How many times was she going to give me that “we need to talk” crap?
“Then talk,” I challenged. “Why do you need Dr. Teresa present to talk to me?”
She rattled the door handle. “I just do.”
I was about to admonish her for being so evasive (something she loved to do to me) when the door swung open. It was unlocked and no one was inside, that much I could see.
I stood, surprised that her door was unlocked if she wasn’t there.
“This is highly unusual,” my mom said disapprovingly.
“Which part?” I answered, walking past her into Dr. T’s room. “The District Attorney breaking and entering or someone standing you up?”
“All I did was check the door. It swung open on its own,” she said defensively.
I’d never been in Dr. T’s office without her being there. Curious, I wandered around the space. I’d always wanted to know more about Dr. T: her family situation, her failed marriage, her miscarriages, her history. Despite how hard she worked on me to open up, she never really returned the favor. All I knew about her came from my mother.
“What are you doing?” my mom asked, sounding suddenly uncomfortable.
“Nothing,” I said, looking through some papers on Dr. T’s desk. “Just checking to see if she left us a note or something.”
“If she left a note, it would have been on the door,” she argued. “Or she’d have sent me an e-mail.”
True. This was so unlike her. Then again, after ten years of intermittent therapy, I wasn’t confident I really knew what she was “like” anyway. I continued to search her desk for a family picture or keepsake that held some trace of who she really was. Instead, it was scattered with self-help books, medical journals, candles, and an assortment of coffee mugs.
“Come on, let’s wait outside and I’ll call her to see where she is,” Mom said, digging through her bag for her cell.
I was about to leave the room when I looked at Dr. T’s chair. My breath caught, and time jerked to a halt—like the moment I shot LeMarq, like the moment the blade went into Father Michael’s chest.
A large, old-fashioned brass key sat in Dr. T’s place.
I felt sick as I reached to pick it up. The panic rising in my chest threatened to consume me as I realized the key could only mean one thing—he’d taken her. The Key Killer, the fourth man on my list.
Attached to the rusty key was a red string and a small note. I pinched it up with my fingertips like it was a poisonous spider. The note read:
Find me.
The handwriting was Dr. T’s—I’d seen it so many times before. Another one of the Key Killer’s signature moves—forcing the victims to leave one last plea for help to their family.
My vision went starry. Air wasn’t making it to my lungs.
Not Dr. T. Not the only person in the world who knew me best and loved me anyway.
I couldn’t comprehend what kind of an evil person would crush minds and souls like this. How would I find her? None of his victims had ever been found. Not one of them. Twelve keys. Twelve missing persons behind twelve locked doors.
This had gone too far, become too personal. If the Key Killer or Silver were here right now, I would tear them to shreds. I looked back at the note, but it was turned the wrong way now—and there was a message on the other side, written in someone else’s hand:
If you want the Doctor to live, do not involve Jane.
“She’s not answering.” My mom’s voice sliced through my spinning frenzy. Why couldn’t I involve her? “I’ll leave a message.”
As she waited to leave a voicemail on a phone that would probably never be found, my mind raced.
Wait, Dr. T’s phone wasn’t off. It rang before it went to voicemail. That meant it could be tracked. If I called the phone, the nearby towers would ping her location—and we might find her before he turned it off and demolished it. I had to act fast.
If there was ever a time I needed my mom, it was now. She had the resources to track the phone, and she cared about Dr. T, too. Surely, she’d pull out all the stops to find her. But a flashback of the blonde girl on Ninth Street stung my mind. Silver didn’t bluff. I couldn’t risk Dr. T’s life by involving Jane. I’d have to find another way.
Suddenly, I knew where I needed to go. To the only person I trusted.
As my mom left Dr. T a voicemail, I escaped. Even when she yelled after me to come back, I kept running to Big Black.
“Slow down,” Liam said, grabbing me by the wrists after I told him about the key. “Ruby, everything is going to be OK.”
“No, it’s not,” I argued. “You don’t understand. This can’t happen to her. Not Dr. T.”
Looking over his shoulder at half the football team and most of the cheer squad staring at us, he pulled me deeper under the bleachers for privacy. Even though Alana’s back was firmly facing me, I wondered if it hurt her that I’d come running to Liam and not her.
“Ruby, just breathe for a second.” Liam still wore his pads with his helmet pulled back on his head. He looked so normal, so All-American. And here I was, drawing him into my dark world, trying to fight a serial killer.
“So, what do you want to do?” he asked quietly
“I need someone with access to cell phone tower information,” I said, knowing it was a ridiculous game plan. A Hail Mary.
“Well, who would have that kind of access?”
“A detective, I guess.” I thought out loud. “Someone who could get a quick warrant.”
“Well, how many detectives do you know who could help with that?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer.
I knew it, too, and the answer was “one”: Detective “I’m Gonna Take You Down” Martinez. I put my face in my hands. I couldn’t believe it had finally come to this. But if it meant Dr. T might live, I would willingly place myself at the mercy of a man I wasn’t sure I could trust.
“It looks to me like you don’t have a choice,” he said, pulling my hands away from my face and nudging my chin so I’d look up at him. “Do you still have his card?”
“I think so,” I said, fumbling through my backpack. “Yeah, here it is.”
“Good. Let me just tell Coach I gotta go. I’ll be right back, OK?”
I wanted to stop him. Tell him I could do this on my own. Tell him I’d go to Detective Martinez first and then call him. But the truth was, I needed him. Or maybe I just wanted him so badly that it felt like need at this point.
Maybe if Liam had been with me when Father Michael died, I wouldn’t have fled the scene and lost the body. Maybe it would have prevented the whole thing. And maybe if Liam came with me now it would throw off some part of Silver’s plan, and we could get the upper hand.
I gripped the rusty key until it left marks in my skin. I would never let go of it until I found her. How many other loved ones had the same thought about their key before the police took it away as evidence? The thought made a bad taste come to my mouth, as if the key was firmly lodged in my throat.
“I just have to go change,” Liam said, suddenly in front of me again. “I’ll meet you at your car, and we’ll call Martinez together, OK?”
“Sure,” I responded, feeling nearly defeated already. I was about to cross over the point of no return—go to the cops, hand myself over to the Detective my mom had told me to stay away from, the man who’d betrayed my father—without any certainty we would ever find Dr. T. I panicked at the thought of where she might be. If she was scared or confused—or even alive.
“Hey,” he said, doubling back and reaching out to squeeze my hand. “It’ll be all right. We’ll find her. Remember, this guy keeps drawing you in. He wants you to save her, and he wants you to kill her abductor.”