Staring down at the lime green folder, which still lies closed on the dining room table, Millie shakes off the urge to reopen it. If Taylor does happen to know more about the accident—or even the murders—than what she is letting on, she has to have her reasons. She knows Taylor.

Correction. She knew Taylor.

Taking a deep sigh, she snatches it from the table. Instead of taking another look inside, she grabs the sling to Marc's messenger bag and lifts it up from the nearby dining chair. She sets it on the table and unzips the pouch, sliding the folder in the small cushioned compartment next to his laptop. She zips it back up, turning her head slightly to glance at the window overlooking the front yard. At first, she thought that perhaps Taylor was just pushing her away and keeping distant out of concern for her safety. Like she didn't want Millie involved in whatever twisted affairs she found herself trapped in. That is what Taylor made it sound like at the police station after all.

In a way, it made perfect sense at the time. Taylor had already pushed Marc away by that point, completely and abruptly severing all ties with him, and was just overall acting completely different. Now hearing that, not only did she reconnect with Marc in the heat of the moment last night, she came back to talk to him afterwards. Millie looks down at the tiled floor beneath her feet, unable to block out a reoccurring thought. Maybe it's not out of protection for her, but maybe Taylor just doesn't want to be her friend again. Maybe she's just too damn stubborn to realize it.

Just seconds later, Millie is in her bedroom as she pulls open one of the bottom drawers of her dresser. Inside are several of her childhood belongings, as well as diaries she had filled to the very last page when she was younger. Some of these were from middle school, others dating all the way back to kindergarten, and most—if not all of them—in one way or another are remnants of her and Taylor's friendship. A shoebox is tucked against the bottom left corner of the drawer, its lid completely ripped off. Her eyes immediately lock at an object inside of it and she smiles as she reaches inside to grab it, pulling out a faded light blue and soft pink beaded bracelet.

She slips it onto her right wrist, gently grabbing the beads and rotating a couple of them to where they revealed engraved letters. It reads 'MILLIE' followed by a dangling silver charm of a small heart. It's similar to the one that she gave Taylor on their first day of middle school, when the two best friends decided to make friendship bracelets.

Still on patrol, Deputy Bennett yawns heavily as he tries his best not to fall asleep in his squad car. He pushes a button to roll down the windows, allowing the fresh night air to slip inside of the vehicle. He breaths it in, feeling immediately refreshed, and opens his eyes to gaze around the isolated street.

The door to Sheriff Martinez' personal office creaks as it eases open. Millie peeks her head through the slight crack in the door, as if to make sure her father wasn't in fact home, before slipping inside and closing it behind her. The bracelet is still hanging from her wrist.

As she approaches his desk, which is cluttered with various loose papers and folders, she stops at the window. She lifts one of the large wooden blinds with her finger and glances at the police car parked alongside the curb. Inside, Bennett adjusts the volume of the radio, tuning it loud enough to hear it but also to the point where the music won't overpower any incoming calls from the station. He begins to sing along to a song and, still watching him, she cracks a smile. She lets the blind close and backs away from the window, turning around to face the desk once again.

Millie sits down in her father's chair and her eyes scan the mess on the table in front of her. Wasting no time, she begins to quickly shuffle through the files while remaining careful to keep the papers just as he left them. The last thing she needs is her father to have a heart attack if he finds out that she was prowling through his office.

Many of the documents are just the general, everyday cases her father encounters on a regular basis. Missing people, public intoxication, a couple of breaking and entering. Sighing, she quickly looks through them again, not finding anything at all pertaining to the murder spree.

"Where would you put it?" She asks herself, trying to put herself in her father's head. Immediately, her eyes gaze down at the small file cabinet tucked in underneath the opening of the desk next to her feet.

Reaching down, she tugs at the handle on the top drawer. It pulls open, revealing a small compartment filled with miscellaneous office supplies. She digs through them in a short, feeble attempt to find anything useful. Shaking her head, she closes it and reaches for the handle on the drawer underneath it. This time she wasn't so lucky. She pulls it but it doesn't budge and, after trying a second time, she confirms that it's locked up.

Sighing, she opens the top drawer again and digs around as she looks for a key. Finding a small box, she opens the lid to see that the only things inside are a few paperclips and rubber bands. She tosses it back in the drawer, not caring to keep anything organized this time as she can feel the frustration taking over. She looks around the room, trying again to step inside of her father's mind.

"Come on. Come on..." She mutters, gazing around the bland walls of the room. Her eyes suddenly light up.

She reaches underneath the open drawer, feeling the slight touch of metal taped up against the bottom of its base. She knows immediately what it is. A smile spreads across her face as she snatches it, slamming the drawer back shut. Using the key, she unlocks the bottom one and pulls it open. Inside is a poorly stacked mountain of folders, similar to the ones scattered across his desk. These folders are thicker though, filled with significantly more reports and photographs. The one on top, the largest file of them all, stands out to her.

She sets it on the table, pondering for a moment on whether or not to open it. Similar to the situation she had with Marc in the dining room, she finally gives into her urge and pulls the flap open.

The first paper-clipped file described the reports taken from Kira Walker's family, as well as the person who discovered her body, Paige Turner. In poorly written cursive, she can see her father's scribbles as he wrote key thoughts next to some of the statements and even highlighted a few sentences. She sets that file aside, seeing the one underneath it pertains to when Julia Baker's body was discovered. Noticing that it's in no particular order, she grabs the side of the stack of paper and lifts them up. She uses her thumb to press the edge of the pages at an angle, quickly skimming through them to see if she can find anything helpful.

Millie stops at a file, its date only about a week after the accident. She pulls out the two sheets that are stapled together, seeing that it is a printed out transcript of a call the police department received the night of the bus accident. An anonymous caller reported a group of teenagers, none ever identified, barreling down her street in the middle of the night—behind the wheel of a district school bus.

Now it is all making sense. Why her father, even though he wouldn't admit it, was always skeptical on whether or not Garrett O'Neil was the sole perpetrator involved in the boy's death. Not to mention, it explains how the police arrived at the scene so fast. The dispatcher must have already sent units out to look for the bus by that point.

She hears the distinct sound of a car door being slammed shut in the distance. Her eyes widen as she quickly, and carelessly, shoves the paperwork into the folder and tosses it back into the bottom drawer. Slamming it shut, she makes sure to lock it before quickly sticking the key back up under the piece of tape and closing the top drawer.

Millie jumps from the seat and, after a quick look at the tabletop to make sure she hadn't left an obvious mess, hurriedly walks over to the window to peek out the blinds. Peering at the driveway, she doesn't see her father's car and she lets out a sigh of relief.

"Close one." She mumbles to herself, already hearing her father's nagging voice in the back of her head. She would be grounded for a month, if not more, if he had walked in on her browsing through his work files. She looks over at Bennett's squad car... to see it's empty. Her lip begins to quiver as she scans the front yard, looking for any sign of the deputy whatsoever. Although she knows that, even if he were out there, he can't hear her from inside the house—she stills lets out a faint whisper. "Bennett?"

"Bennett?" Millie calls out again, this time louder and from the front steps of her porch. She shuts the front door behind her before turning to slowly walk down the short steps of the deck and onto the sidewalk that cuts through the center of her yard. Although her eyes are locked mostly onto the patrol car parked in front of her, she makes sure to continuously glance around her surroundings as she starts to walk toward it.

The faint sound of crickets chirping fills the air. She can hear car brakes skidding against the road a couple of blocks away, the fact that it's so silent that she can hear these minor things sends her hair rising. She approaches the car, finding the two front windows rolled down, and even leans a bit inside to make sure that he hadn't fallen asleep. Nothing.

"Bennett?!" She hollers worriedly, turning around to face her house. Her voice lowers as she mumbles to herself, gazing around the trees that wrap around the side of her house and lead to the backyard. "Where the hell are you?"

Tall shrubs border the fences leading to both of her neighbor's lawns, making her feel even more secluded as she steps back down the sidewalk toward her house. She crosses her arms as she slowly makes her way to the front porch, halting when she hears the sudden sound of twigs snapping from the corner of her house.

Hesitating, she contemplates on whether to run inside and lock the door or take a deep breath and just take a simple look. Slowly, she runs her hand alongside the brick wall of her house as she approaches the corner, just as—

Bennett, wielding his flashlight around in one hand and his gun in the other like a crazed person, cuts through the corner and nearly knocks into her. Both gasp, startled by the sudden encounter, and Millie covers her eyes as she takes a brief moment to gather herself.

"Oh god, you scared me!" She says between heavy breaths, feeling her heart still pounding against her chest.

"I scared you?!" Bennett lets out a deep sigh, trying to keep his cool as he just realized how squeamish that came out. He slides the weapon back into his holster.

She glances down at the handle of his pistol. "What are you doing out here?"

"I thought I heard a noise." Bennett looks up at her, his expression reading nothing but pure concern. Realizing how ridiculous he must look, especially flaunting his rookie moves in front of the sheriff's daughter out of all people, he lets out a nervous laugh as he scratches at his shoulder. "Sorry. I guess I just—"

A gloved hand suddenly grips tightly onto his hair from behind and, before he can even flinch, another reaches around the back of his neck and drives the tip of a knife's blade into his temple at a sloppy downwards angle. It fractures his skull, the blade tunneling through his tissue until it pierces out just below his left eye socket. His wide eyes stare at Millie as he staggers backwards, his body twitching, until the killer wiggles the blade out—puncturing his loose eye with a swift slice along the way—and Bennett's lifeless body tumbles to the ground with a thud. A puddle of warm blood forms around him, seeping into his once blue uniform, as a mangled lump of his eyeball rolls into the dirt.

Screaming, Millie stumbles back but can't seem to peel her eyes from his corpse. The killer, who was able to slip around the corner so fast that neither of them noticed, lifts his head up as he peers at her. His blood splattered mask is so bright under the moonlight that it nearly glows in the dark.

Before she can let out another wail, he lunges at her with a swing of his blade. She spins around, ducking just in time to dodge the blade, and runs back up the steps to the front door. She barely manages to slip through the doorframe, right as he charges up the steps with another swing of his knife, and slams the door shut behind her—locking it just in time.

Millie feels the door tremble as the knife digs into the wood from the other side, the killer repeatedly stabbing at the door. Eventually, the movement stops and she can hear the sound of his footsteps quickly walking away from the porch. She looks over at the panel lit up on the wall and immediately punches in the four digit code on the keypad. The small screen turns bright green and beeps twice, the alarm system activating. Although hoping that he actually left, she knows very well that more than likely isn't the case. And she sure as hell doesn't plan to step one foot outside of this house until police arrive.

Her eyes begin to tear up again at the thought of Bennett. The only reason he was even here was to protect her....

She turns around and looks at the table underneath the railing of the staircase, her attention drawing to the landline phone her father had installed in case of emergencies. She grabs the cordless phone from on top of its charging station, punching in 911 when—

Glass shatters in a nearby room, the sound of something crashing through one of the windows echoing down the short hallway. She jumps and, if that wasn't enough to startle her, a loud ringing bounces from the walls as it abruptly cuts on.

EEEEE-BEEP-EEEEE-BEEP-EEEEE

The deafening sound rings in her ear from the alarm panel, which now flashes an illuminating red. Bold words scroll on the small screen from left to right on a continual loop.

'INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!'

Feeling the phone quiver in her hand, she continues to hold the speaker up to her ear as she slowly steps down the hallway to see what had caused the noise. Or at least where it came from. She's unable to hear the dispatcher on the other end of the phone over the ear-splitting noise.

She freezes the second she reaches the kitchen, gazing past its entrance at the small area where the breakfast table is set up. A large window is broken in, glass shattered across the floor and the table. A patio chair rests on its side among the shards of glass and, without even thinking, she turns back around to dash for the entryway.

The phone slips out of her hand and to the tiled floor as she hurriedly undoes the two locks on the front door. She glances behind her, making sure that the lunatic isn't near, and turns the last deadbolt. She twists the handle and pulls the door open, turning around to see—

The killer jump up the last step on the porch, shoving his way through the cracked door and into her house. She attempts to turn around but he grabs her wrists, the bracelet Taylor had given her breaking apart under his grip. Plastic beads shatter onto the floor around them as he shoves her up against the wall near the security panel, swiftly raising his knife in the air. The piercing alarm drowns out her screams as he reaches back and slams the front door shut.

♫ ᴄᴀʀᴇғᴜʟ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪsʜ ғᴏʀ / ʙᴇʟʟ x1 ♫