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“Kicked and punched.”
He nodded with a tight expression. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
She turned around and let the robe slide down her back until it reached her butt.
Dr. Ben was quiet for almost a minute. “You were whipped?”
“Yes.”
His fingers touched her back gently. “With what?”
She hesitated before answering. “A belt.”
“Some of these lacerations are going to scar,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled with a vacant voice.
“Do I need to do a pelvic exam?” Dr. Ben asked.
The question seemed to startle everyone, because the room went quiet. I held my breath as I waited for Maura’s response.
“No.”
At Maura’s answer, I finally exhaled, and I caught Stefan’s shoulders sagging a little.
When Dr. Ben was done looking her over, he suggested that Maura go to the hospital just in case. She refused.
“Maura,” Stefan said with a tone that told me that they were about to argue.
Maura didn’t look in Stefan’s direction as she put her robe back on. “You have two options, gentlemen. Either Dr. Ben can bandage me up or you can all get the hell out.” Her voice was calm, almost too calm, and brooked no argument.
Stefan whirled around.
Before he could say a word, she said, “You’re lucky I put my robe back on or we both might have been scarred for life.” She slowly lowered herself back onto the edge of the bed.
“I’m glad you’re able to find humor right now,” he said caustically.
“Do you see me laughing?” she snapped, and the way she stared at Stefan was unsettling. It was as if he was nothing to her. I’d never seen her look at him with such intense detachment.
“You were badly beaten—” Stefan started to say.
“Yes, I was,” she cut him off. “And if I felt it necessary to go to the hospital, I would have had Dean drive me there instead of here.”
Stefan went quiet. He studied her, searching for what most of us couldn’t see.
Maura stared right back at him, revealing nothing. “What do you think is going to happen when I show up to the hospital like this?” she asked him. “I’ve been dropping Aryan bodies from New Haven to New York. No amount of lying will hide what was obviously done to me. The last thing we need are police connecting dots.”
“When Buck took you, I was taken in for questioning,” I said. Then I glanced at Stefan briefly because he knew what I was going to tell her.
He didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was staring at the carpet with a pensive frown.
I returned my attention to Maura and continued. “Detectives Cameron and Brooks interrogated me for hours on what happened. They asked about you. They said witnesses saw a redhead at the scene.”
“What did you tell them?” she asked.
“I told them you were in Ireland,” Stefan said, looking up from the floor with a schooled mask. “They brought you up after I showed up with our lawyer, Adam.”
“So they’re already putting theories together,” she said.
