My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Your Rule

"What happened to your arm?"

It came out before I could stop it.

Beckett poured his coffee and didn't look at me.

"Palette knife. I was stretching a canvas at midnight and got careless."

"You?" I said. "Careless?"

"It happens to the best of us."

My dad slammed the pancake flipper down on the counter.

"Where the hell were you last night? Some men grabbed her. Dragged her out to the lake. We called you six times."

Beckett turned around.

He looked at me then, really looked, at the scrape on my cheek and the bruise coming up on my wrist.

His jaw went tight.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked."

"Somebody stopped them," I said, and watched his face. "A stranger. He heard me scream."

Nothing moved in it. Not one muscle.

"Then I owe him," Beckett said, and took his coffee upstairs.

I got a new phone at the mall at ten.

At eleven, Daisy sat beside me in the dean's office with her arms folded.

The dean was a thin man with a bow tie and a framed photo of himself shaking hands with Blaire's father.

"Miss Prewitt, I've spoken to the police. I've also spoken to Miss Coburn."

"And?"

"Four of her friends say she was at a dinner downtown from seven until eleven. There's a receipt." He spread his hands. "No men have been identified. No phone was recovered. There are no photographs."

"Because someone stopped her before she could take them."

"A masked stranger, you told the officers." He gave me a pained little smile. "You understand how that sounds."

Daisy leaned forward. "It sounds like what happened, you absolute..."

I put my hand on her arm.

"So you're doing nothing."

"I'm saying there's nothing I can do."

"Okay," I said, and stood up. "Then I'll do it."

At one o'clock, figure drawing started with forty people at their easels.

Blaire was in the front row in a cream sweater, laughing with her friends.

Beckett was at the desk with the roll sheet.

I didn't sit down.

I walked to the front of the room and turned around.

"Last night," I said, "Blaire Coburn sent two men for me. She wanted pictures she could post to all of you."

Forty pencils stopped.

Blaire's laugh died in her throat.

"I've given the police her name. I've given the dean her name. I'm giving it to you now, so if anything happens to me, you'll know who to ask."

Blaire stood up slowly.

"That's insane. I was at dinner. Prove it."

"I don't have to prove it to you," I said. "I just wanted you to hear me say it out loud."

Beckett's chair scraped back.

"Miss Coburn," he said. "Get out of my studio."

She stared at him.

"You're defending your stepsister? Without a shred of evidence?" She picked up her bag, slow. "Interesting, Professor."

She walked out, and the door hissed shut behind her.

At eight o'clock, my new phone buzzed.

Downtown. The hotel on Michigan. Room 2104. Ten o'clock. Blindfold on before you knock.

I told Dorinda I was sleeping at Daisy's.

At 9:58 I stood in a quiet hotel hallway in a black slip dress with my collar on under my coat.

I tied the lace over my eyes and knocked.

The door opened. A hand found mine.

It pulled me inside, and the door shut, and then his arms were around me so hard my feet left the carpet.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

He just held me, his face in my hair, breathing like he'd been running.

"Are you hurt?" he said finally.

Beckett had asked me the same thing that morning, in the same voice.

"Bruises," I said. "My knees. My shoulder."

His thumb found the scrape on my cheek and traced around it, very carefully.

"I'll be gentle tonight."

"You don't do gentle," I said. "Remember?"

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