Page 10 of Deception and New Direction (Ranger Shield Security #3)

She shook her head as though she was upset by the memory. “ They stopped for a little bit, but then I found some more jewelry hidden in places around my apartment. In my medicine cabinet, my silverware drawer—” she paused and then whispered. “—and my nightstand.”

The fact that he was by her nightstand meant he was close to her bed, and that made my blood boil.

“This happened over the course of a few months. I took all of them and put them in a bag and planned to drop it all off at the pawn shop when I knew only my brother was around and not Mal or my father. A few days later, I was at the salon when the TV screen in our lobby had the local news on. They were showing a robbery at a jewelry store a few days before that, and they showed a picture of the missing jewels.” She paused.

“ They were all the ones I’d found in my apartment. ”

Curses came from multiple people in the room.

“He gave you stolen jewelry?” Cat gasped, sounding affronted on Ruthie’s behalf. “ Already hated this creep, but now I hate him even more.”

“Calm down, babe,” Vince said, smiling and pulling her closer to him before turning back to me. “ I take it this is where Archer comes in.”

“Yes,” Ruthie sighed. “ I panicked. First , I was livid, but then I got scared because I was afraid if the cops found them in my apartment, they would think I was the one who stole them.”

She looked over to Archer and paused. “ When I went to the police, Archer was the responding officer. After handing over all the jewelry I had and explaining everything, he asked me to look at some photos of a few other people to see if I recognized any of them. While I was waiting for Archer to come back with more mugshots, my dad called me. He asked me where I was, and I told him at the police station. He told me not to say a word without an attorney, not to give the police anything.”

She groaned and looked to the ceiling, shaking her head.

“ At the time, I thought he was concerned for my welfare and trying to protect me. He wasn’t.

He assumed I was being questioned. When I told him I was the one who had turned in the jewels after I saw them on the news and explained they’d come from Mal , he became livid.

He didn’t yell, per se, likely because he knew I was in a police station, but his anger was clear in the way he hissed his words at me.

He was pissed—because now the cops would be looking into their whole business. ”

God, her dad was a dick of epic proportions.

“I told him I’d do it all over again if that was what Mal was involved in.

He told me not to say a word and fuck this up for him and Jason .

He hung up on me as Archer walked in with another cop to ask questions about my father and brother.

That’s when I realized the cops suspected my father knew exactly what Mal had been up to. ” She stopped and looked at Archer .

“We suspected they were behind a string of robberies—jewelry stores, electronics stores, homes—and were reselling the stolen goods at the pawn shop for profit," Archer explained.

" Thanks to Ruthie , we had enough evidence to book Mal , but not her father or brother, though we brought them in for questioning.”

This story just kept getting worse and worse. I imagined it would get even more complicated, though, since we hadn’t even gotten to the part about why she changed her name or moved from Las Vegas to here in Georgia .

“With Mal in custody for the night, my father and brother still at the station being questioned, and the police telling me even if they went home, there would be a cop who watched their every move, I felt safe enough to go back to my apartment,” Ruthie said, taking a deep breath.

“ The cops had already been there to do a sweep of the place in case I’d missed anything hidden, but they didn’t find any more.

I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I decided to sleep on it. ”

She stopped, closing her eyes and taking a few small breaths.

“Do you need a break?” I asked her, putting my hand on hers where it rested on Dash .

As much as I wanted to hear the rest of this, I didn’t want her to push herself too far.

“No, I’m good. I just want to get this all out once and for all,” she said, brave as ever. “ My plan was to sleep on it, but in the middle of the night, someone broke into my apartment.”

I heard Cat gasp from the other side of the room, but Ruthie just powered through.

“Because I was restless from the events earlier in the day, I hadn’t been sleeping well, so I heard someone moving around the place, moving furniture and breaking things.

I immediately called 911 on my cell next to my bed.

I had been on the line just long enough to give them the basics and my address, and the door to my bedroom opened.

I don’t know why I hadn’t moved off the bed and hid, but I guess in my panicked state I didn’t think about it. ”

“It’s called tonic immobility, or the ‘freeze response,’ and it’s very common in stressful situations when you are in a state of panic,” Archer said to her.

“Yeah, well, I froze nonetheless,” Ruthie went on.

“ I saw a man in a mask, his hand holding a pillowcase that looked weighed down with stuff, and at first, he didn’t see me, but then our eyes met.

He saw the phone in my hand. Just then sirens started to blare, and he realized I’d called the cops.

He cursed and then said, ‘ I should have listened to your father and killed you first before I grabbed this shit…you fucking bitch.’ And then he lifted his other hand, which had a gun in it, and aimed it right at me.

Thankfully my frozen whatever you called it must have unfrozen, because I leapt off the bed. ”

Her breathing started to pick up again, and I was just about to tell everyone she was done and needed a break when Archer spoke.

“I had just finished my shift and was on my way over to her apartment to let her know we didn’t have enough to hold her dad or brother yet, but I was going to give her my card in case she had any issues with them, or she thought of anything else.

I was literally a block away when the call came in about the intruder.

I threw my lights on and came in to find her bleeding on the floor next to the bed,” Archer said, and there were a few curses in the room.

“He shot you!” Cat screeched. “ I’ll kill him myself and bury him where no one will find him!”

“Calm down, Tony Soprano . Let Archer finish,” Vince said to her.

“No, she landed funny and hit her head on the nightstand when she dove off the bed. But head wounds bleed a lot, which caused blood to get all over her shirt and rug, so it looked worse than it was when I showed up,” Archer explained.

“ We got an EMT there pretty quickly and had her off to the hospital in no time. She told me what the intruder had said right before he shot at her. She stayed the night at the hospital with a police detail guarding her room.”

“Apparently my brother tried to come visit me and bring me flowers, but they wouldn’t let him in to see me,” Ruthie added.

“The next day when I came back, she had just been cleared by the doctor, so I offered her a ride home,” Archer continued.

“ On the way back, she mentioned she wanted to leave because she was afraid Mal or her father would track her down, even if she changed apartments. She mentioned she had a grandfather who lived in Georgia , but she would have no job or anything and wasn’t sure what to do.

I thought about what she’d said and when we got back to her apartment, I told her about our new security company we were starting and how I was leaving in three days to come here.

I had already turned in my resignation and everything.

I offered her the job as receptionist here since she’d already done that at the salon for years. ”

I hadn’t known the whole backstory on why we had hired Ruthie , but I honestly hadn’t cared because the rest of the guys had set all of this up while I was still overseas. Now I knew.

“Just to make sure she was covered, we changed her name. I had a friend who worked in the court processing department who owed me a favor, so he expedited her name change. When we moved here the only people who knew her real name were her grandfather and me, though he was under strict orders to never use that old name again.”

“Granddad was my mother’s father, and he hated my dad,” she explained.

“ So , he was more than happy to keep the secret when we told him what happened. After my mom died, my father wouldn’t let my granddad visit, nor were we allowed to visit him.

I wrote him letters a couple times every year.

Ruth was my grandmother’s name. My mom claimed I looked just like her. ”

“I picked Campbell because it was a very common last name and wouldn’t raise any red flags,” Archer added.

“My hair is also naturally a light caramely-color, but I cut several inches off and dyed it just because I was paranoid. And I guess I had every right to be, since Mal obviously found me.”

That explained the silvery-blonde hair…

The room was silent for a few moments as everyone likely took this all in.

“I’ll make a few calls to some guys I know still on the force back in Vegas and see what I can find out,” Archer said. “ Last I knew, Mal was found guilty and sentenced to a couple years in prison, so he shouldn’t even be out right now.”

“I know she’s staying with you right now anyway because of her bum foot,” Axel said to me from the doorway. “ But we can come out and put up a few extra cameras around the perimeter of your house if you want.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Vince chimed in.

“Why don’t you take her home now. Day’s more than half over anyway, and Axel and I can follow you both back there and set up at least a couple extra, and we’ll do more tomorrow,” Archer said.

“But who’s going to watch the desk?” Ruthie asked. “ I’m not going to let him scare me out of this job!”

“Diego can keep manning the desk for now,” Archer said.

“I can help too,” Cat spoke up.

Archer, Vince , and Ruthie all said no at the same time.

“Listen,” Cat interrupted. “ Diego hates talking, and he hates people. He only knows how to grunt and groan most days; he’ll be terrible at answering phones and talking with clients.

I can do it better, but if you’re worried about my safety, Diego can sit next to me while I do it and be my bodyguard.

Or this lug can,” she said, pointing to Vince .

“I need to call Granddad so he knows,” Ruthie said. “ Because my father could very easily have told Mal where Granddad lives, and I don’t want him to go there and catch him off guard.”

“Let’s do this,” Vince said. “ Axel and Diego can go set up the cameras at Jack’s place, and I’ll stay here with Cat and man the front desk. Jack and Archer can go with Ruthie to her grandfather’s house and maybe even take some cameras for him too, just in case this guy shows up.”

We all agreed, gathered what we needed, and went our separate ways.

I had a feeling this was going to be an unpleasant conversation, but I wasn’t going to let Ruthie do it on her own.

Her real family may not have had her back, but she had a new family now at Ranger Shield , and we took care of our own.