Crushed Ruby, page 16
“Looky what we found,” Ghost sang as he dragged Judy into the room by her hair.
“Let go of her,” Dan growled.
They ignored him.
“How about a last ride on your stallion,” Ghost said, shoving Judy toward the bed.
She shook her head wildly. Tears streamed down her face, and her eyes locked onto his and begged him to save her.
But he couldn’t.
That hurt worse than the bullet through his kneecap.
“We talked about no more games,” Skull told Ghost.
“Relax, man, you’ll get your kills, but what harm is there in having a little fun first?” Ghost suggested.
“Fine, but you only have twenty minutes,” Skull said.
Ghost nodded his agreement of the terms, and Skull strode over to the rocking chair in the corner and sat. Black Cat went and curled up on his lap.
“You heard Skull,” Witch said to Judy, speaking for the first time. “Go take one last ride on your man.”
“Or we can take out his other knee,” Skull added, pointing the gun at him.
Judy whimpered but walked on shaky legs over to the bed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she removed her underwear.
“No, I’m sorry,” he whispered back. He was the man of the house. It was his job to protect his soon-to-be wife and kids, and he’d failed.
He had failed so very badly.
* * * * *
11:13 P.M.
He had been avoiding Ruby all evening.
It was a little immature, Judah acknowledged, but every time he thought he should just go and talk to her, he backed out.
He hadn’t meant to tell her like that. It had just kind of slipped out. She’d been beating herself up like there was something wrong with her because she suffered from a medical condition.
Because that was all it was.
She had been through something horrific; she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. That she had attempted suicide and still had suicidal thoughts was nothing for her to be ashamed about. He just hoped that she was getting herself the medical treatment that she needed.
Judah didn’t want to lose her.
Maybe if she realized that she wasn’t alone and that other people suffered from the exact same thoughts and feelings that she did, she wouldn’t feel so bad.
And maybe if he remembered that he wasn’t alone and that other people suffered from the same thoughts and feelings he had, then he wouldn’t feel so bad either.
Maybe they could help each other.
But only if he actually went and talked to her.
With a last look at the starry night sky, he opened the back door and stepped inside the Hatcher house.
“Finally stopped hiding.”
He turned at the voice and saw Sapphire and Gideon curled up together in front of the TV. Their dog—a Border Collie, called Luna—was curled up beside them, and Sapphire was absently stroking the dog’s head. He should have checked to see if anyone was still in here before coming in, but he’d thought it was late enough that everyone else would be in bed.
“What happened with you and Ruby? Last night you were so chummy, and today she’s hiding out in her room, and you’re hiding out in the backyard. What’s going on?”
“Sapphire,” Gideon chided, but she just shrugged and awaited an answer.
Judah didn’t want to break Ruby’s confidence in confessing the dark thoughts that she had to her sisters, but more than that, he didn’t want anything to happen to her. They were only just at the beginning of a relationship—assuming she still wanted one. Things might not work out between them, but she would always have Sapphire and her sisters.
“We talked earlier, and she let me know that the night of the break-in, she’d been thinking about hurting herself. That was why she had the razor she used to escape into the safe room,” he told them.
Sapphire jumped off Gideon’s lap where she’d been sitting. “I should have known that. I was too busy beating myself up for not being here that I didn’t even think about why she had a razor with her.”
“You can’t know everything,” Gideon said, standing and resting his hands on her shoulders. Sapphire leaned into him for a moment, drawing strength from him, and Judah couldn’t help a stab of jealousy that the two of them had found love.
“So, she trusted you and told you that, and then you avoided her?” Sapphire’s green eyes shot daggers at him.
“No, I told her something about myself, and that’s why I’ve been avoiding her all night.” There was no way he was telling them what; telling Ruby had been hard enough.
“Oh.” The fire seemed to dim in Sapphire’s eyes. “Well, that I understand. Advice?”
“Sure.” It wasn’t like he had anything to lose.
“Go to her … don’t leave it any longer.”
He was surprised to hear that coming from her. Not because it was good advice, but because she was encouraging him to actually go to Ruby.
Judah smiled at her, and she smiled back. He could read in her face that Sapphire didn’t have a problem with him, specifically. She was just protective of her sister and battling her own demons.
Taking her advice, he headed up the stairs but paused at Ruby’s bedroom door.
Talking about his past wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t something he liked doing. He knew that if he and Ruby were going to have a future that, at some point, he would have to tell her, but he hadn’t expected to do it so early.
Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she called out. So, she was awake. As much as he would like to put this off, it would be better just to get the conversation over and done with.
He opened the door and found her lying in bed, her e-reader in her hand. When she saw it was him and not one of her sisters, she put the e-reader down and got out of bed, wincing and stretching as she did as though her muscles were aching.
Unsure where to start, Judah just stood and looked at her, and she stood there staring right back at him.
“You told them, didn’t you? That I still think about suicide?”
He wasn’t going to lie to her. “I did.”
Ruby sighed. “Part of me wishes you hadn’t done that, but the other half is relieved. I wanted them to know; I just didn’t want them to be disappointed in me.”
“They could never be disappointed in you,” he reminded her. “They love you. For better or for worse, they’re never walking away from you.”
“Just like your family,” she said, watching him carefully to see if he was going to bail on her again. She needn’t worry. He wasn’t.
“You look stiff,” he said, needing to stall for just a few more minutes.
She arched a blonde brow at him, telling him she knew that he was stalling but would play along for the moment. “It’s the nightmares. I get so tense that I sometimes get stiff and achy all over.”
“I might be able to help a little with that.”
“Oh?” Although Ruby and her twin sister were blue-eyed blondes, and Sapphire and Diamond were green-eyed brunettes, she looked just like Sapphire when she said that and gave him a suspicious look.
“Go lie down on the bed … on your stomach,” he instructed.
“What?”
The look on her face made him laugh. “I’m just going to give you a massage.” Two birds with one stone. He could help with her stiff muscles, and he wouldn’t have to look her in the eye when he told her about his past.
“Okay,” Ruby said slowly, still sounding a little suspicious, but she went and lay down on her bed.
Judah walked over and climbed onto the bed beside her. She was wearing only an oversized T-shirt and a pair of plain white panties that he could see because when she lay down, the T-shirt moved up enough to show her long legs.
He deliberately averted his gaze. Tonight wasn’t about making out; it was about growing closer emotionally. There would be time to take their relationship to the physical level when they were both ready.
Starting with her shoulders, he began to knead her sore muscles. Almost immediately, she sighed delightedly, relaxed, and settled down farther into the soft mattress.
“You know how you told me earlier how if I needed someone to talk to, that you were there?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, you know the same goes for you. You can tell me anything. No judgment. The only thing I’ll give you is my support.”
That meant a lot to him.
More than he could ever express.
Ruby had more than enough on her plate, and there she was offering her support to someone else.
“I was eleven,” he started. “I was different than the other kids, I had—have—OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. For as long as I can remember, I had to have everything just a certain way, and if for some reason I couldn’t, then I would freak out. These days I have my obsessions and compulsions mostly under control, but back then, I didn’t. Back then, I would have meltdowns at school when I couldn’t do things the way I wanted to, and there were several compulsions that I had to complete throughout the day. There was a group of other boys in my class who used to bully me.”
They had been relentless.
Torturing him every chance they got.
Every day.
Every class.
They never gave him a break.
As his hands moved from Ruby’s shoulders to her back, he couldn’t help but flash back to those times—broken bones, black eyes, teasing, mocking, exclusion, threats. In the end, he just couldn’t take it anymore.
“They never stopped. They would find me on my way to school and follow me home. The whole day they would laugh at me, tease me, beat me up. I didn’t fill out until my late teens. Back then, I was a short, scrawny little thing, and it was always a few of them against me at a time. Then they started telling me I should kill myself, that I was worthless, that I would be better off dead, that my family would be better off if I was dead, that the world would be a better place without me in it. They said it so often that I started to believe it. So, one night I came home and swallowed every pill I could find in the house.”
“Oh, Judah.” Ruby scrambled up onto her knees to face him and took his hands in hers.
“It all worked out okay,” he said, his thumbs brushing absently back and forth across her knuckles. “My mom came home, found me, and got me to the hospital in time. I got help for my depression and my OCD. Things got better, and I was able to move on with my life.”
“But you never forget,” she said softly.
“No, you don’t.”
“When I was being held prisoner, and I thought about being rescued and going home, everything was so perfect, it was like life just went back to normal. But reality wasn’t anything like that. I think that was the worst part of it all. It never completely goes away. Those memories are always there—lurking at the back of my mind—and sometimes it feels like the only way to make them stop is if I’m not here anymore.”
Judah lifted her hands and pressed a light kiss to the back of one of them. “The world wouldn’t be a better place without you in it. It would be a much worse place.”
“The world wouldn’t be a better place without you in it, either,” she told him. “You’re such a good guy. You’re sweet and kind, and you chose a job where you spend all your time saving people. I’m really lucky to have you in my life.” Her gaze moved from his eyes to his lips and back again; her tongue darted out to wet her own lips.
Releasing his hold on her hands, he cupped her cheeks and gently drew her closer, then leaning down, he kissed her.
There were no fireworks or stars.
There was something better.
There was a sense of completeness.
Like all his life, there had been a piece of him missing, and now he had found it.
October 24th
9:50 A.M.
Another day, another family dead.
Judah was getting sick of this.
Three families destroyed in four days. This group was relentless, and he didn’t see an end in sight. So far, all they had were suppositions and a bit of flimsy evidence that gave them literally over a thousand suspects. They knew they were looking for four people—two men and two women—but between students and teachers and families of the students and teachers, there were more suspects than they could ever hope to work their way through.
It was starting to feel like they were never going to catch a break.
All they needed was one small thing to point them in the right direction. They had the connection to the school, but that was too broad. They needed something to narrow it down.
At least things with Ruby were looking good. Last night they had talked for a couple of hours before he’d finally gone back downstairs to spend the night on the couch. They’d done a little more kissing too.
It actually felt liberating in a way to have told her about his past. He didn’t want secrets between them, and knowing that she understood—and for her knowing that he understood—only strengthened their bond.
The bond that was growing between them only furthered his resolve to close this case. Judah took all his cases seriously, but he’d never worked a case before where one of the victims was someone that he knew. And not just someone that he knew, but someone whom he cared a great deal about.
“They’ve completely changed the script,” he said to Zeb as the two of them walked slowly down the stairs at the Lanely house. His fingers drummed their usual pattern on his thigh. The controlled movement not only helped keep his anxiety under control, it was also a small compulsion to focus on that others at bay.
“Other than breaking in through a broken back window, nothing else was the same,” his partner agreed.
“Except that they shot them,” he added. Ballistics needed to link this case to the others because when they did find this gang, he wanted to make sure they got punished for every single thing they’d done.
“Elsie will confirm for us that the cases are linked,” Zeb said, his mind obviously going in the same direction of his.
“They’re devolving, and it doesn’t seem like this was in the original script. I think it’s the power play between the two men. This gang of four is split right down the middle—two couples—but which one is going to end up on top? And what does that mean for us?” There were so many different ways that this could end up playing out, and it was hard to know which one was going to give them the best chance at finding them—and quickly.
“I’m still not getting a sense of motive,” Zeb said as they stepped out into the cool fall morning. “They start by tying people up and shooting them. Nothing more. Then things get messed up with Ruby, and that seems to change things. We know that the skull man was angry with the others, and then all of a sudden, the next break-in involves torture, and in this one, they tortured the couple again before killing them.”
“We assumed that the random bullet holes in the wall at the Kendrick house meant that skull didn’t like the torture and wanted to put a stop to it, but we don’t really know that. Maybe this was always the plan to escalate things each time. If they are doing it on purpose, then what can we expect next?”
Zeb didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
Neither of them knew where this was going to end.
Which was every bit as frustrating as it sounded.
Judah was about to say that at least the kids who lived in the Lanely house hadn’t been there last night, so none of them had been hurt when he noticed something moving across the street.
It wasn’t uncommon for a killer to return to the scene of their crime. Blend into the crowd of people who had gathered to watch. See the police scramble to figure things out, and keep tabs on what the cops were doing and the investigation, or just soak up what they saw as their good work.
“Zeb, over there,” he said to his partner, nudging his head in the direction of the movement he had seen because if the killer was watching them, he didn’t want to alert them and give them a chance to run. “There’s someone over there, behind the hedge in the house right across the street. We should go check it out.”
“You think it could be the killer?” his partner asked, discreetly looking over at the hedge.
“The only way to find out is to go over there.”
Zeb nodded, and they both strolled across the street. Although it was ten in the morning and most people should be at work or at school, quite a few people were standing in the street, gathered in small groups and whispering and pointing at the Lanely house.
Judah had never gotten the fascination with evil.
He had chosen this job because he wanted to save people, and he thought that he would make a good police officer and would be able to accomplish that goal. To him, this job was about looking at a scene and collecting the pieces of evidence then putting them together like a puzzle to find the person they were looking for. That was it. He didn’t take any secret pleasure in the gory crime scenes, and he didn’t enjoy getting inside the head of a psychopath. He loved this job, though, and he couldn’t imagine doing anything else with his life. There was nothing like the satisfaction he got when a case was closed and a criminal was locked away. The only thing that rivaled it was the look of relief on a victim’s face when they learned the person who had hurt them was behind bars, and they were safe.
He wanted to see that look on Ruby’s face, and he would do whatever it took to make it happen.
As they approached the house, he saw movement again. This time it was someone heading toward the front door.
“Hey, stop,” he called out. “Police.”
The person froze.
“Turn around,” he ordered. This guy was big, and he didn’t want to risk having to take him down physically if he decided to ignore them and make a run for it.
