saw him.

“Big Black!” My knight in shining armor. My SUV.

“At least those a-holes left us a ride,” Alana said. “Now get in and drive me home before life as I know it is over.”

“How in the…” Liam said behind me.

“I don’t know,” I responded, only to him. “Whoever this guy is, I guess he doesn’t want me dead.”

“Just traumatized for life.” He feigned a smile. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He tried to lead me over to the passenger side door.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m driving.”

The drive home was sore and silent. After briefly discussing the last thing we each remembered at the party, which was basically nothing—except for Alana being told that I needed her upstairs—we let Mary Poppins guide us back to familiar territory. Turned out, we were only twenty miles down the coast, and it was going to take us about a half hour to get home. But the dread that filled the car was palpable. Dread that bodies would be found, parents would go ballistic, and lives would be ruined—any minute.

I figured no one wanted to speculate about what happened to us. No one wanted to discuss the looks on our parents’ faces when we walked in and got the whole
I’m relieved you’re alive, but now I’m going to kill you
speech.

I kept looking over to Alana in the passenger seat with her raw wrists, wondering what she really knew. Maybe some part of her subconscious had absorbed the gunshots, the sprays of blood, the smell of death. Maybe she was choosing repose over the truth—only postponing the twisted memories or dreams of me slaughtering two men. At least I had a good referral for a psychotherapist.