Killing Ruby Rose (16 page)

And I hoped I wouldn’t be, either.

I slid it into my jeans pocket, next to the Challenge Coin I now carried with me at all times. As I was about to close the safe, the hilt of a knife caught my eye. It was one of those Rambo-type blades, with a leather holder that strapped on to the leg under clothing. I pulled up my jeans, tied it above my boot for good measure, and heaved a big sigh of relief.

I finally had a lead.

CHAPTER 17

I could barely make out the faded address sign on the decaying post at the entrance of the marina. “Bayside Buccaneer Yacht Club” had seen better times. Half of the old-fashioned street lamps were burned out, and half cast a faint Halloween-orange glow that did nothing to illuminate their surroundings. The place was littered with garbage, and the bitter reek of fish seeping through my rolled-up windows made it feel more like a deserted shipyard than a yacht club.

Aside from a few old beater cars lining the street, several abandoned-looking RVs in the parking lot, and a small office near the docks, no other evidence of life existed. This place was totally isolated. Even half of the boat slips were empty.

Could Silver live on one of these eyesores? It seemed unlikely considering his profile. Yet, as I sat safely inside Big Black watching a lonely plastic bag blow down the planked walkway toward the water—which I told myself
didn’t
look like a ghost floating in the darkness—it started to make sense. This might be an ideal place for a criminal to hide. Nobody around except for the rotting fish.

The lights in the small office down the walkway flickered, catching my eye, and I toyed with the idea of jogging down there just to verify that D. Silver really did have a registered slip. But it was dark. And Halloween night. And logic told me to wait for Liam.

Except, logic also told me that I was fully capable of walking a hundred yards to ask one stupid question. Especially with the heat I was packing in my pocket. I grabbed my phone and quickly typed a message to Liam, telling him where I was and what I was doing, just in case. But as soon as I pressed “Send,” the message came back undelivered with a huge exclamation point indicating no service. Just perfect.

I turned off the engine and reached down to make sure the knife was secure under my boot-cut jeans. Reminding myself of all my dad’s training, I turned up all my senses as I walked across the parking lot and onto the creaking wooden causeway. I could do this.

The wicked wind picked up as I drew nearer to the office, and a tattered flag on a pole whipped and snapped at me. I knocked on the glass door of the small shack. Across the room, I saw the top of the guard’s unmoving sun-spotted head behind his chair.

I could tell he was watching TV, not only because of the flickering blue light dancing across the ceiling, but because the volume was vibrating the floorboards beneath me. He was watching the USC versus UCLA football game—it was late in the fourth quarter, all tied up.

I let myself in.

“Excuse me, sir,” I called over the front counter. The guy obviously had no peripheral vision left, because he didn’t budge except to scratch himself in some wish-I-hadn’t-seen-them places.

“Excuse me.” I raised my voice even louder. He took a sip of a dark liquid I was sure wasn’t Coke and adjusted his legs on the chair opposite him. Good gracious, was I going to have to give the guy a coronary just to get his attention?

I walked past the desk and rounded him so he could catch me in his peripheral vision. Instantly, his eyes bulged open, his legs and his drink went flying, and the old man overturned his folding chair and landed flat on his back.

“What the…!” he screamed. “Who the P-P-Pete are you?” he stuttered from the floor.

“I knocked,” I said while helping him up. “I’m really sorry—I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

“What you d-d-doin’ here, girlie? Making me miss my damn game!” he barked. “We ain’t doin’ no trick-or-treatin’ round here!”

“I’m not here to trick-or-treat. If I could just get some information, I’ll be out of your hair.” Oops, he only had like five hairs left.

“Fine,” he groaned, holding his back as he went over to the desk, motioning for me to evacuate his personal space. “What you want?”

“Could you please tell me where Mr. D. Silver’s boat is docked?” I asked politely.

He blew out a stale-smelling breath and started poking at the computer keyboard with one finger. “What’s the first name, girlie?”

“I don’t know. Everyone calls him D. Silver,” I said casually, not wanting to raise any red flags. Legally, he shouldn’t be offering any information, but something told me this guy wasn’t exactly a stickler for the rules.

“If it will get you out of here sooner…” he muttered, pushing up his sagging bifocals and leaning in to the monitor. “B-16. That’s down the left side here—”

“Really?” I asked, craning my neck to sneak a glance at the monitor. “Do you know him?”

“Know who?” The old man tilted the screen away from me. So it was OK to tell me the info but not to let me see it?

“D. Silver,” I said pointing at the screen. “Have you seen him around? Do you know what he looks like?”

“What’s this about?” He took off his skinny reading glasses hanging for dear life off the end of his nose and gave me a see-here-young-lady look. I could tell he was gearing up to run me off when a staticky voice came to life from the ground. An ancient walkie-talkie.

“So B-16 is empty, then?” I asked as I backed out of the office, glancing out the window in the direction of the slip.

“I didn’t say that.” He bent over to pick up the walkie-talkie off the floor. “But ain’t nobody out there tonight, rest assured.”

“Thanks,” I said, almost out the door already. “Sorry about the fright.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he mumbled as I left.

I turned left and made my way down to the B dock. I was operating on instinct now, not fear and certainly not logic. The guard said no one was out here tonight, so if I went and had a peek around the boat, it might pay off. And if he was wrong and I found any signs of life—lights, noise, or movement on the boat—I’d leave and come back later with backup. Lots of backup.

The wind was getting stronger, pushing me backward, but I was almost to the B dock when I heard a shriek.

A man’s.

My feet—and my heart—stopped.

“Help, help
…
I’m drowning
…
please help!” The voice and the splashing water weren’t far away, but I couldn’t see where in the darkness.

I pulled the gun from my pocket and made sure it was cocked and ready.

Damn it. This wasn’t good. I shouldn’t have ever gotten out of Big Black. Or more to the point, I shouldn’t have ever gotten
in
Big Black tonight. This was a setup. But how? How could he have known I’d come tonight? Was he watching Sammy?

“I can’t
…
stay up
…
please!” The voice cut through my thoughts.

I grabbed my cell out of The Cleave. I had a choice to make:

A. Call 911 and go back to the security office, hoping the drunk and feeble old man could move fast enough to help me save whoever was out there;

B. Call 911, go back to Big Black and leave, knowing the police would trace my number and I’d have to explain myself;

C. Call 911 and go save the man myself; or

D. Don’t call 911 at all, because I just remembered I have no effin’ service! I held up my phone to the night, willing the phone gods to send me some little bars of mobile coverage. Curse words I’d never used before came flowing out of my mouth.

What choice did I have at this point but to get out of there, and fast—before it was too late? But if this was Silver’s work, I already knew he wasn’t afraid of putting innocent lives at risk. And what if the person in the water was someone I knew?

I took off toward the cries. Sprinting down the narrow, uneven dock, I nearly fell over some loose ropes. The poor lighting and slipshod care of the dock were dangerous.

In the moonless night, I couldn’t get my bearings. I couldn’t see anything in the water, and the sounds were echoing off the boats in every direction.

Until the light.

Like a spotlight centered just for me, a bright beam shone directly on the side of the old rickety houseboat at Slip B-16.

Its name,
Ruby Belle
, was painted on the side of the boat.

Time seemed to stand still. Information overload started falling into designated Tetris-like slots: The boat was named after me. It was docked at Silver’s slip. And someone was in the water next to it, calling out for help.

He’d done it again. He wanted to toy with me. And I’d been stupid, impatient, and impetuous enough to walk right into his trap.

“Help,” the voice called again. Whose voice was it? Whose life would I have to save, and whose would I have to take?

I jumped onto the boat—a motorboat with a small cabin—and raised my gun to prevent a surprise attack. The deck floor was wet and slippery as I found the bait in the waters beyond the front hull—the human bait meant for me. My eyes adjusted to find another familiar face, another monster fighting for his life.

Father Michael McMullin. Number three on my Filthy Five list, of course. Without his thick-rimmed 1970s glasses, I almost didn’t recognize the pedophile priest my mom had prosecuted and failed to convict. Still wearing the white collar of God. But now, tied up in the silver chains of Mr. D. Silver. The thin chains tightly wrapped around his neck didn’t look heavy enough to drown him, but the ties binding his wrists together weren’t helping.

“Help!” he cried. “I can’t swim.”

Considering what he’d done to all those children, he deserved to drown. The chain around his neck couldn’t have been more appropriate—several of his victims had been tied up with rosary beads.

As I watched this grown man (who’d never learned the basic skill of treading water but had most definitely mastered the skill of ruining lives) struggle for air, I couldn’t help but marvel at how Silver had outdone himself. If I didn’t save Father Michael, technically it would be me who killed him. I wouldn’t have pulled a trigger, but he would be dead at the bottom of the ocean just the same.

But I wasn’t a killer like Silver—or like Father Michael.

“Help!” he called again, more desperate now.

I scanned the deck for a flotation device, rummaged through the sparse galley, and even scoured the two other boats docked nearby. Everything had been removed, as though pirates had pillaged the place. Of course I knew there was only one pirate behind this sick trap.

I hurried back to
Ruby Belle
’
s bow and found the only thing that might save Father Michael—a short mariner’s rope with hooks at each end. I threw one end out into the water for him to grab, but it wasn’t close enough to him to see in the dark night. Not that he was even looking for it. He was probably so blind without his glasses that I’d have to hit him over the head with it.

I reeled the rope back in and yelled, “I’m throwing you a rope. Grab it!”

He was too out of his mind, flailing about for air.

My choices became abundantly clear. Let him die—saving countless souls, and the justice system hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or attach the rope to the boat, jump in to attach the other end to his body, and pull both of us back into the boat—risking not only my life, but others’ lives in the future.

I put the gun and my cell phone down along with my boots and jacket, hooked the rope to a rod at the tip of the stern, and jumped in. The cold Pacific water shocked my system like an abrasive alarm screaming, “This is a mistake!” My clothes suctioned to me, strangling me like a thousand sheets of icy blankets. Each stroke I took felt like a bad dream where my muscles wouldn’t respond to my brain’s commands.

As soon as I got to him, I hooked the rope onto the chains around his neck (knowing it wouldn’t feel awesome to be strangled as I dragged him) and tried to pull us back in, but his flailing legs made it impossible to even move in the right direction.

I swam around to face him, hoping that when he got a good look at me—even without his bifocals on—he’d calm down. But instead, his eyes bulged and he started screaming. “No, no! Not you.”

“Relax, I’m trying
…
to
…
save you!” I screamed, choking on seawater. What the hell was he so scared of? A skinny little teenager trying to save his life? Had Silver warned him that I would hurt him? “I’m going to cut you loose
…
so you can grab the rope.”

But he couldn’t hear me. He was too busy repeating Hail Marys between gasps for air. I took a huge breath and dipped under the water, away from his splashing blows, to try to get at the knife strapped to my leg. With frozen fingers, suffocating clothes, and collapsing lungs, I almost thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it.

Just as I thought I was doomed, I let go of the rope, gave my pant leg a tug with both hands, and slipped the blade out of its sheath. Air had never tasted so good.

Clenching the knife in one hand and taking the plastic tie binding his wrists in the other, I sliced and his hands were free—with or without cutting some of his skin. I neither knew nor cared.

But as soon as he realized I’d freed him, he didn’t try to swim. He grabbed my head and tried to use my body to stay above water. The moron didn’t understand that he was connected to the boat now, and all he needed to do was grab hold of the new line and pull himself in.

I gasped for air and tried to tell him, but he was past listening, past feeling, past reason. I tried to fight the sting of the ice water burning my lungs with the adrenaline kicking in to save me. I was drowning, I couldn’t break free of him, and I couldn’t fight
—
he was too strong, and my reflexes were too weak from the numbing cold. Time and again my head went under the pitch-black water, disorienting me, freezing me, threatening to choke me. I knew I only had one choice left.

I gripped my knife and gave him a warning stab in his arm—only meaning to hurt him enough to get free of his grasp. Instead of the cut weakening him, it enraged him even more. He was like a shark incensed at the smell of blood—thrashing and clawing at me with more force than I could handle. He grabbed me by the neck and tried to choke the remaining air out of me. My mind went fuzzy.

I fought back—for precious oxygen, for life—but instead, I inhaled two mouthfuls of foul salt water mixed with blood. I was going to die, right here, at the hands of Father Michael.