"Michael? Michael, wake up."

It was almost entertaining, listening to Mary try and wake her brother. Correction—it would have been entertaining if there wasn't a possibility of him being dead. The thing was, she talked to him like she was giving him some sort of order to do a chore, and not hoping and praying that he was breathing.

Jordan had to stifle a laugh. It made her feel like a terrible person, but she had to do it anyways. She immediately decided that she was glad no one had access to her thoughts—they would pin her as an awful human being.

"Michael!"

Mary shoved her brother one more time and he stirred slightly, his eyelids starting to twitch as he slowly regained consciousness. Mary heaved a heavy sigh of relief and Michael blinked his eyes open, looking around in confusion.

"How did I end up on the ground?"

"Someone knocked you out." Roland replied matter-of-factly, "Lindsey ran off after them about ten minutes ago."

"I was out for ten minutes?" Michael asked in surprise. "Wow."

"Whoever it was, they hit you pretty hard on the back of the head." Mary looked at her brother with the first ounce of concern that Jordan had ever seen on her face, "Are you alright? Do you think you have a concussion?"

"If I do, I'm not telling anyone about it." Michael shook his head immediately and firmly, "I'm leading the football team this year, Mar. No questions asked."

Mary looked like she wanted to argue, but she bit her tongue. Jordan and Roland helped Michael stand up and sit on a tree stump as he massaged the back of his head.

"Why did the person hit you?" Jordan asked curiously, as if inquiring about the weather, "We were all out there. Did you find something?"

Michael nodded.

"I remember seeing something of Eddie's on the ground...I think. Everything's a little fuzzy right now."

"Well, hurry up and remember it." Mary ordered, "We need all the clues we can get."

"I'll try." Michael promised, "Do you think Lindsey caught the guy?"

"Or girl." Roland shrugged.

"No, she didn't."

The four turned around to see Lindsey approaching from where she had run off, limping terribly and inching her way forward. Roland ran up instantly to help her walk down to the rest of the group and Michael immediately gave up his tree stump for the injured soccer star.

"What happened?" Michael asked, "Did they get you too?"

Lindsey shook her head dejectedly.

"I almost had them. I was so close, and then I tripped on a stupid tree root." She rolled her eyes.

"Did you see what they were wearing? Or whether they were a guy or a girl?" Roland asked.

Lindsey shook her head again.

"No. I didn't think to turn on my phone's flashlight before I took off and I didn't want to lose any speed while I was chasing them."

"Well, aren't you just the most helpful." Mary rolled her eyes, "You honestly can't give us anything?"

"Well gee whiz Mary, I didn't realize that I was expected to singlehandedly unmask our stalker tonight. My deepest apologies for not being able to carry out such a mundane task." Lindsey snapped. Mary scoffed at her jabs before walking away, pacing around the woods a bit before running back to the group.

"I think I heard something. We need to get out of here. Maybe we can come back in like...the daytime."

"Works for me." Roland nodded eagerly. "I feel like someone's watching us constantly."

The group agreed to head back to the car and Mary took Michael's keys from her brother, ordering him to sit in the backseat with his possible concussion. Jordan squished herself into the middle of the backseat, allowing Roland the passengers seat as she and Lindsey tried not to suffocate at sharing the back with a massive football player.

"Wait!" Michael exclaimed as they all buckled themselves in, "I remember what was on the ground. I can see it now, real clearly."

"What was it?" Mary asked, turning around from the driver's seat, the keys waiting in the ignition.

"Eddie's class ring." Michael replied, "Eddie's class ring was lying on the ground. When I picked it up, I was hit."

"How do you know it was Eddie's?" Lindsey asked skeptically.

"He had this really unique class ring." Mary answered for her brother, "Our parents had it specially designed for him by professionals so that he would be the only one with anything like it. We could recognize it in a heartbeat."

"So if Eddie's ring was on the ground, at least ten yards from where the car hit the ravine..."

"...then that means that they weren't killed in the car." Roland finished Michael's sentence, "Someone killed them after they tried to get out of the wreck."

"Wouldn't an autopsy report have picked that up?" Lindsey asked, "I've watched enough Criminal Minds to know that they can find out anything from those things."

"Yeah, same." Jordan nodded.

Everyone looked at her in surprise.

"You've never watched Criminal Minds, Jord." Mary raised her eyebrows.

"No, but I've watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and it's practically the same thing."

Mary shook her head before turning back to the rest of the car, as if Jordan was nothing and her opinions were irrelevant.

She was used to being treated that way, though.

"Someone could have messed with the autopsy report before it was sent to the police." Mary remarked, turning around and putting the car into drive. "We'll have to see if anything was done with that."

"Why don't we just go to the cops?" Roland suggested, "I mean, now we have evidence that they should reopen the case."

"No we don't." Michael shook his head, "I lost our evidence. We don't go to the cops until we have tangible proof of what we know."

Jordan looked up at Roland and saw his eyes roll through the side mirror of the car. She agreed, but wasn't sure why—for some reason, the police seemed to be a better alternative to all of this. She didn't want to be the next one to twist her ankle, or get hit in the back of the head.

Or whatever worse thing the monster had planned for them.

***

Jordan crawled into bed that night with little else on her mind but the entire fiasco from that night. She had fished out her nightlight from when she was a toddler and set it up in her room with a new lightbulb and everything. She wasn't going to be sleeping in the dark that night. Or any night for the next week.

Her Fitbit buzzed on her wrist and Jordan flipped over in bed, hoping for a comforting message from one of the other four saying that they had found something and they knew who was doing all of this.

But life was never that easy.

She hadn't been the one who got a concussion that evening, but Jordan Conrad was the one who leaned over the side of her bed and threw up into an old flower vase. 

A/N: Thoughts on the chapter? Let me know what you want to see/what you think will happen next! Which person's injury is going to end up getting them in (the most) trouble?

ALSO! I started up a blog for my writing to upload sneak peeks of chapters, character backstories and information, and little side things for my books and characters! The link is www.katherinepowellbooks.wordpress.com and it's also the external link to this chapter if you want to check it out, it would mean a ton!

-Katherine