"Well that adds up."

He wanted to laugh at the expression on Jordan's face when he spoke. She clearly had been wanting something bigger, or more interesting, than him being completely alright with her having been ordered to murder him.

In actuality, it was a bit comforting. The scariest part about a threat was not knowing when it would happen or who was going to carry it out. Now he knew both things and could actively avoid them: Jordan was going to kill him within the next 48 hours.

"It adds up?"

Michael nodded.

"I guess it makes sense for me to go next. I was told that I would be killed in the next 48 hours if I didn't turn myself in for what happened with Erin about a year ago."

"What happened with Erin?" Roland asked.

Michael looked over at him with a bit of pity in his eyes—it wasn't as if it mattered that Roland found out now; his sister was already dead to begin with.

"I tried to kill Erin." Michael said, "I tried to stab her about a year ago, but Mary stopped the knife and took the wound herself. That's why the innocent man is in prison—she blamed him for the stabbing to protect me. I tried to kill your sister, and the stalker wants me to come forward."

Roland's eyes were wider than Michael had ever seen them.

"You tried to kill Erin? Why? Wh—you're the Hadden in her restraining order."

Michael nodded.

"She revealed my infidelity to Rachel."

"Rachel?"

"My girlfriend at the time."

Roland was quiet for a second.

"I'm not going to judge. You didn't actually kill her, but whoever did seems to want to blame you instead."

Michael nodded, feeling a slight wave of relief wash over him. Roland didn't hate him. He wasn't sure exactly why he cared about the opinions of the nerd, but he couldn't have taken the news that Michael had actively tried to kill his sister any better.

"So, Jordan." Michael looked over, "How are you gonna do it?"

Jordan rolled her eyes.

"I haven't planned it out, you moron. I was hoping we could come to a different solution before anything like that had to happen."

"And how are we going to do that?" Mary asked, "For all we know the stalker has every single one of our houses bugged."

"Then let's get out of here." Michael offered, shrugging. "We have a beach house in Ocean City. It's only a ninety minute drive, and we could probably make it sixty since it's like one o'clock in the morning and no one's on the roads."

The rest of the group exchanged glances before nodding slowly.

"Alright. I guess that would work."

Michael nodded and stood up from the table, grabbing his car keys off of the counter behind him.

"I'll drive."

Mary rolled her eyes and took the keys out of his hands.

"You still have a concussion. Sit in the back."

***

OCEAN CITY

SUNDAY

2:09 AM

45 HOURS, 51 MINUTES UNTIL DEADLINE

"Well let's just list what we know." Michael set an overnight bag down on the kitchen table of the Hadden's beach house and took a large sketchbook out of the front pocket. "We need to figure out who the stalker is before they have a chance to kill anyone."

"How did this become our lives?" Lindsey moaned, sitting down at one of the seats around the table. "I want to be a normal high school senior."

"Well, if we can get rid of this stalker than normalcy might be in our reach." Roland muttered, sitting next to her. "What secrets did our siblings know? Who had motive to get rid of them for it?"

Michael took out a pen and started to write down what the rest of the group called out.

"Victoria knew about the affair between Cynthia Green and Austin Marcum."

"Cynthia Ryle." Roland corrected Jordan.

"She was Cynthia Green at the time."

Michael scribbled it down.

"The guy that Mary put away knew that Erin knew he was innocent."

"Kaden was blackmailing Neil about his relationship with Mary."

"Michael tried to kill Erin."

Michael looked up sharply at Lindsey's words.

"What?" The soccer star shrugged, "We're listing everything."

Michael rolled his eyes and wrote it down.

"Erin knew about me and Dean." Jordan said, "Dean would have motive to get rid of her."

"Barlow is involved somehow." Roland offered, and Michael realized he had almost forgot that the corrupt detective even existed. "I don't know how, but he is."

Michael wrote down Barlow.

"And we know that there are at least two people involved in this." Mary said, "Since Eddie's class ring was found a ways away from where the car crashed, he was alive when it hit and was killed afterwards."

Michael wrote it down.

"Anything else?"

The group shook their heads.

"Alright. Then who would have motive to kill them? Let's condense the list."

"Dean and Michael had a motive to kill Erin."

"Kaden had a motive to kill Neil."

"My dad and Roland's mom had a motive to kill Victoria." Lindsey said quietly, clearly uncomfortable with saying such things about her own family.

The five looked down at their list. Michael felt like they hadn't made any progress at all. There was nothing that would point them to one of the people on the list over the rest of them.

"I feel like nothing on this list gets us any closer to knowing who the stalker is." Mary verbalized her brother's thoughts, "It's not the affair resulted in a child, and—"

"Wait." Jordan put her hand in the air as she looked at the list more closely, "That affair didn't result in a child." She pointed at the names on the list: the affair between Austin Marcum and Cynthia Ryle, "But we know another one that supposedly did."

Roland shifted uncomfortably.

"But we don't know if any of our siblings knew about that one." Lindsey pointed out, "It's not like there would be a motive for murder without someone knowing and being able to tell on them."

Jordan shook her head, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.

"That's what I'm trying to say. Neil knew."

A/N: I KNOW THE CHAPTER'S LATE AGAIN, I thought I was getting home at like 8:00 yesterday but ended up not getting home until after midnight so I didn't get around to finishing the chapter but here it is! Please don't hate me, I swear I will update on time.

-Katherine