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Come with me if you want answers.
I knew better than to trust my father. Unfortunately, I had already taken my gun out of my ankle holster and set my phone down when he came through my hotel room door uninvited. But I desperately wanted answers, and even though leaving with him might turn out to be the stupidest thing I’d ever done, my curiosity won out. I didn’t stop to think how he’d gotten a key to my room, how he’d come into the hotel unnoticed.
While I didn’t trust him—not even a little bit—I didn’t think he’d hurt me. It seemed to be a game with him. He’d stay just out of my reach, and he’d also leave me alone.
For once, he wasn’t wearing a ski mask or the blue contacts. But he was wearing a Colorado Rockies skullcap, which covered his black hair, and black pants and a hoodie. I guessed he was going for gangsta hood.
We didn’t go far. Just to another room in the same hotel. The top floor. I sat, uneasy, on one of the chairs in the room.
“Wine?” he asked.
“No, thanks.” No way was I going to risk getting even slightly inebriated.
“Mind if I have some?”
“Suit yourself.”
He poured himself a glass and then sat down across from me. “You look good.”
“Am I supposed to say thanks?”
“That’s up to you. You were always a beautiful girl, Ruby. Why you’ve been hiding it behind those masculine clothes all these years is beyond me.”
Maybe because you tried to rape me and instilled an irrational fear of men in your teenage daughter.
I stayed silent. Then, “You said you had answers.”
“I do. But first I need you to guarantee me passage out of the country.”
“No can do,” I said. “Are you forgetting I’m an officer of the law? I could arrest you right now.”
“Without a gun? I don’t think so.” He unzipped his hoodie to expose a shoulder holster and Glock.
Though my stomach lurched, as it always did when I encountered someone who was armed, I wasn’t shocked. “If you wanted to hurt me, you’d have done it long ago.” Still, I began devising ways in my mind to disarm him.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’ve been amusing myself watching you try to catch me all these years.”
“Seems you’ve found other ways to amuse yourself, Pops. You know…raping and torturing people? Kids? Then selling them into slavery? Must be really amusing for you or you wouldn’t do it.”
He laughed. Actually laughed! “I do it for the money, kid.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. Maybe you sell them for the money. The raping and torturing is just for fun. Admit it, you shit-eating psychopath.”
“Is that any way to talk to your father?”
“It is when he’s a shit-eating psychopath.”
He didn’t respond. And then I saw it. On the ring finger of his right hand. The ring, identical to Tom Simpson’s. I couldn’t help staring. Was the symbol the same? I couldn’t get a good look from the angle where I was.
“You promised me answers,” I said again.
“Would you believe anything a shit-eating psychopath told you?” he asked.
As much as I hated to admit it, he had a good point. My heart was beating like a bass drum, but I couldn’t show my nervousness. I needed him to see that I was maintaining control, that I didn’t fear him.
“Your ring,” I said. “May I see it?”
“Of course.” He removed it and handed it to me. “It will belong to you someday. You’re my only child.”
