Jessie Humphries: Killing Ruby Rose

“You are not homeless,” Dr. T responded, unclicking her seatbelt. “Just having a little vacation until you and your mom find a way to”—she paused—“figure things out.”

Her gentle eyes told me it was OK if it took a while.

She got out of her sports car and ran around to help me out.

“I’ll get your bags out of the car later,” she said, taking me by the elbow to walk me into her place. “I want you to see the view first.”

“I never knew you lived on the beach, Dr. T. How come you never told me?”

“You never asked,” she said.

She led me up a flight of stairs into the living room of her modest-sized beach house with an anything-but-modest view. The sun was setting on the Pacific Coast. Her large panoramic windows looked like murals hung on the wall. Either there were still drugs in my veins or this was the most beautiful sunset ever. The horizon was lit up with pumpkin oranges, electric pinks, and, of course, ruby reds. Like it was created just for me. Like someone was saying, “Isn’t it good to still be alive?”

“Yes,” I said out loud.

“What?” Dr. T said.

“Nothing,” I said, a little embarrassed that she’d heard me talking to myself. “I’m just glad to be here.”

She put one arm around me, and we watched the seagulls fly past the deck outside. In the distance I could see the surfers lining up near the Pier. I wondered if Liam had been out there since his release. They’d let him go two days after the Grissom Island Showdown, as Sammy called it. Turned out, Sammy got several shots and even a little grainy footage of me getting myself stabbed as SWAT moved in. It had looped endlessly on every news channel for a week. Which was why I had sworn off television forever.

Sammy sent me a nice card at the hospital, thanking me for the tip-off and the millions he’d make on the images. He even promised to cut me in on the deal, but I didn’t want his money. What I really wanted was for him to take it and bribe all the other paparazzi to leave me alone.

Just to get here, we had to sneak out using the hospital’s private drive. No one knew about Dr. T, where she lived, or what had happened to her. But there was no going home for me—at least not for a while. Partly because the cameras had permanently camped out there, and also because my mother and I weren’t feeling especially close at the moment. She didn’t love my unwillingness to come home, and I didn’t love the time it had taken to drop all charges against Liam for Detective Martinez’s murder. The dude wasn’t even dead! Martinez was probably living off my dad’s money on some Caribbean island. But the public didn’t know that. Not yet, anyway.

It appeared that the current news cycle’s headlining theory for the ever-growing list of murders was “revenge against the high-profile Rose Family.” And if it wasn’t for my “self-sacrifice,” the District Attorney would’ve been the last and ultimate victim of “Viktor Gulav’s rage against justice.” The authorities would neither confirm nor deny the media’s speculation that I’d killed the notorious criminal in order to save my mother. There was no mention of Silver or Martinez.

Once the CIA moved in and took over the case, they threatened us all with prosecution if we revealed any facts about the ongoing investigation, including details concerning Martinez’s involvement. A cruel twist, considering how badly I wanted the world to know that it was James Martinez who killed my father, put my loved ones in danger, tortured my mother, and destroyed my soul. All in the name of exacting his vengeance—on his old partner who was going to expose his corruption, his ex-lover who’d jilted him, and a child whose very existence had supposedly ruined his chance at happiness.

When the Special Agent assigned to my case came to see me, he curtly told me not to worry, assuring me that he’d personally see Martinez face justice. I might have been able to overlook his 1960s-style slicked-back hair, outdated male condescension, and habitual use of the term sweetie —but only if in the very same breath he hadn’t used a line right out of my mom’s old playbook: “Sometimes you have to let a smaller fish go in order to catch the bigger fish.” I wanted to tell him exactly where to go with his fish analogies.

As long as we cooperated and kept our guppy mouths shut, we could earn our immunity. Which sealed the deal for me. That’s when I learned the real truth about Damon Silver. Special Agent Fishy opened up about Commander Silver—Medal of Honor recipient in the United States Army, Green Beret Special Forces Commander, and inactive operative in an elite Special Operations Group of the CIA. A real hero. “One of our bravest.”

Who still hadn’t come to talk to me, even though he’d been released almost immediately after his arrest.

Whatever. It was complicated—I got that. And somehow I knew I’d see Silver again.

As for Jane, after she was discharged from the hospital, her points in the polls skyrocketed. Her campaign managers knew exactly how to swing it—“Jane Rose the Survivor.” But the media turned on her when their questions continued to go unanswered. Bill Brandon took advantage of her weakened position and began accusing her of scandal and cover-ups.

There were still several months until Election Day, but Brandon was quickly becoming the favorite. And I was glad. Not just because he’d be tough on violent offenders and make his slain daughter proud, but because I still held on to a shred of hope that maybe I’d get my mom back. That maybe if the fight for her campaign and career were over, she’d start fighting for me.

“Ruby, I need to apologize to you.” Dr. T’s voice pulled me back to the present. Her arm still held me close to her side, her eyes still centered on the bright horizon before us. She swallowed hard. “I needed some space after the fire. I had nothing to give, and I was scared that if I didn’t distance myself from you, I’d be in more danger. I knew Martinez was trouble from the first moment you brought him up in our post-LeMarq sessions. I just didn’t know it was leading to this—”

“What? You knew about Martinez?” I asked, pulling away.

“Ruby, let me finish. I’m sorry for keeping the truth from you all these years.”

“What truth have you hidden?” I flinched at the pain in my side. It felt like one sentence had just reopened the wound.

“Ruby, please, give me a chance to explain—”

“So that’s why he wrote the word ‘SECRETS’ over your mouth? Because you were in on it all along?” I backed away from her.

“Don’t do that,” she cautioned, using The Tone. “Don’t spin away. Ruby, I was only trying to protect you.”

I rubbed my forehead. “Why does everyone keep using that excuse? They didn’t tell me squat because they were only trying to protect me. Does this gash in my side look like I’ve been protected?”

She closed the gap between us. “I always felt it wasn’t my place to tell you the truth, or at least what little truth I knew. Your parents—Jack and Jane that is—were my clients before you came into their lives. I was their marital counselor. Your mother had been trying for years to get pregnant, and it was causing problems in the marriage. I knew about the affair. Your dad was hurt, but patient. He coped with alcohol. She coped by throwing herself into her work in the Family Court.”

She stopped to gauge my distress barometer, like she knew I needed to take a breath before hearing more.

“She talked about you a lot in our sessions. She told me how neglected you were by your real mother. Unchanged diapers, left in your crib for hours. But most of all, how special you were despite it all. How you reached out to her. How you hugged her tight and wouldn’t let go.”