Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(78)

But at the bend of the next corner, I saw it. A flash of metal in the moonlight. Bright white, tucked off the side of the dirt road.

I moved faster until I was almost upon it. Until I knew it was the car I’d seen before. Tinted windows and mud-streaked tires. No plates.

There was no way to know whether this was Ruby’s car, though. To know why Whitney or Molly had assumed it was hers. Or whether Molly was just spinning another story, trying to keep Ruby at the center.

I circled it carefully, as Preston had done when it was parked in the lot at my office. Between the dark and the tinted windows, I couldn’t see inside. I shone my flashlight into the window but could make out only darker shadows.

I braced myself as I tried the handle, ready for a siren that blared through the night, but the passenger door was locked, and no alarm sounded. I tried the other handles, but every door was locked. There was a keypad under the handle of the driver’s door.

Keys couldn’t keep you safe—

I searched on my phone for the make and model of the car, to see if there was a way to reset it. All I discovered, per the car manufacturer, was that a five-digit code would grant me access, but it would also lock me out for good after three attempts, requiring a call to the dealer afterward.

I almost left. I had no proof this car was hers, and no way to get in. But I had three attempts, and I decided to take them.

The first code I tried was Ruby’s birthday. I knew the date by heart, subtracted backward to calculate her birth year, and hoped the locks clicked open.

They didn’t.

What other codes could there be? Knowing Ruby, she’d think she was being clever, subverting all expectations. Not even bothering to try to outwit someone.

I punched in 1-2-3-4-5, because what other options did I have?

Nothing happened.

I was down to the last attempt, but I could think of no other date. Pacing back and forth, I tried to remember her dad’s birthday or anything significant that had happened in her life—and then I froze.

The date she’d written inside the front cover of that journal. 6-28-19.

The date she’d been released from prison. Something meaningful. Not just arbitrarily dating her book but writing down her code.

I held my breath as I tried it now: 62819.

The locks clicked open, cutting through the silence. And I knew, without a doubt, that this car had belonged to her.

She’d parked it at my workplace, knowing we were all on vacation. Moved it after discovering I’d been there and must’ve seen her car.

Molly was right. Ruby had taken my car and gone absolutely nowhere. Taken it for my set of keys. Because she could. Acting like she hadn’t driven in over a year. Acting, always acting.

Like she’d been planning this for so long. Something stirring inside her for fourteen months. Not arriving in her car but by cab. Acting like she needed help, needed me.

She wasn’t back only for that cash or the set of keys she’d left behind. She was planning to dig to the bottom of things by watching us all. To get her revenge.

God, how she must have hated us. Fourteen months for that hatred to take root deep in her heart and grow.

I opened the driver’s door now, and the overhead light turned on, exposing me.

Ruby, the liar. Ruby, the criminal. Ruby, the victim.

I wanted to know which one I was dealing with. Which one was the true Ruby.

There was nothing but a bill of sale in the glove compartment. Candy wrappers and a soda can littered the cupholder, as if a child had been hiding out in here. I moved to the backseat, where a blanket lay over the space between the seat and the floor—like she might’ve slept here or been planning on it.

Or maybe she was just preparing. Always ready to leave. In case the district attorney decided they were ready to retry her. She couldn’t trust that the system would work in her favor, ever again.

I moved the blanket and found what she’d been hiding: a file box, lid on.

The box from my office of Brandon Truett’s personal effects.

I opened the box and saw all the things I’d stored away: the photo of him and Fiona smiling up at me, on top of a stack of magazines routed to the wrong address. A Visa gift card, removed from the birthday card, wedged into the corner of the frame now.

Tipped on its side was the small box that had been delivered to the office after his death. I turned it over, but Ruby had already torn it open. The edges were mangled, the sides compressed, but the top was folded back on itself.

I pried the cardboard sides apart, looking at what lay within, as a wave of sickness washed over me, heat rising, goose bumps running down my neck.

It was a white box labeled in simple print: carbon monoxide detector.

The picture below the label showed the make and model that had been inside his house. The same model in all our homes.

As if Brandon Truett had placed this order and accidentally clicked his business address for the delivery. As if he’d used the gift card we’d given him, sitting at the desk where he worked, to place this order.

And by the time it arrived, he was dead.

I closed my eyes, trying to take a deep breath, as I finally understood what Ruby had uncovered.

No one had taken the carbon monoxide detector from their house. No one had hidden it or thrown it in the lake after planning their dark and heartless deaths.

More likely, the Truetts had removed it—an incessant beeping that wouldn’t stop, a broken model that needed to be replaced—and the new one had not arrived in time to stop it.