Jessie Humphries: Killing Ruby Rose

Which left me to be what?

The judge?

The jury?

The defense?

Or the victim.

“You have a choice, Ruby,” Martinez said, his voice low, watching me. “Either you kill her, or Mr. Violet does. Who deserves to die more? A man who rapes and murders innocent women? Or a woman who destroys the lives of those she purports to love and protect?”

Really? Did he honestly believe I would shoot my own mother? Even if she wasn’t my biological mother?

I would never do that.

He had to know it just as well as I did.

No, he didn’t expect me to kill her. I had to remind myself that what he was truly trying to do was get me to kill Violet. Just like one through four. He started with me saving a stranger, then my best friend and boyfriend, then myself, then Dr. T, and now my mom—each time raising the stakes to ensure that I made the kill. He wanted to prove to my mom that I was the coldhearted murderer he thought I was—the psycho he’d predicted I’d be.

I turned back to her. Her tears were flowing freely.

“You can’t do this,” she said to me. “It’s murder. It’s wrong.”

“Mr. Violet!” Martinez barked. “This is your last chance!”

Violet jumped, looked down at the knife in his hand and then up at me, as if asking for my help. This was it. I had to make my decision.

I raised my gun in the general direction of Violet, aiming somewhere to the right of him, when an echoing noise from above caught my attention.

It started out as a single clank of metal against metal. Then it rose to a chorus of tappings all around the decks of scaffolding. Through my veil of shock and rising panic, I couldn’t work out what was causing it.

Then it dawned on me—coins. I ran my fingers over the engraved metal of my dad’s Challenge Coin in my pocket. His SWAT team had finally moved in. Sergeant Mathews, his unit, and maybe Sammy were up there somewhere with their sights set on me. They were challenging me to do the right thing. And perhaps warning Martinez.

But they didn’t know what was going on! Did they think I was really going to kill my mom or Violet? They wouldn’t let me. They’d shoot me first—a shot to disable me. Lowering my weapon, I looked over to Damon Silver. He’d retreated further into the shadows, along with Martinez. SWAT would have no shot on either of them. Hell, SWAT wouldn’t even be able to confirm that they were ever here. They’d escape the same way Silver had the night he killed my…other dad.

Wait. Silver killed my dad? I didn’t understand. Jack Rose didn’t deserve to die. I was just starting to get the feeling that maybe Silver cared for me. That he was trying to protect me. Not only from Martinez’s setups, but maybe even from Martinez himself. So why would he take away someone I loved?

I turned to him in a flash of anger. “You didn’t have to kill him!” I yelled into the shadows where I could see Silver, but anyone above couldn’t.

“You don’t understand,” Silver replied quietly. “It’s complicated.”

I pointed my gun at him. “ Un complicate it, then!”

“OK, Ruby, OK.” He paused as if waiting for Martinez to stop him. But he didn’t. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. I don’t expect you to remember this, but when you were three I came for you. I knocked on the door and Jane…your mother…answered with you in her arms.” His deep voice cracked.

My head swiveled to Jane to assess if he was telling the truth. She didn’t deny it.

“She warned me to stay away and shut the door in my face,” Silver continued. “I tried for years to change her mind—or Jack’s mind. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you or disrupt your life. Especially considering my line of work. So I let it go. But I never let you go. I watched you grow up from a distance. There were times when I could’ve reached out to you. So many times. Especially after the LeMarq shooting when I started following you to try to figure out what was going on. Then when I saw that sketch the day of your high school art fair—that’s when I knew that someone was trying to dig up the past.”

Could this be true? Was this why I felt like I knew him already? He’d been so near for so long and I had no idea.

“So you’re claiming that it wasn’t you digging up the past?” I asked, not sure I could believe him. “Why would you have risked coming into my school?”

“I received a letter asking me to come. Supposedly from you.”

“What?” I asked, utterly confused. “I didn’t send you a letter. I didn’t even know you existed!”

“I knew it wasn’t from you, but I had to go anyway.” He paused and rolled his neck as if hesitating in his explanation—or his lies. “Almost a year ago, I received a very similar letter—on the same exact stationery—from Jack Rose, saying that he wanted to talk. When I read the suggestion that we meet here on Grissom, I became suspicious but figured I could handle it. You had just turned sixteen, and I thought it was finally time for us to meet. But when I got here, it was a trap.”

“So you blew him to pieces?” My furious voice bounced off the walls.

“No, Ruby, I thought Jack set the trap for me . That he chose Grissom Island because one of his ex-Marine buddies is head of security here. I figured that when he realized I wasn’t going to fall into his ambush, he called in his SWAT team and told them that I’d set the explosives. I escaped, and I honestly didn’t know what had happened. At the time, I thought he must’ve made a mistake or tried to disengage one of his own traps to protect his men and…something had gone wrong.” Silver sounded miserable. And he could no longer yell his side of the story over the clamor of the tapping.

I didn’t understand this guy.

Why would my dad have messed with something he wasn’t experienced with? He didn’t work with explosives. Something wasn’t adding up. If only he had trusted me enough to tell me what was going on. If only he’d told me the truth.

And then I realized what Mathews was really trying to say with the tapping. It’s what Jack himself would have said if he were here—to remember to stand for honor, courage, and commitment. Jack Rose taught me everything I knew. Whatever his flaws were, or whatever mistakes he made, he shouldn’t have died because of this madness. He was only trying to keep his family together. Prevent all this from happening. And he couldn’t. Despite how hard he tried to prepare me for it, even his worst fears couldn’t have dreamed up this particular nightmare.

“That’s it!” Martinez cut back in. “It’s time to make your choice. You shoot Mr. Violet or your mother. Ten, nine…”

There had to be another choice. If I took a Hail Mary shot at Martinez, he’d stop me—either with a bullet at my mom or me. Plus he had a bulletproof vest on. Same with Silver.

If I took the shot on Violet, SWAT would stop me.

If I chose to do nothing, Violet would be forced to act, bullets would fly, and Jane could get hurt all the same.

The problem was that all these choices produced the same unacceptable results:

Both Martinez and Silver would escape—just like Silver did the last time SWAT had the place surrounded. Neither of these guys would ever surrender with their hands in the air. This entire thing had been meticulously planned. I had no confidence that SWAT or Mathews could stop them.

Liam would go to prison for the rest of his life if Jane decided telling the truth was still a major inconvenience. I couldn’t allow myself to put all my trust in her again. If there was one thing I knew for sure now, it was that the woman could justify anything.

“Eight, seven…”

I stood frozen when the answer came to me. There was only one choice left.