Episode 3

Noah King called me at 11:37 p.m. and opened with the four words every older sister figure learns to fear.

"Don't freak out, okay?"

I sat up in bed so fast my laptop slid off my knees. "Where are you?"

"That is the freaking out tone."

"Noah."

There was shouting behind him. Music. A girl's high laugh. Something breaking.

Then my seventeen-year-old stepbrother lowered his voice and said, "I'm at a party."

I closed my eyes. "Tell me it is a high school party."

Silence.

"Noah."

"It's not my fault. Mason said his cousin could get us in, and I didn't know it was going to be like this."

"Like what?"

Another crash. A male voice yelled, "Who touched the trophy case?"

Noah swore under his breath. "Like Tigers guys. Like rich guys. Like maybe Landon Dalton's lake house."

For a second, all I heard was the blood rushing in my ears.

Three weeks had passed since the championship celebration. Three weeks since I had pitched the Kelsey Hart feature and started checking my email like my future might crawl out of it. Three weeks of telling Harper that Landon Dalton was just a subject-adjacent athlete with too much campus gravity.

Now my underage stepbrother was inside his house.

"Did you drink?" I asked.

"No."

"Do not lie to me."

"I had half a beer."

"Noah."

"Okay, one beer, but I stopped because some girl started filming me and saying I was cute for a prep-school kid, which was weird, and then Mason knocked into this glass thing, and now these players think we came here to trash the place."

I was already pulling on jeans. "Send me your location. Now."

"Renee, don't call Mom."

"Then make it possible for me not to."

The location ping landed two seconds later.

The Dalton lake house sat twenty minutes outside Northlake, past the nicer student rentals and winter-dark roads where every mailbox looked expensive. I drove Harper's old sedan because my car had chosen finals week to sound like loose change in a blender. My phone kept buzzing with Noah's updates.

They're saying fake ID.

Mason bailed.

Girl is still live.

Someone named Craig is mad.

By the time I reached the gated drive, I had built a list in my head: get Noah out, stop the livestream, document any damage, do not let drunk adults scare a minor into doing something stupid.

The gate was open.

Of course.

The lake house was less a house than a magazine spread with windows: stone, glass, three levels of warm light spilling toward the black water. Cars lined the drive. Music pulsed from inside.

A guy at the door looked me up and down. "Party's full."

"I'm here for my brother."

"Everybody is."

I stepped closer, making my voice flat. "He's seventeen. If you keep me out, I call campus police and Northlake student conduct, and then we all get to explain why minors are inside an athlete party with alcohol."

The guy moved.

I found Noah in the great room near a wall of framed jerseys and glass shelves. His face was flushed with humiliation, his prep-school jacket half off one shoulder. Two Tigers players stood in front of him: Dennis Blake, whose name I knew from the roster, and Craig Morris, whose expression said he had already decided my brother was guilty of every bad thing that had happened tonight.

On the floor between them lay the broken remains of some blue-and-silver art piece. A girl in a sparkly top held her phone up, livestream comments racing across the screen.

"There she is," the girl sang. "Prep boy called backup."

I walked straight to her. "Turn it off."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"He's a minor, and you are filming him at a private party where alcohol is present. Turn it off."

The room quieted just enough for people to hear.

Her smile faltered. She looked around for someone to defend her.

"Do it," Dennis said, sounding tired.

She ended the stream with a dramatic eye roll.

Noah started toward me. "Renee, I can explain."

"Later." I caught the front of his jacket and smelled beer. "Did anyone make you drink?"

"No."

"Did you use a fake ID?"

His silence answered.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Give it to me."

"What?"

"The ID, Noah."

He dug into his pocket and slapped the plastic into my palm. It had his real face and a name that belonged to a twenty-two-year-old named Andrew from Wisconsin.

"You are so lucky Mom is asleep on the West Coast," I said.

"Please don't tell her."

"Don't make promises you can't afford me."

Craig laughed without humor. "That's sweet. Are we done pretending this was an innocent accident?"

I turned. "I never said innocent. I said minor."

"He and his friend came in with fake IDs, acted like idiots, and broke a piece that costs more than your car."

"Then send me the invoice."

Craig's eyes dropped to my coat, my old sneakers, Harper's car keys in my hand. "You?"

The word landed exactly where he meant it to.

Noah bristled. "Don't talk to her like that."

"You don't get to defend me while holding a fake ID," I said, then looked back at Craig. "Send the invoice to me. If the amount is legitimate, I'll set up payment. If you try to turn a broken decoration into a shakedown because he's scared, I will ask for receipts, photos, and the security footage."

Dennis's mouth twitched like he was trying not to respect that.

Craig only looked past me. "Dalton, you hearing this?"

The room shifted.

I knew before I turned.

Some people enter a room and ask for attention. Landon Dalton did not have to ask. The party rearranged around him.

He stood near the stairs in black sweats and a Northlake T-shirt, hair damp as if he had just come from the shower. Barefoot, he looked less like a celebrity and more like a man whose home had been invaded.

His eyes moved from the broken art to Noah to me.

No smile for a kid this time.

"Who are you?" he asked.

It was not the same question he would ask me months later under blue club lights.

This one had memory behind it.

Judgment, too.

"Renee Carter," I said. "Noah's stepsister. I'm taking him home."

"Your brother broke into my house."

"He used an open party invite and a fake ID. That is stupid, not burglary."

Noah whispered, "Renee."

I ignored him. "He'll pay for the damage he caused. He'll delete anything he posted. He'll leave now."

Landon came down the last few steps. The crowd gave him room. "You sound prepared."

"I had twenty minutes in a car to become prepared."

His gaze sharpened, and for one dangerous second I thought he might laugh.

Craig stepped in. "She knew exactly where this place was, man. She knew who owned it. I heard her outside telling the kid this was Dalton money and Tigers access like it meant something."

I stared at him. "I said this was exactly the kind of wealthy athlete party where a minor getting filmed could ruin him."

"Convenient."

Understanding clicked coldly into place. "You think I sent him here."

Craig shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first girl trying to get near Landon."

The heat that climbed my neck was not embarrassment. It was fury.

Landon watched me, unreadable.

"I came here to remove my stepbrother from a bad situation," I said. "Not to get near anyone."

"Wearing that?" Craig asked.

I looked down at my sweater, jeans, winter coat, and rain-stained sneakers. "This is the first time anyone has accused me of seduction by fleece."

Dennis coughed.

Noah made a choked noise that might have been terror or laughter.

Landon did not smile. "You know a lot about what kind of party this is for someone who just arrived."

"I know alcohol, athletes, minors, phones, and rich people who assume consequences are negotiable."

The room went still again.

His jaw tightened. "Careful."

"I am being careful." I held up the fake ID. "This is me being careful before someone posts a seventeen-year-old online and your family assistant has to bury it by morning."

At the edge of the room, Dale Porter appeared like my words had summoned him. Suit jacket, calm face, eyes already assessing damage.

Landon noticed him too.

That should have been the end. Dale could take photos, send invoices, make everyone sign whatever quiet forms rich people used to keep parties from becoming headlines.

But Craig, apparently committed to being the least useful man in the room, said, "Or she pays now. Since she's so ready."

"I said send me the invoice."

"People like you always say that."

Noah lunged half a step. I caught him by the arm.

Landon's eyes dropped to my hand on Noah's sleeve, then rose to my face. "People like you?"

For half a heartbeat, I thought he was questioning Craig.

Then he added, "The ones who walk in already knowing the camera angles."

The words hit clean.

He did think it.

Maybe not all of it. Maybe not as crudely as Craig. But enough.

"Landon," Dennis said quietly.

"No," Landon said. His eyes stayed on mine. "If she wants receipts, give her receipts. If she wants security footage, Dale can pull it. And if she or the kid posts one second from inside this house, I'll make sure Northlake knows exactly how they got here."

Noah went pale.

I stepped in front of him.

That movement changed Landon's face for the first time. Something flickered there, quick and irritated, like he had expected me to fold and disliked that I hadn't.

"He will not post anything," I said. "Because unlike some people in this room, he still has an adult willing to tell him no."

A few players muttered.

Dale said, "Miss Carter, perhaps we should document contact information and let everyone leave."

"Gladly."

Craig reached for a tablet on the side table. "Name, number, address."

"Email," I said. "Phone number. No home address unless your attorney asks for it properly."

Landon's brow moved. "You always this suspicious?"

"Only when strangers ask where I sleep."

This time Dennis did laugh.

It lasted one second.

Craig shoved the tablet toward me. As I took it, Noah shifted beside me and knocked his elbow into a red plastic cup abandoned on the table. It tipped, splashing beer across Landon's bare foot and the edge of the broken display.

The whole room inhaled.

Noah whispered, "Oh my God."

I looked at the beer, then at Landon, then at my stepbrother's horrified face.

The night had already gone so badly that something inside me snapped clean instead of bending.

I picked up the half-full cup beside the spill.

Dennis said, "Renee, maybe don't."

Too late.

I threw the beer in Landon Dalton's face.

Gasps cracked across the room.

For one perfect second, the great, untouchable quarterback stood there with beer dripping from his hair, his lashes, his arrogant mouth.

I set the empty cup down.

"Now the wet part is my fault," I said. "Invoice me for that too."

Landon did not move.

Dale closed his eyes like a man seeing six separate PR disasters bloom at once.

I grabbed Noah's sleeve and pulled him toward the door. At the threshold, I turned back because fury made me reckless and because every phone in the room had gone very still.

"If anyone forces, dares, or films a minor drinking at another one of these parties, I will call campus police before I call his parents. Try me."

Then I walked out with Noah stumbling beside me.

The cold hit my face.

Behind us, through the glass wall, Landon Dalton lifted one hand and wiped beer slowly from his cheek.

For the first time all night, he looked at me like he actually saw me.

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