Lily closed the drawer, her panic rising. Her grief. Standing in her mother’s room was getting to be too much for her, even with their complicated history. Her chest tightened with each breath. Tears stung behind her eyes. And she didn’t know that Stefan had stolen the file.

He’d simply been the most logical suspect.

Sucking in little gulps of air, Lily barreled out of the room. Raven’s bedroom was only a few feet away, and it was possible that he’d gone searching through her room. Belle was Raven’s ex-girlfriend. If he was desperate to free her from juvenile detention, he’d be looking for another suspect.

Lily snuck into his bedroom. His satin sheets were tangled up, as if he’d slept fitfully. His soft black carpet caressed the soles of her feet as she crossed his room. Dejectedly, Lily crouched beside his bed, not really expecting to find anything beneath it. She found a pair of boxers and a wrinkled shirt. She shifted through a duffel bag beside the window. No file hidden there. She was almost crying by the time she noticed the little green thread waving at her from the window frame, the exact color of Jack’s olive-green coat.

Heat flashed in Lily’s chest. Her face warmed as she realized that Jack had only pretended to go home after searching Evelyn’s office. Jack had followed her back here. Jack had snuck in through Raven’s window, and she’d probably climbed down the side of the house after her visit, passing Lily’s bedroom on the way.

Lily’s hands shook with rage. She almost dropped her phone as she pulled it out of her purse, and it took several tries to pull up the video she’d recorded the previous night. The one she’d taken outside Jack’s window. The yard had been dark, but the flames were bright inside the house. It was obvious that Jack was burning clothes. Maybe they wouldn’t be identified as Raven’s, but either way, a woman had been murdered, and one night later, Jack fed potential evidence to the flames.

It would be enough to make her a suspect. Especially since the name Poppy showed up on the Recipe for the Perfect Murder. It took less than a minute to attach the video to a text. Thirty seconds later, Lily had typed out a message. All that remained was to enter a number into the contact field, but she didn’t send the video to Jack, or to the Rose Hollow Police Department.

She sent it to Raven.

13 The Least Sinister Explanation