Resisting Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series) (7 page)

BOOK: Resisting Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series)
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“Move,” Quinn urged as he appeared beside us. “This way.”

All four of us began sprinting again. Through trees, over rocks. My heart faltered when a bullet took out a chunk of a tree trunk right in front of me. Alana screeched in terror, unable to contain herself, but Chase kept her going. We all kept scrambling as fast as we knew how through the darkness and unfamiliar terrain.

“Faster,” Quinn ordered from the back of the pack. H
e’d
stopped to empty a clip at our pursuers. I wanted to do the same, but I couldn’t afford to let Alana stop moving.

A few moments later, a flash of lights down the ridge caught my attention.

“There,” Quinn yelled as he caught up to us, pointing to the silver four-door sedan parked alongside a copse of bushes on an old dirt road. He started it remotely with his keychain, and as we sprinted toward it, I wondered how none of Martinez’s men had managed to find and destroy this means of escape.

As if on cue, a bullet sparked off the hood of the vehicle, just twenty feet away now. Quinn and I both paused to fire a few shots at the fast-approaching figures behind us.

When I turned back around for my final sprint to the car, a force as strong as a twenty-foot wave, concentrated in spots as small as bee stings, knocked me to my knees.
I’d
been shot in the back. But the vest Quinn gave me must have stopped the bullets from shredding through my skin, because instead of feeling blood pour out of my chest (where the bullets would have exited), I felt like someone had taken a pickaxe to my back.

A scream lit up the night. It was Alana, from behind me. I turned to find her with blood all over her right shoulder.
Oh, please, no.
I froze, analyzing the situation. She appeared to be hit because of all the blood, but her posture was too straight. I looked to the ground beside her. It was Chase. He was the one who’d been shot; the blood must have sprayed onto her.

“Help,” Quinn said to me as he reached down and picked Chase up off the ground to throw him over his shoulder. “Get Alana.”

I hurried over and grabbed Alana by the arm, then forced her to run the rest of the way to the car. I opened the passenger door and pushed her inside. Quinn opened the back door and threw Chase in as if he were a sack of potatoes, not a teenage guy bleeding to death. I got into the backseat with Chase and shut the door just as a bullet ricocheted off the frame six inches from my head.

Quinn was in the driver’s bucket seat before I could blink, and in seconds we were doing sixty miles per hour on a road meant for off-road vehicles, not a sedan. The LED digital dashboard was the only light I had to ascertain Chase’s condition. He was limp in my lap, and I still had no idea where h
e’d
been shot. There was too much blood.

“Check his pulse,” Quinn said, shifting gears to turn onto a paved road.

I placed my fingers on Chase’s neck and closed my eyes to concentrate. Between the movement of the car and my own heartbeat pounding in my fingertips, I couldn’t tell at first. But then I found his pulse, slow and weak.

“He’s alive, but where was he shot?” I asked, frantic.

“His head,” Alana whimpered, her face in her hands. Her bloody hands covering her bloody face.

“What?” I fumbled for the cell phone in my pocket to turn the flashlight light app on. I had to wipe the blood off my hands for the screen to work. When the light came on, I saw the wound. It was more than a superficial graze, but less critical than it could have been. He was unconscious, most likely due to the shock and loss of blood. If we got him to the hospital soon enough, though, I thought he could live. “How far to the nearest hospital?” I asked.

“An hour, but let’s get out of Sherwood Forest first,” Quinn said, adjusting his rearview mirror and taking the speed up to 90, even though we had a switchback coming. This wasn’t just any ordinary sedan, I noticed. It was an Audi RS 7. How did a teenager own one of the most beautiful—not to mention one of the fastest—vehicles in the known world?

I craned my neck to see what Quinn was looking at behind us: another car. A black SUV. It looked just like Big Black, and my heart soared with hope that Liam and Sofia had gotten away, too. But when a shot rang out and cracked against our rear window, I dropped down, and so did my heart.

“You have bulletproof windows?” I couldn’t believe it. Glass should have shattered in my face just now.

“Can you shoot back?” Quinn asked, downshifting to take the curve.

“I think so.” I moved Chase’s head from my lap, not wanting to jostle him. I took my hoodie off and wrapped it around his wound as tightly as I could to help stop the bleeding. After delicately placing his head on the seat, I rolled down the window and leaned out to take aim. Quinn’s driving steadied while I put the most important parts of my body out of a dangerously fast-moving car. Wind whipped against my face as I pulled the trigger over and over. The SUV jerked and lost control as one of the tires exploded.

I had a few more rounds in my clip, but I dipped back into the Audi to let Quinn speed away. Just as I breathed a sigh of relief that I had stopped them without taking any lives, the SUV skidded off the road, completely out of control, and rolled down a steep shoulder. Metal crunched, glass exploded, and I knew there was little to no chance that anyone in that vehicle would make it out alive.

And just like all the other times that
I’d
taken someone’s life, a part of my soul cringed. It didn’t matter that they were trying to kill us; the suffocating sensation physically took my breath away.

“Well done,
partner
,” Quinn said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

The velocity of the vehicle’s increasing speed sent me back against the seat. As I lifted Chase’s head into my lap, I wondered if h
e’d
make it to the hospital. And if Liam had even made it out of the driveway.

CHAPTER 10

Quinn couldn’t be serious. He absolutely wasn’t taking all the circumstances into account. The consequences, the legal ramifications, and the fallout would be disastrous. Not to mention how disloyal and coldhearted it would be to leave Chase alone at this hospital—and not to mention how unlikely it was we could slip out unnoticed after our incredibly suspicious behavior. In fact, I was surprised that we hadn’t already been questioned by the two feeble senior citizen security guards we passed on our way in.

Yet Quinn had his hand outstretched to mine, his eyes urging me to exit the hospital with him immediately. Alana was still in the car, unwilling or unable to even enter the ER, but I wasn’t ready to leave.

“No, I won’t abandon him here,” I said, shaking my head at his gesture to follow orders. “The doctors need information: his parents’ names and phone numbers, his blood typ
e . . .

“No, they don’t. They need to get him into surgery, and they need you out of the way,” Quinn said, patient but firm. “Just trust me. Chase will be fine. I can’t convince you of everything right here, right now, but you need to come with me.”

“I don’t
need
to do anything,” I snapped back. I was reaching my limit of calm cooperation.
I’d
let him barge in, shove me against walls, and play boss for a little too long. “Why won’t you tell me where Liam and Sofia are? I’ve seen you communicating with her.”

“I swear that if you walk out of here right now with me, I’ll tell you everything. Remember? That was our deal. You help us get out of the cabin alive, and I tell you everything. But this isn’t exactly the place to do it. We’ve already lucked out in that rural hospital security leaves much to be desired, but I guarantee local police will be arriving any moment. Chase is going to recover whether we stay here or not. The question is whether you want to be in custody when he does. Got it?”

“I get it, but—” I said, looking around for any burly mountain cops responding to a call about a teenager with gunshot wounds. A few uniforms just coming in fit the bill. Maybe calm cooperation was exactly what I needed. “Fine.”

When we got back to the car, Alana had curled up into a ball in the backseat, despite all the blood. She was in shock, with no idea what w
e’d
just done—left the boy she loved at the hospital alone. It was too awful to acknowledge.

“Alana?” I said gently from the passenger seat, wanting to make some sort of contact. “You OK?”

She didn’t answer or even open her eyes. It was as if her body and mind had turned off completely, too overwhelmed to stay conscious.

I let Quinn get some distance from the hospital before I considered breaking the silence between us. The sleek digital clock read 5:52 a.m., and the sky behind the mountain was showing signs of dawn.

“Where are we going?” I asked, checking my rearview mirror for any flashing lights.

“Don’t freak out,” Quinn started, which made me freak out, of course, “but Sofia and Liam sort of totaled
your car. Don’t worry, though—only the car was injured. They’re alive and well, but unfortunately on foot.”

As much as I was relieved that Liam was OK, my chest tightened at hearing
I’d
lost Big Black. He wasn’t only a car. He was my refuge and escape, not to mention a tie to my dad that
I’d
never get back. From Black’s custom speakers to his tailored sound system, I loved him. So much for
things
not being able to break my heart.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Quinn asked. “I said Liam is fine.”

Ashamed of myself, I tried to focus on the
person
I loved who was still alive.

“On foot where?” I asked, gripping the armrest, as if Quinn’s beautiful car could comfort me.

“Still in the mountains, and we need to get to them before anyone else does.” Quinn’s speed was reaching a record that
I’d
never dared myself. “And I’m not just talking about Martinez’s men. If Sergeant Mathews or anyone on his team gets involved, things get tricky. So this is what I am going to ask you to do: call Mathews.” Quinn trespassed into my personal space and reached into my pocket for my phone.

“And say what?” I asked, aghast at this ridiculous request.

“That service was out, but everything is fine.
Everyone
is fine.”

“But that’s not true. Everyone is not fine. The men he assigned to protect me are probably dead. Chase is barely alive. Alana is drenched in blood and traumatized for life. And Liam might not even make it out!” My voice raised too high, making Alana stir.

“Ruby.” Quinn tempered me by putting his hand on mine. “You’re smarter than this. Why are you losing control?”

Control? Smarter than this? Who the hell does he think I am?
“These are the facts,” I said, very much in control as I yanked my hand away from his. “We already established that Mathews probably figured out hours ago that something went terribly wrong. If I call, he’s going to press me for details—he’ll never believe some crap story about everything being fine. Knowing him, he’s probably already put himself in danger for me.”

“I don’t think so,” Quinn said assuredly. “I would have known about it by now. Someone must’ve gone to the trouble to keep him out of it. But let’s be sure. Just call him, and if he’s cool, then you’re cool. Understand?”

“Let’s say you’re right,” I said, hoping he was, for Mathews’s sake. “He’s going to find out about Chase eventually. Not to mention that Liam killed the other LeMarq.”

“Yes, eventually,” Quinn reasoned. “That’s the point. Right now we need to handle what we can, and deal with the rest as it comes. If you care about the safety of Mathews and his men, you’ll make the call.”

I pinched my eyes shut, trying to subdue the pain behind them. My sockets throbbed, my head hurt, my body ached, and I was deathly tired. I supposed Quinn was right—I needed to call Mathews and make sure he didn’t make things more complicated than they already were. At a minimum, I had to find out where he was and if he was OK.

“Fine,” I said, gripping my phone and dialing the number. As I waited for Mathews to answer, I channeled the Ruby from twenty-four hours ago. The Ruby who was having fun with her friends and only thinking about breaking rules normal teenagers break. Like excessive physical contact with the opposite sex.

“Ruby, where in the hell have you been?” Mathews answered.

“In the mountains, duh,” I said, my voice squeaky from forgetting to clear my throat.

“Where are you?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you check in last night?”

I took a deep breath, preparing for my lie. “The landlines are down up here, and the cell service really sucks. I had to drive down first thing this morning to call at all. I’m really sorry if you worrie
d . . .

“Of course I worried. We all worried!” Mathews said. “I haven’t heard from you in over thirty-six hours, and now my men assigned to your detail haven’t responded in the last two hours.”
Only two hours? How was that possible?
“I’m on my way up there right now.”

“I don’t know what happened to your men,” I said, telling the truth. “But I’m OK, so don’t worry about me. Where are you
exactly
?”

“On Highway 330. Approximately sixty minutes out, according to GPS. Where are you?”

“We’re at the base of the mountain. We were headed west to find some café for breakfast,” I lied off the cuff. “Some famous pancake house.”

“Well, change your plans,” Mathews ordered with an authoritative tone that Jack Rose would have been proud of. “Until I find out what happened to my men, I want you home immediately.”

“Home as in Dr. T’s condo? Or Casa de Rose? Or—”

“Hang on,” Mathews cut me off before giving some muffled orders to people on his end of the line. “Listen, Ruby, I’m going to send a team up the mountain to investigate what happened to my men, and I’ll meet you back at the hospital, OK?”

I paused, my heart pounding as I searched my brain for a way that he could have already found out about Chas
e . . .

“Your mother has been asking for you.”

It took a few shell-shocked seconds to figure out that he was referring to a completely different hospital with a totally different head-trauma victim I cared about.

“What?” I gasped. “She’s awake? I thought they were keeping her in a coma.”

“Things have changed. How far out are you?”

I checked with Quinn. “Tell him three hours,” he whispered.

“Something like three hours, I think.”

“OK, I’ll be waiting for you. But if anything changes, call me immediately,” Mathews said, sounding relieved. “And Rub
y . . .

“Yeah?”

A pause full of enough huffing and puffing to blow a house down. “Be careful.”

“OK. See you soon.” I waited for him to press end first before I pulled the phone away from my ear. Staring out at the beautiful sunrise peeking over the majestic mountain range, I thought about all the people I loved whose lives were hanging in the balance. My mom, who was hundreds of miles away. Chase, who w
e’d
left behind. Liam, who was somewhere ahead, his future jeopardized by LeMarq’s blood on his hands. I didn’t know how to help any of them.

Quinn pulled his cell out of his vest and read it at an angle that prevented me from rubbernecking. He started typing something back.

“I’m pretty sure that texting and driving at
legal
speeds is unsafe. You’re going over 100 miles per hour. Why don’t I do it?” I said, reaching for his phone.

“It’s fine.” Quinn turned the screen off. “Done. Sofia sent me her coordinates. I activated the GPS. ETA thirty-five minutes.” He nodded toward the console, which now showed a map not dissimilar to one on
Star Trek
. “Don’t worry, they’ll live.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, annoyed at how he could be so cold and unconcerned about his
partner
, Sofia, wandering on foot in the mountains, most likely still being pursued by Martinez’s private army. “What’s your deal with Sofia, anyway?” I asked, without sorting out my intentions behind the question.

“What do you mean?” Quinn scratched at his five a.m. shadow. The boy had some sexy scruff going on, and he knew it.

“I mean, are you really her boyfriend, like she said when she came over undercover that night? Because if that’s the way you treat your girlfriend, then I feel sorry for her.” I aimed for insulting to offset my obviously inappropriate jealousy issues.

“Exactly how am I treating her that you find so offensive?” Quinn asked with an extra dose of charming British cadence.

“You set her up to fail,” I explained. “If they thought she was me, then she had a much smaller chance of escaping.”

“It’s her job, Ruby.” Quinn took his gaze off the road to eye me, as if I were daft.

“It was her job to sacrifice herself for me?” I asked, my tone entering award-winning debate mode.

“If there’s one thing I know for sure, Sofia doesn’t sacrifice herself for anyone, least of all not the girl who’s meant to replace her.”

“Replace her?”

“Sofia wants out,” Quinn said squarely. “She’s one of the best we have, and she wants to quit. This last operation was part of her severance agreement.”

“Back up,” I said, taking a few moments to connect all the dots. “What does she want out of? No one has told me exactly. And how exactly am I
meant
to replace her?” Was he talking about her position as an operative or her position in his bed?

“I suppose this is as good a time as any to give you the spiel.” He opened the console that separated his body from mine, drew out another manila folder, and handed it to me.

I opened the thin file. The first page read: “Independent Contractor Agreement.” I scanned through all the legalese until I saw the numbers. More specifically, the zeros. Eight of them in all, preceded by the number three and a dollar sign: $
3,000,000.00
.

“What is this?” I asked, not able to see past the first page yet.

“It’s yours if you join. But you might like to read the fine print,” Quinn said with a strange smirk. “It’s not exactly a summer job at the mall.”

I scanned through the pages—all ten of them—finding phrases like
risk of bodily injury
,
national security clearance
,
nondisclosure penaltie
s
. . .

“This is insane,” I declared.

“You could always ask for more money.” Quinn shrugged. “I’ve never seen Skryker so keen on a recruit before. I bet you could get five.”

“Quinn,” I said, “I’m seventeen years old. I haven’t even emancipated myself.”
Like
I’d
been considering.
“I’m not even old enough to sign this contract.”

“Ah, yes, the D.A.’s daughter knows the law,” Quinn said as he bobbed his head. “Rest assured, no one is going to take you to court. It’s more a formal way of presenting the terms of employment.”

“Employment! I just barely finished my junior year of high school. And
I’d
like to have a super uneventful senior year. Well, as uneventful as possible, given my life.”

“No one wants to strip you of your all-American high school experience, Ruby.”

“So why don’t you tell me specifically and exactly what it is that you
do
want me to do? This agreement doesn’t say.”

Quinn licked his lips and squinted ahead. “It’s always different. Sometimes it’s as easy as making a drop in a foreign country. Other times it involves bulletproof vests and hand grenades.”

“Is this CIA or what?” I asked, still not getting it.

“No, not officially. Neither the United States government nor the British crown can afford to be linked to hiring teenagers to conduct special operations on covert affairs. Not very politically correct.”

“But Skryker is CIA, no?”

“No.”

“No? But he made me believ
e . . .

“He’s ex-CIA. Now he runs Black Tide.”

“Black what?”

Quinn pointed to the document in my hands, where at the top it read, “Black Tide, Ltd.” How did I miss that? “It’s an international private security firm,” Quinn said, using air quotes.

BOOK: Resisting Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series)
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