[Cormac29Ru]

“Hello, Rebecca. I have to admit, this is unexpected, even after the text.”

“I would guess so. We should sit.”

“Absolutely.” Megan felt the faint shame of not being a proper host. She had no desire for this conversation, but she felt a pang of guilt for not immediately inviting her in. She guided Megan to the living room and a seat. “Can I offer you anything? Ice Tea? Lemonade?"

Rebecca nodded. “Something stronger, if you don’t mind.”
After a fair amount of searching, Megan found a bottle of gin in a cabinet. Jesus, it must be twenty years old. “Um, I’m sorry, not a lot of options.”

“Whatever you've got is fine.”

Megan came back with a tumbler full of ice, two glasses, some Ice Tea for herself and the gin bottle. She watched Rebecca pour a remarkable quantity of gin into the glass and ignore the ice tea all together. Even sitting, Rebecca radiated energy. It wasn’t that she wasn’t feminine. On the contrary, she was a beautiful woman. At 37, she had a better figure than most of Megan’s friends. She had the same soft, dark brown hair as her brother, worn much longer, of course. Megan had seen her with three different men the three times they had met. And while she was no fashion expert, Megan did catch the designer labels on her clothes. But that energy. It was just so different than her brother.

Rebecca looked at Megan for a long second before speaking. “I can’t imagine this is comfortable for you, so let’s just get to it. Why did you leave my brother, and are you coming back?”

Megan recoiled at the word ‘leave’, as if Rebecca had punched her in the stomach.

“I love Mal, Rebecca. Totally. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I want to spend…I just have to help my sister through this. I…it’s just…I…” Megan found herself choking back tears as her words ran out.

Rebecca offered her Megan the gin. Megan wasn’t much of a drinker and the smell alone roasted her sinuses but there was something comforting about the harshness of it in her throat, as if the burn tempered her throat, giving it strength.

“So once your sister’s…better…you’re going back to my brother?”

“Well, yes, that is, if he still…”

“Loves you? Yes, he does. He’s loved you for a long time. A week apart with little more word than from you than a text saying 'things aren’t good right now but you’ll get back to him' isn’t going to change that.”

Megan felt her eyes well up again. This was a different cause for tears, and a few spilled over this time. “I don’t…don’t deserve him.”

Rebecca pursed her lips. “Well, you’ve got him. So let’s get this fixed. What happened to your sister?”

Megan took another sip from the gin. “I think she’d better tell you."

**********************************

A few minutes later, Erin was sitting on the couch, and Rebecca had her tablet on the coffee table between the two of them. Rebecca was looking directly at Erin, who was staring off to the left, almost dreamily. Megan, however, couldn't stop staring at the website on the tablet. The pain was fresh every time she looked at the photo splashed across the main page: her sister, naked, a look of total shock on her face, her mouth in a perfect "O". Every time Megan looked the photo, she noticed something different. This time it was the hair: In the photo, the red braid was so prominent on her shoulder. The contrast seemed to highlight Erin's lightly freckled skin, and the soft rose color of her nipples, the sharp red of her thatch of pubic hair. Megan knew that there was more: other shots, videos, and of course the comments. But she had never gotten much past that first screen shot.

Erin’s voice was shaky at first, but she made it through her story. Rebecca stopped her repeatedly, asking questions, having her repeat details and sections. When it was finished, Rebecca went back down to her tablet and picked it up, furiously swiping and making some notes. After a few moments, she looked up.

“Well, short version. What happened to you was terrible. Reading between the lines, you were set up.”

“By Courtney.”

“More than just her, although she’s your ringleader. Janelle was part of the set-up, probably Samantha, and one or two others. Here.” Rebecca turned her tablet right towards her. Erin looked at it as if it would bite her, while Megan couldn’t bring herself to do more than glance before looking away. “The splash page shot is borderline professional quality. If you didn’t see who took it, then it’s got to be a good telephoto lens. The videos underneath, most of them, are cell phone quality, shaky, teen boys who are trying not to have a heart attack. But this video, this video of your face during the frisking…No kids with a cell phone camera is managing that.” Erin flushed matched the red in her face when Janelle was searching her, but for an entirely different reason. “Also it starts and end with Janelle out of the frame. Had to zoom and edit that. No teen boy is leaving out a woman rubbing another woman’s breasts.”

Erin sighed. “I figured something was up but…How did I not see...” Erin blushed again, answering her own question in her head. Being taken half-way to orgasm will distract someone.

Rebecca waved her hand. “The only question is what you need to get yourself back together. So what do you need?”

Erin sighed. "I love my job, and..."

Rebecca interrupted her with a hand wave. "Employment's not the issue. I make two phone calls and you're back at work, either here or in a list of cities I've had dealings with. My question is this: Do you want to move or stay?"

Erin looked Rebecca directly in the eyes for the first time. "I want to stay."

"Then we'll have to make sure that you can walk around town again with your good name intact."

***********************

An hour later, Rebecca finished a few phone calls then texted her brother. 'Met with your girl. Still don't like her leaving my baby brother but I get why she can't tell you what's up. Family problems. She'll call tonight. I'll fix her issue and have her back to you in a month, tops.'

Malachi texted her back. 'I really do love her, sis. And I love you. Thanks for helping. Just, be gentle okay?'

Rebecca texted back. 'We'll see. I saw the ring on your dresser when I visited last week. I don't do well with people who mess with my family, current or future.'

On his end of the phone in Chicago, Malachi rubbed his temples. An hour later, Megan called him. After an hour of tears and laughter, things seemed settled again.

"So, Mal, your sister can...fix this?"

"Yeah, but I'm genuinely afraid to find out how. When we were kids and things were a bit tough, one of the older girls in the high school made fun of the fact that our clothes came from Salvation Army. Three days later the girl was outside the school, topless and handcuffed from her underwear to the hook on the flagpole with a sign in her hands that said 'I need to be less judgmental'. They never could get a word out of her as to who did it."

“Handcuffed by her underwear?”

“Yep. Think about it for a second.”

"Oh, Jesus. So she’s stuck topless or a full nude streaker. Wow."

"Yep. My big sis is thorough. It's part of why she's so successful but, well, you'll see."