The Devil's Game (Rhodes to Hell Book 1) Page 10

  When I get to the clinic, Ruby isn’t with them in the hospital room as they eat. They tell me she needs to run, and doesn’t do meals ever, but it doesn’t make sense because she’s wearing nothing but the socks I’d given her, her friends dried blood, and the dress from last night. The last time I checked, what she’d wearing is not proper running attire. Unless she’s not actually going running.

  I leave the clinic and from the sidewalk and watch Ruby walk up the walkway towards me and I just shake my head. She’s wearing clothing that has been in the drawers in the guest house for a long time, untouched. Salem will get a kick out of this when she gets back.

  I walk across the rocks and meet her on the edge of the pavement. She stops and puts her hands on her hips. “I hope you don’t mind I borrowed some of the clothes in there. I don’t know who they belong to, but I was tired of the bloody dress.”

  “I don’t mind.” I shrug, keeping my feelings off my face but absolutely checking out her legs in the tight athletic shorts she picked. She has them rolled them up a few times making them sit higher on her legs and the sports bra shows off her tight stomach. She doesn’t have a six pack, but if she wants to get muscular, she won’t have to work hard for it to happen. I notice a scar across her chest, but the bra and her hair do a good job at covering the raised, imperfect skin.

  “Thanks,” she says, her smile touching her eyes. It’s real.

  “They say you're gonna run?” There's a question in my voice and her smile falls.

  “They sent you out to stop me?”

  I scoff. “If your name isn’t Preston Rhodes I’m not taking orders from you,” I tell her truthfully. “But if running is what you want, you shouldn't run just anywhere around here.”

  “Why?” she asks, the sass in her tone almost enough to piss me off. Almost.

  I’m not out here to fight with her though, I just want to keep her safe. Or as safe as I can at least. Preston’s compound isn't in the greatest area and is surrounded by nothing but forest. There’s only one road to come and go from, and her running, even if to just the nearest gas station, would've definitely pose a few problems for her. The biggest being all of the men who would want to snatch her little ass right off the side of the road and take her home to never be seen again.

  I doubt she’d go willingly, but she’s still small and could be overpowered easily. By the right person.

  “Running around here isn’t needed if running is all you want. I’ll take you to the field here within the safety of this place, where you can be seen,” I tell her and she narrows her eyes at me.

  “First, you care I eat. Now, you care about my safety … actually last night you cared too. Why are you acting so out of character Hollis? I know who you are, and I know what you do. Why do you care about me?”

  She stands firm in her words and as I stare at her the wind picks up her dark hair and spins some into her face. She doesn’t even flinch. She just stares at me wanting to know why and I have absolutely no answer to give her. So, I’m honest.

  “I … don’t know.”

  She stands here for a few seconds before taking a few steps in my direction. “I just want to run.”

  I nod and turn to head for the path leading behind the guest house. The field is this way and as I walk I can hear her behind me shuffling to catch up. We walk most of the way in silence until the itch to ask is more than I want to hold my tongue for.

  “Why do you run?”

  “To stay healthy, duh.” She laughs, but she looks up at me with a grin, “Not physically, but mentally. I run to get away from the problems in my face. It helps me sort them out, unbiased. Gives me time to cool off or whatever.”

  “I could imagine you’d need to cool off a lot over something like what happened last night,” I tell her. She shrugs.

  “I need to cool off mostly because the finger behind the trigger wasn’t mine,” she says with a hard look in my direction. “I wasn’t afraid to kill him.”

  I can tell she wants my approval. I can see it plain as day in her eyes she wants me to say I already know she would’ve done it, but the truth is last night I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if she’d be able to live with herself after, so I took care of it for her. I didn’t mean to make her feel helpless or like she couldn’t do it.

  “I didn’t know it for sure.”

  “Do you know now? Do you believe I would have killed him if you hadn’t?” Her eyes beg for me to tell her what she wants to hear, and I want to, but I’m not quick to trust, no matter how the person makes me feel when their skin meets mine.

  “I don’t know you, Ruby. I’m not going to lie, I’m willing to get to know you, but right now, I don’t know if I would have done anything different. Killing is permanent and it’s something you have to live the rest of your life carrying.”

  “I know,” she admits, her voice strong, “I killed my parents when I was sixteen.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  RUBY—TEN YEARS AGO

  The car my parents have had all of my life hasn’t worked in probably six months. Before it broke down, I tried to avoid ever getting in the car with them because on the rare occasion they were sober, they definitely weren’t nice to me. I’ve walked everywhere for as long as I can remember and I don’t mind it, honestly.

  My parents mind it though, and from what I heard outside of their bedroom last night they got the car fixed yesterday. I’m not sure how they got it fixed but my dad was yelling when they first started talking about it, which is what caught my attention in the first place. No matter how much I hate my mom, I’d still defend her against him any day but when I got to their door the yelling stopped.

  I listened as my mom apologized for fucking the mechanic and his whole crew so they’d fix the old truck. I listened as she softened the blow of her infidelity with the promise of the opportunity to once again be able to get the better heroin since they could drive to go get it again. I listened as she fooled my dad into thinking she’d only been such a whore for him.

  I listened to them fuck too.

  I don’t know why I stood in the hallway and listened, and as I lay in my bed now I can only hope the better heroin they get will just fucking kill them already. I hate them and I as I roll over a wave of nausea hits me hard and I bolt out of bed. Running to the bathroom, I trip on a shoe in the hall and it makes a loud noise when it hits the wall but I don’t care. I put my hands on the dirty toilet seat and heave into the bowl.

  I’m fine when I stand back up and flush the toilet but when I see my mother in the mirror behind me I frown and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and sleeve of my shirt. She stares at me for a half a second too long for me to feel comfortable with and I turn on her quickly before she has the opportunity to pretend like she cares about me.

  “What?” I snap at her.

  “I heard a sound in the hallway,” she says, her eyes lazy and her cheek bones protruding out thanks to her sunken in cheeks. My mom looks like shit.

  “Okay,” I say meanly, pushing past her. She doesn’t stop me.

  I get to my door just as she says speaks. “Am I gonna be a grandma?”

  My hand freezes on the knob and I narrow my eyes before turning around to face her. “What?”

  “You’re throwing up …”

  “So,” I snap. “It doesn’t mean I’m pregnant. Not everyone is like you. And even if I was pregnant you’ve never been a mother to me, so how would you be a grandma to my kid.”

  I see her face fall as I turn around and push my bedroom door open and slam it shut. Fuck her.

  I pull my T-shirt off as I walk further into my bedroom and wipe my mouth with it before tossing it in the small laundry bag I keep. I don’t have a dresser or hangers, so my clothes are folded in piles in the corner of my room. I grab a black shirt from the pile and a pair of leggings Cece gave me and hope I can get out of the house for a run before seeing my parents again.

  Once I’m dressed, I slip out of my room and am careful not to kick
anything else as I sneak to the kitchen to get some water. I’m looking down the hall at their bedroom door when I walk into the kitchen and sigh once I look over at the sink and find them both standing there, watching me.

  “I told your dad you need to go to the free health clinic since you’re sick,” my mom says, and I look up at my dad.

  “You’ll go,” he tells me.

  “I just ate something bad,” I argue but he just shakes his head as he walks toward me. He’s not high because it’s still early in the morning but I still step back instinctively.

  He keeps coming at me and backs me right into the narrow wall on the far side of the kitchen. His hands are around my neck before I can block him, and he grips hard as he talks to me. “You will go,” he tells me as I scratch at his hands, begging to be released with my eyes. He doesn’t care. “Won’t you?”

  I do my best to nod in his grip but I’m more concerned with getting his fingers from around my throat. I’m starting to black out and lose my fight when he finally releases me and I collapse on the floor, holding my neck. He stands over me but I don’t look up at him. I’d be okay with never seeing him again.

  “We will be ready in ten minutes to take you,” he tells me. “Do I need to take you back to our bedroom to make sure you remember what running away gets you?”

  I don’t answer him because I hate him. I don’t ever want him to do anything to me ever again let alone make sure I remember something I’ll never be able to get out of my head.

  “Do I?” he barks, kicking me with his dirty socked foot.

  “No,” I rasp out as loud as I can and it satisfies him enough.

  I watch the floor as they both leave the kitchen and I don’t get up until their bedroom door is closed. With one hand still on my neck I turn the sink on and let the water run for a few seconds until it runs clear before scooping some into my mouth with my hand. I swish the water around and spit it into the sink before pouring more into my mouth and swallowing.

  They don’t even take ten minutes to get ready and are back out in the living room before I can think about leave the kitchen. I get my shoes from my room silently and don’t say a thing as we leave the apartment. The truck is parked in the same spot it’s been in for the last six months but once we’re all inside and my dad turns the key it’s like was never broken at all.

  Cars are weird like that. They have the ability to be put back together with all new pieces and it’s like they were never in a bad position to begin with. I think it would be pretty cool to be a car.

  He pulls out of the apartment complex and as my mom reaches forward to change the music he gets onto the highway going the wrong way. The clinic is over by Cece’s house, but we’re going in the complete opposite direction. I know this only means one thing, and in my life I am not sure I’ve ever wanted to jump out of a moving car more than I do right now.

  They’re taking me with them to get their heroin.

  It’s been years since I’ve been forced to tag along on their drug endeavors, and I do not miss those times. In fact, I do just about everything I can to forget those times.

  “I thought you were taking me to the clinic,” I say to my dad, meeting his eyes with my glare.

  “You’ll go when we get back on this side of town,” he snarls at me. “Until then just sit there and shut the fuck up.”

  I truly don’t wonder where I get my temper from.

  I do exactly what he says too, and don’t say another word to them for the whole ride. I hate I have to even be here for this because I know they won’t be smart and wait to do their drugs when they get home. When they come back everyone is going to be in danger and on one hand I want to run, but on the other I know he’ll find me because he always has. It’s always the worst after I run.

  No matter how high they’ve gotten they have been consistent with one other thing, keeping me held prisoner. There have been so many people from the state come visit me in my whole life, but I’ve never been taken away. I have no idea why nothing ever stuck.

  I watch them as they walk up to the dilapidated crack house and when I can no longer see them I survey everything around me. There are some kids playing across the street and I see a few kids my age too, but I also see the older men waiting in the shadows. They watch as the little girls play with their jump rope, laughing loudly, and the nausea from earlier is back.

  I swallow, willing myself not to throw up because there’s nothing in this car the I can puke in and getting out to puke on the sidewalk isn’t the kind of attention I want to attract at the moment.

  They’re gone for a good twenty minutes before they finally emerge looking like the happiest kids on earth leaving the candy shop.

  They get in the car and I don’t smell their highs yet. It’s hard to explain, but I can always tell when they’ve gotten high and I’m thankful they’re not high yet. Maybe I will actually make it to the clinic after all. My thoughts crumble when I notice the white powder on my dad’s nose once he’s settled. I don’t know what drugs they did inside, but whatever it was they clearly snorted it instead of smoking it.

  They ignore me and I’m fine with it or at least I’m used to it and prefer it over the other alternatives they’ve ever shown me.

  “The new shit was some good,” my dad says to my mom as he pulls out a plastic bag with a tan powder inside it. I know what it is, and I’m not surprised but I’d do almost anything to get him to just put the bag back in his pocket and take me to the clinic. He doesn’t.

  My mom pulls a spoon, lighter, and an old needle from her little black bag and I watch as they heat the powder and pull it into the syringe. They don’t even spare me a glance as my mom tries to find a vein in her hand. She’s shot them all to hell, so she probably has trouble all the time. My dad gets annoyed and pulls the needle from her hand and forces it into the bend of her arm.

  They repeat the process for him and my mom is already nodding next to me when he’s finishing up. He tosses the needle and spoon back into my mom’s bag and the remaining powder in the bag is wrapped up and put back into his pocket. I watch my mom as my dad puts the car in drive and the bad feeling in my stomach is stronger than I’ve ever felt before.

  We’re all about to die and I know it.

  My dad is only weaving a little at first but the lower his eyes get the more the truck starts to swerve into oncoming traffic. He has this dumb smile on his face, and I am honestly not even sure if my mom is alive anymore when her body slams into mine as my dad swerves back into our lane. She’s completely dead weight. A few cars have honked but most of them are just doing their best to get out of our way and I’m thankful they aren’t hitting us.

  He swerves hard into the other side of the road and I scream out as a car blasts their horn over and over again. Jerking the car back is the last thing he does before falling over onto my mom, putting more pressure on me. I squeeze from in between my mom and the truck door and grab the wheel, doing my best to hold it steady as my dad's foot wedges into the gas pedal.

  The car is picking up speed fast and I shove my mom over, trying to move her and my dad to the other side of the truck’s bench seat but they’re not budging. I jerk the car back onto our side, but I do it too hard, but I only realize this once we’re flipping. I hear the impact of something hitting the truck and I hear screaming, then everything is just black.

  Chapter Fifteen

  RUBY—PRESENT

  When we get to the bottom of the cement steps I stop and grimace as I look back up the tall flight. “You know, I am not going to want to climb those at the end of a run.”

  Hollis turns away to hide his smirk, but I see it anyway. “I know. He always has a reason for what he does and he put these steps here just to push us all even further than we ever thought possible.”

  “Who are you talking about?” I ask, following him closer to the track.

  “Preston.”

  “But why?” I whine, but pick up my feet faster to catch up to him.

 
“When we were in school we all played sports. We had personal training every day even after school practices. Preston would work us past our breaking point on the field and then make us climb the stairs pushing us even further to be the best and to get stronger,” Hollis explains. When I finally catch up to him he turns his head to look at me. “He always pushes us to be our best. Even when we don’t want to be pushed.”

  I think about what he’s saying while we walk and when I take my eyes off of him I see the expanse of what the track consists of. I am in a big college stadium like area, there are even bleachers lining the whole far left side of the field. The deck behind the guest house looks out over the field and there’s even a building a little ways away.

  “I have always been the one to push myself,” I tell him finally as we get to the gate surrounding the track and field. “Never needed someone else’s nagging.”

  “Preston doesn’t nag.” His voice is firm, and I pick up on the double meaning in what he’s saying. I believe him because Preston doesn’t seem like the type to ask twice.

  Without another word I push through the gate and take off running. I don’t know what Hollis plans to do while I’m running, but it doesn’t take me long to find out. He’s running right alongside me but I don’t look at him or pay him any attention at all as I keep running. I would love to have music but I still have no idea where my phone is. I haven’t seen it since the club, but I’m not holding my breath on getting it back.

  I run and I run, my stomach rolling the whole time and when I come around for my tenth lap I slow some before stepping off into the grass on the inside of track. I feel everything in my stomach violently rise and I throw up everything I’d had at the club. Every drop of alcohol. It stings like hell as all of the alcohol followed by acidic bile poured from my mouth and nose and I hit my hands and knees hard as the last of the throw up racks through my body.