“Jesus,” I exhale in exhausted frustration as I take the steps back up to the front door, knowing I can’t stay out here all night.
When I walk inside, I see Ruby, Sie and Reid all sitting around the table drinking beers. Reid sees me as soon as I walk in and he immediately moves to grab a beer from the fridge and the bag of takeout off the counter.
“You guys didn’t eat?” I ask, looking around at all of them. Sie looks a little happier now, giving me a small smile as I sit down.
“We wanted to wait for you,” Ruby says, squeezing my hand.
Reid puts the containers on the table, handing around some forks before taking a seat. “You okay?”
I nod. “Yeah, no point getting pissed about something that was always a long shot.”
Ruby puts her beer on the table, before leaning back to grab Sie’s laptop off the counter. “It might not be a total waste,” she says, opening the computer and turning it around to face the rest of us.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “You found something?” I turn to Reid and Sie who look just as confused as me, before turning back to Ruby.
She shrugs, her bottom lip between her teeth as though she isn’t sure if it’s something or not. “Nothing from that night,” she says. “But there is something.”
“What,” Sie asks impatiently.
Ruby opens one of the video files and scrolls through until she gets to a time she’s written down on a sheet of paper. “Watch,” she says, motioning to the screen.
The three of us sit in silence, our eyes glued to the screen as we watch Ruby move into frame. It’s early in the morning and she’s alone and dressed in running gear. I glance at the time and date stamp and realize it’s from before the night I beat the shit out of that asshole.
“What is this?” I ask, glancing up at her.
“Just watch.”
My eyes flick back to the screen just in time to see a silver car drive straight toward her, clearly intentionally, as though whoever it is that’s driving wants to hit her.
“Holy fuck!” I practically shout, standing, my chair scraping along the floor as I push it back. “When the fuck did this happen?”
Ruby’s eyes flick to Reid, a guilty look on her face and when I turn to my best friend, I see he’s watching her, his face giving nothing away.
“You knew about this?” I ask.
Reid nods, his eyes still on Ruby. “You want to tell him?”
“Tell me what?” I ask, as Sie says, “Reid, what’s going on?” clearly also confused.
Ruby lets out a breath, her hand moving so it covers mine. “Sit down?” she says gently, as she smiles up at me. “Please.”
I do as she asks, her hand still covering mine as she glances once at Reid before turning back to me again.
“It happened during finals,” she says. “That morning I got up early to go for a run.” I nod once because I think I know the day she’s referring to. “I remember thinking how weird it was that this car was just kinda sitting in the alley, slowly moving forward but not really going anywhere.”
Ruby’s words are like a jolt of electricity down my spine, the all too familiar tingling beneath my skin as my heart starts to pound in my chest. I have to swallow hard, remind myself to stay calm as I take a long slow breath in.
“Then as I ran across the road,” she continues, flicking her hand in the direction of the screen again. “He just drove straight for me, like deliberately.”
“He?” I ask.
Ruby shrugs, squeezing my hand. “I don’t know actually. I couldn’t see who was driving. But when I got home, you’d gone to the gym. I talked to Reid about it and I don’t know, he wasn’t—”
“I wasn’t sure if it was related to what went down with my dad or not,” Reid cuts in, giving Ruby a small smile before he turns to me. “I’d had a call from that detective about a guy who hadn’t been put away with everyone else. He was old and sick, and it was a long shot about this being him, but we didn’t want to worry you. It was my call not to say anything.” Ruby opens her mouth as though to say something, but Reid cuts her off before she has a chance. “You were doing good, Caleb. I didn’t want you to worry about shit that was probably nothing.”
“I don’t think it was nothing,” Ruby says.
We all turn to her, silence falling over the room. “What?” I eventually ask.
Ruby smiles, turning the laptop around and loading up another video. “The car is always here,” she says, her voice more animated now. “Look, see,” she says, pointing to a shot on the screen.
Sure enough, the car is back again, parked on the street looking like any regular suburban car. But then she loads another video, and another and another. And every fucking time, that car is there.
Including the day everything went to shit when I found Keller outside our house.
And that’s when it hits me.
“Holy fuck,” I breathe out as I’m struck with a memory.
“What?” Reid asks.
“I remember this car,” I say, my eyes glued to the screen and the still image of it, parked out on the street, directly across from our house. “I remember seeing it when I came home from work. I remember…” I trail off, racking my brain for the memory, for the vision of what happened that night, weeks before the attack. “Fuck, I remember walking toward it because I could tell someone was inside. Just sitting there in the dark, watching me. It didn’t feel right, but when I approached the car, it drove off, no lights on, nothing, like it was trying to get away before I saw who was driving.”
“Oh my god,” Sie breathes out. “Do you think it’s him?”
I glance up at Ruby as though she could possibly know the answer, but she just shrugs at me. I turn to Reid now, who’s staring at me, his eyes hard and focused as though his mind is running through every possibility of what this could mean, trying to find the one that fits.
“We need to show this to Ed,” he eventually says. “Tomorrow, you need to show this to him.”
Neither Ruby nor I sleep much, the two of us lying silently side by side in the darkness as we stare up at the ceiling of her room.
There’s so much I want to say, so many questions I want to ask, but I can’t find the words, my brain too fried, too many thoughts running through it for me to make sense of anything right now.
I’m trying not to get my hopes up about this though, having been burnt too many times already to possibly imagine that this could be the one thing that saves me, that proves that what I did that night was justified.
If that’s even fucking possible.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the car,” Ruby whispers, her voice breaking the stillness of the room. I feel her hand slip into mine, the bed dipping a little as she rolls over so she’s lying on her side facing me.
I mirror her pose, my free hand moving to tuck her hair behind her ear as I brush my thumb across her cheekbone. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “I get it.”
Ruby frowns. “It’s not okay, not when I spent every day begging you to talk to me.”
I smile at her. “Yeah but I was just being a dick. You were actually trying to help me. Protect me even.”