Page 23 of Cruel Riches

4

Alexis

It was almostmidnight when I finally returned to my dorm at Blackthorne.

Even though it was so late, I was wired from the espresso and the break-in stress back in Avalon City, so I decided to test out my new bathroom and see if a hot shower would calm me down.

It worked.

The longer I stood in the steamy enclosure, the more I convinced myself that I was overreacting earlier. Of course my room at the apartment smelled a little different. Sascha had been in there earlier in the evening, and she was always trying out new perfumes and lotions. Eric went in there too, and he usually wore a spicy cologne. All the scents had simply mingled together to create a new and unfamiliar one.

Also, out of all the rooms in the apartment, my bedroom was closest to the ocean. If Sascha wanted to let in a nice sea breeze while she was getting ready for her date, it made sense that she’d go and open my window for a while. It was also very windy earlier. I remembered thinking about it during my drive along the coast earlier, when I saw all those whitecaps being whipped up over the ocean.

So my sister was right after all. A freakishly heavy wind knocked all my stuff over, and she didn’t notice it when she went to close the window because she was distracted due to her excitement over her upcoming date.

That explained everything.

After I was done in the shower, I got into my pajamas, turned the lights off, and climbed into bed with my laptop and the gifted box of chocolates. I found a new Netflix show to watch on the laptop as I sampled a couple of the decadent treats, and at some point I drifted off.

When I woke again, the TV show was still playing on my laptop screen, making the walls light up with colorful flashes. Yawning, I closed the lid and snuggled back under the blankets, ready to drift off again.

My dreams were filled with images of death and carnage. Faces with gouged-out eyes. Bodies without organs. Blood.

So much blood.

It wasn’t unusual for me to experience graphic nightmares. I’d been plagued by them since I was a kid, and they were always based on the Blackthorne Butcher murders. It got worse when I started researching the case as part of my quest to prove my dad’s innocence, because that was when I finally saw the crime scene photos for the first time.

The photos weren’t supposed to be available to the public, but it wasn’t hard to find them. There were always tech-skilled people out there who could hack in and steal the images from whatever police department server they were stored on. There were shady websites that posted any gore they could get their hands on, too, and those sites went hand-in-hand with all the true crime forums. From there, the images would be shared by case enthusiasts over and over, until there was no way anyone could erase them off the internet forever.

I awoke with a start, heart pounding. There was a knot in my chest that felt like a fist, tightening and untightening. Something had woken me. Something that wasn’t part of the grisly nightmare.

As I lay there in the dark, I searched every corner of my mind for what it could’ve been. Then it struck me. I’d heard a faint knocking sound from somewhere next door. One of my new neighbors had a visitor. That was all.

I was safe.

With a tired groan, I closed my eyes again, intent on getting back to sleep. Before I was all the way out, a strange noise made my eyes snap open again. It wasn’t a knock this time. Instead it was a short, sharp human sound. A moan, or perhaps a muffled scream.

It came from Claire’s dorm. I was sure of it.

I sat up and cocked my head, listening intently, but no more sounds came from next door. I was still worried, though, because Sascha’s earlier lecture on campus safety was playing on repeat in my head. Violent crimes occurred on university campuses all over the world, even the supposedly safe and relatively isolated ones like Blackthorne. What if someone had forced their way into Claire’s dorm? What if she was being attacked in there right now while I lay in bed, hoping it was nothing?

I was aware that I was probably overreacting—again—but that didn’t stop me from getting out of bed, wrapping a coat around my pajamas, and heading out of my dorm.

I walked up to Claire’s door and knocked. There was a sliver of light under it, so I knew she was up.

There was no response to my knock, so I tried again. “Claire, are you okay?”

Another minute passed without any response.

I was starting to fret about what I should do next when the door finally opened. Just a crack.

Claire’s face appeared in the tiny gap. “Hi,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. I was just worried about you. I thought I heard something coming from your dorm.”

Her eyes darted to the right for a split-second. “Really?”

“Yeah. It sounded like a cut-off scream. I thought someone was attacking you.”

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