My head swiveled to Jane to assess if he was telling the truth. She didn’t deny it.
“She warned me to stay away and shut the door in my face,” Silver continued. “I tried for years to change her mind—or Jack’s mind. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you or disrupt your life. Especially considering my line of work. So I let it go. But I never let you go. I watched you grow up from a distance. There were times when I could’ve reached out to you. So many times. Especially after the LeMarq shooting when I started following you to try to figure out what was going on. Then when I saw that sketch the day of your high school art fair—that’s when I knew that someone was trying to dig up the past.”
Could this be true? Was this why I felt like I knew him already? He’d been so near for so long and I had no idea.
“So you’re claiming that it wasn’t you digging up the past?” I asked, not sure I could believe him. “Why would you have risked coming into my school?”
“I received a letter asking me to come. Supposedly from you.”
“What?” I asked, utterly confused. “I didn’t send you a letter. I didn’t even know you existed!”
“I knew it wasn’t from you, but I had to go anyway.” He paused and rolled his neck as if hesitating in his explanation—or his lies. “Almost a year ago, I received a very similar letter—on the same exact stationery—from Jack Rose, saying that he wanted to talk. When I read the suggestion that we meet here on Grissom, I became suspicious but figured I could handle it. You had just turned sixteen, and I thought it was finally time for us to meet. But when I got here, it was a trap.”
“So you blew him to pieces?” My furious voice bounced off the walls.
“No, Ruby, I thought Jack set the trap for me. That he chose Grissom Island because one of his ex-Marine buddies is head of security here. I figured that when he realized I wasn’t going to fall into his ambush, he called in his SWAT team and told them that I’d set the explosives. I escaped, and I honestly didn’t know what had happened. At the time, I thought he must’ve made a mistake or tried to disengage one of his own traps to protect his men and…something had gone wrong.” Silver sounded miserable. And he could no longer yell his side of the story over the clamor of the tapping.
I didn’t understand this guy.
Why would my dad have messed with something he wasn’t experienced with? He didn’t work with explosives. Something wasn’t adding up. If only he had trusted me enough to tell me what was going on. If only he’d told me the truth.
And then I realized what Mathews was really trying to say with the tapping. It’s what Jack himself would have said if he were here—to remember to stand for honor, courage, and commitment. Jack Rose taught me everything I knew. Whatever his flaws were, or whatever mistakes he made, he shouldn’t have died because of this madness. He was only trying to keep his family together. Prevent all this from happening. And he couldn’t. Despite how hard he tried to prepare me for it, even his worst fears couldn’t have dreamed up this particular nightmare.
“That’s it!” Martinez cut back in. “It’s time to make your choice. You shoot Mr. Violet or your mother. Ten, nine…”
There had to be another choice. If I took a Hail Mary shot at Martinez, he’d stop me—either with a bullet at my mom or me. Plus he had a bulletproof vest on. Same with Silver.
If I took the shot on Violet, SWAT would stop me.
If I chose to do nothing, Violet would be forced to act, bullets would fly, and Jane could get hurt all the same.
The problem was that all these choices produced the same unacceptable results:
Both Martinez and Silver would escape—just like Silver did the last time SWAT had the place surrounded. Neither of these guys would ever surrender with their hands in the air. This entire thing had been meticulously planned. I had no confidence that SWAT or Mathews could stop them.
Liam would go to prison for the rest of his life if Jane decided telling the truth was still a major inconvenience. I couldn’t allow myself to put all my trust in her again. If there was one thing I knew for sure now, it was that the woman could justify anything.
“Eight, seven…”
I stood frozen when the answer came to me. There was only one choice left.
I chose Jack Rose, and what he stood for. He might have made mistakes, but he willingly put his life on the line to protect me.
And he had died trying.
“Six, five…”
I looked back to Violet, who was slowly making his move toward my mom.
“Four, three…”
“Remember what I told you?” I asked Violet in a voice loud enough for him to hear through the noise. “You need to protect yourself. You have to fight.”
He shook his head, not understanding what I meant.
“Ruby, stay where you are,” Silver called out. “Don’t move any closer to him.”
“You’ll have to stop me!” I screamed and ran full speed into Violet’s waiting blade.
Too many things happened at once. I felt a searing pain in my side, my mother screamed, several gunshots tore open Violet’s arm, and I collapsed. I looked down to find Violet’s knife sticking up from my torso, like one of those Halloween costumes with the rubber knife poking out. I fought for consciousness through the blurring pain and blood loss to make sure everyone was still alive.
Violet was hurt, whimpering in the fetal position, but conscious. He’d be OK. He’d been shot before.
Mom was screaming like she was on fire, but she’d live.
Martinez had either retreated farther into the shadows or was gone. I figured as much. He got the revenge that he came for—our family was destroyed. He didn’t necessarily want me or Jane dead, but he wanted us ruined, and most of all, he wanted Jane to regret raising me.
But I was relying on the opposite to be true for Silver. The man who was my real father surely wouldn’t turn his back on me now. I scanned the room for movement, for a shadow to tell me he was still here. When I realized that he was gone, the throbbing in my side doubled—like a self-inflicted punishment.
He was supposed to save me. Just as he had at the warehouse and the apartment fire. It was my last hope of forcing him into a weakened position so that SWAT could disarm him. Then they’d take him into custody, force him to account for his involvement in all the crimes, and testify that Martinez wasn’t even dead. Maybe he’d even have a way to lure Martinez back to be held accountable as well. Liam would be released. I would be exonerated for my part in the deaths.
I was so delusional. Silver was long gone.
An explosion went off, but from what direction I had no idea. An alarm sounded soon after. Through the ringing in my ears and the swirling emergency lights all around me, I heard shouting and commotion.
I blinked over and over to fight the pain and fear washing me away. I’d managed to get stabbed in possibly the most excruciating (but safest) location on my core. So long as no one pulled this thing out and the paramedics got here in time, I’d probably be OK, too. As long as the whole island didn’t explode.
But it was all for nothing since the two men behind all of this had fled once again—
Suddenly, someone had me by the shoulders and was pulling me under the protected cover of shadows and scaffolding—it was Silver, using me as a cover, knowing SWAT wouldn’t shoot me. Relief fought with misery for control of my emotions.
I had him. Even if it was for the briefest of moments.
He picked me up like a baby and carried me gently to a concealed corner near his escape door. I pinched my eyes shut in agony as he set me down, partially on the ground, partially on his lap.