A knock sounded on the Marcum's front door and the entire room seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief; no one wanted to admit it, but sitting around the tiny kitchen table in silence was getting more and more uncomfortable by the second.

Lindsey knew they weren't trying to make her feel bad, but having the children of Easton's most prominent doctors, lawyers, and surgeons sitting at her tiny kitchen table made the Marcum girl feel as small as she could get. Mary Hadden had entered the house with her brother and immediately looked as if she had stepped into a trash dump.

So when the knock—undoubtedly from Roland Green—was heard on the front door, Lindsey practically jumped out of her seat to answer it.

"I'll get it." She informed the rest of the table before running to the front door. She swung it open and almost dragged the poor Green boy inside the house.

"What in the actual hell took you so long?" Lindsey huffed, shutting the door behind him. "I feel like everyone's playing the quiet game in there."

"This." Roland replied, holding up a white envelope with his name on the front. "I'll explain it to you guys when we're all together."

Lindsey eyed the envelope with thinly veiled intrigue as she led Roland into the kitchen and took her seat in between him and Mary at the table. The other three gave Roland annoyed glances as he sat down, and Lindsey felt it her duty to breach the tension.

"Alright." She nodded, "Thanks for coming all the way out here, everyone. I know it's a bit of a...drive for most of you."

The other four nodded silently, and Lindsey was sure she saw Mary roll her perfectly made-up eyes.

"Anyways, I think we should all discuss anything that could potentially have made someone want to kill our siblings." Lindsey looked around the table, "Does anyone have any ideas?"

Everyone at the table turned to Roland, who was still holding the white envelope in his hand and looking like a deer caught in headlights.

"I think I should go last." He told the table at large, "I don't think that I'm supposed to share this with anyone in the first place, but I don't want to do it first."

The other four nodded as they slowly faced the center of the table again, no one looking at each other for fear of having to speak up first.

"Well, if none of you are going to talk, then I will." Mary huffed and folded her arms, "I think that Kaden was threatening Neil with something."

Lindsey felt her eyes widen. Kaden was her 24-year-old brother, a drug addict who still lived at the family home. He wasn't home at the moment—no one was, Lindsey had made sure of it—but the accusation still made Lindsey fear that they were being listened to.

"I'm sorry, so you think that my brother killed his own sister in an effort to get at one of the rich boys who was half a decade younger than him?" Lindsey shook her head, "I don't think so. And how would you know anything about Neil?"

"Yeah, Mary." Jordan turned to her best friend, "He wasn't your brother, he was mine."

"Was?" Mary raised her eyebrows.

"Is." Jordan corrected herself. "And I never heard anything about him being threatened by Kaden."

"What was he even threatening him over?" Lindsey asked, "Do you know?"

Mary was silent before shaking her head.

"No. I don't know."

The five of them sat in silence for a moment before Michael spoke up.

"Well then I don't think that that's much of a lead for us."

"Do you have anything, Michael?" Roland interjected casually, eyeing the football captain suspiciously.

Lindsey watched as Michael exchanged a worried look with his twin sister before answering.

"No, I don't." He replied, "Nothing at all."

"Well, I have something." Jordan piped up, "And I'm not sure that some of you are going to like it very much, but it could be relevant."

Lindsey felt something catch in her chest. It wasn't as if she had anything she was worried about coming out in this conversation; she hardly did anything of any worth, let alone anything scandalous or worth being killed over. Yet she was still nervous; it was like when you went in to take a drug test and were scared it would come up positive when the worst thing you had ever done was take a sip of your mother's wine when you were eight years old.

"Well, spit it out." Mary ordered, "What do you have?"

Jordan shifted uncomfortably.

"Well, at the Green's Independence Day barbeque, I kind of found something in Erin's room."

"Why were you in my sister's room?" Roland interrupted immediately, "That's trespassing."

"Mary asked me to go in and find Kate, but I couldn't find her in the kitchen so I started wandering." Jordan replied, "I remembered this one time that she had caught Landon and I in her bed at a party and seemed worried about us looking through her drawers. I was curious, so I looked in them. And I found something in the top drawer."

"How dare you—"

"Roland, this could help us." Michael told the boy firmly, "What's done is done. Listen to her."

Roland recoiled slightly in his chair, crossing his arms in frustration at what he was listening to.

All Lindsey could think about was what she had found at the Green's Independence Day barbeque. And she wasn't ready to share that just yet.

"It was a restraining order." Jordan continued, "And I'm not sure who it was against. She didn't fill it out all the way, and the only thing on it was the last name." She swallowed loudly, her eyes darting between the Hadden twins. "It was Hadden."

Mary and Michael looked at each other swiftly before turning back to Jordan simultaneously.

"I'm sure it was against Eddie." Mary shook her head, "They had broken up a little while before that and were probably still angry at each other. Nothing to worry about." Lindsey couldn't help but raise her eyebrows at the tone of Mary's voice; the queen bee was generally very slow to speak and chose her words deliberately, instead of throwing them out quickly and without thought. She was hiding something, but it certainly wasn't in anyone's best interest to press her for information.

"Alright." Jordan nodded slightly in her best friend's direction, "I guess it's nothing then. Roland?"

Roland sighed before putting the envelope on the table and taking a deep breath.

"I got a text message right before I came here. It told me to go to Portland Yards, alone, to find out why my mother didn't want me coming here tonight. The answer is supposed to be in this envelope. Only...I'm not supposed to show it to anyone. So don't tell anyone about whatever is in here. I don't even know what it is."

The rest of the group nodded, and Lindsey felt her heartrate pick up as she waited for Roland to open the envelope. He did so slowly—painstakingly so—and removed a large, blown-up photograph from inside, opening it up and staring at the image with horror on his face.

"Oh my—"

He didn't finish getting the words out before shattering could be heard and something flew past Lindsey's ear, landing in a heap of dust and glass on the floor beside her. Mary shrieked bloody murder as Michael jumped out of his seat and Jordan covered her head with her hands. Roland was on the ground, arms over his head in the fetal position with the photograph clutched in his right hand.

Lindsey stood slowly and looked at the window behind Roland, which was now shattered beyond repair with bits of glass surrounding the paneling and coating the floor below it. The security alarm was blaring in their ears, set off by the broken window as Michael picked up the brick that had been thrown through it.

"What's on it?"

Michael ripped off the piece of paper that was attached to the brick with a rubber band, reading out the note that had been pasted serial-killer-style on top.

"I told you not to show anyone." He read slowly, turning to Roland, who was just starting to stand. "Roland? Are you alright?"

The boy had a small gash on his right ear where the brick had just barely grazed it, but he didn't seem to be worried about it in the slightest; instead, his eyes were glued to the picture in his hand as he pointed to Lindsey and beckoned her to come to him.

"You." He whispered, pointing to the picture.

Lindsey walked over slowly, wary of another brick soaring into her house, and leaned over Roland's shoulder to see what had him so traumatized that he wasn't even conscious of the police sirens in the distance, headed to the house as the security alarm continued to sound in their ears.

The photograph showed a couple kissing, the sides of their faces the only recognizable parts of them. They were in a hotel room, with the photographer clearly across the street from them, watching, reporting. Lindsey looked closer before clapping her hand over her mouth.

"What is it?" Mary asked, recovered from the brick incident and walking over to see.

"My dad." Lindsey replied, "My dad and Roland's mom had an affair."

"Flip it over." Michael instructed from across the room, "I think we have a clue."

Roland flipped over the photo to reveal a note written in the same script that had been on the original envelope.

            Victoria knew.

A/N: Someone called an affair in the comments in the last chapter but I forget who, but props to you!

Who threw the brick? Is it the same person sending the texts? Let me know what you think of the book so far! And I still don't have my regular laptop back so I don't have the fancy banner thing, but hopefully by the next update I'll have it back! I also just like typing on it more than this crappy one.

-Katherine