Jessie Humphries - Killing Ruby Rose

“What?” I strained to see what he was talking about. “Where?”

“I don’t know.” He huffed and finally pulled his tense body away from the window to rub his eyes. “Maybe it was nothing.”

“Liam, what did you see?”

“I thought I saw a flicker of light in the apartment up there,” he said, pointing to the second story. “I thought I heard something, too.”

I looked up to where he was pointing but didn’t see anything. “Are you sure it wasn’t the fireworks?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m going to go check it out,” I said, but he stopped me again.

“Wait, Ruby, it’s a trap. You know that!” The intensity of Liam’s eyes in the darkness was more effective than his python-like grip. “Just because Martinez didn’t want to call for backup doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t—”

“No, I think Martinez was right. If we call it in, anyone from dispatch to SWAT could handle it wrong and Dr. T could die. Maybe Martinez knows what he’s doing. He seems to know a lot more about Silver than we do.” I shook my head in disbelief that I was actually siding with Martinez. “Look, Silver has a plan, and at this point I don’t think killing me is part of it, so I’m going in there. And you are not going to stop me.”

I got out of the car, and Liam climbed out after me. The building’s entrance seemed more like a deserted mine than college housing. And given how close we were to the stadium, it felt odd for the area to be so forsaken.

A bluster of dust nearly knocked me into Liam as I moved toward the dark corridor’s opening. All the exterior lights were either burned out or busted in. If anyone still lived in these apartments, I felt sorry for them.

Martinez must’ve somehow known exactly where 4E was, and he’d gone this way, so we followed the path until it opened up into a courtyard with a gated pool. The water looked like the greenish-brown algae color of swamps meant for gator huntin’—not bikinis and Pi Beta Phi keg parties. It even smelled like a rotting cesspool. Anything could be at the bottom of that water.

Signs were posted all around the gate, and I crossed the dying grass to read one. The place had been condemned. Scheduled to be torn down and rebuilt in a few months. Which meant it was abandoned, and we were alone.

“Great. No witnesses.” Liam’s words echoed my fears. “I don’t feel good about this.”

When had either one of us ever felt good about any of this?

Suddenly, a desperate groan came from the shadows behind us. We spun around to face a dark entryway at the back of a staircase, then we sprinted toward the sound.

It was Martinez—lying facedown, looking broken and barely alive. Blood poured out of his shirt. He’d been shot.

“I knew I heard something,” Liam berated himself. “I’m calling 911.”

I wasn’t going to stop him. Though I doubted the cops or an ambulance would get here in time.

“Ruby,” Martinez moaned so low I could barely hear him. I fell to my knees beside him as Liam made the call. The smell of blood mixed with the faint scent of smoke made me dizzy and nauseated. I didn’t know Martinez smoked. I hadn’t smelled it on him in the car.

“I’m here, Detective, right here,” I said, holding his bloodied hand. “We’re calling the paramedics. You’ll be all right.” I hoped it was true.

“Liam, help me turn him over.”

As we carefully rolled Martinez over, I felt a bulletproof vest under his linen shirt. In the dark corridor I couldn’t see where the bullet wounds were.

“I’m going to take your vest off, Detective—”

“No, Ruby, don’t…” He spoke laboriously, like every syllable pained him. “I tried…to prevent it…to make them—make her —tell you…the truth.”

He was losing consciousness.

“I told your mother not to do it. I told her to come clean. But how could…we have…known it would…come to this?” His body tensed up with a sudden shaking fit to match the tremors inside me. What had my mother done to bring this on us all?

As I tried to find the source of the bleeding, the metallic scent of blood and the scent of smoke grew even stronger. My eyes watered, my nose stung, and the glands in the back of my throat tickled—that feeling right before a vicious upchucking attack. A section of his flesh had been ripped open on his forearm, right where his Marine tattoo used to be. The same tattoo my dad had.

I watched Martinez struggle for breath, and some intangible part of me ripped as well. As much as I had hated him, I now felt stirrings of compassion and regret. I didn’t want him to die.

“Hold on,” I pleaded. “Help is on the way.”

I looked up at Liam, now leaning over Martinez’s body, and our eyes met. Through the darkness, I could see the fear in his expression. Did this remind him of the night his dad had cut open his head with a beer bottle?

I wanted to reach out and calm him, but my hands were bloodied, and I started coughing. Then it hit me. I looked around—black smoke was blowing our way.

Fire.

“I’m going up to 4E—you stay with him,” I said to Liam.

“No, you can’t…” Liam trailed off as Martinez gasped in pain. “Ruby, the police will be here soon, just wait.”

“If she’s in there, it will be too late,” I said, letting go of Martinez.

Clutching the key in my bloody hand, I bolted to find Dr. T.

From the center of the courtyard I scanned the six surrounding two-story buildings for the right apartment. It wasn’t hard to find—flames behind the windows, not to mention the billowing smoke emerging out the open door, was a pretty good indication of which apartment would be 4E.

I scaled the staircase and covered my nose with the sleeve of my hoodie as the thickening smoke nearly knocked me out of my resolve.

Once through the door, I tried to orient myself among the flames. At the far end of the room, a large metal cage contained what looked like two lifeless bodies. The surging nausea rose again, but this time it had nothing to do with the smoke.

I urged my feet forward. I had no time to close my eyes and try to overcome my stupid psychotic fear of bars. I had to get to the bodies before the flames did, or we’d all die. Black smoke surrounded me. Dancing on the ceiling. Climbing up the walls. Suffocating everything—including a photo of a girl on the wall.

The same girl from the sketch at the art fair. What?

No, I couldn’t think about that now. Another coughing fit hit me. I fell to the ground, aching for oxygen, desperate for clear thought.

Then I saw Dr. T. She was one of the bodies in the cage, blindfolded and duct taped. I crawled to the cage and searched for the lock that matched my key, but I couldn’t find it. Tears in my eyes made it even harder to see—a pure physical reaction to the smoke.

Finally, I found a clunky metal lock and slipped the old key in. It clicked and turned, and the barred door swung open. I forced myself inside—reminding myself that I’d beaten the cage before and could do it again. I pulled Dr. T’s limp body over and saw something written on the duct tape covering her mouth: “SECRETS.” What the hell was that supposed to mean? I checked her pulse—it was slow but steady.

I didn’t want to, but I reached for the other body, too. Eyes stinging and lungs closing up, I pulled on his shirt. It was definitely number four—Roger Vay, the Key Killer, with the same gray tape, same message: “SECRETS.”

There was no way I could get them both out before the flames consumed us. Silver was making me choose. Making me condemn one to death.

I grabbed Dr. T’s arms and wrapped them around my neck as I crawled out onto the green shaggy carpet. Once outside the cage, I dragged her by the shoulders with every ounce of strength I had left, trying to locate the door. The smoke was too dense, the flames too high, my legs too weak. As I searched for the way out, a flame seared through my cloth Toms. Of all my precious shoes, these had to be the most flammable.