Page 40 of Ruthless Riches
“I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.”
She sighed. “It does matter, Nate. We need you right now. But not like this,” she said, twisting her hands in front of her. “You know the most about what happened last night, so we need your brain to be as switched on as possible if we want to have any hope of figuring out where Alexis has gone. But it won’t work properly if you don’t eat anything. You need energy.”
“You need to let us clean you up, too,” Ruby said, eyeing my bleeding, blistered hands. “If you get some sort of infection and die, you won’t be able to help us at all.”
“I won’t fucking die.”
“Well, Alexis might if we don’t find her,” she snapped.
I stared at her, chin lifted high. “You think I don’t fucking know that?”
“Sorry,” she murmured, taking a step back. Tears had sprung to her eyes. “It’s just… we really need your help, and Laurel is right. You need energy. You can’t just stand out here all day and night, delirious and covered in blood. It won’t do anything.”
My shoulders sagged, and I let the shovel drop with a clatter. The girls were right. I was barely thinking straight, and I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. The comedown from the drug that had been injected into my veins wasn’t helping matters, either. Everything in my mind felt hazy, and my body felt strangely weak and stiff, like I was suffering from a flu.
“Fine,” I muttered. “I’ll eat. But I’m coming straight back here afterwards.”
I trudged out of the park with them, and they took me back to my place in Arcadia Bay. I slumped onto a stool in the kitchen as Laurel went to the nearest bathroom to find a first aid kit. Ruby rummaged through the fridge for some leftovers while Laurel cleaned and patched me up with tissues, antiseptic fluid, and bandages.
“This should help you feel better,” Ruby said ten minutes later, ladling some casserole into a bowl. She pushed it in front of me. “I hope it tastes okay.”
“Thanks.” I shoveled spoonful after spoonful into my mouth, not even caring about the taste.
“Tell us what happened last night,” Laurel said after she’d wolfed down her own bowl of food.
“I already told the cops everything.”
“I know, but now that you’ve eaten, you might be able to think more clearly,” she said. “You might remember something new that we can tell them.”
I gulped down some water to wash down my meal. Then I told the girls everything, including Alexis’s theory about Satan’s Penthouse and the plan to draw the Butcher out of hiding.
Laurel pursed her lips. “Oh, Nate,” she said, shaking her head. “That was really dangerous. You should have told the police what you were doing.”
“I know. But they aren’t taking us seriously. They don’t believe anything we tell them,” I said. “We were basically just sitting around waiting for Alexis to get attacked again, even if we chose to do nothing.”
“So you decided to take matters into your own hands.” She paused and let out a heavy sigh, knitting her fingers on her lap. “Honestly… I get it. I probably would’ve done the same if I were you. I just wish you’d told us about it. We could’ve helped. Then maybe…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what she meant to say—if she and Ruby were there to help last night, Alexis would still be with us.
I rubbed my forehead. “We really thought it’d be okay. We had no idea he’d be waiting for us in the parking lot like that.”
“Well, at least we know Alexis is still alive,” Ruby said as she leaned over to refill my water glass. “He keeps his victims for weeks before he does anything to them.”
Laurel frowned at her. “Is that supposed to make Nate feel better?” she asked in a low voice.
Ruby flushed. “Sorry. I just meant…. I don’t know,” she murmured. “I can never figure out the right stuff to say.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “I knew what you meant.”
Laurel turned her attention back to me. “You didn’t see him when he drugged you, did you?”
I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands, trying my best to recall any extra details. Had I seen something when I collapsed? A blur of skin, a patch of hair, a tattoo?
“I don’t think so.” I opened my eyes and slowly shook my head. “I can barely remember anything at all. I couldn’t even tell the cops what time we left the club.”
“That’s okay. I know when you left,” Ruby said. “I told the police already.”
My brows shot up. “You saw us leave?”
