Page 6 of Ruthless Riches
“Yup. It was a gold one of those.” I paused and went on. “Anyway, when the guy realized I’d seen him, he pushed the window all the way open and climbed into the bathroom.”
Nate rubbed his jaw. I could tell from the dark look in his eyes that he was picturing the scene unfolding in his mind. “That must’ve been terrifying,” he said, squeezing my hand again.
I let out a dry, mirthless laugh. “Actually, it wasn’t. Not at first, anyway. I thought it was you.”
His brows rose. “Me?”
“I thought you were playing some sort of prank on me,” I said. “So I just laughed and said something like: ‘Very funny, Nate, but after all the shit I’ve seen, you’ll have to try a hell of a lot harder than that to scare me.’ He didn’t respond to that. Just stepped closer.” I hesitated and bit my bottom lip as the memory flashed in my mind’s eye. “That was when I realized he was a few inches shorter than you, so it had to be someone else. I finally started to get scared then.”
“Did he say anything once you realized it wasn’t me?”
“No. Just stared at me from behind the mask and pulled out a knife.”
“Do you remember the color of his eyes, or anything like that?”
I shook my head. “No. I don’t even remember him stabbing me. Everything that happened after he pulled out the knife is a total blank.”
“I’m glad you don’t remember that part.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, me too.”
“Did the cops tell you about the text on your phone? Or the message on the mirror?”
I nodded, and a shudder went through my body, making goosebumps crop up all over my arms. “Yes.”
“I told them I thought it was the copycat Butcher.”
“It seems like they’re thinking the same thing for now. But they don’t know why he warned me instead of killing me like he did with the others.”
Nate opened his mouth to reply. Before he could say anything, the door opened, and Sascha appeared on the threshold. She looked like hell—pale skin, dark circles under her eyes, tearstained cheeks.
“Oh my god,” she murmured, pale blue eyes raking over my hospital gown, morphine pump, and the drip in my arm. She swallowed loudly and hurried over to me. “Am I allowed to hug you?”
I smiled weakly. “Probably not. Might tear the stitches. I can give you my arm, though.”
I lifted my right arm, and she immediately clasped it in her hands, squeezing me tightly. “I’m sorry I took so long to get here. Those detectives out there questioned me forever,” she said. “By the way, Mom and Simon are on their way here. I have to pick them up from the ferry in half an hour.”
“Okay.” I frowned and tilted my chin. “Why were the detectives questioning you? They don’t think you’re involved, do they?”
Sascha rolled her eyes upward. “No, you goose,” she said. “They weren’t questioning me as a suspect. They just wanted to ask questions about you.”
“They did the same to me,” Nate interjected.
“Oh. What sort of questions did they ask?”
Sascha let go of my arm and turned to grab a chair from the other side of the room. “All sorts of stuff,” she said as she pulled it closer to my bedside and perched on it. “They wanted to know about our family, and where we lived before we moved back here. Then they wanted to know if I could think of anyone who might want to hurt you for any reason.” She paused and stuck a tongue in her cheek before continuing. “I told them there’s about two thousand people in a high-security prison in Seattle who’d love to hurt you.”
“I said the exact same thing,” Nate said, raising a brow.
Sascha glanced at him, then flicked her gaze back to me. “When I first got the call about you being attacked, I assumed it was related to those people. Like it was some sort of revenge attack for you catching them out and getting them all arrested,” she said. “But I got the impression the police think it’s the new Butcher. They said something about you getting threatening messages.”
I nodded. “Whoever attacked me obviously thinks I’ve been doing too much digging on Avalon, and they want to stop me from doing any more. The new Butcher makes sense as a suspect when you think about it like that.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone in the Golden Circle is in prison, and everyone already knows what they did, so there’d be no point in them warning me to drop my investigation into them now,” I replied. “They can’t communicate without being monitored either, so there’s no way any of them could order some sort of hit on someone. So it has to be someone else warning me to stop digging into stuff on Avalon. Someone like the Butcher.”
“Oh. That make sense.” Sascha scratched her chin. “I also got the impression that the police think it’s someone you know. They kept asking me questions about your friends. Do I know them, what are they like, and so on. They asked me if you’d met any new friends recently, too. Anyone who might be volatile or unstable.”
