Taken While I Slept by My Stepbrother and His Friends novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Monsoon

"Her money's gone," I said. "She's got eleven dollars. What does he want with her phone?"

Torin didn't answer.

He let the clip run.

At 3:27 the door opened again, and Dwight came out tucking the daisy case into his robe pocket.

He paused in the hall.

He looked up at the camera, the one he'd asked for "for the cleaners", and smiled at it like an old friend.

Then he walked back to his office.

I got my answer that afternoon.

My mom fell asleep on the couch at three with a magazine on her chest and her phone on the coffee table.

I picked it up and pressed her thumb to it as gently as I'd ever taken a pulse.

I hated myself the whole time.

Her inbox was mostly coupons.

The newest email was from an insurance company I knew.

It was the one whose logo had been on my dad's policy.

Thank you! Your e-signature was received at 3:16 a.m. Your new life insurance coverage is now pending.

Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.

On my mother's life.

Beneficiary: Dwight Kemper.

I photographed the screen, sent it to Torin and deleted the sent message.

Then I set her phone back exactly where it had been, face down by the magazine.

Two more weeks, sweetheart.

Then it's your mother's turn.

Her money had never been her turn.

She was.

That night I swam laps at nine like I always did.

I was so angry I did sixty of them.

I drank the whole swim bottle I'd left in the fridge.

At ten, Dwight brought my tea.

He didn't hand it to me and leave.

He sat on the end of my bed and waited.

"Your mom told me about your little theory," he said kindly. "About the tea. So let's put it to bed."

"Drink up, and I'll sit right here."

I drank.

I filled my mouth and swallowed nothing, and smiled at him with my cheeks full of chamomile.

"Good girl," he said.

He kissed my forehead and left.

I spat the whole mouthful into my bathroom sink and rinsed it twice.

Then I lay down to wait for three o'clock, wide awake and furious.

I woke up at ten forty in the morning.

My mouth was cotton.

My arms were sand.

My phone was on the kitchen counter with forty-one texts on it.

The last one was Torin's.

He came at 3:04. Left 3:39. You didn't move. Are you okay? Answer me, Laine.

I opened my bank app with a shaking thumb.

A login at 3:06 a.m. Three hundred eighty-eight thousand, still there. He'd only looked.

I stood at the open fridge and stared at the swim bottle on the top shelf, refilled, cold, where I'd left it.

Gage drove me to urgent care.

He didn't say a word on the way.

I gave blood with my own sleeve rolled up and the swim bottle sealed in a bag in my lap.

The portal posted my result at four.

Benzodiazepines: POSITIVE.

"It proves it's in you," Gage said quietly in the parking lot. "It doesn't prove who put it there."

"I know."

"The board will read it as you."

"I know, Gage."

I dipped a strip into the swim bottle on the hood of his truck.

No second line.

Positive.

"He's not just doing the tea," I said. "He's doing everything."

At six the sky over the McDowells turned purple-black.

Zane called.

"Storm's coming," he said. "I'm on standby. When it hits, I'm up a pole till morning. You want to watch it come in first?"

"Yes."

He drove us north past the last houses and down a dirt road into the desert, and backed the truck onto a rise.

He dropped the tailgate and spread a moving blanket on it.

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