CHAPTER 27
I woke up with a start. Gasping for air, I rolled over wondering who’d taken my pillow and why my comforter was tangled around me. It was 4:00 a.m.
“Oh jeez.” I sat up to get my bearings. Light trickled in from my bathroom across the way. “No rest for the wicked.”
Sore didn’t cover the way my back felt. Even my mind felt stiff. Dreams of blonde-headed zombies chasing me with pitchforks hadn’t been exactly restful. I looked around Gladys’s dark walls for some comfort, but for perhaps the first time in my life, my shoes had none to give. They all just sat there, listless and inanimate. I must have hit rock bottom if I felt alone even among my shoes.
I finally scraped myself off the floor and headed to the kitchen for something to eat. As I hobbled down the stairs, I noticed my mom’s doors were open. Maybe she couldn’t sleep, either.
I perked up my ears for signs of her presence, but all I heard was the howling wind seeping in from outside. No TV coming from her room, no dishes clinking in the kitchen, no tapping of the keyboard in her office.
I couldn’t help myself. I mounted the stairs again and peeked into her room. It would be so like her to lure me in there just to punish me for it. Maybe she was the mastermind after all. Or had employed Silver to make me into the assassin she couldn’t be. If she couldn’t put those killers away, she would have her psychopath child do it for her.
Now my speculation was getting out of control.
“Mom?” I called out. I hadn’t been in her room for months. “Are you in here?”
The wind whistled back like it was trying to tell me something. The hair on my arms stood on end.
Her bed was unmade; the light in her walk-in closet was on. Curious.
Her briefcase and car keys were on the dresser. Suspicious.
I rounded the corner into the hallway leading to her bathroom but was stopped by papers scattered all over the floor. Straight-up alarming.
“Mom!” I called out again, this time with a tremor of panic. To be sure, I doubled back into her room to look under the crumpled bedcover, in the closet, and even on her balcony.
I ran downstairs and then back up, checking each room to make sure she wasn’t hiding somewhere.
She wasn’t here.
Silver had gotten her. I was sure of it. Somehow, he’d slipped in past security and taken her. Despite the anger I’d felt toward her last night, all I felt now was sick. I went back to her bed and put my head in my hands. She was my mom, and I still loved her. I needed her, even if she’d never need me back. She was all I had left.
Blood. Why could I smell it all of a sudden? I sniffed the air like a dog. The metallic scent was definitely coming from the bathroom. I’d followed the coppery smell over the trail of papers and into the excessively large master bathroom suite when the wind got kicked right out of me. My mom’s sink was full of bloodstained water and more papers. The drain was actually blocked, holding it all there for me. I pulled out some of the papers and let them drip on the floor.
Red streaks covered the countertop and mirror. Mom must have resisted. I was horrified by my reflection—it looked like I was covered in blood. Like some magic mirror had finally revealed the real me.
Red Ruby Rose, stained in blood.
More papers were strewn across the drawers and shelves, all of them soaked in watery blood. I put them together on the bath mat to figure out what they could be. Knowing Silver, I had to assume they had meaning.
It was a pleading, and the caption read “In the Matter of the Custody of the Minor Child Hailey Bracken.” It was a Notice of Hearing on a Petition to Terminate Parental Rights. I dropped to my knees, desperate for more information. I found pieces of the Petition with my mom’s signature, then another signature on a paper titled “Affidavit of Guardian Ad Litem.” She hadn’t had physical custody of the child but had closely monitored the girl’s care, nutrition, and well-being. That much I got.
Through the scattered and blood-soaked puzzle pieces, a story started to unfold. Fifteen years ago, my mom was appointed temporary Guardian Ad Litem of a baby. The baby’s mom was on drugs, the baby had been neglected, and my mom terminated the bio mom’s rights. No mention of any dad. All I could find was “Abandonment by biological father, name unknown.”
During my mom’s Family Court days, she must have been appointed Guardian Ad Litem for dozens of children. Did this have something to do with Silver? Was he the one who’d abandoned his child? Was my original theory correct, and he was paying my mom back by slowly taking away everything she had? Did he intend to destroy her by destroying me, too?
Suddenly, her phone rang, the high-pitched ringtone frazzling what was left of my nerves. I followed the sound back to the bed and picked up her cell. Unknown number.
“Hello?” My voice cracked.
“Hello, Ruby,” a male voice said. It sent shivers down my spine.
“What do you want?” I demanded.
“Do you remember the last day you saw your father?” he said in a deep Batman-type whisper.
Of course I remembered. I remembered it every day. “Why? What are you planning to do to my mother?”
“Do you remember?” he repeated.
“Yes! OK, I remember.” I tried to remain calm. “Listen, whatever she did to you and your family, she’s sorry.” It wasn’t working. I was losing control. “We’re sorry—”
“Then remember last night, because unless you get here fast enough to save your mother, it will be her last night.”
I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
“Just so you know, Mr. Violet is also waiting for you.”
My heart sank. He must’ve taken Violet right after I left. Or maybe Silver had been there when I visited earlier.
“We are both waiting for you,” he said carefully. “I know I don’t need to tell you this, but if you call the police, you might as well call the morgue, because she will already be dead. We’re going to finish this just as it began—on Grissom Island. The place your father tried to bury the truth. More detailed instructions will be sent to your phone. Good-bye, Ruby.”
I held my mom’s phone long after the line went dead.
I had no idea what kind of delusional truth Silver was referring to, but a sharp reality lodged itself inside of me: This man had killed my father. I was sure of it now. My dad was murdered. Assassinated. By the same man who’d officially destroyed my life.
I’d believed knowing the truth would finally set me free. Instead, it crushed me. And hardened me. I vowed to make Silver pay.
If there was one way I could honor my father, it was to remember what he’d taught me. I couldn’t react emotionally. I had to be logical and strategic.
Silver had said he’d know if I called the police, so either he had a scanner or a rat on the inside who would tip him off. In any case, he couldn’t expect me to go in there alone. I longed for Liam. He was smart. He saw things I didn’t. I needed him, and my own mom had made sure I couldn’t have him.
I checked the call history on Mom’s phone. One name stood out among all the others: Mark Mathews—the man who let my dad die and then took his place as SWAT Sergeant. Why was my mom talking to my dad’s old best friend at 11:25 p.m.? And again at 11:52? Plus several missed calls through the night?
Was she sleeping with him, just like she had with Martinez? Or could it be they were working together on catching the man behind all this madness? Or both? My mom was a lot of things, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d probably known from the night I killed LeMarq that there was someone manipulating me. That the same man who killed her husband was following me, luring me, torturing me. And she’d never said a word.