Page 76 of Cruel Riches

“The second my mom stopped the car, I got out and raced over to the forest behind the picnic area. Mom chased after me because she was scared I’d get lost. It only took her five minutes to find me, but when we got back to the rest stop, Emilie was gone.”

“Oh.” Another arrow pierced my heart. I knew what happened to Emilie that day. Poor girl.

“At first Mom thought she’d chased after me as well. Then she thought maybe she’d gone to the bathroom or back to the car to grab the picnic stuff. But we couldn’t find her anywhere. We called and called and called. Looked everywhere together. But she was gone.” Nate held up all the fingers on his right hand. “That was all it took for the Butcher to snatch her. Five minutes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You can imagine how I blamed myself. I was too young to know any better,” he said bitterly. “But after a while I realized it wasn’t my fault. I was ten fucking years old. How could I have known there was a psychopath hiding at a rest stop, waiting to snatch up the first pretty young thing he saw?”

“Of course it’s not your fault,” I said.

“No shit. It’s your fucking father’s fault. He took Emilie. He kept her hidden somewhere for four weeks, and then he gutted her like a fish.” Nate rubbed his jaw. “It doesn’t end there, by the way.”

“Why? What happened?” I asked.

The longer I kept him talking, the longer I had to plot a way out of this place before he started torturing me or starving me.

“Everyone went to pieces after she went missing. Colette had to take leave from work at our house, understandably, and Mom and Dad were always upset. But we still had hope. We tried to tell ourselves that Emilie just got lost looking for me in the woods, and she’d turn up soon. Or maybe she just so happened to meet a rock-star at the picnic area and ran off with him on tour.”

I nodded slowly. I knew how hope could be terrible sometimes. Like thick bars in between you and the thing you really wanted. You could picture it, hear it in your mind, even taste it… but you couldn’t have it.

“One morning I refused to go to school because I was still upset about the whole thing. Colette wasn’t around to look after me, for obvious reasons, and Mom had some event that she couldn’t miss. So Dad had to take me for the day. He had a meeting over at Blackthorne for some reason, so I had to tag along with him. He told me we were going to get there early so he could show me how nice the campus looked in the morning with all the snow covering everything.”

“And then?”

“I think you know what happened then.” Nate gave me a murderous look. “We got to Blackthorne just after eight in the morning. People were standing around near the quad looking freaked out, and there was police tape everywhere. Dad tried to stop me, but I was a curious kid. I ran over and sneaked under the tape. Then I saw her. The cops still hadn’t taken her down, so she was hanging right there from a branch. No eyes, and her face was covered in blood… but I still recognized her.”

“Because she was practically your older sister,” I said softly, scooting closer to him. “I’m sorry, Nate. That must’ve been horrible.”

I wasn’t trying to suck up to him now. What he’d described to me was truly terrible. I couldn’t imagine seeing a loved one strung up like that when I was only a kid.

“I’m still not done,” Nate said, rattling the bars to my cell again. I shrank back to the mattress. “Your father didn’t just kill Emilie. He took so much more from me. He broke my whole fucking family.”

“I understand,” I said. “The Butcher destroyed everyone who knew the victims, and he—”

“Shut the fuck up and listen,” Nate growled. “I don’t mean he emotionally destroyed my family. I mean he literally destroyed it. He killed my father and uncle.”

I shook my head, brows puckering with confusion. “What?”

“Like I said before, after Emilie was found dead, everyone went to pieces. It was fucked up. Dad started drinking. Not huge amounts, but it was frequent. Enough to numb him.” Nate paused to scratch the back of his neck. “One day he and my uncle decided to drive up to Pickersgill to meet up with an old friend. You know where Pickersgill is, right?”

I nodded. It was a town on the northwest side of the island, which was lined with treacherous cliffs and dark forests. Farther inland, there was a rugged national park with steep snow-capped mountains and remote valleys teeming with wildlife. It wasn’t a region for the fainthearted.

“Mom said she saw Dad drinking a glass of scotch before they left. She assumed my uncle was driving, because he was sober, but when she looked out and saw them heading up the driveway, she realized my dad was in the driver’s seat. She tried calling them to make them stop, but no one answered.”

A heavy feeling settled in my stomach. “They crashed?”

“It was worse than that.” Nate’s nostrils flared. “Dad lost control of the car on a stretch of road that was covered in ice. If he was sober, he probably would’ve been able to skid over to the other side. But when you drink, your reflexes aren’t as fast.”

“I know.”

“They went off the cliff. Crashed right onto the rocks below. The car ended up wedged between two big rocks, all smashed up and half underwater.”

“That’s awful,” I murmured.

“It gets worse. You know what they have up in that area?”

I shook my head. “What?”

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