Resisting Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series) (8 page)

“So,
security
? You’re a bodyguard, then?” I asked, incredulous at how they could hire teenagers for that.

“When the job calls for it. Though I would say most of my jobs involve the opposite of guarding bodies.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I ‘pull triggers,
’
 
”
quoting Liam from last night, when Liam wanted to shoot Quinn and Sofia. The jab hit the target.

“And Skryker wants me because I’m a proven killer,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Skryker knows how particularly suited you are to this line of work. I’m sure your looks don’t hurt either.” Quinn tossed me a seductive smile that didn’t fit the situation.

I blushed against my will. Although the heat could also have been coming from the stress of this insane proposition. Three million dollars. International security. Pulling triggers for a job.

No. No. No. But I couldn’t find my voice. I had no way of articulating my objections to this abominable, dangerous, ridiculous situation. Plus, Alana was starting to stir.

“How are we going to find them?” I asked, changing the conversation as we returned to the forest. I needed to be with Liam. With someone and something I knew was good and right.

“See this icon?” Quinn said, pointing to his GPS monitor, lit up in cool blue. “It’s Sofia’s coordinates. They should be approximately two miles up the bend on the south side of the river.”

“Good.” I didn’t need any more conversation. And if any more triggers needed to be pulled,
I’d
leave it to the professionals.

CHAPTER 11

When Liam and Sofia climbed in the backseat of Quinn’s car with Alana, I was relieved. But my relief turned to aggravation the longer we drove without Liam so much as touching me. I knew the circumstances were difficult. Challenging at best, disastrous at worst. But the last time I saw him he said he loved me, and now all I got was tense silence?

After Quinn and Liam had a heated discussion about Chase’s condition and location at the nearest emergency room, everyone fell quiet. Including me, especially when I turned and caught the way Sofia reassured Liam with her perfectly manicured fingers on his leg. There were way too many cooped-up emotions in this vehicle. I didn’t know who I wanted to hug, kiss, punch, slap, and otherwise touch the most.

“So how are we going to do this?” I asked no one in particular after an hour of driving. “Liam, Alana, and I get dropped off at the hospital, then try to explain to Sergeant Mathews and other interested parties that we hitchhiked home?”

“Skryker will be at the hospital waiting to debrief you,” Sofia said matter-of-factly, as if that was all I needed to know.

I turned to Quinn to see if he had anything to add. He didn’t. Instead he gave her another one of those secret-combination looks to which I didn’t have the access code.

“I just want to go home,” Alana squeaked. I glanced back to find her tearing up again. “I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise. Ruby can vouch for me. I’ve kept all her crazy secrets for years. Please, I just want to see my family.”

“You’ll see your family soon,” Sofia said. “Debriefing will be short and sweet.”

“
Sweet
?
Right.” I turned back around before Sofia could give me another dirty look. “And you can keep the hoodie. Other people’s blood doesn’t look good on me.” I shocked myself with my own cattiness. I wasn’t normally so rude. And I wasn’t sure my supposedly cutting remark even made much sense.

“That’s funny, because you’re kind of covered in it right now.” Sofia leaned forward from the backseat, took off my brightly colored Roxy sweatshirt, and dropped it on my lap. “Besides, cheap doesn’t look good on me.”

Ouch.

I threw the stupid thing on the floor mat and rested my head on my window. I was done with her. If I never saw her or her voluptuousness again,
I’d
be fine with that.

When we reached the hospital, Quinn pulled into the parking structure around the back instead of dropping us off at the front. He parked on the west end of the third floor next to an oversize black SUV with tinted windows. It made my heart ache for Big Black, who could’ve taken me far away from all this madness.

The window of the SUV descended and there he was: Skryker. “Get in,” he ordered.

I turned to Quinn. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it.” Quinn nodded. “For now.”

I tried not to let it show, but I didn’t want to leave the car. It might have been because I was now extremely wary of Skryker, a wolf in CIA clothing. Or it could have been that
I’d
finally have to confront the reality of everything head-on. Or it could simply have been leaving Quinn’s side. Even knowing Liam would be going with me didn’t help me move my feet.

“Let’s go, Ruby,” Liam said as he got out of the backseat, along with Sofia. As Liam offered his hand to Alana, I caught Quinn’s eye. He placed a gentle hand on my thigh and whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon.”

My breath caught at the intimacy of the moment. No one saw the stolen touch and gesture. Not Liam, not Sofia, not Skryker, and certainly not the grief-stricken Alana.

Whatever was going on between Quinn and me needed to stop. Now.

Sofia opened my door. Like a valet to a hotel guest, she used a sweeping motion to indicate I should get out of the car. I did.

When Quinn and Sofia drove away, I didn’t watch them go. Instead, I rounded the SUV and climbed into the front passenger seat as Liam and Alana got in the back. It was only then that I realized Quinn had taken the gun out of my waistband without my noticing.

Before I even had a chance to blink, Skryker put another one of his stupid manila envelopes in my lap. “This is your story.”

“
Our
story,” I repeated, hating the fact that all three of us were going to have to memorize and regurgitate a huge lie. I opened the file to find three sheets of paper, copies of the same info.

“One for each of you.” Skryker adjusted the air to blow cooler, and I felt it on my face and down my spine. I handed the paper to Liam and Alana before I scanned it myself. A list of bullet points outlined the lies. From no service due to inclement weather and downed telephone lines to Liam being the one responsible for the accidental shooting of Chase.

“Whoa,” I said, slamming the paper on my lap. “You want Liam to take the rap for the shooting? He’s not going to do that.”

“Relax,” Skryker said dismissively. “There will be no charges, no publicity. I’ll take care of everything. The local PD won’t even need to interview Mr. Slater. It was simply an unfortunate accident due to careless teenage shenanigans. It will be reported as such, and nothing more. My sources tell me that Chase is out of surgery and doing well. He’ll be released in a few days, and one of my team members will make sure that he is safe and informed. His parents will be alerted and discreetly persuaded to make nothing further of it. If Sergeant Mathews’s suspicion becomes a problem, let me know and we will find a solution.”

I despised the way he simplified all the horror with a word like
shenanigans
. Surely he was overlooking a few details. And what did he mean by “discreetly persuaded” and “find a solution”? Chase’s parents and Mathews could never be harmed, though I was fairly sure that’s not what he meant. He was too smart to leave a trail of bodies up the coast of Southern California.

“What about Mathews’s men?” I demanded. “A SWAT team is probably up there right now, combing through all the dead bodies to find their friends.”

“It’s been taken care of,” Skryker said, seemingly gauging my emotional stability with his probing stare. “Those men are no longer MIA. They’ve been found, and they’re safe. Not completely sound, but I’ve taken care of them. They’ll receive a handsome reward for their silence, and they have successfully called off their brothers in arms.”

“So Martinez or his paid guns held them hostage or somethin
g . . .
and somehow fooled Mathews into believing the surveillance was uninterrupted?” I asked, working through the frayed ends of my understanding.

“Something like that.” Skryker checked his phone, as if something else could have been more important than this.

I couldn’t believe it. Was anyone free from corruption? Could Skryker have so swiftly cleaned up the whole debacle already? I racked my sleep-deprived brain for any loose strands, when one occurred to me—right in front of my eyes.

“What about my car? How am I going to explain that?” I asked.

“
This
is your car,” Skryker said flatly.

“What do you mean? This is most definitely not my car.” I looked around just to make sure. I would’ve liked nothing more than for Big Black to be magically resurrected.

“It is now. No one will know the difference. The plates are identical, same make and model. Perhaps the smell of new leather is the only difference. An improvement from the previous overkill of vanilla and piña colada.”

Did he just use the word
overkill
for my choice of car scents right after he called Chase’s near fatal bullet wound to the head an “unfortunate accident”?

“What about our clothes? We left everything at the cabin, and we’re covered in blood,” Liam piped in.

“Each of you will find a change of clothes and some cleaning supplies in the back. I’ll make sure that your personal items
from the cabin are returned to you and all other evidence is cleaned up accordingly. Do you understand?” Skryker wasn’t just talking to me. He was addressing all three of us. When Liam and Alana failed to acknowledge the question, he reiterated, “Do you understand?”

Both Liam and Alana nodded and offered a weak yes.

“Now, I want you to further understand,” Skryker said, his voice dropping an octave, as if to switch into ultra-condescension mode, “had I not assigned two agents to protect you, all three of you would be dead right now. I hope I don’t need to tell you that should you mention my name, my agent’s names, or our involvement in any of this, our protection will cease to exist, putting you in serious danger.”

My eyes found Liam and Alana’s, grateful that they still had life in front of them.

“And as for my offer, Ruby,” Skryker said, snapping my attention back to him. “It still stands. You’re more like your father than I could have wished for.”

I closed my eyes, preparing to unleash my aggravation at everything that came out of his preposterous mouth, when he beat me to the punch. “I’ll contact you in a few days. In the meantime, take care of yourself.” He swiftly exited Big Black’s imposter twin and disappeared.

Liam just as swiftly jumped out of the backseat and sat down in the driver’s seat.

“I can drive,” I said, flustered that h
e’d
reacted more quickly.

“I know,” Liam said. “But you need to get changed and cleaned up. I’ll drop you off at the front of the hospital—just like Mathews expects.”

“So you’re just going to play along? Accept the BS blame for shooting Chase?” I asked.

“Of course I am,” Liam responded, directly and maybe a little accusingly. “What other choice do I have? There’s no way out of this other than Skryker’s way.”

“Of course there’s another way,” I said. “There’s
our
way.”

Liam made a strange
hmph
ing sound as he pulled out of the darkness of the garage and into the bright light of day. I instinctually touched my head, then my shirt collar, to grab my sunglasses, but of course I wasn’t wearing them, since we ran out of the cabin into the dead of night. Instead, I felt the collar of my bulletproof vest—
I’d
forgotten I was still wearing it. I tugged at the Velcro sides and lifted it off, feeling the soreness in my back where the vest had absorbed the bullets. All this time, and I hadn’t thought to take it off. My skin thanked me for letting it breathe.

Without any more time to argue with Liam, I climbed over the center console past Alana into the back of the SUV. Just like Skryker said, there was a large duffel bag with a change of clothes for each of us. Three oversize plastic baggies marked with our names. I grabbed the one that read “Agent Rose,” clenching my jaw at the premature designation.

I took off my sweat- and blood-stained tank and pulled the new similar tank over my head. It felt disgusting and wrong to put clean clothes on my very dirty body, but what choice did I have? Lying on my back to change my jeans, I marveled at how well the new ones fit despite not actually being mine. Then I grabbed the wet wipes and began scrubbing off the dried blood, throwing the used wipes into the baggie with my old clothes—it was all garbage as far as I was concerned. Or, more to the point, evidence in need of disposal.

As Liam approached the hospital’s main entrance, I climbed back over the seat to sit next to Alana and handed her the baggie with her name on it. “Chase is going to be OK. You’re going to be OK. We are all going to be OK. OK?”

“OK,” she parroted back without looking me in the eye.

“Do you think you can remember the story?” I asked, pointing to the paper still in her trembling hands.

“I’m not as good at this as you are, Ruby.” She folded the paper in half. “But I’ll try my best.”

“You have to, Alana. It might be the only thing keeping you alive right now,” I said, wishing that the words weren’t true. That I somehow knew the way to protect her 24/7 without getting the police or media involved. Maybe Liam was right: Skryker’s way was the only way. “Go home, take a hot shower, tell your parents you’re sorry for worrying them, and I’ll call you in a little while. OK?”

“OK, fine,” Alana said, verbally slapping me in the face. “Just go.”

I hugged her against her will. “I really am sorry.”

Not feeling like I had any time left for another awkward and emotionally stunted good-bye, I opened the door without touching Liam. “Liam?” I said, asking for at least an acknowledgment.

“Yeah,” he said, finally turning to face me. Maybe he was tired or scared or hurt or a long list of other negative emotions—I had no idea—but there was a palpable divide between us that wasn’t there the last time he held me in his arms and told me he loved me.

“Will you come back and get me?”

“Just call me in a little while. Cool?”

I nodded and shut the door, feeling very
un
cool about everything, especially my two closest friends driving away. I told myself that they would be OK. Their end of the story was easy. They didn’t have parents (or guardians) whose primary set of skills involved investigating criminals or intuitively detecting signs of deception, as I had in Mathews and Dr. T.

But there was one good thing I could focus on—seeing my mom conscious for the first time in days.