Or she wanted so badly for things to be as good as they seemed.
She slid her finger across the screen to answer. “Hey, Ruby. How are you doing?”
There was a pause over the line. “I’m okay. When are you coming back?”
More guilt. “I don’t know, sweetie. Michael is convinced someone tried to hurt me, and honestly, it’s hard for me to be in that house.” First Ruby had lost Nicki, and now she herself was gone. “Why don’t we have dinner later on this week? Do you think you could? I’d like for you to meet Michael.”
“Are you serious?” Ruby asked.
“Of course. And I’m coming to your play later this month. How are rehearsals going?” Vanessa had been the one to convince Ruby to try out for her high school’s musical. The kid had a hell of a voice, but she was too shy to share it. Or she had been before Vanessa had worked with her and she’d managed to get a key part in the show.
“They’re good. I like it a lot. More than I thought I would,” Ruby admitted, and now Vanessa could hear a smile in her voice. “I’m getting to be pretty good friends with a couple of girls from the set. They’re cool.”
“I’m so happy to hear that.” She’d known all Ruby needed was opportunity.
“And I’d love to have dinner, but we have rehearsals.” She hesitated for a moment and then her voice was quieter. “Maybe we could go out after the show.”
“Of course.” She’d always planned to go. She even had a wig, and she would sit in the back so she didn’t bring any attention to herself. “I would love to.”
Ruby’s mom didn’t attend school functions, and her father didn’t call enough to know what Ruby was doing.
“Awesome. I’m going to pick someplace fun like Cheesecake Factory,” Ruby vowed.
She hoped the wig worked there. “Sounds perfect.”
“All right. Now on to weirder news. I’ve been looking into this Hawthorne guy, and I’ve hit a wall,” Ruby admitted. “I’m almost sure something else is here, but I can’t find it.”
“What do you mean?” She moved to the fridge and pulled out a yogurt. Michael had taken her to the store to stock up. She’d loved how normal and domestic it felt to shop for groceries with someone.
“I mean it’s like his whole military life is classified. Not really. There’s nothing that says it’s classified, but his records don’t make sense to me. Some of these records say he’s in places he couldn’t have been in at the time. I’ve talked to a couple of my contacts online, and they think the government is trying to hide what this guy was doing.”
She put down the yogurt. “Ruby, please tell me you didn’t hack into military records.”
A huff came over the line. “Well, I had to since they wouldn’t let me in the normal way.”
How far had this gone? “You have to stop. I never meant for you to get into the kind of trouble you could get into with the military.”
“Hey, it’s cool. They can’t trace it back to me.” Ruby sounded so self-assured. “But I do think it could get rough if I go deeper.”
“Don’t. I want you out of this,” Vanessa replied. “Concentrate on the play. I’ll handle everything else. I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong. Maybe the accident was nothing more than an accident.”
“I don’t think so. I remember how scared she was at the end. But I think you need to consider telling this Michael guy. You said he was an investigator, right?”
“He works for a security firm. But he also works with Kyle Hawthorne, and Kyle is Michael’s boss’s nephew.” She’d seriously considered telling Michael. She’d gone over how she could present her case to him in a way that wouldn’t cost her the relationship. He was a reasonable guy, but this would potentially put him at conflict with a coworker. She needed real evidence before she went to him.
“Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that,” Ruby said with a sigh. “I’ve gone over and over that police report, and I’ve got nothing. There’s one video of Nicki’s car about half a mile from where she crashed, and none of the cars that follow her are suspicious.”
She knew. They’d spent an evening painstakingly going over the grainy video footage they’d managed to get their hands on, taking down every license plate number and then researching each one. None of the cars who could have reached her in time to cause the accident had been taken to a shop or seen with any damage. Vanessa should know because she’d tracked them all down.
According to the police report there had been no signs that Nicki had been forced off the road. But she’d been afraid of MK. MK, Nicki had been sure, was going to kill her.