Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

“Follow me.” I untangled myself from Liam and pulled him through the crowd.

If it was Silver, what was he going to do? How would we stop him?

As we weaved around the dancing couples, my vision finally adjusted to the dim light. And there he was, plain as day—Mr. Holsum, our Calculus teacher, with his unmistakable floppy comb-over, pouring himself a drink.

I felt like a moron. Not to mention paranoid. “I thought I saw…” I trailed off, feeling suddenly shaky.

“Ruby,” Liam shushed me with his voice and touch. “You don’t need to explain. I get it.”

I looked into his understanding eyes.

“Maybe we should just go,” I said. “I suck at normal.”

“What, before my song is over?” His eyebrows pinched together in dismay. “I don’t think so.”

Just as he drew me back in close, the song ended and I pulled away, thinking I’d ruined the moment and probably the night. But then the DJ announced another slow track.

I exhaled. “I’ll try not to run away this time.”

Liam held on to me for the next three songs. In fact, he barely let go of me for the next three hours as we danced, whispered, and touched.

But the fear never left me. The fear that one of the dark shadows I kept seeing out of the corner of my eye would materialize—and Silver would come back.

In fact, I knew he would.

I’d really outdone myself this time. Not only were Alana and my mom still giving me the cold shoulder, but Dr. T was, too. She’d been distracted and distant in our appointments. I wondered if the fight with my mom was the cause. I didn’t doubt Jane was vindictive enough to have done something to compromise my relationship with Dr. T because of my comment about my twice-a-week therapist being a better mom. Maybe she’d told her that it was unprofessional to get so emotionally close to a patient, or something like that. Maybe she was hoping I’d feel like I couldn’t lean on Dr. T after all, and would break off the relationship altogether.

My suspicions spiked even higher when I got a text from Jane:

Meet me at Dr. Teresa’s office after school today. 4:00 sharp.

She had never (as in ever ) come with me to an appointment before. Something must have changed. I worried about what she could possibly want to say to me that she couldn’t just say alone. Maybe she was going to tell us that she wasn’t going to let us keep having our appointments or something.

It felt like an ambush, and I didn’t like it.

The tension between my mom and me was at an all-time high. I felt like I was still sitting at the breakfast table, holding on to the edge with white knuckles, waiting for her wrath. Like I had been sitting at that table my whole life.

When she finally showed up in Dr. T’s waiting room, she was late, of course. Gucci purse in one hand and a Venti Starbucks in the other, she came storming in like a celebrity.

“Hello, Ruby,” she said with the aloof formality of a stranger.

“Hello, Mother,” I responded with the sass of a neglected teen.

“Is Dr. Teresa not here yet?” she asked as she sat down next to me and started digging through her purse.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I knocked a minute ago and no one answered.”

“Is she usually late?”

“No, not really,” I said, thinking back. Actually, I couldn’t remember the last time she’d been late.

“Well, I don’t have time for this,” my mother said, standing and power walking over to the door to knock again.

Shocker: Jane Rose didn’t have time for this .

“What’s going on, Mom?” I asked. “Why are you even here?”

“Dr. Teresa?” she called through the door, ignoring me. “It’s Ruby and Jane. Are you in there? Please open the door.”

I rolled my eyes. If she were in there, she would open up. What if she was with a client and didn’t want to be disturbed yet?

“Mom, are you even going to answer me?”

Apparently not. She pressed her ear against the door, listening for a sign of life, I assumed. “She should get a receptionist, for crying out loud.”

“Mom?”

“What, Ruby?” she answered harshly, looking at me like I was a petulant two-year-old.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m here because we need to talk.”

How many times was she going to give me that “we need to talk” crap?

“Then talk,” I challenged. “Why do you need Dr. Teresa present to talk to me?”

She rattled the door handle. “I just do.”

I was about to admonish her for being so evasive (something she loved to do to me) when the door swung open. It was unlocked and no one was inside, that much I could see.

I stood, surprised that her door was unlocked if she wasn’t there.

“This is highly unusual,” my mom said disapprovingly.

“Which part?” I answered, walking past her into Dr. T’s room. “The District Attorney breaking and entering or someone standing you up?”

“All I did was check the door. It swung open on its own,” she said defensively.

I’d never been in Dr. T’s office without her being there. Curious, I wandered around the space. I’d always wanted to know more about Dr. T: her family situation, her failed marriage, her miscarriages, her history. Despite how hard she worked on me to open up, she never really returned the favor. All I knew about her came from my mother.

“What are you doing?” my mom asked, sounding suddenly uncomfortable.

“Nothing,” I said, looking through some papers on Dr. T’s desk. “Just checking to see if she left us a note or something.”

“If she left a note, it would have been on the door,” she argued. “Or she’d have sent me an e-mail.”

True. This was so unlike her. Then again, after ten years of intermittent therapy, I wasn’t confident I really knew what she was “like” anyway. I continued to search her desk for a family picture or keepsake that held some trace of who she really was. Instead, it was scattered with self-help books, medical journals, candles, and an assortment of coffee mugs.

“Come on, let’s wait outside and I’ll call her to see where she is,” Mom said, digging through her bag for her cell.

I was about to leave the room when I looked at Dr. T’s chair. My breath caught, and time jerked to a halt—like the moment I shot LeMarq, like the moment the blade went into Father Michael’s chest.

A large, old-fashioned brass key sat in Dr. T’s place.

I felt sick as I reached to pick it up. The panic rising in my chest threatened to consume me as I realized the key could only mean one thing—he’d taken her. The Key Killer, the fourth man on my list.

Attached to the rusty key was a red string and a small note. I pinched it up with my fingertips like it was a poisonous spider. The note read:

Find me.

The handwriting was Dr. T’s—I’d seen it so many times before. Another one of the Key Killer’s signature moves—forcing the victims to leave one last plea for help to their family.

My vision went starry. Air wasn’t making it to my lungs.

Not Dr. T. Not the only person in the world who knew me best and loved me anyway.

I couldn’t comprehend what kind of an evil person would crush minds and souls like this. How would I find her? None of his victims had ever been found. Not one of them. Twelve keys. Twelve missing persons behind twelve locked doors.

This had gone too far, become too personal. If the Key Killer or Silver were here right now, I would tear them to shreds. I looked back at the note, but it was turned the wrong way now—and there was a message on the other side, written in someone else’s hand:

If you want the Doctor to live, do notinvolve Jane.