“You didn’t know?”
No, at least not until right at the end. And even then, Nolan figured it was the stress of the situation that made her say all that stuff. She knew she’d lied about her age, and she knew CPS was preparing to cart her off to foster care, and she thought begging him to leave town with her would somehow fix things. As if they needed a statewide manhunt on top of all the other shit going on.
Then she’d left, just vanished into the ether, and there was no manhunt, no Amber Alert, nothing. Nolan never had worked out how she’d managed to erase her presence so completely.
“I treated her like a little sister.”
“I’m not suggesting there was anything inappropriate going on. Didn’t you ever have a teenage crush?”
“Yes, but on Dana Hanson.” Who was firstly a movie star, and secondly ten years older than Nolan. “That’s totally different.”
“Same concept, though. But that’s the past—Alexa’s older now. Whether she’s wiser is debatable, but she’s definitely an adult.”
“She doesn’t look like one.”
“Ah, that fresh-faced innocence. If she worked in one of my clubs, she’d make a fortune.”
“The fuck she’d work in one of your clubs,” Nolan snapped. “Over my dead body.”
“There it is.”
“There what is?”
“The rabid defence of Alexa. Some things never change.”
“I am not rabid.”
“Buddy, you are when it comes to her. Every time she did something questionable, you took her side, in between making her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and running her errands.”
“I didn’t always take her side. Remember the time she sent Bryan Walker a fake active shooter alert? She went too far with that one, and I told her so.”
Bryan, their former next-door neighbour, had been an ornery jerk with a hearing problem, and no matter how many times they asked him, he refused to turn down the thumping bass that emanated from his house at all hours of the day and night. Eventually, Alexa had taken matters into her own hands, and while Bryan hared off to his teenage daughter’s high school, Jerry had meandered into his home through the open garage and filled his speakers with superglue. Both Alexa and Jerry had been totally unrepentant, even after the panic triggered Bryan’s asthma and he ended up in the hospital.
“Yes, that was absolutely wrong,” Brax said. “But also a hell of a lot quieter afterward.”
“Right. I threw away my earplugs.”
Because Bryan had medical bills to pay, so he hadn’t been able to afford new speakers for another year. He’d finally bought another set a month before Ruby’s death, and Nolan would always wonder if they might have heard her screams if it hadn’t been for that fucking music.
“Did you know the Walkers’ home burned down?” Brax asked.
“Are you serious?”
“Three months after the trial. Justin told me about it. Apparently, the fire started due to an electrical fault in a speaker.”
“Damn.”
“And the Walkers’ insurance policy had lapsed. Now Bryan lives in a trailer park near Charlottesville, alone, seeing as his wife divorced him.”
“Good for her.”
“Agreed. But none of that changes the fact that you always stuck up for Alexa.”
Nolan gritted his teeth. “She was misunderstood.”
“A psychiatrist could make an entire career out of studying Alexa Stone, or Alexandria Rockwell, or whatever her name is.”
Nolan stiffened. “Alexandria Rockwell?”
