Dangerous Allies (The Ruby Danger Series Book 1)

by Rickie Blair

  The bonds were the key. If she could find where Dimitri had hidden them, she could take Sergei away. Whether she took the bonds to the police or the vor v zakonye made no difference. Either way, she could bargain for her brother’s future if not her own.

  Turkey was also thinking, but ended up in the soup.

  Mila snuffed the cigarette under her foot. Hopefully, that proverb she had learned as a child would not prove to be true.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  GEORGIA

  Ruby winced at the sunlight that bleached the dingy parking lot of the Easy Dayz Motel and slid on her sunglasses before closing the door behind her. She threw her new duffel bag into the back seat of the dusty beat-up Fairlane and got into the driver’s seat with her tote bag. Checking her makeup in the rearview mirror, she fluffed her hair and then slid the car into reverse. ‘Jersey Girl’ had almost a thousand miles to cover before the Canadian border.

  After a few hours she pulled into a gas station for a fill-up and walked into the tiny storefront to pay with cash. As the clerk rang up her gas purchase, Ruby scooped up a dozen packs of mint gum. Jersey Girl always chews gum. On impulse, she added a bag of Double Stuf Oreos. After all, she could be dead in a few days.

  The clerk, who had a twirled black mustache and a bright green turban, studied her over the top of his glasses while his hand hovered over the cash register.

  “Is that it?” he asked. When Ruby nodded, he counted out her change and reached under the counter for a plastic bag.

  “Oh, hang on, sorry,” she said.

  Ruby walked to the cooler and pulled out a half-dozen chilled plastic bottles of water and placed them on the counter. She might be dead, but at least she would be hydrated.

  Back on the interstate, she fiddled with the radio dial. Talk show snippets, country songs, sermons. The only newscast she found did not mention Antony or her. Switching off the radio, Ruby turned her attention to the road. If she drove through the night she would hit Niagara Falls in the morning. Then she could get a room and cross the border the following day. But not until she’d changed her appearance to match the photo on her Canadian passport. ‘Abigail Ruby Baxter.’ It had been years since anyone had called her that.

  Hours later, she pulled up to a roadside restaurant and walked inside. Booths lined the front window and a counter along the back was bookended with six-foot-high glass coolers. Interior spotlights lit up six revolving shelves of pies in each cooler. Blueberry, lemon meringue, pecan, key lime, apple crumble, and chocolate silk. Ruby sat on a stool at the back counter, gave the pies a lingering wistful look, and then ordered the all-day breakfast, hold the bacon ... and the butter. She already regretted the Oreos.

  When her food arrived, she stuck her gum to the side of the plate and attacked the scrambled eggs and dry toast. Glugging down coffee, she waved at the waitress to keep it coming.

  Behind her, a family of four slid into a booth under the front window. The children, a boy and a girl, were arguing. Ruby watched them in the mirror behind the counter as she chewed. The girl punched the younger boy in the arm.

  “Mom …” the boy wailed.

  Their mom, who looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, paid no attention.

  The kids’ father slumped back against the booth with his eyes closed.

  “Shut up,” he said, without opening his eyes.

  With a smirk, the girl sneaked a hand behind her brother’s back and pinched him.

  He slapped her arm away.

  “Stop it,” he hissed.

  Ruby chuckled and turned her attention to her eggs.

  “Sorry about that.”

  She looked up from jamming toast into her mouth.

  “The noise, I mean.” The waitress refilled Ruby’s coffee mug and lowered her voice. “Folks drive all night, come in here tired and cranky and …” Her voice trailed off. With the coffee pot still held aloft, she frowned at Ruby. “You look familiar.”

  Ruby’s stomach tightened.

  “Yeah?” She reached for the ketchup and drenched her eggs with it, lifted a forkful to her mouth and chewed with gusto. “Well, we’re all s’posed to have a twin somewhere, right?”

  The waitress stared at her.

  “You put ketchup on eggs?” she said. “You must be Canadian.”

  Ruby tried to laugh.

  “Nah. I just like ’em this way.”

  “Wait—I know.” The waitress beamed. “You look like that actress who died. On that boat. You know. Ruby. Ruby Delaney? Family Album?” Her gaze narrowed as she nodded. “She was Canadian.”

  The girl in the booth slapped her brother. He screamed, rose to his knees on the bench and shrieked, “Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it …” while slapping his sister’s arm with both hands.

  “Shut up!” their father yelled.

  The children froze and turned to look at him.

  The restaurant fell silent as the other customers stared, many with forkfuls of food halfway to their mouths. But within seconds, the background hum of conversation and cutlery clinking against china resumed. The children slumped sullenly in the booth.

  The waitress behind the counter had not moved. She studied Ruby’s face.

  “Can I get my bill?” Ruby said weakly, reaching for her bag.

  The waitress nodded, putting the coffee pot back onto the warmer, and pulled a pad from her apron pocket. She took a pencil from behind her ear, scrawled, ‘Special, $3.99,’ and laid the bill beside Ruby’s plate.

  “It’s weird how much you resemble her. I bet you get that a lot.”

  Ruby pretended to study the bill.

  “Not really.”

  The waitress squinted.

  “Eyes a different color though. Hers were green.”

  Ruby looked up with a twist of unease.

  “You know the color of her eyes?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m a big fan. Big fan.” The waitress leaned in and lowered her voice. “And anyways, why would she jump off a ship? I bet her husband had something to do with it. It’s always the husband.” She gave a suspicious gaze down the counter, where an elderly man added several spoons of sugar to his coffee with a shaky age-spotted hand.

  The waitress leaned in even closer.

  “We have a website, me and Ivy.”

  She nodded at a woman across the room and Ruby glanced over her shoulder. A waitress stood beside a table of four young men who wore hoodies and track pants. A dozen empty beer bottles dotted the table, and the men were arguing the merits of ordering another round, plus full racks of ribs, at eleven a.m.

  Ruby turned back to the counter.

  “FindRubyDanger.com,” the waitress said, nodding. “Check it out. We’re gonna get to the bottom of this.” She grimaced. “Although Ivy’s hubby James says the sharks would have got at the body by now, so there wouldn’t be no evidence.”

  Ruby stared at the waitress. Her arms were chubby, her unruly black hair was swept up in a hair net and her bright blue eye shadow and black liner were too heavy for her petite face. A nameplate on her chest read, Katelyn.

  “Why do you care?” Ruby said. “I thought that actress was a bit of a screwup. Didn’t she get arrested at one point?”

  Katelyn frowned and shook a finger.

  “See, I hate when people say things like that. Her sister up and died. Don’t you think that would get to ya?” She shook her head. “We got a review up on our website, from one of those New York papers, about a play Ruby was in once. It says she was lumin, lumin—”

  “Luminous?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. It means,” she looked at the ceiling and recited, “bright or shining, especially in the dark.” She looked at Ruby and smiled. “And she was, she really was.”

  Ruby’s eyebrows rose.

  “You saw that play?”

  “Me?” Katelyn shook her head. “Oh, no. I never been to New York. But our kid was sick, scary sick, last year, and when I got home from the hospital every night, I watched Family Album reruns.�
�� Smiling, she shook her head. “Ruby helped get me through it, honest she did. She was so funny.” The waitress stared across the room for a moment, lost in thought. Then she looked back. “I didn’t know her or nuthin’, but if I could have done somethin’ to help her, I would have.”

  Ruby stared down at her plate, blinking rapidly. She placed a twenty on the counter and slid off the stool. Yanking her chewing gum off the plate, she popped it into her mouth.

  “Keep the change,” she said, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder, “you can use it for your website. Nice chattin’ with ya, Katelyn.” She turned and headed for the door.

  “Thanks,” Katelyn called after her.

  Ruby nodded at Ivy on her way out. Ivy inclined her head at the four young men, who were still arguing, and raised her eyebrows.

  * * *

  The Interstate rolled on, endless, for hours. Ruby passed the time by drinking coffee, fiddling with the radio, concocting new disguises in her head, and rolling down the window occasionally so the blasts of cool air would keep her from nodding off.

  The pale blue horizon faded into black and then gray and then pale blue again. Eventually she reached the outskirts of Niagara Falls, where she hoped that crossing at such a busy tourist spot would reduce the chances of serious scrutiny. After paying cash for a motel room, she went across the street to a Walgreens where she bought hair dye and a white shirt. Back in the motel, she drew the blackout curtains and collapsed on the bed, too tired to change.

  The next morning, she dyed her bleached-blonde hair and dark roots an even honey blonde and leveled off her surfer cut with scissors. Ruby pulled on black capris, runners and a plain white shirt. She covered her bruises with foundation but kept her eyes free of makeup. It was crucial that no one associate plain Abigail Baxter of Sudbury, Ontario, with notorious Ruby Delaney of New York, Hollywood, and Family Album.

  Ruby left the motel and drove the Fairlane to the border. She pulled up to a row of cars waiting to clear customs, after first checking for a male border guard. The time slot for Family Album had conflicted with Monday Night Football.

  On this day, Homeland Security’s threat level was low but that didn’t stop Ruby’s legs from trembling. She rubbed her clammy hands on her thighs and looked around. Long lines of tourists waited to cross to the Canadian side for a close-up view of the Horseshoe Falls. Ruby rolled down her window. In the car beside her, a thirty-something woman had propped a book against her steering wheel. The woman smiled at her and shrugged in a what can you do? gesture, then went back to her reading.

  Behind Ruby’s Fairlane, four young women in an electric-blue Toyota Yaris bopped and swayed to Taylor Swift’s latest single so vigorously that their tiny car swayed, too.

  In the Mercedes in front of her, two small white dogs yapped out the passenger side window at a huge Doberman in a van on the right. The Doberman ignored them. Ruby bit her lip, her chest aching. If only she could ask Zelda about Charlie.

  She pulled up to the stop here sign and waited while the knot in her stomach tightened. The Mercedes drove off and the guard in the booth motioned for Ruby to move up.

  She handed him her passport, open to the first page, which he took with an expression at once both grim and bored.

  “Where were you born?”

  “Sudbury.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Toronto.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Returning home.”

  “What were you doing in the U.S.?”

  “Shopping.”

  “Anything to declare?”

  “No, I was sightseeing. Not so much shopping, really.” Ruby smiled nervously. “It’s a nice day for a drive.”

  The guard studied her face, then the passport picture, and then her face again. The knot in her stomach became a full-fledged macramé lamp.

  Handing back her passport, he waved her on.

  “You can go.”

  She eased the Fairlane forward, preparing to stomp on the gas, when a blaring whoop, whoop, whoop filled the air. The barrier in front of her slammed into place and armed border guards burst from a small building beside the road. They ran straight at her, their boots echoing in unison on the pavement.

  Ruby put both her hands in the air in terror.

  The guards thundered right past her.

  Two rows over, they yanked a young dark-haired man out of a low-slung aging Cadillac. He said something to them, but it was lost under the guards’ shouting. They forced him to the ground, face down with his hands clasped behind his head. An unmarked black SUV shrieked up and shuddered to a halt. Two officers in assault vests jumped out, yanked the young man to his feet and frisked him. They pushed him into the back seat of the SUV and drove away.

  Ruby lowered her shaking hands and glanced at the guard in the booth, who fortunately had not noticed her attempted surrender. He was watching the armed guards, who set up barricades around the Cadillac and waved the vehicles behind it into other lines.

  The barriers rose and Ruby inched the car ahead, picking up speed until she reached the bridge. Easing her foot off the gas, she drove over the Niagara River. On the other side, she turned left and pulled into the first parking lot she came to. Across the street, white mist billowed into the air above the Horseshoe Falls.

  Ruby turned off the ignition and leaned her head on the wheel until her breathing had slowed, then walked across the road and rested her hands on the metal railing at the edge of the gorge. Saturated air cooled her face and dampened her clothes while the Niagara River thundered over the cliff yards away. Her thoughts turned to the past.

  Great-aunt Dot had brought her and Lily here as children. They picnicked on the lush green grass and visited the wax museum. There, the girls stared in fascination at the impaled and butchered bodies in the basement’s Chamber of Horrors, while Great-uncle Henry waited stoically outside, museums of any kind not being his thing. In the upstairs galleries, their aunt stopped in front of the wedding party of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, frozen forever in the forced joy of a day when the world had stopped, according to Aunt Dot anyway, to watch their nuptials. There was no hint on their stiff wax faces of the scandal and tragedy to come. Lily and Ruby found them boring.

  But today Ruby was alone. Lily was gone, Uncle Henry was gone, and Aunt Dot—Ruby winced as she remembered her great-aunt must think her remaining niece was dead, too.

  She climbed back into the Fairlane and headed for Toronto.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  TORONTO

  The CN tower was a blur in the distance as Ruby drove across the bridge that hugs the western end of Lake Ontario. The belching smokestacks of Hamilton were on her left and on her right the great gray-blue lake was dotted with the season’s last sailboats and a lone freighter making its way to port.

  Then the bridge dipped back to ground level and for the next forty miles she followed the highway past malls, business parks, and suburbs, until the first thicket of blue-glassed condominiums at the city’s edge came into view. The downtown skyline appeared in a gap between the buildings, its tall bank towers rendered in black and gold. The Fairlane climbed onto the elevated expressway that sweeps past the glass-walled condominiums along the lake and into the heart of Toronto.

  With six million people in the city and its suburbs, Ruby figured Canada’s largest city was a good place to hide out while she executed her plan. Holding the steering wheel with one hand, she flexed her wounded arm and winced at the resulting flash of pain. She hadn’t yet ironed out the details of that plan, but not getting shot again was a key component.

  Turning off the expressway, she headed north, away from the lake, and up a street she hoped still had a few rooming houses left. Ruby drove until she saw a hand-lettered Room to Let sign in a window.

  The landlady snapped each of the crisp American twenties Ruby handed her, peering at them suspiciously over the top of her glasses. Then she led her up a flight of narrow stairs past walls, carpet, and wood
work in similar dingy shades of muddy brown. On the second floor the landlady paused at the third door, pulled a key from her apron pocket and handed it over.

  “No bed bugs. See you keep it that way.”

  Ruby hung her coat over a hook on the door. Her new accommodations included a kitchenette with a bar fridge and microwave, a bay window that overlooked the street, and an old television on a rickety TV tray. She pulled her laptop from her bag, placed it on the cheap plastic coffee table, and sat gingerly on the sofa. Not quite what she was used to. But no one would look for Antony Carver’s wife in a place like this.

  In any case, it wasn’t her first shabby rooming house. She and Hari had lived in similar accommodations in their Manhattan Academy days. Ruby smiled as she remembered the flophouse in Queens, frequented by performing arts students, that had been her first home in New York. Hari had the room next to hers, but they were only casual acquaintances.

  That changed the night Ruby woke at three a.m. to find a man on the fire escape peering in her window. She screamed, and Hari barged into her room with such force that he wrenched the lock off the door. He held a baseball bat. Ruby, clutching the bedclothes to her chest, took one look at his Superman-themed pajamas and burst into peals of laughter.

  Hari rubbed the back of his neck with a shrug, checked the fire escape and, on discovering the peeping Tom had fled, turned to leave.

  Ruby stopped laughing.

  “No, stay. Please? What if he comes back? Besides,” she added, pointing at her door, “you busted my lock. You should have used your X-ray vision.”

  “Very funny, Lois,” Hari looked down at his pajamas. “A gift from my mother,” he said ruefully. “Not too many people see them.”

  Ruby arched an eyebrow.