littlesentences

[littlesentences]

Richard’s duffel was on the bed, not as neatly packed as he would have had it—a sleeve of a jumper spilling out, brushing the duvet on his bed, and bulging out in awkward places. And that alone could have just been Jordan doing it to piss him off, but there was also a drawer that wasn’t completely closed, and his pillows weren’t perfectly placed at the head of his bed.

In anyone else’s room, it would have meant nothing, but Richard liked his room perfectly in place, and Jordan—that could have been Jordan too. But Amerie slanted a look at her, and she was looking at the pillows with her eyes furrowed.

“Start this side, I’ll start up there, we meet at the duffel.”

Amerie watched Jordan walk up to the pillows and almost forgot to move to her starting point—the partly open drawer. It was a bit too easy to get sucked into murder investigations when you were invested in the outcome, and so Amerie had almost that she was there to keep an eye on Jordan, even if Jordan made her be useful.

The open drawer proved absolutely useless, as did the rest of her end of the room, and she was standing by the end of the bed, watching Jordan run her hands under the various sheets of Richard’s bed for anything anyone could have left behind. And she was staring at the duffel bag.

It would still be in there, even if Jordan had found it. And if she had read through it, it wouldn’t be a surprise to her, but if she hadn’t, well, that sort of thing was always good to come with a warning and someone on your side.

Amerie decided not to question why she was even going to say it in the first place before it came out. “I’m adopted.”

So Jordan hadn’t read through the book. Maybe she had been telling the truth. She didn’t say anything from where she was, splayed along the bed, but she didn’t move either, and Amerie kept talking.

“He found out a couple of years ago, and was holding it over mu—Betty’s—head, but he thought I should know.” Jordan looked at her and Amerie raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know why, but there’s a reason I still think of him and Darren as my brother’s, and Betty and David aren’t mum and dad anymore.”

Jordan didn’t move, or really do anything for a long time—a long enough time that Amerie thought about just going through the duffel bag and book on her own. Just because she knew where he kept it didn’t mean she knew what was in it. And she had only just reached for it when Jordan pushed herself off the bed and said, “Did you kill him?”

How the fuck she had got there from her last sentence, Amerie had no idea, but that was not the kind of question to brush off. “No.”

She had been with Jordan when she suspected Richard had died, and unless she had a clone walking around somewhere, it had not been her to take a shovel to her brother’s head.

But Jordan was staring at her another not moving, once again, so Amerie rolled her eyes and gestured at the bag in front of her. “Shall we?”

Jordan shrugged, and Amerie carefully unzipped the bag. Slowly, her brother’s scent crept up to her nose until it was the only she could smell. This was probably one of the last times she would smell him as he had been.

And in there was all of his stuff.

Amerie wrapped a hand around the sleeve of his jumper and pulled it out, barely aware of what she was doing. Holding it to her chest, she bent her head and inhaled. With her eyes closed, she could almost see him there, about to go off at them for going through his shit, promising Jordan would have to do something for him if she wanted her dirty little secret to remain just that.

This was Richard’s stuff, and he would never wear it again, never make it smell like him again. She couldn’t even really remember the sound of his voice anymore, and it hadn’t even been a full day. Soon, the smell would fade from his clothes, and he would just be a distant memory. Unpleasant most of the time, but he had his moments.

And his clothes were getting flung everywhere, dispersing that smell that was so distinctive to him, making it disappear faster and faster with each inhale. And she watched as the duffel emptied.

By her estimation, there was about one layer of clothes between Jordan and the book when she said, “You don’t give a shit do you?”

Jordan looked up at her, eyebrows rising into her hairline.

“Just throwing his shit everywhere, getting rid of the last thing that was organically his right in front of me.”

“Amerie,” she said, leaning away from the bag, keeping her hands on it, “this is a murder investigation. No, I don’t care about his things or … his scent.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

Jordan closed her eyes. “I can stop if you like.”

Their conversation from earlier came back to her, and Amerie knew that the cops would have only made it worse, nor would they get anywhere. “Fine.”

Jordan nodded and with a flourish, pulled the last item of clothing—a shirt Amerie had never seen before—out of the duffel and revealed the book. If she didn’t still have the jumper in her hands, she would have gotten her hands on it first and stood a chance at protecting some of her secrets. But as it was, Jordan let go of the shirt and reached into the duffel to bring it out, almost reverently.

Abruptly, Amerie decided she didn’t want to know how long Jordan had looked for it earlier in the day. “What now?”

Jordan dragged her eyes from the book to her sister-in-law. “I’ll set up a post in the back room and go over this tonight, making notes.”

“And I’m supposed to trust that you won’t get rid of anything that could incriminate you?”

“You can look over it in the morning,” Jordan said, like that solved everything. But Amerie knew what the next step would be, and she would rather be anywhere else than in the company of Jordan for the night. She had had her all fucking day—had almost cried in front of her twice, almost thrown up three times—she needed to be away.

Amerie shrugged. “Okay.”

Then she stalked out of her brother’s room, leaving Jordan standing there, holding the book like it would solve all of her problems, Richard’s jumper still bundled up against her chest.

-

The door was closed. There was only person in the house that closed the bedroom door when they were in it, and Darren hoped Jordan was dealing with the shovel. Or it meant that she would be. Or that she had. Or even that she wasn’t even in there.

The latter would definitely be easier, but as he had been hesitating at the door, he heard a metallic clang, followed by a curse. Slowly, Darren eased the door open to find Jordan standing in front of the bed, with the shovel leaning against it next to her. “Are you hurt?”

The words came out before he could really think about them, and he winced at her scoff.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was my own damn fault.”

Almost out of habit, Darren said, “I don’t think it was.”

He watched as Jordan worked her mouth before turning her head to look up at him. “And how would you explain it? The shovel slipped of its own accord? No one was holding it, or moved it or anything around it to make it slip? No one jumped a bit too hard to make it fall?”

Darren closed the door behind him and walked further into the room. “I can’t speak for the shovel, but even if it was your fault, that does’t mean it can’t hurt you.”

Jordan didn’t say anything back, just moved her eyes back to their bed and stared at it. It was the last thing Darren wanted to do, but he knew where her mind was going looking at their bed, and he figured he was safer if they were talking about the murder investigation than … the other thing. “Why don’t you have gloves on?”

Jordan blinked. “What?”

“You’re handling a murder weapon,” Darren said like it would explain everything, still in front of the door. “Without gloves, you’re sacrificing the integrity of the investigation and any prints you might get from it.”

“Where would I run those prints, Darren?” Finally, Jordan turned to face him, and he couldn’t help but wonder why he had wanted it in the first place. “I know this place well enough by now to know there is nothing here that would help in that regard. And why do you care so much now, anyway? Got anything else to confess?”

Anything else to — Darren sighed, “Jordan.”

“Don’t Jordan me. You’re the one who’s been having an affair for three fucking years, where barely a week has gone by where you haven’t managed to see each other. You’re the one who never saw fit to tell me, despite ample opportunity. You’re the one who still wouldn’t have said anything if I hadn’t known you were lying!”

“What would you have had me do? Tell you? When it was still going to go on? It would have killed us both—”

Jordan threw her hands in the air. “Do not try to say you did it for us. You could have talked to me.”

“Would you have listened?”

“I would have fucking tried—”

“Three years ago, would you have listened?”

Jordan’s hands fell back to her sides, and she didn’t say anything, just stared at him. The silence was telling, and he wasn’t even after an answer. Darren had been there three years ago—hell, five years ago—he knew she wouldn’t have listened. They both knew she wouldn’t have listened, and that he wouldn’t have said anything

The downside of getting comfortable.

“That’s still no excuse for cheating on me.” The words were quiet, and Jordan was staring at the dessert by the door, probably as close to looking at him as she could get. He couldn’t exactly blame her. He didn’t even know why he was defending himself this much. “But fuck three years ago, what about now? What about last night?”

Darren ran a hand through his hair and breathed out. What about last night indeed? “We haven’t gotten any better.”

Jordan barked a laugh and finally managed to look at him, her eyes pinning him to the wall. Voice dripping with sarcasm, she said, “I can’t imagine why.”

“Don’t pretend this is all my fault. It takes two to tango.” For fucks sake, why couldn’t she just see that he hadn’t meant to? That he still loved her?

“And, what? We should invite Brittany to this little discussion of ours—and why not? She’s been an integral part of our sex life for three years—or are we circling back to our problems?”

That she had even—“Well I’m certainly not going to invite Brittany here!”

Not when there was a murder weapon already in the room.

Jordan took the answer with an unexpected grace. “So, you’re telling me that if, say, two nights ago—never mind the atrocious timing—I had come to you and said ‘Hey, maybe we should work out our problems’ we would be having a very different conversation now because you wouldn’t have slept with Brittany last night?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I’m saying! Even if it had been on the drive down here—”

“Yeah, that would’ve gone great, we would be dead in a ditch covered in snow.”

“—I want to work it out. I want to get back to where we were.”

“You have a strange way of showing it, Darren.” She looked away and swallowed, and if it had been hours earlier, he would have gone to her. But there was no one she would want to hold her less—he didn’t even want his own company, hadn’t for at least a year. “You should have come to me, pestered me, carved out time to talk to me instead of—”

Darren couldn’t remember the last time they had talked for this long. It might have been last year when she had been between cases, and they could actually talk to each other for longer than five minutes. But it was hazy, and he could remember even less the last time he had heard her cut herself off mid sentence. And he wanted to encourage her to finish her sentence, but that would just be cruel. They both knew the end.

They both knew what he had done.

“I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes and forced the words up his throat. “So fucking sorry.”

Jordan hadn’t moved when he opened his eyes again, and so he spoke again, gently, wanting her to look at him again, even if there was nothing but hate there for him. He could work with that. Hate meant there was love. “What can I do?"

Prev.

[littlesentences]

Amerie was further away, and sounding choked when she said, “No idea.”

Jordan hummed and raked her eyes down the back of Richard’s body before sliding her hands in his back pockets. Who went out for a smoke without their wallet? “Would you be able to tell if anyone had been through it?”

“You were the last one in there, the fuck would you need me for?”

Jordan looked back at her and raised an eyebrow.

Amerie sighed and rolled her eyes. “Only if you didn’t make a mess.”

Jordan went back to Richard, taking photos of his head and the wound.

“But I do know where he keeps the book.”

Jordan froze. Whoever had that book had the power in this family, and Richard would never let it go. That Amerie knew where he kept it—whether in his room or in his duffel—meant that he trusted her a lot more than anyone thought.

“Well I hope you didn’t have any plans after dinner.”

She could feel Amerie’s outrage at being told to do yet another thing she didn’t want to do today. “And what if I did?”

“Then maybe you should have thought of that before you volunteered me to look into Richard’s murder.”

Amerie could take a number at being angry about doing things she didn’t want to do. Jordan had most of them, and she was still waiting for her turn.

Pulling her phone out of her back pocket, Jordan finally took photos of his body—the wound, the general position of him, the rest of the back of his body—and flipped him over to take photos of his other side, too. The blue tips of his fingers barely came up on her phone camera, but she did her best to get them anyway. She had to if she didn’t want any deeper questions asked.

Leaning back, and leaving Richard to stare at the sky, Jordan let herself think about Amerie again, still standing behind her, and decided it was probably best not to tell her that one of them would have to watch over Taylor’s or Richard’s room tonight, depending on what they found—or didn’t find—in Richard’s room.

“Are you done?” Amerie did not sound too impressed to have watched Jordan take photos of her brother’s dead body.

Jordan spun on the balls of her feet to face her. “Do you want the cops to be getting into your business?”

Amerie pursed her lips. As much as they didn’t want to answer Jordan’s questions, they would want a total outsider like the police to be asking those same questions even less.

Jordan pushed herself to her feet and decided to leave Richard’s body out here. It was the best place for it—cold enough to prevent decomposition, smell, and a lazy killer who wanted to hide something. Although if someone really wanted to come out here and hide something, they would.

Yet another door she would have to watch.

There were not enough people she trusted in that not-mansion for her to watch every door she needed to. Walking back to it, she supposed she wouldn’t be sleeping in her bed tonight. That was probably for the best.

Can’t exactly be trusted to investigate a murder when you kill your husband in his sleep.

By the time they were in the back room, divesting of their snow gear, the smells of dinner were strong enough to permeate the whole house, and Jordan heard her stomach grumble. All she’d had to eat today was a late breakfast, and maybe that was why everything felt off when she tried to focus on it, but it was hardly the first time she’d forgotten to eat because of a case, and it would not be the last.

She wasn’t even aware of how fast she was moving until she was around the corner from the dining table, and could hear the chatter of the family, without Amerie behind her.

Standing there, alone, Jordan didn’t think she could face it. Conversation would die out the moment she was spotted, and there’d be a spot next to Darren open just for her, with the one opposite him open for Amerie. She did not want to sit anywhere Darren, or Brittany for the matter, for the rest of time. And if they were smart, they would be at opposite ends of the table. But then, if they had been smart, they wouldn’t have started an affair.

Barely, just over the sound of the family, Jordan picked out the sound of footsteps getting closer. It could only be Amerie.

Knowing she wouldn’t be the only one facing some sort of scrutiny, Jordan stepped around the corner and stalked to her spot beside Darren. As if it would make her feel any better, he had already filled her plate with what she liked, not that there was much to choose from. Betty had, apparently, figured out that since they couldn’t get into town, they couldn’t restock the food they had in the pantry.

Darren barely looked at her—or maybe she barely looked at him—as she started eating, paying no attention to the way the silence grew as Amerie took her seat opposite Darren, on the other side of their mother. Or the way conversation started up haltingly as Amerie started loading up her plate.

Jordan didn’t remember if she had taken Amerie for questioning before or after Betty had put out food for them to eat, but since she knew that Betty had put out food, it had probably been after. Which would explain why she was not attacking her food with the same voracity as Jordan. And why she was spending so much time looking at Darren.

She had to agree that both Darren and Brittany had the most reason to want Richard dead, but their alibi—if Darren had been involved in killing Richard, there would be a lot more marks on his body from a fight, and Brittany couldn’t have done it, thanks to her brilliant fucking alibi. And Jordan liked to think she would have noticed if her husband had been in a fight.

Even if she hadn’t noticed him having an affair for three years.

All of that was irrelevant though, and Jordan half-refilled her plate, since no one else seemed to want to take advantage of Betty’s cooking. She was asking for the depleted bowl of bread rolls to be passed down to her when she met Brittany’s eyes.

The bread rolls came to rest in front of her and she looked away to put one on her plate and pass them back down, but she still felt Brittany’s eyes on her, burning a hole into her head.

She had almost finished her plate when she gave up. “Do you have a problem, Brittany?”

Jordan was aware, somewhere in the back of her mind that she had interrupted several conversations in between her and the aforementioned adulterer. But all that she could see and feel was Brittany’s eyes, glaring into hers.

“I do, actually,” Brittany said, before anyone could come to her defence. “Who interrogated you?”

Jordan bit into her bread roll and waited until she swallowed before answering. “Amerie. Why?”

“Did she interrogate you twice?”

Jordan raised her eyebrows, not at the question, but the haughty tone. “No. But then, I didn’t lie the first time.”

It was Brittany’s turn to raise her eyebrows—and was she losing it, or had that been a flash of fear in her eyes? “Do you really want to do this here?”

Like she had more to lose. “Do you?”

If she hadn’t been sleeping next to him for the better part of eight years, Jordan probably would have missed the way Darren tensed next to her. Jordan may not have anything to lose but the promise of an inheritance that she didn’t really need, but Darren had a wife and an inheritance he had been promised since childhood. And Brittany had a wife and the promise of the remnants of that money.

Believably, Brittany’s eyes flicked to where she was sitting across from Maria, and Jordan sat, staring at her, waiting.

It was nothing to her whether the yelling started in private or surrounded by the people who would find out first.

The silence was deafening at the table, and Amerie pushed her chair back in a way that made it screech loud enough to wake the dead. Jordan hoped it didn’t wake up Richard.

Jordan didn’t pay her any attention whatsoever, still staring at Brittany, who was still staring at Maria. In fact, if she didn’t feel Amerie’s eyes on her, Jordan probably would have sat there all night, waiting for Brittany to decide where and when she wanted to do this.

When she met Amerie’s eyes���slowly, reluctantly swinging her head around—Amerie raised her eyebrows. For someone who hadn’t really wanted to help with the investigation of her brother’s death, she sure was eager to go through his things. The duality of siblings, Jordan supposed.

Sighing, Jordan dropped her shoulders and stood, leaving the table with one last look at Brittany.

They were halfway up the stairs when she realised she had managed to ignore Darren the whole meal. And it hadn’t even been a conscious effort.

-

Amerie didn’t quite know what she was thinking. When Jordan, Brittany, Maria, and Darren were all next together, she would kill to be a fly on the wall the wall, and when the opportunity had presented itself to instigate the fight, she had defused it. What the fuck was happening to her?

And now she stood the risk of having to deal with a depressed Jordan. If she was given the chance to go back in time and change something right now, she’d change that.

But the closer they got to Richard’s room, the more Jordan seemed to come back to herself, and it occurred to Amerie to not believe her. Jordan had gone through his room, and would have gone through his duffel. Richard hadn’t had time to unpack anything when he had arrived, and certainly not before he slept, so unless Jordan was supremely terrible at her job, she would have found the notebook.

Unless.

Unless whoever had killed him had gone in and moved it around before Jordan could get there. There was a lot of time between when Amerie had pulled him out of the snow and Jordan had told the family to fuck off so she could go through his room in peace. Anyone could have gone through his room and hid a book. Or taken a book. Or defaced a book.

Just as Jordan opened the door, she felt her heart in her throat. If anyone had gotten their hands on that book, they would hold her life in their hands. Richard had written down her secrets, sure, but he didn’t use them the same way he used everyone else’s secrets. She had been his little sister, holding those secrets over her was one of the rare lines he wouldn’t cross.

And she was in there prolifically. Amerie had used Richard’s weak spot to her advantage every chance she could.

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[littlesentences]

You would have thought they had been trying to get Brittany to confess to murder, the amount of teeth-pulling they had had to do to get her to talk. And yes, Amerie had been a helpful part of the interrogation process. Not that it really should have been an interrogation. They had just been trying to get her to confirm her and Darren’s alibi for last night.

And apparently three nights a week for the last three years.

Jordan didn’t know how Brittany had walked out of there without a mark on her, but it was a near thing.

Once she had realised Jordan didn’t want her to confess to something she hadn’t done, she had been giving up details of her affair like it would save her. All it had made Jordan want to do was push her out the window. And Amerie was finally proving herself useful.

She had been the one to get Brittany to talk, had been the one to bring her up with a stern reminder of who was in charge—a point of contention between the two of them, but it definitely hadn’t been Brittany—and had taken over the questions when Jordan was about to push her out the window. And yet she still refused to go anywhere without her phone, like it would just start working again without any external help.

Like it could have gotten that bad overnight without any external help.

It was a long-shot, but maybe Richard had chosen to divulge one of the secrets he squeezed for all they were worth to Amerie for maximum efficiency when spreading. And then he had told the owner of the secret, and they had killed him and wrecked Amerie’s phone.

Jordan almost jumped up to tell her to stop and give her her phone. But that wouldn’t be smart for multiple reasons, one of which that fingerprints were impossible to run with the objects she had on hand. She supposed she could call her team for long distance help—it wouldn’t be the first time—but reception was too spotty and she had given them the fortnight off.

She hadn’t exactly expected to be investigating a murder on her two weeks off.

Or finding out that her husband had been cheating on her for three years. Three whole fucking years, almost to the day.

Jordan knew she hadn’t been the best wife, but he hadn’t been the best husband—case in point—and yet she hadn’t gone off and fucked one of her cousin’s wives for the last three fucking years.

The full stop she put in her notebook pierced the next couple of pages. If Jordan had it her way, she would never have to think about it again, would never look at that notebook, would never talk about it, maybe leave Darren—but where would she go?—maybe think harder about killing Brittany. But it was a viable alibi, given how much neither one of them wanted to give it up, and it needed to be put down.

Immortalised in the investigation of Richard Russell’s death.

Finally, Jordan understood why the main Russell family always closed ranks whenever something went wrong. Or maybe she had just been around them long enough to start using their defence mechanisms.

She wanted to kick everyone else out of the not-mansion and deal with this with Darren in the privacy of an empty not-mansion.

The door swung open and Amerie leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. “Is your tantrum done?”

Jordan looked at her. She didn’t know what else she had been expecting—maybe a little bit of sympathy?—but Amerie was not one to dole out care. Never mind that she had just had to confirm that her husband had been fucking another woman last night to absolve him of murder.

She was still staring daggers at Amerie. No, her perfectly reasonable horrible mood was not over.

Closing her notebook, she hopped off the desk and skirted around Amerie, leaving the room, notebook in hand. “Follow.”

The whole family knew that she had taken up Taylor’s room to work in, and they had all seen her scribbling in that notebook. It wouldn’t take half a braincell between them to figure out where she would leave it. And Jordan could’t afford her investigation to be compromised in any way—probably why she was tolerating Amerie’s presence, no one better to keep you in check than someone who hates your guts—so she would be taking it everywhere she possible could.

At the bottom of the stairs, she went left, and resisted snorting at the sound of Amerie tripping over her feet to keep up with her. She would only do that if and when she had no choice but to at this point.

Besides, talking to them now would only invite them into the investigation. And every single one of them were suspects with alibi’s of varying strengths. Jordan would rather keep it all to herself. And Amerie, who was currently staring at her in the back room as she put on her snow gear by rote.

That Amerie had to even be included was grating on her, but Jordan couldn’t remember the last time she had worked by herself. It might have been a good thing for her to have someone to bounce ideas off of, but with this one, it would have been easier if she was alone.

“What are you doing?” Amerie asked, still not having moved, like she already knew the answer.

“It’s getting dark, I want to see if there’s anything I missed on your brother before we lose all light.”

Amerie’s jaw worked, and Jordan didn’t say ‘When you’ve finished your tantrum, you know where to find me’ but it was a near thing. Shoving her snow boots on, and her notebook in one of her many pockets, Jordan went out into the dying light.

Richard’s body was bluer than when they had left it, despite it being completely exposed to the sun. As a result, he did look deader than he had in the morning, and, thankfully, he was still exactly as they had left him.

Jordan didn’t think she’d be able to deal with someone actively trying to sabotage her on top of everything else. Without Amerie around, Jordan checked his pockets once again, and found nothing as expected, then she lifted up his eyelids to check his eyes and barely hid a flinch. They sure were the eyes of the dead.

There was nothing else of interest there, so she let the lids fall, and checked his throat again for strangulation marks—nothing—before going over the rest of him for any other injuries. Nothing. Just the hole in his head.

She still couldn’t believe no one had proposed a party—then, with a murder investigation and Betty floating around, it wasn’t all that surprising after all. Though, once they were all back in civilisation, there was definitely going to be one. And depending on how this played out, she might even be invited. She’d bring the wine.

It had been a while since she had been allowed to bring wine to a family event.

Leaning back on her heels, Jordan heard the tell-tale crunch of snow under a snow boot and waited until Amerie stopped a couple steps behind her to say, “Notice anything different?”

It was a couple of minutes before she said, “No.”

She felt her head nod slightly at the confirmation that she hadn’t missed anything. While she knew she hadn’t, it was always good to have confirmation.

At this point, or hell, in the morning, Jordan would have been all over the body, picking and bagging any stray hair for any semblance of viable lead, but that was redundant without the ability to test any of it. Besides, it was almost a full day since he had been dead. Whatever evidence was left would have been compromised by now.

She had just been about to move closer to the hole in his head when Amerie, still standing several steps away from her brother’s dead body, said, “What were you doing in Richard’s room?”

Her hands, which had been out to flip him over, froze. A part of her was glad Amerie couldn’t see her face. “Trying to find a clue as to who could have possibly killed him.”

“Did you find it?”

If Jordan could have paused again, she would have. There was only one ‘it’ anyone talked about when it came to Richard Russell, especially in this not-mansion. “No.”

Amerie hummed. “It must be hard for you,” she said, suddenly closer. If she concentrated, Jordan thought she could feel her breath on the back of her neck. “Investigating the death of someone you loathed on your fortnight off.”

Jordan rolled her eyes and worked her hands under Richard’s body to flip it. “I don’t commit murder, Amerie.”

She could almost see the way Amerie leaned back, hand to her chest, face shocked as she said, “I didn’t say anything about murder, Jordan.”

“That’s what you were getting at, I’ve done this a few times.” Richard was once more face down in the snow, bloody back of his head on full display in the dying light. The snow stuck to his hair, making the dried blood matting it even more obvious, and it sparkled in the last few rays of sunlight they’d have for the day. “Did you hear anyone else in Richard’s room?”

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[littlesentences]

“Okay.” That didn’t mean she had to make it come out quicker, or add fuel to the fire.

As they walked the rest of the way to where the family was sitting, Amerie was well aware that if it had been anyone else, she would have strung them along and made them worry, and probably not have even made her mind up as well. Waiting until the best possible moment to let it drop unless someone dropped it first.

She was proud that she didn’t feel weird about that hypocrisy in her anymore. She knew who she liked, fuck everyone else—one way or the other.

Darren walked back to the spot where she had found him, a shell of the man he had been, and Amerie said, “Brittany.”

Just before she turned to look at her, Maria narrowed her eyes. While she wouldn’t say anything, she did not envy the interrogation her brother was about to get.

Gesturing for Brittany to follow her, Amerie started walking back to Jordan.

She was worried in a distant way for her cousin-in-law’s safety, but Jordan was nothing if not professional, and Amerie was there to pick up the slack in questions if there were any. She had been ready to do just that the moment Darren had said where he had been and why. And then Jordan had gone surprised her by asking all the necessary questions.

In the moment she had thought it was rude. She had wanted to interrogate her brother, and also make him think that acting on an affair with a full fucking house had been the terrible idea it was.

And now it was only a matter of time before everyone knew, which served them right. If they had wanted to fuck so badly last night, they should have fucked their own wives.

Brittany’s footsteps weren’t long behind hers in coming back up the stairs. Given the situation—and that they weren’t yet in Taylor’s room—this was the closest Amerie ever wanted to be to her. Brittany could talk a fucking stick to death. The amount of questions she would ask that Amerie couldn’t and wouldn’t answer made her want to shrivel up and die.

Let Jordan figure that one out. Maybe she could find a way to make Brittany take the blame for it. Amerie thought Jordan would enjoy putting that woman behind bars.

Since when did Amerie care about Jordan’s happiness?

Amerie shook her head and waited at the door to Taylor’s room for Brittany. She half expected to open the door and find the five-year-old (Maybe six? She didn’t know.) sitting in there, completely oblivious to the world around her. That was a dream-fodder thought if she’d ever had one, and she was no longer looking forward to going to sleep.

Not if she couldn’t forget Richard was dead even in her dreams.

Brittany was finally standing in front of the door, tapping her foot impatiently like she couldn’t open a door for herself. And she hadn’t even been born into this family. Amerie yanked open the door and strode through it, leaving Brittany to follow behind her like the suspect she was.

-

He shouldn’t have been surprised that they had taken Brittany back up next—whether it was to confirm his alibi or get her real one, he didn’t know—and so he should have known better than to sit next to Maria when he had come back. But what else was he going to do? Not show his face again?

That would tell them something was wrong faster than if he stood on the table and shouted it at the top of his lungs. And he wouldn’t do that with a shovel to his head.

Jordan still hadn’t left Taylor’s room. It was still in their room. So he couldn’t even go there for sanctuary. Well, he could, but then he would be in the presence of the thing that had killed Richard, which was both unpleasant and not good from an investigatory perspective. Not if it was to be viable evidence. And that brings him back around to letting everyone know that something was wrong.

Darren would keep his affair with Brittany quiet for as long as possible. In fact, the only way he could see it coming out would be if someone was pestering either Jordan or Amerie about why he wasn’t being questioned more. Neither Jordan or Amerie would let anyone into their family business without pressure.

They may have hated each other, but they had been apart of the same family for long enough to know to close ranks.

Brittany and Maria though—“Earth to Darren.”

Maria was waving a hand in front of his face, calling for his attention. “Hello, I asked you a question.”

He shook his head and once again regretted his choice of seat. Where he had been sitting before being called back in was still free. “Sorry, what was it?”

Maria looked at him like he was crazy. “What did they call you back for?”

“Oh, they just wanted to go over some details.” Darren looked at the rest of the eyes now unequivocally on him. “Who’s idea was it for them to work together anyway?”

“Jordan’s. Why did they want to talk to Brittany again?”

That Maria didn’t even wonder at why Darren even asked the question spoke to her distraction. He had been there when Jordan had volunteered Amerie to go with her to look at Richard’s body. “I don’t know, you’d have to ask them.”

Maria narrowed her eyes. “Bullshit. You know.”

He turned to look at her, eyes wide and hands spread out before him. “I swear I don’t know, they didn’t tell me anything, barely even reacted when I answered their questions.”

“They were both asking you questions?” George piped up from where he sat next to the empty spot Darren had left, eyes narrowed.

“Yes, what is this? The fucking inquisition?”

George rolled his eyes, and Amber answered in his stead. “For all we know, Jordan could have been the one who killed him, and you two could be colluding to hide the truth.”

Most days, Darren was not jealous of the strange marriage those two had going on, but when Amber was answering for her husband in a way that meant they were constantly on the same wavelength despite … everything else going on with them, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy. Maybe if they weren’t so focused on their careers. Maybe if they had waited to get to know each other better before getting married. Maybe if they were definitely better as friends who didn’t have to spend each spare waking moment together.

“Do you really think Amerie would let us?”

“She could be in on it, too.”

Darren raised his eyebrows, and the rest of the room seemed to agree with him. “Amerie would have rather killed herself than let herself go along with Richard’s murder.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I have eyes.”

Murray, thankfully, cut Amber off before she could say anything else. “Amber, you know you’re talking bullshit. But I am curious as to what they’re asking Brittany.”

Darren rolled his eyes. “I told you. I don’t know, so stop looking at me.”

“It wasn’t a question, Darren.”

He could feel his uncle’s eyes boring into him, and he knew that if he sat there for too much longer, he would start talking and not be able to shut up. Which would both ruin Jordan’s investigation and any chance he had of keeping his affair—which was really over this time—a secret. And after he had worked so hard to not have Richard spill it, it would be a waste to not be able to live in a world where he had nothing to worry about for a full day.

So, risking them believing something was actually up, Darren got up and walked to the bathroom he had been hiding in before.

He had been about to go to his room, but he remembered the shovel just in time. He could have just kept the door open, but he knew it was there now. Nothing would keep him in that room until Jordan had taken it upstairs, which would probably only happen at some ungodly hour of the night.

Which meant he would be sleeping on a couch, keeping uncle Luke company until one of them passed out from exhaustion. How mum had even gotten Luke to come was a mystery.

Luke hadn’t shown up for any family thing in years. Not even at his wedding had Luke shown up, though he had been invited, but it had just been Maria, who had shown up and made the usual excuses. The only family Darren suspected Luke saw regularly was Maria, and his wife’s family. From what Darren remembered of her, she had been lovely. He still didn’t know if they had ever caught the bastard that had killed her in a hit and run.

Although, with the way Luke had taken up drinking and was hanging around her family afterwards, it was entirely possible he had been the one to do it.

It would hardly be surprising, given the Russell family in general, and the apathy with which Richard’s death—the unofficial family secret keeper—had been met with. The secrets that man had been keeping were probably worth their weight in gold. It was a wonder no one had planned a fucking party. Then, he hadn’t exactly been with the whole family the whole time after Richard’s death was announced.

A knock on the open door cut through his thoughts.

He didn’t look up from the sink he had been drowning in, waiting for whoever it was to speak.

He didn’t have to wait too long. “Why did they take her immediately after you?”

Maria sounded like she wanted to be asking anything other than that question, and he couldn’t blame her. Darren would rather she ask any other question, too. Telling your wife that you had been cheating on her as your brother was getting killed was one thing—telling the wife of the person you had been cheating with was another. It somehow made him feel even more guilty.

Guilty enough for a sigh that started in his soul to be breathed, and him to lie. “I don’t know.”

It was the most genuine sounding lie he had ever said. And that was saying something, considering how long the affair had been going on. Whether that thing was about his lying ability or how often Jordan took note of his comings and goings, he didn’t know.

But he did know that his cousin finally believed him, and he couldn’t help but feel … something. He didn’t know what he was feeling, but he didn’t like it. Who knew what Brittany would say?

Darren knew all too well that it would only take one wrong sentence for Jordan to decide telling everyone would be more beneficial to her than keeping it quiet. And then he would be a known liar, in more ways than one. He had had countless chances to come clean in the past half hour alone, let alone the last couple of years.

Him and Jordan would be waving that beautiful inheritance away, and then he and Jordan would probably go through a divorce—which would be messy—and he would never see her or Brittany again. And Maria would hate his guts.

Maybe he should—no. If told the truth now, when there was still a chance it wouldn’t come out, would just publicly ruin four lives.

“Mind if you have company?” she asked, already sinking onto the floor.

It was only after he had waved his hand in a way that said ‘be my guest’ that he realised Brittany would ask after Maria, and she would be directed here, and who knows what she would say when she saw them sulking together.

But that was a problem for when Brittany actually came back down the stairs, and she was still up there, in Taylor’s old room, making life hell for Jordan.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

Prev.

Next.

[littlesentences]

Darren’s shoulders shook with the effort of breathing, and god all Jordan wanted to do was run her hands over his back and kiss neck. Tell him it was okay and fine and they could handle anything together. But Amerie was there, their brother was dead, and Jordan was sitting on the desk halfway across the room from him waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Eventually, her husband looked up at her, hands running through his hair to fall into his lap. His back was still hunched over, but his face was up, and Jordan wanted to scrub the guilty look on his face from it, from her mind.

Quietly, he said, “I was with Brittany.”

Brittany.

The next time Jordan saw her, she was going to kill her.

By the wall, Amerie was completely silent. In some distant part of her mind, Jordan was surprised she hadn’t jumped up and heaped on the pain with each question that it prompted.

But she didn’t say a word for long enough that Jordan knew what she was doing. The only thing worse than getting all the information at once was having to ask for it herself.

And Jordan did not. Want. To know.

But she needed to do this.

Tongue as heavy as a lodestone in her mouth, she made herself ask, “What were you doing together?”

She hadn’t even noticed her eyes had dropped to his hands, where they were twisted into each other, going white in his grip. His wedding ring standing out against the pale skin.

She brought her eyes up to his face in time for him to swallow and talk.

“We were having an affair.”

Jordan was sure she had flinched.

Her mouth open for the next question, she hesitated.

I DON’T WANT TO KNOW.

“Between what times were you together?”

She did not want to know.

Darren swallowed and held her eyes. “Eleven and three.”

Jordan wanted to bury her head in the sand and forget this had ever happened.

“Did you notice anything peculiar in that time?”

Apart from the fact that she was not me.

“No.”

In some distant part of her mind that had not shut down, she knew that the answer had come too quickly for it to be completely accurate. She would have to ask him later. But she did not want to know.

She did not want to know.

She did not wa—

“How long has the affair been going on?”

Darren looked down at his hands, and Jordan followed his gaze down. “Three years.”

Now that it was out in the open, she would have preferred three months.

If he had wanted to fuck her so badly, why didn’t he just ask for a fucking divorce? Why had he snuck around for three whole years only to come back to her every single night? Why fucking bother?

Did he want to hurt her? Was it a fucking joke?

Jordan wasn’t staring at his hands anymore, instead choosing to burn holes into his the top of his head that she had kissed more times than she could count. “Amerie, take him downstairs and get Brittany.”

Like there was nothing wrong in the world, and it was the only problem, Amerie said, “The family will have questions.”

Jordan snapped her head around to her. “I don’t care, get him out of here and get Brittany.”

Amerie blinked at her, and Jordan had the distinct impression that if she hadn’t been up against a wall, she would have taken a step back. “Are you sure we should do thi—”

“Do it or I will.”

It was only as Amerie closed the door in front of her and walked down the stairs with Darren that she realised how much that had sounded like a threat.

-

Jordan had been so fucking sure Darren hadn’t killed Richard, and Amerie had wanted to believe her, but his were the only whereabouts that hadn’t been accounted for. At least, until he accounted for them in a way both of them would believe. Because who the fuck would risk their inheritance for Brittany unless it was true?

And also who the fuck would ruin their marriage instead of just confessing, but that was a lesser question.

The walk down the stairs was quiet, and they heard the noise their family was making well before they could hear them. Betty must have just gone to the kitchen to make dinner—it was crazy how fucking fast and slow this day was going. It felt like two seconds ago she had pulled Richard from the snow.

But no. That had been several hours ago now, and even through the snow coating the windows, Amerie could tell that the sun was going down. Depending on when he had died, she had almost lived her first full day without her oldest brother.

“Please don’t tell anyone.” And there was her other brother.

Darren’s voice was quiet and further away than she expected. She looked around only to find him a couple of steps back, looking into the distance like it would fix anything. The distance would not fix his marriage, or make it easier sleeping next to Jordan for the next two weeks—or however long it took for the roads to be cleared. Because if he didn’t want anyone to know, then they would have to keep acting like the happily married couple they had been in the morning.

And that meant sleeping in the same room every night.

He really should have thought about this before he had met Brittany wherever they had met up last night.

As a general rule, if Amerie was in a relationship and partaking in adultery, she would make sure her partner knew she was going out, and was going to be a while. Along with all the other rules of adultery—cheating was a tricky business, and not for the faint of heart. Like Darren. How this was the only way it got out was beyond her.

Looking at him, this had to be what Richard had on him. Her second oldest brother couldn’t have had too many secrets he would have paid to keep secret, and Richard would have dug and dug until he found something. And there was always something.

But as for keeping it quiet … It was two people’s alibi for a murder.

Prev.

Next.

[littlesentences]

Darren picked up the least offensive sandwich he could find and sat down opposite her. “So what did she ask the rest of you?”

“When I went to bed, if I got up in the night, if I saw or heard anything suspicious,” Riley said from beside Brittany. “All of the usual things you get asked in a murder investigation.”

Darren felt his eyebrows rise, but Maria was quicker. “Not your first?”

In answer, Riley just took a sip of her drink, and the silence quickly spread through the whole room until everyone was looking at them.

“Ah right,” Maria said. “What did he have on you?”

Darren narrowed his eyes. Not once had Jordan even broached the subject of Richard’s business of finding out and keeping the secrets of the family. She hadn’t even alluded to the secrets floating around this house apart from asking if anyone had gotten up in the night. Admittedly, he had never seen her at work, but that would have been the first thing he would have asked.

It was too obvious a motive for her to ignore.

Riley cocked an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Why didn’t she ask about that?” It would seem as though Darren was not the only one who’d had that thought, with Murray broaching the question almost as soon as his second child had finished speaking.

“Maybe she doesn’t want her own secrets getting out,” Brittany said, shrugging.

Darren could see how the conversation would go, and while he couldn’t help but have the same questions, he wouldn’t let them drag his wife through the mud when they were worried about the exact same things. “Or maybe she’s just trying to figure out where everyone was in the interest of eliminating people before asking for their secrets.”

Brittany scoffed. “Of course you’d say that.”

“Yes.” Darren looked into her eyes. “She’s my wife.”

Brittany hid whatever flashed over her face well, there and gone in the space of a blink, but Darren didn’t look away. Jordan was his wife, and he would not let their family talk behind her back—when he was there, at least.

“As enlightening as this conversation has been,” George said, standing up and probably regretting bringing Taylor along for this trip. “The fuck did you mean Riley?”

He was definitely regretting bringing Taylor along. If there was any incident that determined a shit ton of swearing it was Richard Russell’s body being found in the snow the morning after a blizzard.

“About?” They innocently sipped at their drink, blinking at George like they had all seen Taylor do countless times to win him over.

George threw his hands up in the air. “About this not being the first murder investigation you’ve been involved in!”

“Is that right?”

Amerie’s voice cut through whatever had been building in the room, and everyone swivelled to look at her. Her eyebrows were up, and she was staring at Riley with an interest Darren hadn’t seen her take in them since they had come out.

Riley sat up straighter and stared at Amerie head-on. “What if it was?”

Normally, Amerie liked when people tried to start a fight with her, but even before Riley had come out, she had always hated them. So, the challenge that would have brought a smile from anyone else made Amerie purse her lips and say, “Don’t leave the room.”

And then she turned her disapproving eyes onto Darren and said, “Darren, come back up.”

That Jordan hadn’t come down to get him said something, but what, he didn’t know. It couldn’t mean anything good. Not when everyone was staring at him, and Maria was leaning back from him like the designation of murder suspect was a plague that could be caught.

In a trance, Darren pushed himself to his feet and went after Amerie, who was already going back up the stairs. He still didn’t know what questions he had answered wrong—or which ones he answered right. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, couldn’t think about it, with the family around him.

As he turned the corner to the stairs, he felt mum’s eyes on his back. And even though he knew he hadn’t killed Richard—he had been otherwise engaged at the time—he still couldn’t turn back and face the look in her eyes.

The heartbreak would be too much for him, and he suspected he wouldn’t leave that room without breaking Jordan’s, and there was only so much heartbreaking one man can take.

-

He was lying.

He had sat on that bed and lied to her face.

HE WAS LYING!

And now he was sitting on that bed again after her and Amerie had gone around and around about what to do about her lying husband. Normally, Jordan would have let him sweat it out until at least tomorrow, make him wonder, make him think he had gotten off. But what the fuck had he been lying about? She knew he hadn’t killed Richard, so why had he looked in her eyes and lied to her fucking face?

Sure, they don’t have the best marriage, but it was better than it could have been, and they didn’t actively hate each other yet. Jordan would have given it a couple more years before it reached that extent. Now, she didn’t know what to think.

Amerie was beside her, staring at her brother like he had killed her other brother. And Jordan couldn’t look up from her notebook. If he hated her, then she didn’t want to face it. He was all she had left in the world, the only reason she came home at the end of every day in an effort to not let resentment grow between them.

Their marriage was the perfect breeding ground for hate, Jordan saw it every day at work, and she would be damned if she let it turn into the ugly mess of hate and love and resentment that so often ended in murder.

“Why am I back?”

She doubted he could hear it, but he sounded scared. And if Amerie had seen her brother more than once—maybe—a year, she would have recognised the fear in his voice, even if he didn’t know it was there.

“You think we don’t know you’re lying?” Amerie’s voice could have cut glass as she walked up to Darren, close enough to stand on his toes. “Where were you last night as the snow was falling?”

Darren swallowed, and his eyes started to slide to Jordan, likely about to profess his innocence. That he was in bed all night. But she had been lying beside him too long to know that he was a light sleeper and would have known if Jordan had gotten out of bed at any point in the night.

Darren narrowed his eyes after a moment’s hesitation. “I was asleep in bed.”

For all Jordan knew, he may very well have been asleep, but he had not been in bed.

Amerie grabbed his chin and yanked his eyes back to her, leaning down to look in his eyes. “Don’t look at her. I asked you a question. Where the fuck were you last night?”

Darren knocked Amerie’s hand off his chin, but Amerie grabbed onto his wrist instead of being pushed aside so easily. “Why don't you believe me?”

She pointed back to Jordan. “Because I saw her in the kitchen getting a glass of water!”

Jordan looked up at that. When the Russell siblings barely spoke to each other, it was hard to remember they were siblings in a relatively close age range and had grown up together, half in this not-mansion, half in the other not-mansion Betty now lived in alone. And viewed the not-mansions as home ground, and, as a result, were more comfortable there than anywhere else.

So, of course Amerie was going to get emotional questioning her brother about where he had been last night. Of course Darren was going to look at her like he was lost. Of course Jordan would be almost forgotten about until his eyes stumbled on her by accident.

He stared at her like a rejected puppy. “You said you’d slept well.”

As if it was her fault his alibi wasn’t panning out as well as he’d hoped—but alibi for what? “I needed some water.”

He hadn’t killed Richard, so where had he been?

Darren looked between them, his eyes flicking back and forth between the desk and the wall Amerie was leaning against, regaining her calm and unaffected demeanour so she didn’t kill the last brother she had left. Watching him, Jordan could practically hear the gears turning in his mind, could almost see the sweat beading on brow.

He was guilty of something, but murder wasn’t it. Although, if it was what Jordan was starting to suspect it was, she would have preferred murder. She could have forgiven him for that—even got him off the hook.

His chest was rising faster and faster, his eyes moving faster with each breath he took. And then he had his head in his hands, fingers pulling at his hair. Jordan had almost stood up and went to him—her feet were on the ground, her notebook in her hand and not in her lap—the instinct so ingrained in her after so many years.

All she wanted to do was run her hand over his back and get his hands out of his hair, whisper to him, tell him it was okay. They didn’t have the best marriage, but seeing him like this had her heart in her throat, and she thought perhaps that she still loved him after all.

Swallowing and settling back on the desk, Jordan asked, as gently as she could, “Where were you last night?”

Prev.

Next.

[littlesentences]

Jordan barely paused. “Ten thirty.”

Amerie raised her eyes and scribbled on a new page of the notebook. “Such an exact time.”

The accusation hung in the air, and Amerie saw her roll her eyes from halfway across the room. “I looked at my phone before I went to bed. Habit.”

“And why, exactly, is that a habit?”

“I like to know how much sleep I’m gonna get before I have to get up for work.”

Amerie nodded and looked down at the notebook. Her handwriting was barely legible compared to Jordan’s on the previous page, but she could read it, and that was enough. Poising the pen over the page, Amerie looked back up at Jordan. “And when did you get up to go to the kitchen?”

Jordan had to have been expecting it, but she still took at least a minute to answer. “Just after two.”

“Why did you go to the kitchen?”

Jordan blinked. “Same as you, needed some water.”

Amerie hummed and put it all in the notebook. She could barely get her next question out fast enough. “Why did you have your phone with you?”

Jordan blinked again, and Amerie saw the moment she realised Amerie had seen more than she had been letting on. She covered it well with a shrug. “I was going to play some games before going back to bed.”

“And you didn’t do that in your room because … ?”

Like it was the most obvious sentence in the world, Jordan said, “So I wouldn’t wake Darren.”

“Ah! The husband,” Amerie exclaimed like she hadn’t grown up with him. “By the way, don’t think it wasn’t noticed that you’ve left him to last.”

Jordan, in true Jordan fashion, changed the subject. “Any other questions?”

“When did you get back to bed?”

She could almost see Jordan trying to remember the time she had gone to bed, could almost hear the cogs turning in her brain trying to figure out how long she had been playing games on her phone with a glass of water. “It would have been a little after three.”

“You didn’t check your phone this time?”

Jordan shrugged. “No point once my sleep was interrupted.”

“What games did you play?”

“Bubble Witch, mostly. A bit of Bejewelled.”

Amerie paused, her hand hovering over the notebook. “Who the fuck still plays Bejewelled?”

“I do. Anything else?”

That was the second time she had asked if that was all the questions she had in as many minutes, but pointing that out would not help Amerie at all. In fact, it would only probably give Jordan an excuse to twist her words until Amerie found herself believing whatever was coming out of her mouth.

Not that she believed it could actually happen, but the last time Amerie had seen Jordan had been a couple of years ago, and she had already demonstrated how much she had changed in that time. “Nope.”

Amerie hopped off the desk and handed the notebook back to Jordan, who was already standing and walking back to the desk, hand out for her precious fucking notebook. She should be lucky Amerie hadn’t destroyed every single note she had already taken. It was tempting though, imagining the look on her face as she realised she had to go back downstairs and tell everyone she needed to interview them again, just for the record that had already been so callously destroyed.

She wouldn’t have even been able to tell them who had done it. Amerie was far too well entrenched in the Russell family for her to pull that kind of bullshit. Not to mention that she would deny it to hell and back—and who makes their murder office in a kid’s bedroom anyway?

Amerie looked at the butterflies decorating one of the walls for a couple of minutes before she had to look away. She wasn’t good with kids, but she would put money on Taylor never wanting to sleep in this room again after this. A murder investigation happening in your bedroom is only mildly worse than a murder happening in your bedroom, especially when you’re five.

Amerie walked back to where Jordan was going over the notes she had written and was suddenly glad she hadn’t done anything to them. She didn’t particularly want to spend a couple more hours in the day looking over her brother’s body. She had barely managed the last time.

Jordan looked up from her notebook, staring at nothing in particular, but definitely talking to Amerie, if the bite in her voice was anything to go by. “You are free to go.”

Amerie pouted. “Not going to walk me down the stairs?”

How they had managed to get a desk with so much shit on it from one room into this one was beyond her, but it gave Amerie something for her fingers to toy with. They danced over pen cups and paperweights and staplers and things she hadn’t seen in ages. All of them belonged on the desk that belonged in the last century.

She didn’t look up at Jordan as she said, “Go downstairs and tell my husband to come up. Please.”

Amerie scoffed and plucked a pen off the desk. “As if I’m going to let you question Darren all by yourself, you should know better, since the cops are going to look through everything you give them, and all.”

If looks could kill, Amerie would be the second murder in this very unfortunate string of events she had a slight hand in nudging along. All she did was sigh. “I’m not going to stop you from questioning him, I’ll just be here to make sure you follow the rules. You know, just in case you move on a bit too quickly from things, ask the right questions, etcetera, etcetera.”

The silence went on for far too long. It should have been an easy thing, with how official Jordan was trying to make this, and with how she had so willingly volunteered Amerie as her assistant. Not that Amerie knew if she usually had an assistant.

From the way this was going, Amerie was willing to bet she didn’t, and that if she did, they were severely underworked. Jordan could say all she liked about Amerie, but at least she knew how to use an assistant properly. When she could get in contact with her—but that was a problem for another day.

Pulling her from her thoughts, Jordan said, “Fine, stay. Now go get Darren.”

Amerie did not revel in the win for long—just long enough to say, “Why yes of course, thank you so much for asking me nicely.”

She sauntered out of the room and closed the door behind her, not noticing the finger Jordan was throwing her way as she left.

-

It was disconcerting, to say the least, to see his wife and baby sister staring him down from halfway across the room.

He knew that they had to be impartial, but that was his wife. And she was not his true alibi. And no, he hadn’t killed his big brother, no matter how much he had deserved it. He still tasted his delayed vomit at finding the murder weapon dumped unceremoniously in the corner of their room.

Now that she had taken over Taylor’s room, he hoped it would only be a matter of hours before it was moved up here—one of the only rooms with a lock on the door.

Neither of them had looked away from him. He shifted on the bed.

“What time did you go to bed last night?”

Jordan tracked his every movement as he digested the question. “Just after ten.”

She didn’t even nod to say she knew he was telling the truth, just wrote it down her little notebook. He couldn’t believe this was happening on the fortnight they were supposed to spend away from work.

“Did you get up at any point in the night?”

Yes. “No.”

“And what time did I get into bed last night?”

Darren hadn’t even noticed her crawling into bed, but he couldn’t exactly say that, now could he. Otherwise they would ask more and more questions until they found his dirty little secret. And now that Richard was dead, and he didn’t have to worry about anyone finding it out, Darren wasn’t going to ruin it with one wrong answer.

So he guessed. Jordan had been half-working the whole day until she lost all ability to do anything, and after a day of working, she always went to bed at half past ten. “Around ten thirty, probably a bit after.”

“No exacts?” Amerie piped up behind her.

As far as he knew, she hadn’t been in the room for the other interviews, so what she was doing here was beyond him. “I didn’t exactly look at a clock, Amerie.”

She hummed. “Shame.”

He could feel Jordan’s annoyance radiating off of her as she asked her next question. “And did you notice me get up at point in the night?”

It was a guess, but Jordan had never been one to get up in the middle of the night, not in the whole time they had been sharing a bed. “No.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Amerie had stopped fingering the Newton’s cradle on the desk and was staring at him, while Jordan just wrote something in her notebook and before looking back up at him. Was his guilt written on his face? Did they know? Did Richard not keep his word?

Oh that man should be lucky he was already dead, otherwise Darren would have—what? He could barely stand the sight of the murder weapon in his room. He wouldn’t have been able to actually kill him.

He should get in on finding the person who killed him just so could fucking thank them and shake their hand. Whoever they were had probably saved a lot of people’s careers and lives.

“And you didn’t get up at all throughout the night?”

Darren shook his head. “No, slept like a baby.”

Jordan stared at him for a few long, long seconds, before looking back at Amerie like they were life-long friends and asking, “You got anything you want to ask?”

Amerie hummed, again, and said, “Nope.”

Jordan nodded and slid off the desk to get the door for him. He half expected her to walk him down the stairs, like she had done with apparently everyone else bar Amerie—hardly surprising—but she just closed the door behind him with a promise that she would be down soon.

He had barely walked around the corner to the living room before everyone was asking him what he had been asked, why was Amerie still up there, why, what, how.

It didn’t matter.

Darren had answered a question wrong.

And now they would think he had killed Richard when he hadn’t done anything of the sort. He had just—Brittany hadn’t gotten up from her spot on the couch, holding a mini sandwich in her hands. She didn’t even look at him. Probably for the best.

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[littlesentences]

Luke shrugged. “At two, Betty got up for some water, and at midnight Maria went up to bed.”

This was why one of the first things she had ever learnt was to never discount the drunks and the elderly. Because no one wanted to speak to them, they watched everything with the keenest eye. The trick was just getting them to remember, and then tell you the information you needed.

She thanked him, and walked him back down the stairs.

Jordan stayed as present as she needed to with Amber and Brittany, barely remembering their answers besides the fact that their alibis matched what their spouses were saying—wait. Maria had said Brittany had crawled into bed after one. Brittany was saying she had gone to bed at eleven.

Jordan kept her face the same as she drew an asterisk next to Brittany’s alibi.

As she walked her down the stairs, Jordan wondered what Brittany had to hide. It could have been anything, but the only things downstairs were Richard’s body, the couches where Luke had been sleeping, the kitchen, and her bedroom. It was a good thing she needed to investigate exactly where Brittany was last night.

Maybe she had secret bad enough to kill for.

-

Jordan was staring at Amerie with the least impressed face Amerie had ever seen on her. Truly, it was impressive.

The amount of disdain that woman showed in one corner of her mouth made Amerie slouch on Taylor’s bed even more, her phone held in the hand in her lap. It was useless now, but it looked so good with her new outfit so she just couldn’t give it up. Her look might have also had something to do with the fact that she hadn’t been offered any of the lunch Betty had put out after she had been questioned.

Of course, it had taken until Jordan had been done with Brittany to actually be put out, but that was beside the point. Amerie was full—finally keeping food in her stomach—and Jordan was starting to feel the ill effects of hunger.

“Are you going to start asking questions any time soon, or are we just going to sit here in silence and enjoy each other’s company?”

Jordan sighed. Normally she was better than this at keeping her mask in front of Amerie. She settled on the desk Amerie guessed she had been using as a seat for the past couple of hours and asked, “What time did you go to bed last night?”

Amerie smiled and didn’t ask the questions she knew Jordan had been asked about twelve times already. “Around eleven.”

Jordan flicked her eyes up at that easy answer. Oh, Amerie hoped she let down her guard. “And did you get up at any point in the night?”

They both knew the answer to this one, and Amerie leaned forward. “Yes.”

Jordan waved her hand like she wanted more information, and Amerie furrowed her brow in confusion. “Where did you go, what did you do, did you see anyone?”

She doubted Jordan had gotten this agitated for anyone else, and Amerie revelled in being able to get under her skin. As far as she knew, the only Russell’s who had ever gotten under Jordan’s skin were the ones born from Betty and David.

Speaking of, she hadn’t been in David’s office since Taylor had taken over, and she had to say that she liked what she had done with the place. A much better colour palette than the neutrals he had insisted on right until the end. In fact, Betty ceding the room to Taylor had been the first thing to raise both her and Richard’s eyebrows. Darren had been too preoccupied with his wedding at the time, otherwise she was sure something would have turned out different.

She didn’t know what, but something would be different here. Betty really only did listen to Darren with any reliability.

“I went to the kitchen, for a glass of water, and I saw you.” Amerie wasn’t sure if Jordan flinched at the word, but it had to be a near thing.

Amerie looked out the window—thanking whoever the fuck was listening that Taylor’s window looked onto the front of the house—and lamented that she couldn’t throw Jordan under the bus with that comment with real cops around. The snow glistened in the cloud-covered sun, and Amerie would have kept staring at it until she had melted it with the force of her stare until she felt Jordan’s eyes on her.

Their eyes met, and what had happened in that kitchen in the early hours of this morning played in their minds. Nothing important had really happened, but Jordan had had her phone in her hand in a reception-less home. Both of those things enough to on their own to raise questions, let alone together.

“What time was this?”

Amerie smirked. “Close to two in the morning.”

There wasn’t much more Jordan could ask Amerie, knowing exactly what had happened in the kitchen, and the thought of how close her questioning of Jordan was made her heartbeat pick up.

“And when did you go back to bed?”

Jordan’s words were softer than Amerie had heard from her in years, and she still hadn’t looked away. Amerie would be damned if she looked away first. “Probably half an hour later.”

Her voice had been a lot stronger than Jordan’s.

Jordan looked down to write in her notebook and Amerie let her, before jumping up and holding her hand out for it.

It took Jordan one whole minute—she counted—to look up and eye her hand like it was the devil. “What are you doing?”

Amerie raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing? Did you honestly think you’d get out of this without being questioned?”

She felt Jordan drag her eyes up to her face, and she immediately needed a shower. The whole week leading up to this, she thought she would have been fine if Jordan just didn’t fucking look at her. Every time she felt her eyes on her, it was like she left behind a sludge that was almost impossible to wash off—and it got harder and harder to wash off each time she looked at her.

Before she had even had breakfast, Amerie had known she would have been scrubbing her skin raw in the shower that night, but now she thought she might just soak in the bath and then scrub her skin off.

And there were Jordan’s eyes, staring into hers, and Amerie wanted to ball her hand into a fist and slam it into her face.

“Get your own notebook.”

“And break up the train of evidence so unnecessarily?” Nevermind that Amerie hadn’t owned a notebook since she had been a kid. They were completely archaic, and a waste of resources.

No wonder Jordan used them for work.

It took a couple of seconds, but eventually Jordan sighed, and gave into Amerie’s completely reasonable argument. She may not have been cut out for this detective bullshit, but she would be damned if she didn’t know how to manipulate people into getting what she wanted. That was pretty much the crux of her job.

The weight of the notebook was heavy in her palm, and Amerie didn’t step back as Jordan stood up. It made no sense, given that the mere feel of her eyes on her made her want to rip her skin off, but the way Jordan was so clearly leaning as far back as she could as she inched around Amerie was worth it.

Once Jordan had passed her, Amerie spun and took up Jordan’s place on the desk. Either it was how she was perched, or the desk was absolutely horrible to sit on, but Amerie could not imagine sitting here for hours on end, talking to her family.

She had barely been able to stomach them when sitting on the fucking couch downstairs. And there had been food there for the last half hour.

The bed springs creaked under Jordan’s weight, and Amerie waited until she had settled before asking, “What time did you go to bed last night?”

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[littlesentences]

Jordan broke the silence first. “When was the last time you saw Richard alive?”

Without a time of death, it was hard to ask people where they had been at a specific time, but Richard being buried under the copious amounts of snow was telling. If she had reception, it would have been as simple as a couple of google searches to find out when the blizzard had started.

Betty pursed her lips and answered. “Before I went to bed. I told him I was retiring for the night, and he kissed my cheek.”

Jordan looked down and flipped open her notebook. “What time did you go to bed?”

It took her a few seconds longer than it should have to answer, and Jordan looked up just in time to catch the tail end of Betty’s death stare. Briefly, Jordan wondered how she had survived this long. Generally, once one person had been murdered, it was only a matter of time until someone else was, too. “About half past nine, I didn’t get a good look at a clock.”

“Were you alone?”

“What kind of question is that, Jordan?” Betty asked, her words biting. “Yes, I was alone, and all night, too. I hope you enjoy asking me these questions in my husband’s office.”

With butterfly curtains that had been picked out by a three-year-old, this hadn’t been David’s office in five years.

“I’m asking all the questions I need to ask, Betty,” Jordan said, writing in her notebook. “And if you don’t want to be answering these questions again when we can get the cops, I suggest you answer them as best you can.”

Betty adjusted herself on the bed. “At least you haven’t asked me if I had any reason to kill my own son.”

Jordan raised her eyebrows. “Did you?”

She scoffed, and with her hands on her knees, she pushed herself onto her feet. “I can’t believe this.”

Jordan let her get to the door before saying, “We can always do this again tomorrow, Betty.” Betty turned on her heel to look at her. “Sit down.”

It was not lost on her the significance of the look her mother-in-law had just levelled her with, but Jordan had not been raised by her, so it had little to no effect on her. Instead of backing down, she pushed herself up to sit on the desk, eyes never once leaving Betty’s.

An uncountable amount of minutes later, Betty made her way back to the bed and reluctantly sat on the edge. This may not have been the best place to question the family that were all suspects by proximity, but Jordan would be damned if she wasn’t going to make it work. “I take it you were aware of Richard’s penchant for secrets?”

At that, she scoffed. “I’m his mother, of course I was. It was hard not to be aware.”

“Do you know whose secrets he had?”

Betty flicked her eyes up and down Jordan, from her shoes that still hadn’t warmed her feet up to the hair she hadn’t bothered styling. “He had something on you.”

Jordan did not swallow. Instead, she sighed and leaned back as far as she could, hands curling around the edge of the desk to keep her upright. “Is there anyone else of interest that you want to point out?”

“You don’t want to know what he had on you?”

“Do you know what it is?”

It was a redundant question. If she did, then they would not be having this conversation.

“No.”

Richard would not spill a secret unless he had a reason to, and that only happened when someone pissed him off enough. “Back to my original question, is there anyone else of interest that you want to point out?”

Betty actually seemed to be taking the question seriously, looking down at her hands in her lap. “Amber and Brittany. He told me a couple of weeks ago that they had a couple of really bad secrets.”

Jordan didn’t look up from her notebook. “A couple each, or a couple altogether?”

“Altogether.”

Jordan nodded. There wasn’t much more she could ask Betty, not when she had seen her reaction to the body of her eldest child—not when it was still far too early for her to willingly give up the secrets of hers that Richard knew. He was never one to stop at just one per person.

As she let Betty out of the room, she wondered just what he had on her, and knew it would come down to the secrets no one in the not-mansion wanted anyone to know about. It was the only thing that would have gotten him killed. It was also the only thing the people under this roof would hide from Jordan with everything they had.

She needed to get back into Richard’s room, and do it when neither Darren or Amerie were in theirs. As much as she hated to think it, they—including herself—were the biggest suspects. They had been subjected to Richard for decades. It was hardly unbelievable he had crossed one line too many, held one too many secrets over their heads, and they snapped.

And they knew the house the best, having grown up in it for at least one month a year.

Jordan followed Betty down the stairs, took note of the absence of Darren, Amerie, and Riley, and took Murray.

He had always been, if not overtly nice to her, then kinder than the rest of the family. Which was not a high bar to pass, but you take your wins where you can get them.

She only asked once what Richard had on him, and all of the somewhat grudging cooperation she had been getting once she had reminded him that the cops would look at what she had done went out the window. She would be stupid not to ask, with it likely being the reason he was chilling in the snow. But he had just shut her out until she moved onto easier questions like ‘was there anyone acting differently that you noticed last night’.

And he may have been kind to her, but he was quick to throw Maria under the bus. Which made a lot of sense, given that she was a Russell by blood. She took it with a straight face and walked him down to bring Belinda up—Darren still nowhere to be found, but Amerie, in a new outfit, and Riley were talking to each other. Jordan had been surprised for the two seconds it took Amerie to find her and give her a look that would have withered the trees outside.

It took three questions with Belinda to determine that both her and Murray’s alibi’s would hold up despite their embarrassment. And another two to determine that she had been too amped up in excitement for what they were going to do that night to notice anything.

Jordan didn’t buy it—Belinda was always far too nosy for her own good—but until Jordan needed more details, she wouldn’t push her. Belinda tended to come clean of her own accord if given enough time and space.

Next was Florence, who still wasn’t looking too crash hot after, apparently, suffering food poisoning on the drive down. And she only answered to yes or no questions. It had taken Jordan two minutes to figure that out, but that still didn’t mean she got anywhere. Her parents weren’t that much better, and she had to wonder, as she was walking with Joshua down the stairs, why Betty had invited them.

David had been very adamant that only those with the Russell name would be in the will, and Betty was nothing if not loyal to David’s wishes.

George and Maria were more hostile, turning every question back around on her. Jordan suffered it only until they started asking her what she had been doing last night. And sure, her blow-up would only make them more suspicious of her, but when Amerie questioned her there would be no questions about her innocence.

Because that was the only reason Amerie would have come downstairs, and the only reason she would look as excited as she did every time Jordan came down the stairs. Next, she brought up Luke—Maria’s dad—to ask as many questions as she could as quickly as possible. Most of them she only asked out of formality.

Everyone had seen him passed out drunk on a couch by the door at seven last night. He had been a wreck ever since his wife had left him. Her name had been stricken from the family vocabulary long before Jordan had come around, so why he was hanging on so hard was beyond her. And she had already seen him dipping into the precious alcohol supply after breakfast.

He did have an interesting answer to one of her questions though.

“Did you wake up at any part of the night?”

Luke’s eyes flashed, and he stared at something on the desk like it would give him the answers he was looking for. His words came slower than the rest. “I think so.”

Jordan frowned. “In that time, do you think you might have seen anything suspicious?”

“Anything could help, right?” Luke asked, looking up at her. “No matter how small?”

Jordan did swallow at that. “Yes.”

He nodded, almost to himself. “Well, I think I saw someone creeping up the stairs, they had to be moving slow because there was no light. And the wind had been howling at the windows, begging to be let in, so the blizzard must have been in full force.”

She could barely look up from her notes enough to ask him, “And what time would you think this was?”

“It was between midnight and two.”

Jordan’s pen stopped moving. “So sure?”

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[littlesentences]

Amerie was off her bed and kneeling beside the vent quicker than she could think.

When they had been kids and coming here every year when school broke up during winter, they had made a game of listening in on each other for as long as possible without getting caught. It just so happened that with the way this big, old house had been built, most of the rooms had connecting vents. Three rooms with directly connected vents were the three rooms the three Russell children had chosen when they had been old enough to chose where they wanted to sleep.

She had spent long nights sitting beside this very vent that led to Richard’s room, trying to figure out exactly what he was doing and how to use it against him. He had always managed to make it so that he was keeping yet another one of her secrets. And never for free.

But despite that first ‘fuck’ that Amerie may not have actually heard, nothing else was coming through the vent. Or maybe this was the vent to Darren’s room.

God not having her phone was making her fucking insane. Amerie couldn’t remember the last time she had doubted herself. She still sat by the vent for as long as thought she could before someone went up to her room on the third floor and dragged her downstairs for Jordan’s questioning.

It was a toss up as to whether or not it would be relentless or careless. Amerie didn’t know which one she was hoping for. She just hoped that whatever it was got the image of her brother’s caved in skull with a shovel hovering over it out of her head.

-

Darren hadn’t unpacked a thing. How could he? His brother was dead, staring sightlessly for the rest of time into the sky.

And he knew Jordan had been trying to help him—knew she was also making up for the way this would ultimately destroy the time they had set aside to grow back together—but all she had done was make him want to close the door and sleep the day away. Wake up tonight and redo it all like it was all just a bad dream.

He didn’t know where she had gone after leaving him, but a couple of minutes later there were the raucous sounds of the whole family going down the stairs. All it took was one person—it sounded like Riley—to say, “The gall! Going through his room like that!”

That answered that question he didn’t really have.

Before any of them could try to find him, or noticed that his door was open and he was trying to bully himself into unpacking, Darren got up and closed the door.

He could have sworn that shovel hadn’t been there this morning. He had seen it before, though. Once every year. That had stopped recently, but he knew everything in the shed like the back of his hand.

It wasn’t all that much of a mystery what it was doing here when Jordan had spent most of the morning out there. And she had brought it inside. And left it in their room.

Darren couldn’t look away from it, he didn’t know the specifics of how he had died yet, but that didn’t stop his imagination from creating scenario after scenario of that shovel killing Richard hitting the back of his head smashing into his back again and again and again until all that was left was a shell of a chest and all the blood covered up by the snow. He blinked and he saw blood all over it, he blinked again there was the killer, standing in front of him covered in shadow hand reaching for the shovel in the corner.

He only felt his hands on his neck when the nails dug into the skin.

And then he felt his knees on the floor, stinging from hitting it so hard.

His brother’s murder weapon was in his bedroom. If George, Amber, and Taylor hadn’t condensed rooms yet, he was going to make them.

Jordan loved her job and could do whatever she liked with it, but Darren wasn’t going to sleep with the thing that killed his brother in the room.

What had she even been thinking, bringing it in here? Why not bring his body here, too? That way she could keep a close eye on it as it decomposed with the central heating.

He would not get mad at her. This was what she did for a living, and she had limited resources, cut off as they were from the town. She had next to no choice on a place that wouldn’t be disturbed to put Richard’s murder weapon.

But she could have at least told him.

Somehow, Darren managed to pull himself back to his feet, open the door to their bedroom, close it behind him—he had little choice in the matter, with the family now downstairs—and get to the closest bathroom two steps away.

Looking in the mirror, once the marks from his fingernails faded, no one would be able to tell he had just found the murder weapon in his room. He just had to wait until they had faded enough to look natural. Well, natural enough to blame on his recently deceased big brother.

That was going to take a while. Good thing no one was gonna come looking for him.

-

Betty sat, staring daggers at her in David’s old office.

It had been co-opted by Taylor since the first time she had been here, given up willingly by Betty for the first child born into the Russell family since Amerie. With the coming of that particular child, there had officially been no more bedrooms in the not-mansion. The argument to make the room Taylor’s bedroom had been long and winding and despite being invited into it more than once, Jordan had known better than to have her say on whether or not George and Amber’s baby should take over her dead father-in-law’s office.

That was like asking for trouble.

Only now, there was no room for her to lay out the pieces of her investigation, and no room to interrogate the people who had fought so viciously over this very room. But then, no one had ever planned on anyone dying here—much less that person being Richard, and to have Jordan of all people do the investigating. But no one had planned for him to die right as a blizzard hit.

Apart from the person who had. Which was why Betty was currently staring daggers at her from where she sat on Taylor’s bed, pushed against the wall to make room for a small desk and whatever else Jordan might need.

The door was closed and unlocked—the distinction necessary since this was one of the only doors with a lock in the not-mansion—and Betty kept darting looks at it. If she thought Darren or Amerie were going to come in and save her from the questions, she had another thing coming. Darren knew better than to get between her and an investigation.

And if Amerie wasn’t still in her room, Jordan would be shocked. After interviewing Riley, she had sent them up to bring Amerie down, not really thinking about the fact that Amerie hated their guts until they were halfway up the stairs. Well, if Riley didn’t know Amerie hated them, then that was unlikely to change today. Especially when Jordan was enacting her ‘common enemy’ privileges.

Betty hadn’t said a word since she had sat on the bed. To be fair, Jordan hadn’t asked any questions, but there was a difference between amicable silence and whatever this was.

Jordan leaned against the desk and crossed her arms, content to wait.

Getting the room hadn’t been hard once she had come back downstairs. All she had said was, “I need a place to work,” and Taylor grabbed her hand and led her back up the stairs.

She had been hesitant about using Taylor’s room since she wanted something on the ground floor, but it was the only room anyone would probably give her. No one else would offer to room with anyone, unwilling to give up the one bit of privacy they were guaranteed this fortnight.

Jordan couldn’t say she blamed them, but she didn’t think getting a five-year-old to help push her bed out of the middle of the room was a great answer either. She had brought in the desk herself, pushing it from an office that didn’t get used to this one. Betty hadn’t said a word against it at the time, but she preferred to ‘keep family issues to the family’.

Never mind that everyone in the not-mansion was family enough to be invited, and most of them shared the same last name. Darren’s cousin Florence and her parents—Penelope and Joshua—the only exceptions, Penelope being David’s only sister.

That all of his siblings were still alive and thriving when David had spent the last few years of his life in and out of hospital was a cruelty Betty only suffered because they reminded her of him in the best way possible. Otherwise, Jordan doubted any of this would be happening.

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[littlesentences]

When everyone started pointing fingers at her, she needed evidence to throw back in their faces.

Which meant she didn’t have time to sit by her husband’s side as he tried to keep going like everything was normal. But a couple of minutes couldn’t hurt. The only evidence in the not-mansion was the shovel currently behind the door and his body still outside in the snow.

And anything that could be in his room.

Jordan needed to go through it and block it off hours ago.

Before getting up, she kissed her husband’s cheek and left the door open as she made her way to the stairs.

Rounding the banister, she spotted Betty sitting at a window, staring out at the cars stuck in the parking lot, chin in her hand. If she hadn’t been in such a rush, Jordan liked to think she would have stopped and tried to comfort her. It probably wouldn’t have ended well, but Betty looked so lonely. Jordan knew better than most that grief tended to separate people, but in a normal situation, there would be people who wouldn’t have been knocked off their feet by the death to lean on.

Right now, Betty only had other people who had known Richard for years.

Jordan hadn’t tried to keep her feet silent as she ran up the stairs, but it still took a few minutes for people to try to find her. And by the time they did that, she was already standing in the middle of Richard’s room with her hands on her hips.

He hadn’t had time to unpack yet, but that meant nothing when all he had brought with him was a duffel bag, still zipped and very full, sitting just out of the open door. She had just moved toward it when Maria said from the doorway, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Jordan turned around and barely took in the audience that had filed into place behind Maria. “Investigating his murder that I was so graciously volunteered to do.”

“In his room?” Maria cocked an eyebrow and Jordan wanted nothing more than to put a fist in her face. “Wasn’t he murdered outside?”

“Yes, and yet he didn’t get that hole in his head all by himself, now did he? I need to narrow down the suspect pool a little.” That made the assembled crowd squirm a little, and Jordan took this opportunity to start doing something she should have done before making her way up into Richard’s room. “Now, everyone needs to go down into the main room and wait. I will be there as soon as possible.”

Jordan was not looking forward to those interviews, but she needed to know where they all had been last night. Even if it getting the answers out of them felt like pulling a bone out of a fully intact body.

Once Maria was finished staring her down, she turned on her heel and stalked away, following the rest of the family down the stairs—minus Amerie. Jordan hadn’t seen her since the breakfast table and was half-expecting to find her with a knife in her eye when she went looking for her after tearing Richard’s room apart.

It was better if there was no one else around when she went through his room.

This time, before going up to the duffel on his desk, like a perfectly wrapped present, Jordan closed the door behind her with her foot. The slam likely echoed through the not-mansion—at least this floor—and she was waiting for either a knock or someone to barge in and open the door. That didn’t stop her from unzipping the duffel and upending it on the floor.

The show had to go on, and if she was busy waiting for someone to walk in on her, she wasn’t going to get anything done.

The duffel had been filled with clothes, mostly. It was all the Russell siblings needed to bring to their not-mansion in the snowies, with everything else they would need already there besides food—but with town a short twenty minute drive down a mountain, that was easy enough to fix. But there, at the top of the pile—at the bottom of the duffel—was a well-worn, well-used notebook.

-

Amerie had heard Jordan, clear as day, shut Richard’s door after telling the family to fuck off and wait for her to question them. It didn’t take much to realise that was why she had told them all to wait for her downstairs.

If there was anything that was going to get her out of her bed and actually excited about Jordan choosing her to stare at Richard’s dead body for a couple of hours before either of them had eaten anything, it was the prospect of questioning Jordan. Because while she would be questioning the others, someone needed to question her. And who better than the assistant she chose in a fit of pique?

And damn did Jordan need questioning.

Amerie knew what she had been doing up in the middle of the night—but what the fuck had Jordan been doing in the kitchen, with her phone and a glass of water? Jordan’s career didn’t rely on her being able to use her phone or have internet connection.

And if she thought Amerie had missed the fucking looks she had sent her, then Jordan had another thing coming. All of this to say, Jordan was not attached to her phone, and therefore had no reason to have it in her hand in the middle of the night. And also what the fuck was she doing in Richard’s room?

He had barely been in it since he had arrived last night—late, as expected, and who could blame him—too busy with calming his mum and then surprising everyone by placing nice the whole night. Being seen and talking to as many people as possible, the arguable life of the party.

Amerie couldn’t deny that her eyebrows had raised, too. But that was just Richard. Sometimes he was in a really good mood and other times he was—

Richard had barely had enough to dump his bag on his bed before going back down to the party, and then, it turns out, he hadn’t even gone to bed. He must have been close to it, though, if he had been outside. He always went outside before he went to bed to have one last smoke for the day—the only times she had ever seen him not was when it was pissing down with rain.

And the only people who knew that he went outside were herself, Darren, Jordan, and Betty. Sure, it wouldn’t have taken much for anyone else in the house to figure out where he had gone, but none of them would have known where to look for him.

Oh who the fuck was Amerie kidding? If she was cut out for this detective bullshit, she would have figured it out a long time ago. She closed her eyes.

From the vent near her door came a muffled, “Fuck.”

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[littlesentences]

It took Amerie a couple of seconds to realise just what she meant. “What?”

“Check if it matches, I can’t be in two places at once.”

As Amerie stared at her in outrage, Jordan used her foot to turn Richard back over onto his face. Belatedly, she thought about what her boss would have said if they had seen that. Not only was it unprofessional, but it showed blatant disrespect to the deceased and anyone who could have liked them. Which had definitely not what she had been trying to do.

Her hands had just been full.

“You want me to check if the shovel you’re holding to my brother’s head matches the hole that is already in his head?” Amerie had moved past anger and was staring at Jordan like she was delusional.

And maybe she was, but she was also working with what she had. “Yep. You can even take photos, just remember to get all the angles.”

With her lip curled, Amerie snatched the phone from Jordan’s outstretched hand and knelt beside her brother’s body.

Judging by angle of the hole, and where it was in his head, someone would have had to come up behind him and swing the shovel around to their left side. If she was a mortician or a forensic scientist or someone with any more education in the matter of dead bodies, Jordan would have been completely sure that the person who had been swinging the shovel was shorter than him—she would have even been able to give an approximate height difference—but instead she just had the fact that the hole the shovel had left was tilted slightly down.

The hole was also too close to the centre to have been directly behind him. If someone had been directly behind him, the shovel would have hit the side of his head, and therefore would have been visible when Amerie had first pulled him from the snow. So whoever it was had to have been coming up slightly to his right, lugging a shovel, and completely silent. Otherwise he would have turned around.

So Jordan positioned herself accordingly and placed each shovel over the hole in Richard’s head for Amerie to inspect and take photos of.

It was only when Amerie went entirely still that Jordan thought that she should have been doing this with gloves on. It was too late for that thought to do any good, though, with the way Amerie was acting like they had found the murder shovel.

Jordan kept the shovel as still as possible for Amerie to take the required photos and brought it back to her the moment Amerie leaned away. Inspecting the back of the blade turned up nothing obvious with that much rust, but she figured a magnifying glass would help. Or a very high-res photo.

She doubted whoever had done it had had time to clean the blade of the shovel in any convincing way.

Setting the murder weapon carefully to one side, Jordan picked up the next shovel, and continued through the pile and the one from the back room for due diligence. Without it, it could be argued that the blood on that shovel—if there was blood on it—could have been from anything and any time. She had made that argument countless times.

It was too late now to avoid getting her fingerprints on the shovel, so after putting the rest back in the shed and giving the one from the back room to Amerie, Jordan carried it back to the not-mansion, heavy in her hand.

-

Amerie didn’t know how she had managed to get back inside, out of her snow gear, and into the bathroom before throwing up again. She didn’t even know how she still had shit to throw up before remembering Betty giving her something to eat before going back out to Jordan with her fucking phone.

Amerie knew even less how she had managed to keep from punching Jordan.

Everything she did seemed the perfect thing to desecrate Richard’s corpse, each one worse than the last. She had almost lost it when Jordan had turned him back onto his stomach with her foot. Her foot.

Sure it hadn’t looked like it had been easy, but that only meant the bitch had put thought into turning her brother’s dead body over with her fucking foot. And then she had made her kneel that close to his head and take photos of the ways different shovels lined up with the—

Amerie retched into the toilet bowl again. No one came running in to pull her back, so she did that herself.

It was barely ten in the morning and she didn’t know if she could keep going with the day. God only knew how she was going to get through the fortnight.

If they all even lasted a fortnight. There was a killer amongst them. Someone callous and careless and—

For all she knew Jordan had killed Richard.

It had been a few minutes since her last retch, so Amerie pulled her phone out of her pocket and tried turning it on again.

Like being here without reception, with the whole family around, wasn’t bad enough, now her phone had up and died on her first night. She almost threw it in the toilet.

Finally feeling like she could walk, Amerie hit flush, washed her hands and face and went back out to the table, still laden with food. Betty had been a tad over presumptuous with how much everyone would eat, but at least all the perishables were almost gone. With no one able to go into town for a restock, these leftovers would last them a couple more days, especially with Richard—especially without Richard.

Amerie slid into one of the seats with a plate left and picked up a slice of toast to nibble on. She wasn’t an idiot, she knew she needed something in her stomach, but if Jordan wanted to go back out to his body again, she didn’t want to be throwing up a whole feast she thought would last her until dinner.

Jordan, however, seemed to have no such worries.

Sat across the table from her, Darren’s wife had piled her plate with as much food as would fit and was scarfing it down like she hadn’t just spent the morning with Richard’s dead body.

She was hunched over her plate, shovelling egg and bacon into here mouth like it was the last thing she would ever fucking eat. And then pausing in chewing to take a bite of French toast. Sorry, one of the many pieces of French toast she had managed to fit onto her plate.

Despite saying she had never had such fancy food before she and Darren had gotten serious enough for her to meet the family and Betty and David to start talking about writing her into the will, she sure had taken to French toast—not fancy, just timely—and caviar like a moth to flame. Amerie had never been able to figure that out.

Caviar took most people marrying into this family months to get used to, yet our dear Jordan had almost eaten a whole tin by herself until someone told her how expensive it was.

And again, she just couldn’t fucking figure out where the fuck her appetite was coming from. Amerie had once talked to a cop who said he couldn’t eat for a whole day after seeing a body. A cop, and not a green one, either. Well.

And then she had met his friends and they had said more-or-less the same thing—they could barely eat after dealing with a body.

Jordan finally looked up. It took her less than a second to notice Amerie sitting across from her. She could hear her swallow whatever ridiculous concoction she had last shoved into her mouth from where she sat.

“Do I have something on my face?” Jordan asked, like there was really no other reason Amerie would be staring daggers at her sister-in-law—for better or worse.

Amerie pushed back from the table and went back up to her room, leaving the half-eaten piece of toast on the plate.

-

The shovel was still in her room when she got back to it.

That had been her one reservation about bringing it into the not-mansion. The family was nosy, and would jump all over it if they knew that was what had killed Richard. Jordan felt sorry for whoever had killed him—they wouldn’t be met with nearly the same amount of enthusiasm and wonder.

She had placed it just out of sight behind the door—if anyone had opened the door to quickly look in, they wouldn’t have been able to see anything out of the ordinary. That didn’t mean anything for Darren, who was sitting on the bed staring into the suitcase he had said he would unpack today. Jordan was almost surprised he wasn’t staring at the shovel.

But the door was open, and the shovel would have been too hard to see from where he was sitting. Probably for the best. Keeping the shovel that had killed his brother—no matter how contentious their relationship—in their bedroom probably wasn’t the best idea. Which meant she would need a room.

Jordan hated the idea of asking this family for help, but she might just have to kick George and Amber’s kid out of his room to have a place to put everything. And spend most of her time in.

She wasn’t looking forward to everyone finding out just how single-minded she became when faced with a case, but then, she wasn’t looking forward to anything to do with this case.

Jordan walked into the room and sat beside Darren, resting her head on his shoulder, staring into his suitcase.

He had managed to pack appropriately without her help for once, several long sleeve shirts and jumpers folded neatly beside the long pants and shoes he had packed with care. Too much care. But Jordan couldn’t exactly say anything on the matter, this was the most they had seen each other in weeks. She had been facing a deadline, and he had been making sure work wouldn’t have to contact him for two weeks.

“I thought he was gonna be different this time,” Darren said, almost forlorn. “He had seemed so nice last night I thought someone—or something—had finally gotten through to him.”

Jordan was quiet, her eyes going from the suitcase to the door, like she could see what hid behind it. “Maybe they had, and he had just pissed off the wrong person.”

Darren didn’t say anything, and Jordan knew it was thanks for humouring him.

For the six years she had known this family, Richard had had it out for her, and even on some of his tamer days he had managed to find the right words to get under her skin. He hadn’t changed in the last six years, and he wasn’t going to change on a whim.

It was a wonder only one person had pointed out that she was the most likely person to have killed him. Which meant she needed to find some suspects, and fast.

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Nothing would be in them, but it never hurt to have a look and see what secrets may have been hiding in the pockets of a dead man.

Her hands were sliding out of his back pockets when she started thinking about a murder weapon. Given he had been under all the snow and she could feel the shed looming behind her back, Jordan would put money it being in there.

Jordan pulled her gloves off with her teeth and inspected the wound closer. It would have been better to do it with surgical gloves, but needs must and the only gloves she had on hand wouldn’t do any good. The murder weapon seemed to have a sharp curve running through the middle of it, hardly enough to mention the rest of it seemed to be that flat.

Almost like a shovel.

Jordan leaned back. The tips of her fingers rested in the snow, covered in goop, as she tried to remember if there was a shovel in the back room. The snow covering the door to the shed was far too thick and high for them to use their hands.

If anyone in that house had a single brain cell, there should be. Either beside the door or in the cupboard with the snow gear. And Jordan would have to go and get it now so she wouldn’t be leaving Amerie alone with Richard’s body. Which was a sure way for Jordan to come back to evidence that hadn’t been there before.

Amerie would be going into her room after all. Maybe she should have risked going to get her phone herself. The worst Amerie would have been able to do out here was throw up more.

Jordan pushed herself up to her feet and hurried back into the back room, gloves hanging from a belt loop in her pants.

She found the shovel just inside the door, and just as she laid a hand on it, Amerie walked into the doorway looking like Betty had managed to remember she had other children and given Amerie something to eat and drink.

It would probably just come right back up, but the thought was nice. It was nicer when Jordan wasn’t jealous. Betty would barely blink an eye if Jordan had been in Amerie’s shoes.

Wordlessly, Amerie handed Jordan’s phone over, and she immediately started thinking about everything she needed to document to have her investigation be considered good enough. They stepped back into the cold and Amerie pulled her gloves on as they walked back to her brother’s body.

It was still face down in the snow, and nothing that Jordan could see had changed. Doing this with no reliable help was going to be impossible. Still, she opened her camera and took a photo of the scene before getting up close and personal with Richard’s dead body.

This was the most she had ever paid attention to him, beyond whatever was coming out of his mouth or whether he was in the room.

It was through the lens of her phone camera that she noticed the exact colour of his eyes—not quite brown, almost hazel. Not so different from her own.

Jordan leaned back and stared at the not-mansion. Figuring out who killed him was going to be an uphill battle, with one person in that not-mansion on her side, and everyone else halfway to believing she had been the one to put that hole in his head.

“Are you done?” Amerie’s sardonic voice cut through her thoughts and Jordan looked back down at Richard.

Despite having pored over his body for the better part of an hour, she almost expected him to smile and get up to terrorise the rest of the family for the fortnight. Her heart raced at the thought, fear ratcheting up her throat as quickly as bile as had rushed up Amerie’s.

“Yeah.” Her voice steady—thank god—and she got back up to her feet, putting her phone in a pocket and grabbing the shovel.

Amerie stood back in silent invitation to let her do the hard work. She just hoped the snow didn’t fall and cover them and Richard’s body.

Jordan had already measured up the shovel to the hole in Richard’s head and came up clean. This particular shovel didn’t have a bend in the middle of it, and the blade itself was too big. There was also no blood to be seen on it.

Although, it wouldn’t have been too hard to wash off in the dead of night.

Miraculously, the snow did not topple over onto them and leave them to freeze to death in the company of each other and Richard Russell’s remains. Jordan could almost think of no worse way to die. Instead she just moved the snow to the side with each push of the shovel until she could see the door to the shed. She was about to think that they were lucky the door faced the not-mansion until she remembered Amerie hadn’t lifted a finger to get to this point.

Jordan was lucky the door faced the not-mansion and she didn’t have dig all the way around the shed. Especially with Amerie standing behind her on the opposite side of her brother’s body.

Praying the door would still open, Jordan turned the doorknob and pushed.

Everything was still and serene, barely any light from outside getting in through the wooden slats. Jordan slapped the wall to her right until she felt a switch and turned on the light, not daring to walk in any further without some illumination. Who knew what could be lying on the floor?

Turned out nothing was lying on the floor in wait. In fact, nothing had changed since she had last been in there.

The ski and snowboard tuning station was still set up behind the door along with all of their skis and snowboards. The shovels were in the corner to her right, followed by drawers that held all sorts of tools that could fit in drawers—all that mattered to her was the small collection of shovels in the corner.

There were enough there that fit the specifications she was looking for that it was easier to just grab them all and leave the shovel from the back room beside the door. It was awkward, carrying seven shovels bundled up against her chest, and she probably should have asked Amerie for help, but Jordan would have screamed if she had to hear Amerie complain about this.

Besides, Amerie could help check which shovel matched the hole in her brother’s head.

It felt cruel, even to Jordan, but Amerie was the one who had forced her into this, and she should have known Jordan would be this petty. When had she been anything but with the family who hated her?

Jordan kept hold of one shovel and said to Amerie, “Check if it matches.”

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[littlesentences]

One of the cousins behind her scoffed. “You’d trust her to investigate the death your brother? She’s probably the one who killed him.”

They had a point, but Jordan was two seconds away from squirming. She didn’t want to do this more than Amerie didn’t want her to go anywhere near her brother’s body.

“Well is anyone else qualified? Put your hand down George.”

Flunking out of cop school after two months did not make you qualified to solve a murder—not even a presumed murder.

As Jordan stared at her in the blissful quiet muttering of the room, all Amerie wanted to do was smile. But now, the family was her audience, and Jordan was her target. Amerie didn’t know what she had been doing up in the kitchen last night, but she was going to find out.

-

Mum took a bit of convincing to move, but eventually Darren got her up and away from Richard’s body—Richard’s body—and now they were standing behind Jordan as everyone in the back room stared at her. It looked like the whole family had crammed in to hear about Richard. If Richard hadn’t been Richard, he would’ve been touched.

As it was, Darren looked around the room, then at the tension between Jordan’s shoulders. He had only ever seen one person do that to her, but how Richard could get her so riled up from his chilly grave, Darren had no idea until Jordan said, “No.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was saying ‘no’ to. Not with a dead body in the fucking backyard.

Almost immediately, the assembled family tried to convince her, saying they’d help, that they wouldn’t get in the way, that George and Amber could sleep in the same room as the child who still hadn’t woken up so she’d have a room to do her detective stuff, that they would do whatever they could to make the investigation as easy as possible for her. And even more that Darren didn’t pick out amongst the cacophony.

And in the middle of it all, barely suppressing a smile, was Amerie, arms folded, watching as Jordan got angry enough to agree just to shut them all up.

“Fine.” The sentence was loud enough to shut everyone up mid-sentence. Darren didn’t need to see Jordan’s face to know she was seething and might be considering adding Amerie to the list of people who had died this fortnight. “Amerie, you’re with me.”

With a flick of her wrist, his wife beckoned his little sister after her and back into the snow to look at his brother’s stone cold body.

Amerie followed with a smug look on her face that rivalled the time she found out her ex had gotten kicked out of her parent’s house.

He couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t kill each other out by the shed, but mum needed to get inside and eat something. It was hard to believe none of them had even had breakfast yet. But it was for the best. Darren couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t have just thrown it all up at the sight of Richard’s body, and mum’s cooking deserved better than to be sprayed all over the copious amounts of snow outside.

As he ushered her into the backroom and got out of his snow gear, the family seemed to actually take a hint and leave the room. Mum took a while getting her snow gear off, too busy staring at Richard’s, all too obvious until Darren hung his own up next to it.

The room was silent bar the rustling of snow gear, and he felt it pressing on him until he closed the cupboard after mum had put her snow gear in and led them out of the room.

The house was disconcertingly silent. From the direction of the kitchen, he could just make out the inherent sounds of people along with the occasional clang of metal against ceramic, but that only made it worse.

He knew that there was no better way to kill off all conversation than finding a dead body in the backyard, but there had to be something else they could talk about to fill the silence. Normally he wouldn’t even care if they were talking about Richard, but mum wouldn’t want to hear it. Darren doubted mum would want to hear about it when she had to talk to someone about it—whether it was Jordan or not.

He wouldn’t put it past her to walk to town to get someone up just so she didn’t have to investigate.

This was meant to be two weeks off for both of them.

Mum slid into her seat at the head of the table and looked at the food laid out down the middle like she was sick. Darren didn’t want to leave her side, but already Murray was putting a couple of pieces of toast on her plate and nodding at Darren like he had it covered.

Three seats were left available, none of them next to each other, so he picked the one closest to mum a few seats down from Murray and got to work on filling up his own plate.

He was putting his fifth piece of bacon on his plate when he felt a hand on his wrist. He had also managed to pick the seat next to Brittany, who was flicking her eyes between the bacon in the tongs and his plate. Either the plates were smaller than before, or he was hungrier than he thought.

Darren shook off her touch and put the bacon on his plate. He took a second to put some water in his glass before picking up his knife and fork and eating.

Like that had broken a spell—or like everyone had been waiting for him or mum to eat and give everyone else permission to eat like nothing was wrong—everyone picked up their own utensils and continued eating the breakfast they had given themselves. Still, no one spoke. And Darren didn’t exactly want to be the first to break that silence.

So he didn’t say anything that was on his mind. He didn’t ask what was going to happen to Richard’s things. He didn’t ask about who was going to let his job know—not that any of them knew what he did. He didn’t ask if anyone knew if he had anybody that needed to be told. And he definitely didn’t ask about what would happen to his share of the inheritance.

Brittany’s hand brushed against his again, and he didn’t even ask where everyone was last night.

That was Jordan’s job, after all, and she’d get to them all eventually. She’d be able to tell who was lying better, too.

Maybe it was a good thing she’d be working this fortnight.

-

Jordan was going to kill Amerie. She didn’t care who saw. She didn’t care if she was caught. She just wanted to wipe that smug look off Amerie’s face as Jordan knelt next to Richard’s body.

“Why am I out here again?” Amerie asked from her spot several metres from the where she had dragged her brother’s dead body out of the snow.

Jordan flicked her eyes up to her before looking back down at Richard. His eyes were open, so there was no chance of her getting a fingerprint from some last minute regret. Not that she’d be able to run it anyway, being in the middle of nowhere with patchy reception at best. “Since you so graciously volunteered me to investigate until someone can get into town, I figured you’d want to help.”

Of course, right as Amerie’s smug look fled her face and she started sputtering, Jordan noticed something.

When Amerie finally got her voice back, it was missing its usual sardonic undertone. “You want me in your investigation?”

No. But she couldn’t exactly flip Richard’s body over on her own to see what had caused blood to mat the back of his hair. And besides, it was only a matter of time before someone would have joined her. Only one person in that not-mansion trusted her.

Jordan looked up at her. “How long would it have taken for you to stick your nose in it anyway? Now help me flip him over.”

Jordan got her hands under him, and while she had no doubt she could move him on her own, flipping him would require someone to keep his head still, and all of her hands were currently occupied. Snow hadn’t crunched, and Amerie wasn’t standing close enough on the other side of his body to be of any help.

She looked back up at her to find her staring at Richard’s body. “Why do you want to flip him?”

Jordan didn’t think she had ever heard Amerie sound so small. “To see why there’s blood in his hair.”

Amerie flinched, and Jordan didn’t think she would ever forget that. Already, as she walked up to Richard’s body, she was playing it back in her mind. Jordan nodded at his head. “Keep his head steady while I flip him.”

It wasn’t as hard as you would think, flipping a dead man over, and Jordan was just glad it was freezing cold, otherwise the smell would have been horrible and she would be waiting for the cops just so she didn’t have to touch it. But now there was snow falling over most of his body because she had forgotten half of him had still been under the snow. She could still see his head though, face down in the snow.

Jordan blinked.

There was a sizeable dent in his in the back of his head, with enough blood and spinal fluid around it for her to confidently say that killed him. That someone had killed him. Not that there was any ever doubt that Richard had been murdered. That man had been too far up his own ass to even think about killing himself.

She reached out and brushed the snow from his hair, which had frozen, thanks in part to the spinal fluid that had come out of the hole in his head and the cold.

It took longer than Jordan had thought it would for Amerie to start retching, but there it was, right as Jordan leaned over to look into Richard’s head wound. She regretted not bringing her phone with her—it may have been useless without reception, but it could still take photos, and Jordan doubted she would have constant access to Richard’s body.

Hell, depending on how well stocked the not-mansion was, she might even be able to print off a couple of photos.

“Can we turn him over?” Amerie asked, and if Jordan hadn’t been so preoccupied, she might have revelled in just how weak and pathetic Amerie sounded with a small puddle of vomit at her knees.

The smell of whatever Amerie had eaten the night before was almost enough to overpower the smell of Richard’s frozen dead body. But then, it wouldn’t have taken much to overpower the smell of Richard’s frozen dead body.

“No. Now go inside and get my phone.” When Amerie just looked at her and didn’t move, Jordan smiled and said, “Please.”

Amerie rolled her eyes before getting up and going back inside. After intimately remembering what she had eaten the night before, Amerie had probably been two seconds from going back inside anyway. Jordan had just made sure she would come back. Hopefully.

If Jordan had felt less wary about leaving the body alone and free for anyone to take, she would have gone in after her. And now she could work without Amerie around—who, despite her seeming love of her brother and inability to be near his dead body, could have easily murdered him. Jordan had seen her lift twice her body weight.

Methodically, keeping half an eye on the way to the not-mansion, Jordan went through his pockets.

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[littlesentences]

And now, back to your regularly scheduled biweekly updates of can you keep a secret

[littlesentences]

Oc kiss week day 7 - Caught

… Jordan didn’t know what she had gotten herself into.

She had just wanted a normal life, away from the �� hell that had been the last twenty years of her life, and this had been the best bet. Darren had been so nice when he had sat next to her on the couch at the party full of people she was too scared to get to know. And he hadn’t known a single thing about her—a relief greater than it should have been given everything, but he had sat down next to her rather purposefully.

And, almost to her detriment, she hadn’t known anything about Darren Russell, who had turned out to be of the very rich, very highly sought after Russell’s.

That whole night, where he had sat next to her and they had talked about nothing, and Jordan hadn’t missed the glares she had been getting. But there was nothing any of them could have done about it, and now she was meeting his immediate family.

An important distinction in the Russell household—you did not keep secrets from your immediate family, however, the rest of the family were as good as the public. They only knew what you wanted them to know.

It was the first thing Darren had told her about his family, and she probably should have taken it as the warning it had been. Because now Darren’s brother Richard was cornering her outside of the bathroom, and Jordan was realising that by continuing her relationship with Darren—that angel on earth, who had never asked about her past—she would have to be indoctrinated into the immediate family for his two siblings and parents. And none of them liked how secretive she was about her past.

Hell, Jordan was almost sure they wouldn’t like her no matter what. At least his siblings wouldn’t have. The Russell’s had very intense inheritance rules.

But that was neither here nor there, because Richard was looking at her like she was a meal.

“So, you think you’re in love with my brother.”

Jordan raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t still be here if I wasn’t.”

Richard chuckled and took a step closer to her. “We can be a bit much, can’t we? But then, who are you to say that? You don’t belong here, Jordan.”

He had said her name like a weapon, like he knew the truth of just how much of a lie it was. She blinked. “I’m pretty sure that’s up to Darren.”

“Oh, hasn’t he told you?” Richard took another step closer, and now Jordan really had no way out. Her back was pressed flat against the wall as she stared up at Richard Russell and felt an all encompassing fear she hadn’t felt for a year. “If we don’t like you, but he follows you out of the family, he gets written out of the will.” Then, quieter, “Do you think he’ll give up his inheritance for you?”

Jordan swallowed. “Why would he?”

Richard leaned back half a step, but Jordan still didn’t feel like she could breathe. “An excellent answer. I wonder if Devina would have thought the same.”

He didn’t know anything. He couldn’t. It was all under lock and key. There was no way he could have—

She couldn’t breathe. She had given up everything—everything—to get out of that place, she would not let that name follow her here, into this life blissfully untouched by everything before. How did he know that name?

“I wonder, does my dear little brother know?” Richard stepped closer. “No, no of course he doesn’t, that would be borderline illegal. But then, you would be very familiar with walking that line.”

"That's a very interesting name you've got there, and a nice little story. I wonder where you heard something like that."

Moving was out of the question—how did he know that name?—all she could see was Richard. He was in her peripherals, at her back, staring her down in front of her. He took another step closer, and she could feel his breath on her face. Smell the cologne he must have bathed in every day.

He shook his head, looking down. "Don't play coy with me, Devina. You don't know half of what you're getting into."

At least he didn’t know the real secret.

"You keep using that name." Jordan tilted her head. "I've never heard it before in my life."

His hair brushed her nose, and Jordan started begging for someone, anyone to walk around the corner. Or maybe not.

Richard chuckled and wrapped a hand around her throat. "Don't lie to me, Jordan. You won't like the consequences."

And maybe it was the hand around her throat, or maybe it was the lack of footsteps from anywhere close by, but Jordan decided it was safer to give an inch. "Where did you hear that name, anyway? Pretty sure that's all kinds of illegal."

His smirk made it a thousand times not worth it, but his grip was looser than it had been. "Thank you. And my sources are my concern."

It was laid there like bait, and he wouldn't move on until she bit. But she would not just bend to him. Jordan would be better than that.

Richard sighed at her silence and shifted on his feet, and in response, Jordan lifted an eyebrow and glanced down at the hand around her throat. The sound that came out of his mouth, anyone would have thought he'd been asked to give up a million dollars to charity. But he took the hand off her throat.

And like a monkey perfectly playing her part, she said, "And what's my concern?"

Richard's thousand-watt smile came back, and he backed up a step, the malice in his eyes fading just enough to do business. Business that he was clearly enjoying. “A thousand dollars, every month, or the truth comes out whether you want it to or not.”

“And how many other thousands of dollars are you collecting each month?”

She had spoken without thinking. An unwise idea these days if she had ever heard one.

Richard's smile twisted—an answer in itself—and she wondered how many people thought to ask. "Aren't you a smart cookie. I rather like this version of you."

Her name hung in the air between them, and Jordan did her best not to let it show that that wasn't the only thing to find if he looked hard enough. "When and how?"

He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “No complaints about the amount?”

Jordan shrugged. “I agree with it.”

“I bet you do, you broke bitch.” Now Richard’s smile was amused, and slightly pleased with himself. “I’ll let you know at the end of the night.”

Jordan nodded and pushed past him, already starting to rearrange her thoughts into something far less incriminating, but he halted her progress when he grabbed her hand. She spun to him and watched as he pressed his lips to her knuckles.

Staring at him, scowling, Devina ran through how easy it would be to throw his mouth off and grab his throat from this position. All she'd have to do was twist her hand, take a step forward, and hold on. It was so, so clear in her mind that her fingers twitched.

Once she had him in her grasp, all it would take was a good squeeze.

Seconds after he had kissed her hand, he straightened back up, smiling, like he knew what the twitch of her fingers had meant. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Jordan, I look forward to our next meeting.”

Jordan did not hesitate, and walked away from Richard, and the corridor that had the bathroom. By the time she was back in the main room, curling up next to Darren, she wasn't even thinking about the first twenty years of her life.

Darren didn’t question her behaviour, just wrapped an arm around her and kissed her head. Jordan sighed and wondered what would have happened if she had wrapped her hand around Richard Russell’s throat and watched the light leave his eyes.

[littlesentences]

Oc kiss week day 6 - Forbidden

It was a bad idea.

Not only was the house full, but not everyone had gone to bed yet. And Darren had never wanted to do this under the same roof as his wife, or for so long. But there he was, creeping up the stairs, praying no one saw him—especially not fucking Richard. His brother would know why he was creeping up the stairs and walking close to the walls down the hall to the one empty bedroom this late at night.

At the very least, if it was anyone else, he’d be able to lie, and they might even believe him. But Richard … god if Richard saw him right now and gave him that horrendous smile, Darren didn’t know what he would do. Good thing his wife would be able to help him get away with it.

If she didn’t find out why he had killed Richard.

But this was all useless speculation, because he hadn’t even seen Richard since he had gone out the back door for a smoke half an hour ago, let alone fucking killed him.

Darren reached the door to the only empty bedroom in the house and triple checked that the hallway was clear before he opened it and slipped inside. He had never quite mastered not looking like he was sneaking around when he was sneaking around. You would think he would have given the amount of times he got caught as a kid.

That he hadn’t gotten caught at all yet—Richard didn’t count—was setting off his nerves. Made him want to call the whole thing off. Which he should do whether or not he had been caught. But it was a habit, and habits were the hardest thing to break.

Hearts were the easiest.

Which figures. The one that he wanted to break was the hardest to, but what the fuck had been his excuse that first year? It hadn’t been a habit yet, and he had felt worse every time he had come crawling back home to Jordan after pretending to work late (which hadn’t been too unbelievable a lie, there was a reason why it had worked for the last three years).

Darren had only been in the room for a minute before the door opened again, letting in the object of his frustration. Darren knew why he had decided to do this, but Brittany had never once indicated it was something other than the usual reason married people have affairs. He hoped she didn’t love him. He hoped she didn’t mistake any of this for love.

Darren himself didn’t know what it was, but he knew for damn sure that it wasn’t love.

The door had barely closed—he could have sworn he had seen the flicker of a shadow through the gap—when Brittany was pressing him against the wall and kissing him breathless. He was married, but he wasn’t a robot. It was why he was there in the first place, although why he had agreed on this under this roof, on this night, was beyond him.

So he kissed Brittany back, hands coming up to tangle in her hair, if only to not disappoint her (if only to let go of the tension that had been in his shoulders all night, waiting for the inevitable blow up between Richard and Jordan).

Her hands were hot on his skin, her mouth pliable under his, as she got his shirt off, stumbling away from the wall and tripping over a rug. His fingers tangled in her blonde hair as he tried to untie her shirt from the back of her neck, and god when she pressed up against him like that—

Their jeans came off next, and Brittany wrapped her legs around his waist and he carried her to the bed, sitting on the edge so that she could push him down whenever she felt like it. He pulled her hair, tilting her head back to glance over her throat and attack her chest, already stained with enough marks Maria wouldn’t notice a couple more.

Brittany’s hands stopped on his shoulders and pushed him down. His mouth left her breasts willingly, moving up to her jaw when she laid down on top of him. He felt her legs tense seconds before she rolled them over, and he was balancing on top of her.

One breathed word later and he was kissing his way down her sternum, hands trying to keep himself steady on her.

And it was as he was down there, starting to hear her little gasps, that Darren thought about Jordan, asleep in their bedroom downstairs, none-the-wiser to what was happening in this bedroom upstairs. And he wanted her to be the one wriggling underneath his touch—not his cousin’s wife, who had been desperate for … something.

Abruptly, Darren backed away, sitting on his haunches, staring at the beautiful body spread open for him for two seconds before gathering his clothes up.

“What are you doing?” She sounded confused, and like she already knew the answer.

“What I should have done a long time ago.” Buckling up his jeans, he shook his head and turned around. “I am going back downstairs to my wife, and actually try to work on our marriage.”

Brittany blinked. And blinked again. Then she trailed a hand up her body, torturously slow. “Aw, but I’m right here.” Up her thighs, between her spread legs, over her stomach, caressing her breasts, shaking her head in false pleasure when she ran out of body to touch.

Darren had his shirt on and back to her before she finished. “That’s the problem.”

Slamming the door on her as she had pouted at him like a child would remain the best part of the next couple of days.