"You may leave now."

Mary looked up from her position sitting on the floor as the voice spoke for the first time in over twenty minutes. She had been sitting on the old, creaking wooden floor for twenty minutes, not quite sure what she was waiting for.

But she certainly hadn't expected to be told to leave.

So she stood up slowly, her legs slightly sore from being in the same position for longer than five minutes, and walked towards the door. Mary felt like if she tried turning the doorknob something would shock her or a blade would pop out, but nothing of the sort happened. She turned the doorknob and stepped out into the hallway to find Jordan and Roland already outside, looking around cautiously as two doors could be heard opening from downstairs.

The three didn't say a single word as they all walked down the rickety staircase single-file, Mary in between Jordan and Roland. They reached the bottom to find Lindsey and Michael already standing by the door, standing at least five feet away from each other with their eyes towards the floor. They looked up as the other three approached before Michael opened the door silently, leading the five out to the stalker's car.

They all took their seats from the ride there and waited until the GPS lit up and began to speak. Mary felt herself cringe every time the voice spoke—she knew this one was just a regular GPS system, but that would forever be the voice that instructed her to betray her friends the second it asked her to.

Jordan put the car in drive and started forward, away from the cabin and away from all the terrible things that had happened there. Mary felt herself wishing she could ask what had happened, ask the others what the voice had told them or asked of them. But no one else was speaking, and from her position in the back seat behind the driver, Mary could see that all of their faces looked as though they'd seen ghosts.

Mary studied the faces of the other four as they drove. Jordan was visibly shaking, but she was the only one—something that seemed strange. What had been said to her that was so much worse than what had been said to the others?

It took less than half an hour to get back to the Hadden's, where everyone's cars were still parked where they had left them. The lights were all off inside and the five got out of the car slowly, closing the doors quietly behind them so as not to wake up anyone inside the Hadden mansion. They milled around the car in silence until Mary finally decided to speak.

"Well...goodnight."

"Goodnight." Four voices chorused back to her before she turned and followed Michael into their home, assuming that the other three were getting ready to drive off from behind them. She closed the front door behind her and stood still for a moment, her eyes closed with her back pressed up against the door.

The events of the evening seemed so incredibly surreal that she had to keep reminding herself that this was her reality, and not simply a bad dream that would go away in the morning.

"Michael?" Mary asked, seeing her brother stop in his tracks. She could only make out his silhouette, illuminated by the moonlight shining through the countless windows in the Hadden's foyer. "Can we talk about what happened?"

Michael was quiet for a moment before nodding and turning back around to walk towards his sister.

"Sure. Let's sit down."

They made their way to the kitchen and turned on the light. Michael started to get a pot of coffee ready for the two while Mary tried to keep her hands from shaking.

She did not succeed.

Michael had just barely sat down with two cups of coffee when a knock sounded on the front door.

The twins exchanged glances before standing to answer. They walked over and opened the door to find the three exhausted looking teenagers on their doorstep.

"We need to discuss what happened. Now." Jordan said, stepping into the house without an invitation. "This isn't going to end until we're all completely honest with each other. We have a common enemy."

Mary nodded.

"I agree." She said, remembering how just a few hours ago Jordan had refused to speak to her on account of Mary cheating on Jordan's brother, who she was using to cheat on her actual boyfriend.

It seemed like it had been days ago.

Lindsey, Jordan, and Roland all walked into the kitchen to join the twins as Michael poured them their own cups of coffee.

"We're probably going to need energy for this."

Everyone sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping their coffee and looking around at the others. No one knew what to say. Everyone seemed absolutely traumatized.

"I'll start." Mary finally offered, "But just as a warning: it's like...really bad."

Jordan scoffed slightly from her position across the table.

"You have something to say, Jord?" Mary asked.

Jordan shook her head.

"I think I have everyone here topped. By a lot."

Roland rolled his eyes.

"Doubtful."

"Do one of you want to go first?" Michael snapped, "If not, then let Mary speak."

Everyone was quiet and Mary continued.

"I promised the...voice, I guess...that I would betray you guys if it meant keeping something awful I did a secret from the police."

"What did you do?" Lindsey asked immediately, ignoring the dirty looks she got from Roland and Michael. "We're all being honest here, aren't we?"

Mary looked over at Michael, knowing that sharing what had happened would be far worse for him.

"I sent an innocent man to jail with my testimony in court." Mary said slowly, "I was stabbed in the stomach a little bit ago. And I lied about who did it." She looked down at her hands, not wanting to see the others' faces. "I mean, I paid him a lot of money, and his family's set for life. But he's in prison. And he didn't do anything."

The table was silent for a second. No one asked who stabbed her. No one asked any questions, really.

"I'll go next." Lindsey spoke up, "I'm so sorry, Jordan. And Mary. But I...I knew about Mary and Neil before this year."

Mary raised her eyebrows.

"Excuse me?"

"I knew about you guys. I knew because my brother was blackmailing Neil about it."

Mary felt her heart drop. She remembered how desperately Neil had wanted to come forward with their relationship. She had always assumed he simply didn't like lying—but he had probably been running out of money instead.

"What does this have to do with the stalker?" Jordan asked, her stony gaze fixated on Lindsey.

"The 'voice' asked me for secrets. They said that's all they needed, and that's the first thing I thought of. They had this police report, all filled out, calling the car crash in June a murder. They were going to frame me for it, everything was filled out and ready to go...and then they said I could decide. I have 48 hours to decide whether I'm going to jail for killing our siblings or if Kaden is. Since now...now I gave the stalker his motive."

"What are you gonna do?" Michael asked when everyone else was silent.

Lindsey shrugged.

"I'm just trying to figure a way out of everything."

"Yeah, well I don't really have a way out of my thing." Roland spoke up. "This is totally going to be awkward, and awful. I wasn't exactly blackmailed, like the rest of you probably were. I don't really have all the secrets that you do. Or at least, I didn't think I did." He reached into his back pocket and laid a birth certificate out on the table in front of the group, "My mother isn't my mother."

"Then who is?" Jordan asked as everyone leaned over to read the certificate. "Oh my...no."

Roland nodded.

"Say hello to your half-brother."

"That's impossible." Jordan shook her head, "I was born in May, so you'd have to have been born before—"

"August." Roland nodded. "I was born almost exactly nine months before you, Jordan."

Jordan shook her head again as the rest of the group sat back quietly, all of them grateful that they weren't the ones who had just found out about a secret half-sibling.

"Well..." She started to speak before stopping and taking a deep breath, "We can do a DNA test or something."

Roland raised his eyebrows.

"I realize I'm not the coolest new brother, but—"

"I'm just not okay with taking a stalker's word that my mother slept with your father." Jordan snapped. "Call me crazy." She shrugged slightly, leaning back in her seat. "Although she always was a gold digger."

The table was silent again before Jordan cocked her head to the side and spoke again.

"Well, I have nothing to lose, I guess." She looked over at Michael and kept eye contact as she said the rest of what the voice had told her: "The voice thing reminded me of the fact that I dated a guy who was ten years older than me back during freshman year. He threatened to kill me if I ever turned him in, so the voice took the choice away from me and decided to turn him in and blame it on me!"

Mary wasn't sure what Michael had to do with all of this, but she kept listening.

"There is a way to avoid all of this, though." Jordan grinned, a sadistic look that made the hair on the back of Mary's neck stand up.

"Yes?" Michael asked, clearly wondering why she was maintaining such direct eye contact with him out of everyone at the table.

"I just have to kill you in the next 48 hours." 

A/N: Sorry for the late update! I didn't anticipate how long the chapter would be and didn't exactly leave myself enough time to get it done yesterday. Thoughts? How will Michael react to Jordan's revelation?

-Katherine