He raised his hands in proclaimed innocence, heading back inside.
I couldn’t get away from him fast enough, and I wasn’t paying attention as I rounded the corner, up the next road, behind our street. My mind was stuck on that scene in the courtroom—Ruby’s face, turning my way; Ruby’s eyes, meeting mine—so I didn’t tune in to the noise at first.
A car driving off. Brake lights disappearing around the curve ahead.
There were plenty of possibilities: someone lost; someone curious; someone who knew that Ruby was here and was watching.
As I stood there, staring at the space where the car had disappeared, I sensed something off in our backyards.
Something moving. Not behind the patio gates but closer—in the trees.
I ran my light through the pine trees, looking for any sign of someone else. I was worried that this was the person whom Chase might’ve mistaken for Ruby, testing the boundaries of his house. Who had been in my backyard when Mac was over.
I stood perfectly still, then heard that same familiar noise—of a gate creaking.
I paced the line of fences until I came to the unlatched gate: at the house beside mine.
The Truett house.
I pushed open the gate, shining the flashlight into the corners. But there was nothing inside the patio fence. A rusted spot on the brick where a grill had once stood. Dark, uncovered windows giving way to the empty house.
I pulled the gate shut, unable to lock it from the outside, wondering how it had gotten unlocked in the first place. Whether someone had found a way in and was snooping around.
And then I stopped.
Maybe it was Chase’s words, or thinking back to my testimony, but I stood frozen in place. Contemplating once more what I’d heard that night. The story it created.
Ruby, leaving through the front, taking the keys to the Truett house. Bringing the dog outside. Peering into the Truetts’ bedroom, watching them, making sure they were asleep. Taking Fiona’s car keys, starting the car, leaving the door ajar—
Planning it so carefully. So methodically. So ruthlessly. From the moment she took those keys.
In which case, what was she doing, waltzing in front of the cameras after?
If she’d been planning to return by sneaking in the back gate, she wouldn’t have let herself be spotted in the front by half the cameras on the street.
Either she planned it carefully and was not careful at all, or it was a crime of chaos. Both of these things could not be true.
Chase had to be wrong. About her, about what she’d said.
I hugged the edge of the fence line on the way around the block, passing each enclosed patio, until I could circle to the front of our street again, at Tina Monahan’s house. Without the porch light, the corner was pitch dark. As I passed in front of Tina’s house, a bright light suddenly shone across the driveway. They must’ve had a motion detector.
It illuminated my path until I approached my front steps, where I’d left the porch light on for my return. I tried to unlock the front door, but the key didn’t turn—it was already unlocked. Had I forgotten to lock up after myself when I’d left? With the late hour and all that had happened, I couldn’t be sure.
Stepping through the front door, I almost slipped. Under my sneaker, a paper had been left in the center of the entryway, folded on the hardwood floor of the foyer.
The room buzzed, and I remained perfectly still, listening to the silence of the house. Someone had been inside.
Maybe someone still was.
My shoulders tensed and I held my breath, trying to hear the sound of an intruder, but all I could hear was my own heartbeat, the pounding inside my own skull steadily increasing. I felt the adrenaline coursing through me—fight or flight; stay or run.
I flipped the lights on, thinking this would set someone fleeing, but nothing happened. A clatter as the ice maker dropped newly formed ice in the freezer, and I jumped, hand to heart.
I stepped silently around the paper on the floor and continued deeper into the house, flicking on each downstairs light as I passed. A rustling upstairs, and I paused at the base of the steps. I could feel my pulse in my fingers, gripped to the banister, as I listened. Ruby, probably, turning over in bed.
I took the steps slowly, cautiously, my senses on high alert, until I stood in the entrance of Ruby’s darkened room. The light from the hall stretched across the carpeting, and I saw her facedown on the bed, her legs moving in some restless dream.
Feeling more secure, I checked every corner of this house, assuring myself that we were alone. Checking each lock, closing the curtains.
All the while, thinking of Ruby sleeping upstairs with the knife under her bed. The blasé way I’d walked outside, unsure whether I’d left this house unsafe, unguarded, when everyone knew I was on watch tonight.