Killer Instinct

9 | Lindsey

         

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Was?" Mary raised her eyebrows.

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

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

Mary was silent before shaking her head.

"No. I don't know."

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