Page 56 of Ruthless Riches
14
Nate
Alexis had been missingfor eight days.
Never sleeping and being bone-tired had become an ingrained part of my life, which I was enduring rather than living. My brain felt as if it were on two percent battery, and my body felt like a heavy sack of bones that I was listlessly dragging around.
I was still doing everything I could to find Alexis, because no matter how exhausted I became, there was nothing that could make me give up. She was still alive somewhere on this island. I knew it. I could feel it. I had to do anything and everything in my power to bring her home.
Every day, I went to Central Park to see if the police would let me help them search the place for the hatch. They never did—I always got some line about how only official investigators were allowed past the yellow tape—but I had to try anyway.
I had other search tactics as well. About four days ago, I went out with Ruby, Laurel, Sascha, and Simon—Alexis’s stepfather—to stick up posters all over the city with Alexis’s face and name on them, along with some printed information about her disappearance.
I figured someone might’ve seen something the night she was drugged and taken into Central Park. At the time, they might not have realized she was being abducted. They could’ve been out for a late night stroll in the park and simply thought she was a drunk girl being helped by a friend when they saw her being carried through the area, or perhaps they were drunk themselves after a night on the town and didn’t realize what they were seeing because so many unusual things seem totally normal to an intoxicated person.
Even if there was just one person out there like that, they could be a goldmine of information. They might be able to tell us what sort of car the Butcher drove. Maybe even remember part of the license plate. They could give us an approximate height and weight, too.
So far, no one had called to tell us they saw anything, but I refused to give up hope.
Yesterday, I’d tried yet another tactic. I’d gone back to the old bus depot, where a lot of homeless people hung out, and I’d spoken to every single person there in the hope that one of them had an extra piece of information about the Satan’s Penthouse tunnels. I found Henrik again, too, and he was kind enough to help me ask around.
No one knew anything. The only piece of information that had ever been passed around the homeless community was the stuff I already knew from Henrik, about a guy randomly stumbling across a hatch in Central Park and covering it up so no one else would be able to find it.
I still refused to give up. Someone out there knew something, surely. I just had to track them down.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, where I was perched with my third cup of coffee for the morning. I snatched it up immediately, desperately hoping for an update on Alexis.
Instead, it was a message from Sascha. Hey. Sorry if I woke you. Do you think you could come over? I think something might’ve happened, but I’m not sure.
She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask. I just grabbed my keys and hightailed it out the door.
When I arrived at Sascha’s apartment in Avalon City, she answered the door in wrinkled gray sweatpants and an oversized cardigan. Her eyes were bloodshot and slightly glazed, and they were ringed with dark circles.
She looked as bad as I felt.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, standing aside so I could enter. “I know I should’ve messaged my friends, but they don’t really know Alexis, so they don’t understand what this is like. Not the way you understand it.”
“It’s fine. Are you okay?”
She sniffed and scrubbed a hand over the lower half of her face. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.
“You said something happened.”
“I… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
I put a hand on her upper back and guided her over to the gray sofa in the lounge room, kicking a path through all the trash lying on the floor—empty water bottles, a large chocolate box with colorful wrappers strewn around it, crinkled brown paper bags, and plastic food containers.
She obviously hadn’t been in the mood to cook or clean lately, which I completely understood. The only reason I hadn’t starved to death over the last week was because of the large supply of casseroles from Colette sitting in my freezer at home.
“Sorry about the mess,” Sascha said, cheeks flushing as she stared at it all.
“Don’t mention it.” I sat next to her on the sofa. “What’s going on?”
The flush in her cheeks deepened, and she wrapped her arms around her chest, like she was trying to protect herself. “Do you know anyone who’s been Roofied before?” she asked in a low voice.
My brows furrowed. I hadn’t been expecting to hear something like that. “I know a girl who got drugged at a club a few years ago,” I said. “Why?”
Sascha turned her watery eyes to mine. “Did she tell you what it felt like?”
