Page 10 of Ruthless Riches
3
Alexis
3 weeks later
With my browsknitted in a slight frown, I lifted my top, peeled off the bandage, and stared at my abdomen in the bathroom mirror. A small scar ran horizontally across my skin, a few inches above my bellybutton. It was a mixture of pink and white. The skin around the area was also slightly discolored—a temporary side effect from the stitches that used to be there, according to my doctor.
Those stitches had been removed ten days ago and replaced with a bandage that had to be changed every day to avoid infection. Apart from that minor inconvenience, things were looking up for me. I was able to stop taking the painkillers recently, and I was also able to walk, bend, pick things up, and do light exercise like yoga. Sex, running, and heavy lifting were still off the table for another few days, though.
I averted my gaze from the mirror, biting my lip. Even though weeks had passed since the attack happened, I still didn’t like to look at the scar for too long. It filled me with a strange mix of guilt, fear, and shame.
I gently cleaned the area around the scar and stuck a new bandage over it. Then I padded downstairs to the Lockwood library and opened my laptop with a jaded sigh.
After I left the hospital a few weeks ago, I’d stuck to my temporary pledge to Nate to focus on my health, leave the Butcher investigation alone, and generally try to act like a normal person.
It wasn’t hard to let regular life call me for a while. I had unpaid hospital bills to deal with, month-old emails I still hadn’t opened, requests from newspapers and TV shows for interviews about the Golden Circle case, and voicemails and texts from old California acquaintances who either wanted to congratulate me or rekindle our friendship now that I was semi-famous. On top of all that, I had college stuff to deal with.
I wound up withdrawing from my course at Blackthorne. Just for now. I’d simply missed too many classes, assignments, and exams throughout the semester to be able to scrape a pass. The Dean of Students was very understanding, though, given the fact that I’d spent recent weeks cracking open a decades-old organ trafficking scheme before being stabbed at a party. He said I could return next semester and start again without any negative reflections on my transcript.
I refused the interview requests from the TV shows and newspapers. So did Nate. We didn’t look into the Golden Circle to get famous—we did it to get answers about our families. Now that it was over, we wanted to move on.
Unfortunately, our refusal to engage with the media didn’t stop them from going wild over us. I’d seen my name and photo in at least seven different newspaper articles so far.
A Google alert suddenly pinged on my phone, and I perked right up and clicked on it. A local news site had just posted something about the copycat Butcher.
Anticipation zapped through my veins like an electric current, only to be replaced with disappointment when I saw that the article was just a rehash of everything the media already knew about the Butcher. No headway had been made by the Avalon police or the FBI agents who had been called in to assist with the case. There were no leads. No suspects.
He was like a ghost.
Now that three weeks had passed without any progress on the case, my anxiety and curiosity about it were growing like jungle weeds, twisting around in my brain and dominating my head so entirely that there was almost no space for other thought.
The Butcher would give into his urges and take another person soon. I knew it. Everyone did. At this point, it was probably only a matter of days until someone was reported missing, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Not until the ruthless monster was caught.
The more I thought about him, the more I realized that part of me hadn’t left the bathroom in the Skulls house after he attacked me—not entirely. The moment I was in bed at night, lights off, all I needed to do was close my eyes and I was immediately back there, standing frozen as I watched the Butcher edge closer to me with a glinting knife.
The nightmares would return after that—the ones where I was chasing someone around with a knife, becoming the Butcher myself. There was always so much blood, so much screaming, so much suffering. It left me with a persistent sense of dread that made me want to avoid sleep as much as possible, but exhaustion always caught up with me in the end. Then I’d plunge right back into the black abyss of terror.
“What are you looking at?”
Startled, I looked up to see Nate standing on the other side of the table. He was holding two cups of coffee. “Just my emails,” I said, not wanting to admit how obsessive I’d become about the Butcher case.
Nate placed the cups down and pushed one toward me, eyeing my laptop. “Why are you using your phone when your computer is right there?”
A blush crept up my cheeks. “Um… I got a Google alert.”
“About the Butcher?” he asked, lifting a brow.
“Yes.” I nervously scratched the side of my head. “I know I said I’d leave it alone, but—”
Nate lifted a palm to cut me off. “I get it. I’ve been looking it up too. Constantly.”
“You have?”
“How could I not? The cops still haven’t found anything, so everyone on the island is freaking out.” He leaned forward and put a hand over my arm. “It’s affecting you, too. I know you’re having nightmares again.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I bit my bottom lip and looked down at the table. “Maybe it’s just the antibiotics messing with my brain.”
“I don’t think so. It’s stress. Probably from the cops making zero progress on the case.”
