Killing Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series)

by Jessie Humphries

  He stared at me for a few moments. “Really?” he whispered, eyes bright. “Won’t she be totally pissed at me?”

  “Who cares if she’s pissed at you?” I didn’t understand why he would even care how my absentee mother felt about him.

  “Well, she could put me away for good. Everyone knows how tough Prosecutor Jane Rose is.”

  “For kissing?”

  “For perjury,” he said with a devilish grin. “You can’t ask me to lie, can you?”

  He moved in closer and put his arm around me, cradling my neck. He looked down at me with an intensity I almost couldn’t handle, waiting for my permission. What was I going to do—say no?

  Suddenly, he wasn’t asking anymore. The moment our lips touched, my eyes fluttered shut in a rush of sensation. His hands, his body, and his mouth were slowly, tenderly, exquisitely consuming me. His warm breath and lips reminded me of melting campfire chocolate—soft and full, smooth and sweet, but dangerously hot. A tingling heat rose in my body. I’d been kissed before, but never like this.

  I squeezed the back of his shirt into my fists and pulled him even closer. He didn’t seem to mind as he brought both hands to my face, then to my shoulders, then to my hips. I didn’t even know what to do with my hands anymore. I didn’t mean to touch his abs, but there they were under my fingertips. Waves of adrenaline and desire surged in me with each kiss and touch.

  I finally took a breath and realized how desperate I was for oxygen. He rested his forehead on mine, and we breathed the same air. I couldn’t open my eyes yet—I was too dizzy.

  “Wow, Ruby Rose, no wonder they say you’re lethal,” Liam whispered.

  I playfully slugged him in the chest. “Hey, easy with the name-calling.”

  “Sorry,” he said, kissing my cheek, then my neck, then moving back up to my lips. “At least we won’t be lying.”

  I heard my mom just outside the door murmuring intermittent curses. She must’ve been going upstairs, because her voice trailed off around the third F-bomb. She definitely didn’t know we were in here.

  “I think she might have a case against me for assault,” I said, looking at his wrinkled shirt and swollen lips. “You look like you just got mauled by a bear.”

  So much for restraint. As in every other aspect of my life, I was losing my self-control.

  Liam smoothed out his clothes and tried to straighten up, but he couldn’t erase the giddiness written all over his face. Which was good, because that was exactly what I needed my mom to see. I clutched my backpack and mentally prepared myself for the confrontation.

  “C’mon.” I grabbed his hand and led him out of the room. Once we hit the stairs, I yelled, “Mom, I’m down here.”

  A few seconds later, she popped her head out of my room. And one second after that, her eyes nearly popped out of her head.

  “Rue, what…who…how…” she stammered. Poor D. A. Jane was at a loss for words. She was a mess, and she knew it. Shirt untucked, a few strands of unruly hair askew. As she descended the stairs, she straightened herself up as much as she could.

  “This is my friend Liam. We were just studying for a Calculus test,” I said.

  “I wasn’t expecting company,” she said with a salty tone directed at me. “Though it’s lovely to meet your friend.” Liam smiled back, not knowing what to say. The look on Mom’s face was bizarre at best. Was she pulling a cougar move on the first boy I ever let into my house?

  Mission Awkward: Accomplished.

  I watched as she accumulated the evidence against us. Messy hair, pink lips, guilty faces. I couldn’t tell if she was mad or jealous. Or maybe she was just flat-out flabbergasted.

  “We were just leaving, actually,” I said. “Study group.”

  “It’s almost eight o’clock on a school night!” she argued. “And I got dinner—fresh halibut from Duke’s.”

  “Well, we have a big test tomorrow, and I already ate.” I rebutted each point, just like she’d taught me. “I promise to be home by ten.”

  I turned to go. I wasn’t exactly asking for permission.

  Liam followed me to the door but stopped midway to do the proper thing. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Rose.”

  “It was nice to meet you, too, Liam,” she replied, looking him up and down again. Even in her disheveled state, she was beautiful and she knew it.

  I wanted to slap her right then. For how many reasons, I wasn’t sure.

  CHAPTER 15

  Groggy didn’t cover it. And third-period History wasn’t helping.

  To keep my head from collapsing on my desk, I supported my chin in my hands and propped open my eyes. Even then, the dim lights and gentle hum of the projector were luring me to sleep.

  The long day and the late night with Liam had left me drained. Finding Sammy proved far more challenging than just calling Star Magazine and being connected to the desk of Sam Carmichael, who was credited with the “Hollywood Belles in Bikinis” pictures this week. We left a few messages and wrote a few e-mails before being forced into patiently waiting for a reply.

  The endless early morning hours had left me exhausted—tossing and turning in bed with memories of blood and gunshots. And the warm room and Mrs. Monotone Voice weren’t helping.

  The only thing that kept me going was a steady intake of a very caffeinated soda in my thermos, and the invigorating memory of Liam’s lips on mine.

  Finally, the lunch bell rang and I hurried to meet Alana at her locker, just as I’d done every other school day for the last five years. As I approached, I noticed she wore long sleeves—despite the warm day. She was hiding the bruising from the ties.

  “Hey, Alana,” I said in my best lighthearted, glad-you’re-alive tone, as I slid up to the locker next to her. She jumped at the sound of my voice.

  “Hey,” she said without looking in my direction. Instead, she kept her focus on switching the books from her backpack to her locker.

  “Why haven’t you returned my calls? I’ve been really worried—”

  “Please, Ruby.”

  “Please, Ruby, what?” I asked.

  “I gave you space when you needed it—now it’s time to return the favor.” Surely she was speaking to her textbooks, not to me.

  “Uh…no, if you recall, you never gave me the space I wanted. And I understand why. You were only being a good friend.” I put my hand on her shoulder.

  She jerked away and turned to face me. “I was wrong. I should’ve listened to you. I should’ve understood. Now I’m asking you—”

  “To what? Abandon you when you need me the most?”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Ruby. I really don’t need you.” She shut her locker with force. The crash of metal against metal was jarring.

  “I get why you’d feel that way right now. But you have to understand that I never meant for you to get hurt.”

  “Look, I don’t know what happened or why. I just know I don’t want any part of it. Can you understand that?” She hurriedly zipped up her backpack.

  “I do. But…you’re my best friend.” I looked down, searching for the words to convince her to forgive and forget. But mostly to forget.

  “Consider this my best-friend breakup speech then,” she said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. I almost laughed. She’d threatened to “break up” with me many times over the years.

  “Alana, you’re being silly,” I said, reaching out to her again.

  She pulled away and took a few steps backward, shaking her head. “You know, all these years I thought the guns and the training were just more of your weird…quirks. Just a strange way to spite your overbearing mom, or a bizarre way to bond with your dysfunctional dad.”

  Hey! I thought she loved my dad. He’d taught her to shoot, too!

  “Alana, don’t…” I didn’t need to finish that sentence. She knew my dad was out of bounds.

  “But now I’m not sure what to think anymore. I’ve always given you the benefit of the doubt. Even when you killed that LeMarq
dude and your mom took care of it. But the problem is”—she paused, with a look of sadness that turned to blame—“I know you too well, Ruby Rose. You’ve always been the one looking for the fight.”

  I ground my teeth in a flash of anger. OK, I got it—she was pissed. I almost got her killed and then tried to pretend nothing had happened. But attacking my family? Not cool. What was next? Burning my favorite pair of UGGs?

  At the same time, though, she was right about one thing. Alana had known me too well, and for a long time. Of course, she didn’t know the details—that I was stalking LeMarq and The Stick—but she knew I was more involved than I was letting on.

  I closed my eyes, calling on my problem-solving skills to give me the words I needed to persuade her to freaking relax.

  “You’re overreacting, Alana,” I said, opening my eyes to find her walking away. “Would you just wait? We need to talk about this.”

  “I’m sorry, Rue,” she said, clearly not sorry at all. “But I’m sure Liam would just love to ‘talk.’ You two can share your secrets.”

  “What? Liam?” I looked behind me. Liam was at his locker, trying to pretend he wasn’t listening. He gave me a sheepish smile, and I smiled back weakly.

  When I turned back to Alana, she was already disappearing around the corner.

  “She’ll come around.” Liam’s gentle voice softened the blow. “As soon as we figure all this out, she’ll understand.”

  “There’s that we again,” I said, backing up against the locker, still shaken from Alana’s cutting words. “You sure you don’t want out yet? A good night’s sleep didn’t give you more sense?”

  He put his hand on the locker next to me and leaned in. “Not after the way you kissed me last night,” he whispered.

  The heat blossomed in my cheeks. Surely he wasn’t considering kissing me right here in the hall? That would be highly inappropriate and at the same time freaking amazing.

  “Any news on that schmucky Sammy dude?” he asked.

  “Ha, no.” I smiled. “He hasn’t returned any of my e-mails or phone messages. You?”

  “Nah, but he’ll call. Don’t worry.” Liam gently touched my face. I really hoped no one was watching me melt right now. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

  Every day Liam and I ate lunch at school (enduring Alana’s spectrum of looks from disdain to disappointment), and every night we patrolled the Hollywood hotspots looking for Sammy and his missile-sized camera. But the schmuck was good at what he did. He was a ghost—just like Mr. D. S., the even bigger schmuck behind all this madness. And I was the haunted.

  I didn’t like being on the defensive all the time. I had to find a way to regain control of my life. Except I couldn’t figure out how.

  Until nearly two weeks later on Halloween, when the ghost finally called.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Pier was crowded for a Friday afternoon in late October. Unseasonably warm weather and the Halloween spirit buzzed in the air.

  As I people watched, ghouls and phantoms roamed the beach. Some dude wearing nothing but skate shoes, board shorts, and a Captain Jack Sparrow wig played Bob Marley tunes on his guitar below me. Another kid, wearing one of those white masks from the movie Scream, casually rode his beach cruiser down the boardwalk. The souvenir shop in the middle of the Pier even had a huge grim reaper–shaped kite flapping around in the breeze.

  The real ghost—schmucky Sammy—could be anywhere, watching me, taking aim to shoot me from afar. He had a camera lens for all occasions. Sammy had said to come alone, so I made sure I scheduled our little rendezvous for when Liam had a football game an hour away and would be gone all afternoon and night.

  Liam and I had been together every other possible minute of the day for two weeks. I tried to act like it wasn’t necessary, but he stuck by my side—which may or may not have had something to do with all the kissing. It seemed like whenever we had the chance, we’d lose ourselves in each other: at the beach, in my room, at the back of the library.

  Shaking the images from my mind, I looked down on the beach for distraction. And what do you know—Jell-O-Shot Taylor and her still nameless sidekick lay tanning in their matching hot-pink string bikinis. I felt a larger than usual amount of spite rise up within me. Not only had Taylor most likely taken the upper hand in the valedictorian race, but she was embracing the seemingly carefree life that I’d never have again. She had a friend to hang out with, time to lie in the sun, and a future full of normalcy. If ending up incredibly successful and somewhat famous on the Real Housewives of Orange County is “normal.” Better than ending up on Cops, though.

  Taylor said something, and her friend’s high-pitched laugh floated on the breeze all the way over to slap me in the face. Alana and I used to be like that—happy, silly, naive. I had no idea what she thought happened that night, or what she’d remembered since, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t told a soul about being drugged, bound, and left for dead on a cliff.

  I’d tried to call her. I texted her about twenty-five thousand times, with gentle questions like, “What’s up?” or “Wanna hang?” or “Need chocolate?” I told myself she just needed more time. She’d been mad at me before and had gotten over it. After all, we were besties. It said so on the chain necklaces we got in junior high.

  “Well, well, well, if it’s not the infamous Ruby Rose.” A thick and greasy voice sludged down my ear. Was he talking with his mouth full of food?

  I turned to find an equally repulsive visual. Oily face, shiny bald head, and the unshaven jowls of a chipmunk about to hibernate. He took the last bite of the burrito in his hand and threw the yellow wrapper toward the garbage can about ten feet away. He missed.

  I looked down at him in disgust—I mean I literally looked down at him because he was so short.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said, swallowing some pride.

  “I brought what you asked for,” he said, swallowing down the food and opening his jacket to expose a flat manila envelope tucked into his pants. What did he think this was, some kind of drug deal? The thought of touching that envelope made me want to take a shower in hand sanitizer.

  “Can I see them?” I wished he’d just hand them to me.

  “Let’s discuss the terms of this deal first.”

  “What’s to discuss? You said you’d help me.”

  “For a price.” He stared at me like I was an idiot. “You didn’t think this was free, did you?”

  “Fine, how much dirty money do you want?” I stared back like he was clearly the idiot.

  “I’m not talking money.” He looked at all the girls in bikinis and licked his lips.

  “If you think I’m gonna…” I trailed off, incapable of even forming words so vile.

  “Relax, that’s not what I meant.” He patted his camera. “I meant some exclusives. I get some pictures of you doing interesting things, and you get pictures of a black van doing uninteresting things. By the way, do you think this black van has something to do with you blowing LeMarq’s brains out?”

  “What do you mean interesting?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “You know—you in a bikini doing Tai Chi, you scantily clad in the arms of your hot new boyfriend,” he said through a smile so big the pigeons were likely to crap on it. Then he dropped the smile. “Or a tip the next time a shooting goes down.”

  I hadn’t given this snake enough credit. He saw a pattern and knew it would happen again. Maybe he knew it already had.

  I nodded reluctantly. “We can work something out,” I said, careful not to agree to anything specific.

  He handed me the sweaty envelope, and I quickly took it.

  “I knew your dad, you know.” He took off his sunglasses and cleaned them with his dirty shirt. “Long time ago. He was a good guy.”

  “How would you know him?” I asked, seriously confused by how this lowlife could know a legend like my dad.

  “He helped me out on a research paper I did in grad school. This was a few years back
, before he became Sergeant, before I…got into this.” He put his glasses back over his squinting eyes, like he was suddenly ashamed of himself. “I used to be a real journalist.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” I muttered. “So why’d you join the dark side?”

  “Money,” he said flatly. “Grad school ain’t cheap.”

  And apparently, it’s ineffective at teaching proper grammar. “What did my dad help you with?” I asked.

  “Rooting out some interesting cops,” he said with raised eyebrows, like I was supposed to know what that meant.

  “OK,” I said, raising my eyebrows in return.

  “He made a few enemies back then, but I wasn’t one of them. He scratched my back and I scratched his.” He made another incomprehensible facial gesture. He thought we were speaking in some kind of code and I knew the subtext. But I didn’t.

  “They won’t tell me anything,” I burst out, knowing I was changing the subject. “They say my dad died in an ambush, blown up by explosives. But they have no idea who or why. Do you have any more back-scratching buddies left in SWAT?”

  He dropped all the wise-guy pretenses. “Sure I do.”

  “Anybody say anything about what happened?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “I still got some buddies in SWAT who talk. Loyal guys. Guys still torn up about it. Yeah, word is someone was causing him problems. A high-ranking special operative—someone with a vendetta. There was a report, an official complaint your dad filed just weeks before…” He stopped to make the sound of a bomb exploding and illustrated it with his fat little hands. “They didn’t tell you this stuff? Not even Mathews, your dad’s replacement? I thought the two of you were close.”

  “A report?” I said in half disbelief, half rage. “No one ever mentioned a report! Certainly not Mathews. What did it say?” Could the “special operative” be Mr. D. S.?

  “I’m not sure. I never saw it. This is just what I heard from Mathews, off the record. I’m not supposed to…” Uneasy, he started to look around. Like he felt someone watching us. “Look, that’s really all I know.”