First Instinct by Suzie O'Connell

Author:Suzie O'Connell [O'Connell, Suzie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Suzie O'Connell

Eleven

After telling Beth he’d see her in a few minutes, Nick headed upstairs to his room. As soon as he crested the stairs and stepped through the doorway into his hall, he saw them—a pair of handcuffs adorned with fuzzy, neon pink feathers hanging from his doorknob.

“Real cute, Trey,” he muttered, digging his keys out of his pocket.

Careful to avoid touching the handcuffs—who knew where they’d been—he unlocked and opened his door and dropped his keys and bag on his desk in the living room. Then he grabbed a pen and went back to his door. He stared at the handcuffs with narrowed eyes for a few moments before using the pen to lift them off his doorknob and held them up, unsure what to do with them. His first thought was to throw them in the garbage, but if there was a possibility that he could prove Trey had left them, they might be useful somehow.

“What the…?” Beth asked, joining him.

He looked at her. She had changed into her pajamas, and he was momentarily distracted from his quandary because she was completely adorable in those fuzzy, snowman-print pants, tank top and unzipped gray hoodie with her hair plaited into a sloppy braid. When she met his gaze expectantly, he said, “I’m guessing Trey left them.”

Nick didn’t know how he expected her to react, but rolling her eyes certainly wasn’t it. He stared after her when she promised to return in a moment and disappeared back downstairs. Frowning with equal parts confusion and curiosity, he waited, wondering what sort of picture he made holding the fuzzy pink handcuffs with a pen as if they disgusted him. Well, that was true, but he was certain anyone who happened down the hall would burst out laughing as soon as they saw him. Still, he didn’t move, and Beth returned a few minutes later with a gallon-sized Ziploc baggie.

“Here,” she said. “Put them in this.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to collect evidence that Trey is harassing us. I don’t know if it’ll help… but if we get enough, maybe it will.”

Nick tried to recall anything else Trey had done that Beth could use, but other than his taunts at the Club Bar a week and a half ago, there was nothing else either of them could prove; it was all verbal without anyone other than Beth or himself as witnesses. Nick had been with Beth most of her waking hours since the rape or in a position to observe any harassment, so he would have seen or heard anything Trey did. Unless he’d done something Thursday night or Friday.

“What other evidence have you collected?” he asked.

“He wrote ‘slut’ on my whiteboard Thursday evening,” she replied. “I took a picture of it.”

Nick’s immediate reaction was one of anger. He clenched his free hand into a fist and nearly hurled the handcuffs across his room, furious that Trey had snuck in while he wasn’t around to shield Beth and pulled something so cowardly. He held his temper in check, closed his eyes and counted to ten before he exhaled.

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