Resisting Ruby Rose (The Ruby Rose Series) (15 page)

CHAPTER 20

The drive wasn’t bad—only fifteen minutes inland—but the walk up to Bill Brandon’s front door without being seen was worse than bad. My hands went clammy, my mouth went dry, and my heart raced as my brain functioning slowed. Whatever I was doing here did
not
feel on the up-and-up.

I’d
never met Bill Brandon face-to-face. Well,
I’d
stood next to one of the semitruck-size campaign posters of his tan face and feathered hair, but
I’d
never spoken to the dude or shaken his hand. And I didn’t plan on doing much of either tonight.

I swallowed as I rang the doorbell. It was 10:55 p.m., and he was probably asleep—but I would keep ringing until he got his smooth-talking ass out of bed.

It took three rings and several minutes of frantic barking dogs for an unshaven, disheveled middle-aged man to answer the door. At first I wondered why an upper-middle class civil servant like Brandon would have a butler, but then I realized the “butler” was Bill. Without his TV coiffure and makeup artists, he looked like a normal human being.

We stared at each other as if it were a jaw-dropping competition until he finally spoke. “Ruby Rose?”

I cleared my throat. “I have a
delivery
for you.”

I held the yellow envelope for him to take, but he just looked at it like I was handing him a ball of barbed wire—and he was deathly afraid of barbed wire.

“Just take it,” I pleaded. “Please.” I remembered what Skryker told me about smiling, and for some reason I did. Sort of. If he took it, I could leave. But he wouldn’t: mistake number one.

“Is this some kind of prank?” he asked, looking around for cameras both outside and in. I didn’t blame him; I was always looking around for the cameras in my life, too. For good reason, but still, he was stalling: mistake number two.

“No,” I said, “unfortunately, this is reality. Maybe a very skewed form of reality, bu
t . . .
” I was talking too much. “Please, I’m going to put it down on your porch if you don’t take it.”

“Who sent you here?” he demanded, sounding like the hard-nosed former chief of police and not the diplomatic candidate.

“It’s complicated,” I said, “and it doesn’t matter. Look, I don’t know what’s inside this envelope. I only know it’s my job to make sure you get it. So here.” I shoved the envelope into his chest so at least he would defend himself and grab for it.

“Ruby,” he said, taking it reluctantly. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing.”

Of course I didn’t. I just said that! But it infuriated me to hear it from his lips. As I turned to leave without another word, he rushed out and grabbed me by the arm: mistake number three.

I clutched his hand and spun to gain leverage, then I palm-thrusted him in the throat to throw him off balance. Before he could react, I shifted momentum to my back leg and heel kicked him right in the gut. Which, to be fair, was probably more like a six-pack. I waited for him to defend himself. To strike me back, now that I had established myself as a threat and not a little girl he could talk down to or dismiss. Instead, he held up his hands as if to call a truce, grimacing as he gathered himself.

“Look, Ruby, I’m sorry for what happened to your mother,” he said (or groaned, or something between the two). “I hope you know that
I . . .
you know, didn’t have anything to do with it. That I would never wish anything like that on anyone.”

What? Why was he going there? Of course I didn’t think that he was capable of pulling off a terrorist attack on my mom just to beat her in a stupid campaign. He was already winning, even if only by a few points.

It was Martinez! Everyone knew that.

“Why would you even think that I would think that?” I asked, “Just because I don’t like people grabbing me doesn’t mean that I blame you for what happened.” I suddenly regretted attacking him, defending myself, or however a jury would see it. I knew how Skryker would see it: as a hotheaded mistake.

He held his throat where my palm had made contact. “I wasn’t sure if you were here because you though
t . . .
”

“I’m here because I was told to give you that.” I gestured toward the envelope now crumpled in his hand. “That’s all.”

He straightened up and retied his robe before smoothing out the envelope. “OK,” he said. “Consider it delivered.”

“Good-bye,” I said, giving him one last fake smile before leaving.

I was famished. No matter how awful that scene just was, it was nothing a few midnight Nutella crêpes couldn’t fix.

“So it’s done? Like
done
done?” I asked, savoring the way the warm crêpe melted the hazelnut-chocolate spread inside. Mixed with the banana, vanilla-bean ice cream, and whipped cream, it might have been the most delicious thing
I’d
ever tasted.

“You saw the emails for yourself. Your mother’s money is safe. Your father’s legacy will live on. Your shoe budget will live to see another day.” Quinn teased me while leaning on his elbows and watching me inhale his culinary creation. “Not that you need it. You could buy a whole new shoe collection in a blink of an eye now that you’re a self-made woman.”

I closed my eyes and ignored my urge to debate him on the self-made woman crap. More like self-made killer.

“So how was it?” Quinn asked.

“Delicioussss,” I said, slurring my words. If I weren’t so deathly tired, I probably would have eaten five more of the French fantasies.

“What, did you eat Bill Brandon then?” Quinn joked. “Did he tell you that your shoes were so last season and so you cut him up into pieces and—”

“I thought you meant the crêpes,” I said, licking stray Nutella off my fingertips.

“I already know my crêpes are to die for.” Quinn chuckled to himself and took a big bite of his, which was smothered in strawberries and cream. “Seriously, though, was your first mission a success?”

“I shoved the envelope in his chest, got in a few shots to his throat and stomach, and left. So yeah, I guess that could be considered a semi-success. I felt kind of bad, but I’ve been wanting to knock the smile off that dude for a while.”

“That dude, eh?” Quinn poured himself another cup of tea. “Did the ‘dude’ say or do something to deserve your accosting him on his own doorstep in the dead of night against Skryker’s instructions to get in and out?”

“He grabbed me.”

Quinn stirred his tea, adding a dash of milk and a cube of sugar. “Why on Earth would he have done that?”

“Because I was going to leave, and he wanted me to kno
w . . .
” I stopped myself, because honestly, I couldn’t quite remember what point he was trying to make. All I knew was that he grabbed me and spoke to me like a helpless little girl in need of a daddy. As if I didn’t have enough of those! “He wanted me to know that I didn’t know what I was doing or something. Which, duh, yeah—I had no idea what I was doing delivering that stupid envelope. But then he grabbed me, and I reacted.”

Quinn took a sip of his tea and smiled with his eyes before rounding the island bar and moving close enough to touch me. “So if I grabbed yo
u . . .
” He reached out slowly to test me.

“You would end up on your back, like the last time you tried,” I said, thinking back to the cabin, the way our bodies moved as he attacked me and I defended—almost like a dance. Until I was left straddling him, and he was left smiling.

As if he knew exactly what I was thinking, his eyebrows raised and his smile grew wide.

“Then Brandon started asking me if I thought he was the one behind my mom’s attack, which was seriously just weird. It was almost like he was scared of me. Like maybe he thought I was there to get revenge, which doesn’t make sense, right?”

I checked Quinn’s reaction, but he turned his back and returned to his tea.

“I mean, he wouldn’t know about all the murders I’m responsible for. That’s supposed to be classified. My mom made sure of that—I thought. And back when I thought Skryker was CIA, I was told by him and several other of his suit-wearing conspirators that my admissions would be kept confidential and subject only to high-level clearance. Brandon is
not
high-level.”

“Ruby,” Quinn said, holding up his hand. “You’re sort of delirious right now, yeah?”

Delirious? That was probably accurate. And confused. And torn. And afraid for Liam and my mom. And obsessed with these crêpes.

I piled all the goodness on my fork and tried to finish off my serving with one last bite. My eyes closed again as I chewed and imagined what it would feel like to be far away from this place, from these problems, from all these complications and people. Would the chocolate taste any better if I were in a café in France, overlooking the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe?

“I have an idea,” Quinn said, interrupting my imaginary café sequence, an accordion player moving through the tables, a bright Parisian moon smiling down on me. “You should stay the night.”

My eyes sprang open to assess whether he was joking or not.

“Seriously. It’s almost midnight, your eyes keep rolling into the back of your head, and I have the most comfortable memory foam mattress on this side of the Atlantic. Or Pacific. Or whatever.” Quinn’s smile melted me like I was inside one of his crêpes.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Come on, Ruby.” He took my plate and placed it in the sink. “It’s not safe. You’ve had a long day. My crêpes might have made you slightly drunk. And most important, I will take care of you.”

“Take care of me?” I couldn’t even muster the outrage I should have felt. I didn’t need anyone taking care of me. I could do it my—

He took me by the hand, slow and sweet, and lured me into a bedroom, where my eyes would have popped out if they could have. The whole space was like some Egyptian king’s palace. Columns, vases, artwork, rugs that might have once been animals, and a four-poster bed complete with draping curtains and pillows for days. The only things missing were concubines.

I couldn’t help but thinking about Liam in this moment. How he would roll his eyes and make fun of the gigolo with too much money on his hands. How he would never waste so much time and effort on a bedroom. How he would never date a girl impressed by such gaudy things.

But I
was
impressed, if not by the style then by the sheer audacity of it. And against my will, I
was
slightly turned on by the way Quinn held me with one hand on my hip to guide me. An
d . . .
against all good judgment, I
was
ready to go to bed. With this boy. Who I had no energy to fight off.

Quinn led me to the right side of the bed and pulled the covers down. I glided between the comforter and the one-million-thread-count sheets, closing my eyes again in ecstasy. The sheets felt like sliding into chocolate.

I thought vaguely that I should text Mathews and Dr. T to let them know I was OK. But as I drifted into sleep, the phone was the last thing I wanted.

CHAPTER 21

When I rolled over and pressed the light on my watch, my eyes finally did the popping thing they should have done last night when I entered this palace—it was 10:00 a.m.! How could I have slept in so late these past two days? But as I looked around, I understood how. Quinn had blackout window coverings. It could have been 2:00 a.m. for all the light there was.

As I got out of bed and turned on the bedside lamp, I realized I didn’t have all my clothes on. No shoes, no hoodie, and no jeans. The shoes and hoodie were laid out all tidy on the chair opposite me, but where the hell were my pants? I considered storming out of the room in nothing but my pink polka-dot boy-cut underwear, then sneaking up on Quinn to land a nice kick to his eyeballs so I could look for my pants without him seeing.

The longer I stood there, the angrier I became, until I realized where they might be. I slid my hands back into the smooth layers of luxe cotton until I found them. False alarm—Restless Ruby was an idiot and took her own pants off in the night.

My phone wasn’t in the Cleave, so it must have fallen out, too. If it were anywhere near my body, I would have felt the normal vibrations of messages and alerts I get in the mornings. Especially this morning, when I had forgotten to tell anyone I knew and loved where I was. For all they knew, I was at the bottom of the ocean.

But, unlike my pants, my cell was not tangled up in the heavenly waves of silken sheets.

After getting dressed, I stepped out into the bright morning. Welcomed by a cool breeze, an amazing view of the coast, Bob Marley singing, a beautiful boy wearing an apron, and a mixture of smells, including vanilla and butter, I smiled. I could get used to this.

If it weren’t for the complete and irrational panic I was facing when it came to not having my cell phone on me, that is.

“Give me my phone,” I said, walking over to Quinn with my hand out.

“Good morning to you, too,” Quinn replied, rinsing a colander full of berries in the sink. “It’s over there.” He motioned with his head to the dining room table, which was halfway in, halfway out of the house. Could the floor move?

“There’s a track under the rug,” Quinn said, following my gaze. “It’s a fun little function. Plus, underneath is a safe room where I hide my guns.”

I didn’t even feel like I had time to question him about the insanity of his architecture, because being separated from my cell phone was like living without a lung.

I snatched it off the table, the weight of it in my hand allowing me to breathe again.

I turned it on. Ready to endure the abuse of everyone who was pissed at me for disappearing and not checking in, I swiped my finger across the screen to unlock it. I expected to see Alana’s big puckered lips as the screen saver and a thousand notifications of missed calls, texts, and emails, so I deflated when I saw something quite different.

There were absolutely no notifications, no missed calls, no new emails, and no unanswered texts. And the picture on the home screen was of me sleeping in Quinn’s four-poster bed, curled up like a baby.

“You’re an idiot,” I seethed. “Taking my phone was seriously not cool.”

“I wanted you to get some rest,” he said, nonchalant as he went about his breakfast business with the skill of a French sous-chef.

“You tampered with it again,” I said, checking the text log. “There’s no way I didn’t get any messages. Mathews calls or texts me every morning.”

“Relax.” He stopped, finally looking at me. “The real world will catch up to you soon enough. You can’t blame me for trying to give you a few solid hours away from gunfights and throat jabs.”

“You had no right—” I began.

“Ruby,” he cut me off. “It’s my job to look after you, and you make it awfully difficult sometimes. You prance around like you’re untouchable, but you’re not even carrying a weapon. You barely eat, you rarely sleep, and you’re weak.”

“I’m not weak.” I raised my voice. “I’m in recovery.”

“When was the last time you trained?” He tilted his head and shot me an
oh-please
look. “You may have great instincts and form, but no strength. How do you expect to get to Martinez if you can’t even take care of yourself? It’s my job to prepare you.”

“So you took this creepy picture of me sleeping because it’s your job?” I asked, holding up my phone, shooting a hole right through his façade of being Quinn the Benevolent. “Please tell me you didn’t do anything else with this photo.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

“Quinn, answer a freaking question for once! Or else I’m about to make your ‘job’ a lot harder.” I scanned the room for a weapon to use against him, just so he knew I was serious. In reality, I wasn’t in the mood to play with knives, though. I was as likely to hurt myself as him. He was right—I was weak. Weaker than
I’d
been in a long time.

“Fine, I might have sent it to my friend Eva.” Quinn turned his back on me to pull some eggs out of the fridge.

“Quinn! She’s going to think something happened. She’s going to show it to Liam and
he’s
going to think something happened!” I started to pace, tapping my phone on my forehead, panicking.

“Ruby, something did happen,” Quinn said, sincerely confused.

“What?” I said. “No, it did not.” I sounded sure, but inside I was wondering in horror—I didn’t do something stupid and not even remember it, did I? I sat down and put my head in my hands, grasping for any four-poster bed memories.

“Don’t worry, I fought you off,” he said, taking the seat next to me. His joking tone did nothing to soothe me. “You tried to kiss me, though. You seriously don’t remember?”

I shook my head and looked at him. Either the shaking action jarred something loose, or seeing his lips up close sparked the memory. A vague one of reaching for a warm bod
y . . .
in my sleep, I must’ve thought Quinn was Liam.
I’d
slept in a bed with Liam so many times, it was second nature to nuzzle into his side, where eventually our lips would meet.

“What were you even doing in bed with me?” I asked, feeling angry and foolish.

“I was just getting your phone, Ruby. Nothing else.”

“So why’d you stop me?”

“Because that’s not the way it’s going to happen between us,” he said, putting his hand on mine.

Shame and regret weighed down on me at the thought of Liam. If only he could see me now. Well, if Eva had passed along the photo, he sort of had. “Were you trying to hurt Liam?” I asked.

“No, but sometimes dirty tactics lead to clean results. Sometimes we do bad things for the right reasons.”

He was explaining the story of my life.
I’d
broken the law in more ways than one in the pursuit of justice.
I’d
killed bad men to save innocent lives.
I’d
aided and abetted the hiding of my mom’s dirty money to save our family. He was right—I accepted the concept whole-heartedly.

“Liam isn’t good for you right now,” Quinn said, gently guiding my chin to force my eyes to meet his. “He has some issues that he needs to deal with. Give him room to do so. Especially while we deal with yours.”

“OK, Dr. Quinn,” I said, shaking him off and standing up to walk outside on the verandah. “When did you get your degree in psychology? Right about the same time you were breaking up with Sofia?”

He followed me outside and sat down on the edge of the pool to dangle his feet in the clear water. “All cards on the table?” he asked.

“It would be nice for once.”

“OK, yes, Sofia and I had a thing. It’s common between partners like us. Or partners like Liam and Eva, for example.”

I rolled my eyes, an automatic response to the mere pronunciation of the name
Eva
. It made me sick to think of them together.

“But Sofia and I never saw eye to eye. She never found what she was looking for, I suppose. Once we took out the eleven cartel guys sh
e’d
been pursuing over the course of two years, she changed. Instead of finding peace, she hardened.”

“Eleven guys?”

“She was never sure which one ordered the hit on her father when she was six, so she took them all out.” Quinn swallowed, revealing that even he had trouble with that amount of bloodshed.

“No wonder she wanted out. Not even I have that many murders on my conscience,” I said, sitting down at the edge of the pool and rolling up my pants to dip my ankles in the water.

“She wanted out for other reasons, too,” Quinn went on. “She had issues beyond my reach. But even with her, it was a hard cut to make. That’s why it’s best that she’s off the grid now. No contact. No further connection.”

“So you ‘cut’ Liam and me apart because it’s what you think is best for me?” I asked, pushing him. “Or because you need a new partner?”

“I won’t lie. I did it for selfish reasons, too. Look, Ruby, I admit that I’m attracted to you, that I want to be with you, that I admire you. I confess that I feel more drawn to you than I ever felt to Sofia. I can’t deny that you’re the toughest, most capable, most ready recruit I’ve ever seen, and that I feel lucky Skryker placed me with you. But none of that negates the fact that I’m better for you than Liam is. That we’re better together.”

“That’s not your call to make,” I responded, vacillating between outrage over his messing with my personal life and being flustered by the barrage of compliments and most sincere expressions of high regard
I’d
ever heard. Liam tried to say things like that to me before. There were times when he opened up, as hard as it was for both of us. Liam made efforts.

“You already made the call,” Quinn said flatly.

He was right. Unconsciously, I
had
chosen—the night Quinn came to the cabin at Big Bear. That night I chose Quinn over Liam. The subtlety of the decision didn’t cancel out the impact. After that night, Liam and I were never the same again. And now we were both unsubtly sleeping in other people’s beds. Or at least I was.

I put my head between my knees and watched as the water circled around my feet. I was overwhelmed, and
I’d
only been awake for twenty minutes. Ready to opt out of this conversation, I pulled my phone out of the Cleave and remembered the curious fact that I had no notifications.

“Oh, and yeah,” Quinn said, “I’ve been pretending to be you and regularly responding to the flurry of messages from the Ruby Containment Committee. The RCC, if you will.” He stepped out of the pool and headed back into the kitchen.

“Though you might need the help of the RCC today,” he added, grabbing the newspaper and throwing it at me. “And you might also need a good breakfast.”

I caught the paper in my hand right before it would have dropped in the water.

“Good catch.” Quinn smiled, obviously impressed by my reflexes.

I smiled too—it really was a good catch. Maybe he was right about me.

I sat back and looked at the paper. “Oh, shit,” I said, gaping at the picture on the front page. My smile vanished.

A grainy picture of me, looking like I was donkey-kicking Bill Brandon in the crotch, stared back at me. Had that slimy son of a bitch Sam Carmichael followed me and decided to get rich off of me once again? Was it a picture from a hidden security camera at Brandon’s house? Or had I been set up again?

The headline read:
Revenging Ruby Rose Lashes Out.

Blood pounded in my ears. I scanned through the article looking for any details as to what the theory was on why I attacked him, or why I was even there in the first place. But the hypothetical rationales were absurd and insane, ranging from drug use to an assassination attempt. The article said that Brandon was unavailable for comment, and that no police report had been filed and no 911 call had been reported.

“How did this happen?” I asked Quinn, who seemed unfazed as he cracked eggs into a bowl.

“Dunno.” He whipped and hummed to Bob Marley in the background, apparently unconcerned about my failure to execute one simple “mission” without it blowing up in my face.

“Quinn! This is bad!” I yelled.

“It’s not that big a deal, Ruby,” he assured me.

“It
is
a big deal,” I argued, holding up the paper like a flare to get his attention. “What’s Skryker going to say about this?”

“He would have already said something if he were going to.” Quinn poured his egg, milk, and spice concoction into the hot skillet. “How do you like your omelet? Meat or veggie only?”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, annoyed that he could think about food at a time like this. “How can you act so nonchalant?”

“Honestly, I have no idea what to think of it quite yet.” Quinn’s eyes softened. “How about we hang out here, have a delicious breakfast, then figure it out as we go.”

Even though I liked all the times he said
we
, there was no way that I could “hang out” knowing that Brandon would probably try to press charges against me, if only as a publicity stunt.

My phone vibrated on my chest and I pulled it out to see which member of the RCC was calling.

“Hey, Mathews,” I said, forming an apology in my mind.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked point-blank, daggers of disappointment in his voice.

“
I . . . I . . .
didn’t want to,” I stuttered. Surely he was talking about the newspaper and my attacking Bill Brandon, not just my one-night disappearing act. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Where are you?” he demanded.

I looked to Quinn, wondering what I should say.

“At a friend’s.”

“Give me the address.” There was a strange sadness in his voice
I’d
only heard when my dad died. “I want to be the one to take you in.”

“Take me in where?” I asked, confused at his choice of words.

“Into custody. Ruby, apparently you killed a man. And they’re not going to let you get away with it this time.”

“Wait, what? What man did I kill?”

“Bill Brandon was found dead on Damon Silver’s boat a little over an hour ago. Now tell me where you are.”