Killing Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series)

by Jessie Humphries

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Jessie Humphries

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Skyscape, New York

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Skyscape are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477820063

  ISBN-10: 147782006X

  EISBN: 9781477870068

  Book design by Krista Vossen

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

  To Nanny, who would have loved this the most.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Truths and roses have thorns about them.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  CHAPTER 1

  I hid in the shadows, scanning the dark parking lot to assess the threat level. So far I’d identified three potential informants I’d have to evade when making a break for it. I didn’t need my 4.0 GPA to know that being seen leaving the city library at 9:00 on a Friday night wouldn’t win me any points on the SPA (Social Point Average), on which I was definitely flunking. Avoiding detection was key.

  Maintaining position under the library’s dark awning, I took a quick breath of briny ocean air to gain my bearings. The parking lot’s sickly yellow lights flickered behind the suffocating fog, making it hard to tell whether the rain was misting down from above or wafting in sideways from the shore. In any case, the blacktop lay slick, full of potholes, and speckled with math-club kids who would have just loved to report a sighting of Reclusive Ruby Rose.

  With a practiced stealth, I dashed through the night. Even in my new Prada peep-toe pumps—aka my Penelopes—I had speed. I moved light-footed through the blind spots, like I was navigating one of my dad’s SWAT obstacle courses, until I found cover in the driver’s seat of Big Black, my overly tinted SUV and current best friend. I gripped the steering wheel. “Ready to do this?” I asked Black, ignoring my therapist’s voice in my head telling me to stop personifying the things in my life and start concentrating on the people. She didn’t understand. Things couldn’t break my heart.

  Big Black’s tires spun out, fighting for traction against the wet asphalt. No more denominators, dusty textbooks, or depressing thoughts. Instead, my mind changed gears to the last subject of study for the night. A study I’d so far kept strictly to myself. One that required night-vision binoculars, a police scanner, and my .38 Smith & Wesson handgun—all carefully hidden beneath the false bottom of the driver’s console.

  Rebel energy flowed through my veins as I allowed myself to imagine tonight being the night I caught my mark—Mr. Charlie LeMarq—in the act. I had thirty minutes until he got off work and headed to his favorite dive. A creature of habit, he hadn’t deviated from his Friday-night routine for five weeks. And neither had I, as I’d waited for the evidence that would finally put the violent predator away for good.

  I hit the Pacific Coast Highway with momentum, grateful for a break in the rain. With the windows cracked and the stereo up, the whipping wind and heavy beat refreshed my senses. Something about the brewing storm beyond the ocean’s black-and-blue horizon spoke to me. It was a foreboding that simultaneously quickened my heart rate and eased the ever-present heartache.

  I enjoyed the moment—until my phone vibrated against said heart like a minidefibrillator shocking me back to reality. The sad reality of a seminormal seventeen-year-old girl and not the sleek sleuth I pretended to be. (Only semi because totally normal girls don’t wear four-inch Prada heels to the library, or stalk criminals, or wear four-inch Prada heels while stalking criminals.)

  Pulling my cell out of my cleavage, I found the screen lit up with my best friend’s face—my real-life, living-and-breathing best friend, Alana. Though breathing as a determining factor in a best friend seemed slightly overrated.

  I had a choice to make. The red “Decline” button versus the green “Answer” button. Red: Avoid the call now, and keep declining all night because Alana Kailua (aka the only un-laid-back Hawaiian in SoCal) would never stop. Green: Put up my dukes to defend myself and be forced into lies. So, basically—lose-lose.

  “Hello, caller, you’re on the air,” I spoke into my Denali’s Bluetooth speaker system. I was nothing if not a law-abiding citizen who’d taken “The Pledge to Put It Down,” the promise to “put down” handheld phones while driving. District Attorney Jane Rose (aka my absentee mother) had come up with that catchy slogan for her latest campaign.

  “Girl, where are you?” Alana banshee-shrieked, forcing me to make an unsafe jerk of the wheel to turn down the volume.

  “I’m driving home,” I said, fully aware she wouldn’t believe me. She knew I hated going home to an empty house.

  “It’s nine p.m. On a Fri—day!” she groaned. Our high school’s fight song played so fervently in the background that victory could be the only cause. Other than the abuse of energy drinks. “I know you’re not going home, so just get your antisocial A-S-S over here right now. There’s gonna be a killer after-party, and you’re coming!”

  Sparring match commenced. Lately, every conversation with Alana felt like a brawl at the dojo. Like, even though I’d put away my black belt months ago, I couldn’t stop fighting.

  “I’m tired, Alana.” Lateral defense move.

  Checking my rearview mirror, I caught Huntington Beach High School’s stadium lights fading away. Year-ago me would have been there at the game with Alana—giggling, cavorting, and playing along. That girl (with the 4.0 SPA) had long since faded from view. “I’ll catch you tomorrow. We’ll go to the beach or something.” Submissive bow out.

  “Ruby, I know you miss your dad, but your self-imposed solitary confinement isn’t helping. He wouldn’t want this.” Provoking palm-heel strike to the heart.

  “Please don’t pretend to know what he’d want.” Double-handed hooking block, protecting the weak spot.

  “It’s been over six months since he died,” Alana said with worn-out delicacy. “It’s time to snap out of zombie mode.”

  “I didn’t lose a puppy, Alana,” I said. I lost the most important person in my life, I didn’t say, as I tried to suppress the billowing emptiness I felt inside. “I need more time.”

  “Yeah, so you say.” Elbow to the mouth.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” Bleeding.

  “Say you’ll take off your loner trench coat and come have some fun. It will be
good for you.”

  “Not tonight, OK?” I begged, feeling the familiar anchor of guilt tugging at me, heavier every time I blew her off. “I promise we’ll go to the beach or the mall tomorrow. Whatever you want.”

  “You know, Ruby, I should start calling you Rubik’s Cube, because no matter how hard I try, I can never figure out what I’m supposed to do with you,” Alana said. “And it’s such a shame, because despite the fact that you’ve gone from being the slightly intimidating Brainiac Barbie to the totally antisocial Hermit Barbie—there are still several dudes I know who’d be willing to offer their shoulders to cry on…or their laps to sit on…or their lips to—”

  “Alana!” I interrupted. “I’m sorry, but my life doesn’t revolve around boys and parties like yours does, OK?”

  Her long pause meant I’d pissed her off (more than I wanted to), and I drove past the street where I’d wanted to turn. My blood boiled as I realized my stupid mistake. I rarely made mistakes. And I never lost sparring matches, physical or verbal. I had the karate and debate trophies to prove it.

  “Well, I promised I wouldn’t say anything, but if I can’t lure you out of your hole by myself…I have no choice.” Alana must’ve moved into the girls’ bathroom for privacy, because most of the background noise had vanished. “Your boy has something planned tonight.” Side stance, luring wave to come closer.

  “What are you talking about?” Careful approach. “I don’t have a boy.”

  “Liam Slater, Rubik’s Cube. Don’t play stupid with me. I know better. I gave him your number last week, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to text you tonight. And in case you feel like blowing him off, too, just know…he’s going to ask you to Homecoming.” Roundhouse kick to the temple.

  Click.

  She hung up on me.

  I pulled Big Black into an empty beach parking lot along Bonfire Row, my ears still ringing from both the imagined blows and the real news.

  Could I believe it? Mr. Elusive, Mr. Preseason Favorite for Most Beautiful Eyes of the Senior Class, Mr. Too Cool for School was going to ask me, Miss Too School for Cool, to be his Senior Homecoming date?

  Surely not. Alana had to be messing with me. Liam and I had barely spoken about anything other than equations or our Advanced Calculus teacher’s “sexy comb-over.” I didn’t even have Liam’s cell number. Sure, I’d been crushing on the guy for almost two years. And yes, the boy had impeccable taste in shoes. But since my dad died, I hadn’t been in the mood for flirting. Or anything else that required the pretense of happiness.

  Plus, I thought he was going to ask Taylor Jennings, the cheerleader not-so-secretly voted Nicest Rack. She’d been hanging her aforementioned lady parts all over him a lot lately. It wasn’t enough that she was my sole competitor for the valedictorian race—she also had to compete with me for everything else, including the only boy I not-so-secretly liked.

  I hoped he was smart enough to withstand her and her considerable ass-ets. He seemed smart. He was on last year’s honor roll. But, then again, he’d probably paid for his grades with touchdowns and devilish grins. Not that I hadn’t benefited from the way his smile could light up the room. These days, the thought of Liam’s eyes on mine was sometimes the only thing that brought me back to school at all.

  My phone vibrated again, but this time it was a text from an unknown number:

  Hey Ruby :) It’s Liam. Could you meet me at 366 Water Street as soon as you can? There’s something I want to ask you.

  He was texting me already?

  Flourishes of goose bumps scuttled up my arms. Part of me felt ecstatic, thinking about the possibility of more than his eyes being on me tonight. Maybe his hands, maybe his lips—

  But then little red flags began flying across my over-analytical brain. Actually, they were more like red flares lighting up the night sky in my mind.

  Red flare: The mere thought of Homecoming! I’d have preferred for Liam to just ask me out to dinner without the rented tuxes, slutty sequin dresses, and group-sex parties. I didn’t believe in high school dances. Beyond all the forced awkwardness of pinning corsages and posing for cheesy pictures—and never mind all those pesky statistics about higher rates of drunk driving and sexual assault—the whole idea of high school dances gave me anxiety.

  Then again, how long had I been dreaming about spending any amount of time with Liam Slater? He could’ve asked me to go swimming with the sharks, and I’d have considered it.

  Red flare: Water Street. Such a strange location. The old shipping harbor was hardly romantic. I hadn’t pegged Liam as one of those guys who asked girls out in an overly dramatic way. Just today in English class my eyes had almost rolled right out of my head when Alana told me about a boy asking out a girl by having her name and the word “Homecoming” written in the sky. Gag.

  But there was no way Liam would stoop to that level. He was the complete opposite of gaggy.

  Red flare: “As soon as you can.” The team should still be in the locker room celebrating, showering, and patting each other in inappropriate ways that only athletes are allowed to do. Had Liam already left for Water Street? I hoped he’d at least managed a quick shower, because I never pictured sweat as part of my fantasy make-out sequence with him. Though even that wouldn’t be a deal breaker, considering it might mix with the drizzling rain running down our bodies, and we could have one of those epic kisses straight out of The Notebook…

  Red flare: I already had plans—tailing Charlie LeMarq, one of the most prolific child abductors and murderers in my dad’s profiles. My own kind of “killer after-party.”

  Sure, I knew that stalking criminals was a bizarre after-school activity for a seventeen-year-old girl. But ever since SWAT Sergeant Jack Rose (aka my fallen father) was killed “in the line of duty,” I’d needed an outlet. A way to honor his memory. A challenge to focus all my efforts on. And yoga wasn’t doing the trick.

  Since the Department wasn’t talking, or releasing any information on the “continuing investigation” into his death that seemed more like a “discontinued investigation,” I had to do something to overcome the gnawing need for justice that never came. Obsessing over catching a predator my dad had hoped to put away had become that something. It wouldn’t bring Dad back from the dead, but it had brought me back from wanting to die. I could no longer afford to be the helpless little girl who cried herself to sleep every night. I had to find a reason to live.

  And Sergeant Jack Rose hadn’t made me a weapons specialist and combat expert for nothing. For as long as I could remember, he’d trained me to be able to defend myself and protect others. Between sparring lessons and shooting practice, a spooky sound track had played in my head as he went on and on about what a dangerous world we lived in.

  Nowhere was safe.

  He and my mother had enemies because of their high-profile positions.

  I should prepare myself for the day I’d be tested.

  Somewhere around age fourteen, I turned off the broken record. The only threat I’d ever faced in my sheltered life was the threat of being suspended from school for fighting. So much for being prepared to defend myself when it was the very thing that got me into trouble! Which was the exact argument Mom always used with Dad after she got home from arbitration meetings with my principals.

  But he’d stuck to his guns, or “our” guns, as they actually were, and never stopped training me.

  Sometimes I chalked it up to his undiagnosed post-traumatic stress from his time as a Marine, or the violence he saw every day in law enforcement, or simply that I took the place of the son he never had. Whatever the reason, he kept on with my training—and I took to it.

  Like a fish to water.

  Opening the false bottom of my console, I looked down at the shimmering weapon—aka Smith, my .38 Special Revolver with built-in laser sight that I’d gotten for my Sweet Sixteenth. Gleaming underneath Smith was the accompanying laminated concealed-weapons license that Dad had personally signed for me two weeks before his de
ath. As I ran my finger over his signature, I couldn’t help wondering (for the umpteenth time) what he’d think of seeing his little girl and her gun now. Surely, he’d never envisioned his young scholar turning into a vigilante stalker.

  Yeah, well, I never saw him being ripped from my life without any answers, either. So, whatever.

  I grabbed the manila file labeled “LeMarq” and flipped through the pictures, timelines, and notes, focusing on my target instead of my sorrow. I knew almost everything about the sicko by now.

  He liked prepubescent girls. He liked violating them, choking them, and leaving zero forensic evidence behind. Some of his cohorts called him Cherry Charlie, not only because of the string of cherry tattoos he sported on his left forearm, but also because of what each cherry represented: the theft of a young girl’s innocence—and, inevitably, her life.

  I’d never been able to zoom in close enough to be sure, but I’d counted at least a dozen cherries on his arm. A crop that should have earned him at least a dozen life sentences.

  My dad died before he could catch LeMarq, but shortly after, another detective nabbed the creep. My mom was the lead prosecutor. I stared at the newspaper clippings in my hands now, remembering the injustice. His expensive attorney (provided by a rich relative), a procedural technicality (provided by an inept member of my mother’s prosecution team), and a hung jury (provided by the great State of California) sent him walking. It was only a matter of time before he killed again, and neither my mom nor the police were likely to stop him. They only had another 113,000 or so registered sex offenders to worry about.

  I slammed shut the file, disgusted with his ugly mug, his stupid baby-blue pedophile van with Louisiana plates he still hadn’t registered (not even a misdemeanor crime), and the infuriating lack of evidence against him. I knew he’d be skipping jurisdictions again before long. If I didn’t catch him soon, he could keep getting away with murder forever—and those little girls would never see him coming.