Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) (9 page)

Lucas shook his head no. “Can’t this weekend—I’m
spending the next two days in Pittsburgh. There’s still some
stuff we need to clear out of the old house.”

He fidgeted a bit in his seat like there was something
else he wanted to say but didn’t know how to say it. Finally,
he took a deep breath and just came out with it.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way you could cancel
your plans for tonight, is there? I was hoping to get started as
soon as possible and I really don’t want to do this all by
myself.”

He looked so sad, so alone that I almost said yes. But
Rachel was
desperate to find Crimson and
Zach would
probably break up with me if I cancelled plans with him to
spend time with Lucas. So I held firm and told him no.

“That’s totally out of the question. I really am sorry,
but I can’t. Next week sometime?”

His disappointment was obvious and I instantly felt
like a terrible girl...
friend
. I felt like a terrible
friend
. Why did
I just look at him and think he was my boyfriend? Weird.

“Sure, next week then. I guess I’ll talk to you in
school.” Lucas turned the key and started the car.

My cue to get out, I guess. Not that I wasn’t
beyond
ready for a little time to myself—more than just a little, as a
matter of fact. I closed the car door behind me but reopened
it quickly. On a scrap of paper, I scribbled my number and
handed it to him. “Here. Text me.”

He did the same and gave it to me with a smile. “Here.
You can
call
me. Pittsburgh gets lonely, you know.”

 

I nodded my head and went inside the house not sure
of what just happened between us.

A few hours later, Zach and I pulled into the driveway
of the Sterling house. Rachel was already there impatiently
waiting for us.

“I told you guys to meet me here at seven—I was
starting to think you backed out, Ruby,” Rachel said as we
walked through the front door.

According to my watch, we were only five minutes
late.
Five minutes to Rachel was apparently more like five
hours. “Sorry, Rachel. You know how it is when Zach and I
are together. We lost track of time.”

Rachel gave
me a
wink
and
a
knowing
look
but
actually she had no idea. Zach and I weren’t late from making
out. We were late from arguing. Arguing about Lucas. Again.

In the end, Zach was happy to hear that Lucas would
be gone for the weekend. So happy, in fact, that he told me he
had a special date planned for me.
He was
taking
me
somewhere we’d never been before—to a place he’d wanted
to take me ever since we started dating. He wouldn’t tell me
where we were going but I didn’t care. This date would be
some much needed alone time for the two of us.

Boone and Drake were waiting in the living room with
matching looks of skepticism on their faces. I pulled Rachel to
the side and whispered to her, “How much do they know
about me? Did you tell them about—”

“Nothing,” Rachel interjected, “I told them nothing.
Boone doesn’t even know about what happened this summer.
That’s why they’re both looking at us like that. They think
we’re just two silly girls playing detective or something.”

“Thanks, Rachel,” I said, already feeling more at ease.
“You, Zach, Rita, and Mr. Raspatello are the only ones who
know the whole truth. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Wait? Did you just say Mr. Raspatello knows?”
Rachel scrunched up her face and cocked her head to the side.
“Never mind—you can tell me that story later.”

Rachel plopped down on the couch between Boone
and Drake and I snuggled up close to Zach in an oversized
chair. We all just sat there looking at each other until Rachel
got things moving.

“Okay, Drake. I can’t explain any more to you than I
already have but Ruby and I have a plan to help find Crimson.
But first, we need to know all of the
details
about your
relationship with Allison and the circumstances surrounding
her disappearance.”

Sad Rachel was now gone but replaced by an even
more confident Rachel than she was before this whole mess
started. If this didn’t work, she was going to be epically
disappointed. Epically disappointed in
me
. I was starting to
understand what they meant by the phrase “performance
anxiety”.

“Look, Rachel, I know you want to help but….” Boone
trailed off when Rachel shot him “the look”.

 

“Go ahead, Drake,” she replied sweetly, pretending
that Boone never interrupted. “Tell us how you met.”

Drake ran a hand through his thick brown hair. “Well,
I met her my senior year.
Me and my buddies snuck into one
of the big college parties over at the campus. We just wanted
to get drunk and run with the big dogs for the night, you
know. We weren’t even there five minutes when we heard
sirens and somebody yelled ‘COPS!’.
The whole place went
nuts.
They were telling everyone underage to run out the
back so I just did what they said and ran for it. I got separated
from my friends and I didn’t have a ride home so I started
walking. That’s when I met Allison.”

Something about his voice changed when he spoke
her name.
In that moment, I knew that Drake had been in
love with her. She wasn’t just some girl he dated—she meant
way
more to him than that.
Knowing how strongly he felt
about her made me want to find out what happened to her
even more.
I knew what it was like to lose someone you
loved. How much worse would it be to know that person was
tortured and killed so sadistically?
And that
you
were the
only suspect? Zach wrapped his arms around me just a little
tighter and I returned the sentiment. Out of the corner of my
eye, I watched as Rachel and Boone did the same.

Drake went on without displaying his emotions but I
knew they were still in there just below the surface. “I was
walking past that little park in front of the campus library
when I heard this couple arguing. It was getting pretty heated
so I thought I would check to see if she was alright. As I got
closer, the guy saw me and just took off. So I walked up to her
and she started crying. I asked her if she wanted me to walk
her home and she said no.
I was about to walk away when
she asked if I would want to go have a cup of coffee with her.
So I said yes.”

Something about his story unnerved me already and
he hadn’t even gotten to the part about her disappearance or
murder yet.
Maybe Zach was right—maybe I
was
getting
involved in something I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t back out
now—not if there was still a chance to save Crimson.

Drake related the story of their relationship in depth.
“Me and Allison went to that little coffee shop on campus
where we talked for hours. She told me the guy from the park
was an old friend from back home—not her boyfriend or
anything. She wouldn’t tell me what they were arguing about
just that she never wanted to see him again. After that night,
we started dating.”

I couldn’t even wait until he was finished with his
story. I blurted out, “You think that guy from the park is the
killer, don’t you?”

“I don’t
think
so—I
know
so,” Drake said confidently.

 

Zach spoke up. “But the police didn’t think so, did
they?”

“See that’s the thing, man. I had no proof that this guy
even existed.
She never gave me his real name—she just
called him Mr. Fantastic. I didn’t see his face and I was too
drunk that night to even be able to give the cops a rough
description of him.
Apparently I’m the only one she ever
talked to about him, too. We met the fall of her freshman year
and she hadn’t made any friends yet. Her roommate was the
only person she ever talked about. Her parents insisted that
she didn’t have any
friends
back home who
used the
nickname, Mr. Fantastic. The cops thought I made him up to
cover my own guilt.”

“How long did you date? Did she talk about him at all
after that night?” I could almost see the wheels turn as Rachel
tried to wrap her brain around the mystery. Maybe her love
of Shelly’s novels would pay off once again.

“We were together for about five months when she
went missing. I asked about Mr. Fantastic a few times but she
said she hadn’t heard from him. I believed her until shortly
before she disappeared.
She acted strange those last few
weeks.
I last saw her in February—Valentine’s Day to be
exact.”

The room filled with sadness as Drake recounted that
last night with Allison.

“She started to become distant. I thought there might
be another guy so I asked her what was wrong. She told me
she missed her family. She stayed at school through all of the
breaks so we could spend time together so it seemed legit.
I
suggested that she go home for the weekend but she told me
she didn’t have the money for bus fare. When I said I would
drive her, she freaked out. I just figured she wasn’t ready to
introduce me to her parents yet so I offered to buy her a bus
ticket. She didn’t want to take my money but in the end, she
agreed and said that she would find a way to pay me back.
Buying her that ticket is my biggest regret in life.”

Ahh, regret. I knew it well. Even though I couldn’t
take my own advice, I was the first one to dish it out to
anyone else who needed it. “It’s not your fault, Drake! Ticket
or no ticket she probably would have died anyway!”

Drake had been nursing a beer since the beginning of
his story but downed what was left of it in one gulp and
cracked open another. “Maybe. But she never would have
been at that bus station without me. She never would have
met her killer there.”

Drake stared off into space for a minute and we all let
him take his time. “So anyway, I said I would drop her off at
the station on Friday night. Allison was due back Sunday
afternoon but I had other plans and couldn’t be there to meet
her. Her roommate volunteered to pick her up so her plans
were set.
We got to the bus station early and I was going to
wait for her but she knew I had to catch an early flight the
next morning. I was flying down to Sarasota State to tour the
campus and meet with the coaches and stuff so I had a lot to
do that night.
She said she would be okay so I kissed her
goodbye and went home. That’s my last memory of her.”

With that, Drake broke down in tears.
There was
something so unnerving about watching that hulk of a man
cry like a baby. Was this how Zach would be if he lost me—
even
five
years
later?
Why
did love have to be so
sad
sometimes?
We let him cry in silence until he was ready to
talk again. This had to be the saddest date I’d had in a while.

Once Drake regained his composure, I asked, “So what
happened after that?
How long was she missing before they
found her.…” I couldn’t bring myself to use the word ‘body’—
it sounded way too cold and impersonal so I just stopped
there.

“We searched everywhere for her but there wasn’t a
trace of her. The bus station attendant said he saw her get
into a black car and drive away. The only problem was that I
drove a black car at the time. The cops stopped looking for
her
and started looking at
me
instead. Two months later they
found her on the church steps dressed in a wedding gown.”

I wanted to ask questions but I didn’t know how to do
it. How do you ask someone for details about the torture and
murder of their girlfriend? I breathed a mental sigh of relief
when Rachel asked instead.

“I know this must be tough for you, Drake, but we
need to know what that monster did to her,” she said placing
her hand comfortingly on Drake’s arm.

Drake wouldn’t look us in the eyes. Instead, he stared
at the ceiling and rattled off a list of the most horrendous acts
I’d ever heard in one sentence. “Broken neck and legs, severe
bruising, and some random burn marks. And that’s just the
details the cops released.
You know they always hold some
information back, too.”

I could see what this conversation was doing to him.
Now more than ever, I knew I had to do everything in my
power to find Crimson and help Drake put this all in the past.
“Do you know where she’s buried?” Her gravesite would be
the best place to start.

He nodded his head slowly. “Right here in Charlotte’s
Grove. Her family moved here from New York to be closer to
the investigation.
They buried her in the Heaven’s Gate
Cemetery out by the hospital. They stayed in town for about a
year hoping that the crime would be solved but once the case
went cold they moved back to New York.”

“Where did Allison like to hang out?” Rachel quizzed
him like an ace reporter hot on the trail of a story.

“She spent most of her time at either the coffee shop
or the library,” Drake answered. A coffee shop and a library—
harmless enough. But when he added, “Oh, and the Bantam
Theater,” my blood froze in my veins.

Rachel shot me a look of pure terror.
That place was
creepy—it just looked like it would be full of horrendous
things.
Could
my
dream
be
something
more
than a
coincidence? Allison was found wearing a wedding dress and
so was I in the dream.
It felt like I just set foot into a field of
landmines—willingly.

“The Bantam Theater?” I asked, hoping that maybe I’d
misheard him.

“Yeah, she was part of that college theater group that
tried to reopen it that year. They didn’t get far—there was
some sort of falling out between the college and the man who
owned the Bantam.”