I was so intent on Kristen that I had forgotten Reagan was in the room; at least, until she exclaimed, "So you did it? You killed your father?" She leaned towards Kristen, the legs of her chair wobbling.

I half-expected Kristen to tell her to shut up or ignore her comment, but instead she answered, "Yes. I murdered dear old Dad." She let out a small sigh, arching her neck upward and stretching her shoulders. "Oh, it feels so good to finally be acknowledged for it."

Reagan gave an involuntary shiver at her callous tone, but Kristen's attitude didn't surprise me in the slightest. I'd dealt with enough cases - and watched enough Criminal Minds - to know that killers were often proud of their work, and craved recognition for it. I sensed my advantage over Kristen at having given her what she most desired, and phrased my next words carefully. "It must have been awful letting your mother take all the credit."

"Oh, it was." She agreed, just as I knew she would. "Especially when all the weirdos who actually believe in that stuff turned up at the house with machines trying to get a read on her 'ghost'. The things some people will believe are astonishing."

There were a billion questions I wanted to ask her about her own supernatural visiting tonight, but I forced myself to wait. It was hard when the image of my little sister gliding across the grounds was still fresh in my mind, but I had to put the topic of ghosts aside if I wanted to get all the details out of Kristen. "So how'd you do it?"

She seemed to regain some of her wit, eying me with obvious suspicion. But the hunger in her eyes, her thirst to spill the secret she'd been keeping clutched so tightly, won over her common sense. "It was easy. I did it all myself." She said with pride, unconsciously smoothing down her hair. "Everyone always says I'm the spitting image of my mother, and all it took was some dark lighting and cleverly placed make-up for me to pass for her. All I had to do was get the right outfit and splash some pig's blood on it - ketchup is so unauthentic. I recorded myself slashing the knife about a bit and growling, added some mist for theatricality and projected the image on for thirty seconds each night, so it would disappear as realistically as a ghost.

"I'm not gifted with technology or anything, I just know how to use a phone well, and my father's was top notch. I was able to set a timer for a haunting melody to wake him about midnight, and projected the image from his own phone set on the bedside table facing out. And then, on the seventh night..." Her voice took on a dream-like quality. "I came there myself. Shook him awake a midnight, standing with the knife over him. This time however, he knew it was me. He recognised me, but he was too late. I killed him, and I got away with it."

"And your mother's prints on the knife?" I cut in.

"I convinced someone to hack onto a database and switch the record of my mother's prints to mine." She answered, before smiling again. "I hadn't anticipated the rush of it, how good it would feel... It was one of the best moments of my life."

"But how could you do it?" Reagan blurted out, and I rolled my eyes at the memory of her promise to keep quiet. "How could you kill your own father?"

Her face grew sharp again. "He wasn't my father." She said scornfully. "He never loved me or even cared about me. He let me grow up in the house all alone, and then he dared to try to influence my life. So yes, I killed a man, but I didn't kill a father. There was no father to begin with."

Buried beneath the act, beneath the fancy gowns and the glares, I finally got a glimpse of what had been there all along; a little girl angry at her father for never paying her any attention. But I still felt no sympathy for her. There were plenty of people who managed to survive with no parents, and no riches to make up for it, and they didn't become killers. If you asked me, Kristen deserved everything that was coming to her.

"So then you fired the servants who were there are the time. Paid people off. Covered it up." I concluded. But something still felt off about the fact she'd managed to keep it going for so many years, whenever it was so obvious that she had done it. I'd figured it out just by reading about it, so other detectives should have been able to do the same, especially those looking at the case.

"But you didn't cover it up alone." For once, I was glad of Reagan's interruption. Her voice was growing higher, perhaps out of excitement that she had figured it out, or maybe out of anticipation that Kristen would agree with her. "You got help. Someone professional, who knew what they were doing, knew exactly how to make murders of those who questioned you look like accidents..."

Although her statements seemed to be aimed at Kristen, her eyes were on me, egging me on. She was almost impatient, waiting for me to figure it all out. And then it clicked.

"There's no need to investigate Ben, my butler. He is completely innocent in all this, and even tried to help me catch the thief."

In my experience, rooms were only kept like this if the occupant was trying to hide from something by ensuring there was no trace they'd ever been there. I wondered if I dusted the surfaces for prints whether I would find any.

He was hiding something, I knew that, but he was doing a good job of it. Too good a job. I would bet my life savings that he was professionally trained in the business of secrets, legal or illegal.

"Ben." The name slipped easily off my tongue, and Reagan sank back in her chair. "Ben's an assassin, isn't he?"

Kristen's lips curled. "Not just an assassin. My assassin." She looked smug. "You're not the only detective around here. Let's just say that all the ones who dared approach me like you're doing now got a little visit from Ben. I keep him around for security reasons, of course."

"And also because you're sleeping with him."

For the first time in the conversation, I think it was fair to say Kristen and I were truly shocked. We both slowly turned to look at Regan, who was blushing with the fierceness of a tiger. "What?" She said, trying to sound nonchalant. "We all know it." She scrunched up her nose. "You're not exactly discreet."

For a moment I was struck by an image of Kristen and Ben kissing in the hall whilst all the servants try to creep around them, and I couldn't help but laugh. My opening snort was all it took to set Regan off too, and even Kristen looked slightly shamefaced, as if she didn't realise how obvious her romance was. "At any rate," she said through gritted teeth, "Ben got all the detectives before. And he's going to get you."

I showed no fear at the blatant threat. Instead, I leaned forward, making my next words nice and sharp. "If you kill me, everyone in my department will come running down on you. I'm a homicide girl, a redhead bitch, and that means there'll be a lot of people to answer to, including my partner." If I knew where she was. Brooke would be a really welcome addition right now.

I half-suspected Kristen to come up with some amazingly brilliant retort that rendered my argument invalid, but instead she sighed in annoyance. One thing I could say about her was that she always defied expectations. "I know," she complained. "That's why Ben told me not to bring you. But I had to - I needed the supposed 'best' detective."

"But why?" I snapped back. "I'm homicide, not theft. And I found the jewellery in your room. So why the hell did you need me here? Why did you invite someone who was such a threat to catch a petty thief?"

At this, she laughed. "Oh Amber," she said with a hint of fondness in her tone. "Clueless to the very last, aren't you? Able to pin a murder on me by not my intentions regarding you. Really, I'm in two minds about your sleuthing ability."

I felt a white hot flush of anger, and it took all my self-control not to pin her down on the table and force some answers out of her. But I knew Kristen was capable of incredible things, and I couldn't allow my anger to get the best of me in such an unpredictable situation. "So tell me then. Explain your genius plan further. Why am I here?"

She rolled her eyes and gave a long sigh, but I could already sense the quiver of excitement within her at the thought of explaining her elaborate plans. Her greatest flaw, her pride in the terrible feats she had accomplished, was at work again, freeing her mouth so she could sing her story to us like a bird. "The jewellery was never stolen, I admit. I lured you here so you could solve a different homicide-"

But her words were cut off by the unforgiving click of the safety being snapped off a gun, and a cold voice coming from behind me; "I think you've done quite enough talking for tonight."

I whipped around to put an image to the sounds, and was rewarded by the gun being forced against my temple. Ben's eyes hardened at me as he ordered, "Stay still or I shoot."

Oddly enough, I recognised the feel of the gun, but Regan shouted it out before I had the chance too. "Hey!" She cried. "That's the gun I confiscated off her earlier! I hid that in the safe!"

In the second it took me to marvel at being held at gunpoint with my own weapon, Ben redirected his aim at Regan. "That advice applies to everyone." 

"Don't shoot her in here, honey." I winced at the term of affection that rolled of Kristen's tongue as she relaxed into her chair. I'd been a damn fool to think Ben would have been ushered off to bed by Regan as easily as the others, and as always she'd been one step ahead. No wonder she'd revealed her secrets with such ease; she'd known Ben would soon figure things out and put a stop to it. "We'll have to have her properly disposed off. She's heard too much. And as for Miss Detective here, we have to put some thought into it. After all, her partner's coming in the mor-"

"That advice applies to everyone." Ben repeated, cutting her off once more. Kristen's eyes widened as the gun swivelled around to her.

"You're my assassin." She said as if that was a perfectly normal thing, as if it was preposterous that he would try to be anything else. "You do what I tell you."

His jaw clenched. "I followed your awful plan to invite her here." He jerked a shoulder towards me. "And look how that turned out." There was a moment of silence in the kitchen. I didn't even want to breathe for fear of breaking it. But it was Kristen who broke it, pushing out her words frantically, as if she was aware her time had a price on it.

"But we can still repair this. I don't understand why you would do this. We'll kill them and move, kill the others upstairs too for good measure, you can cover out tracks..."

"You've just told them everything!" He yelled, his composure breaking to the extent where he waved the gun around wildly, and this time Kristen didn't just look shocked, she looked scared. "If you did it once, you'll do it again. You're too much of a liability." A note of frustration crept into his voice. "I should never have stayed this long. Do the job, move on, that's the rule." He shook his head. "I'll kill them, Kristen. I'll cover my tracks. But it'll be me moving on, not you."

He re-focused his aim and pulled the trigger.

_________

I hope you all had a merry Christmas! I can't believe nearly another year is gone... and I still haven't finished this book! Things are heating up though, and I think this chapter is my favourite to date... and the next ones are going to be even better. Did anyone see Ben's betrayal coming? Did anyone work out how Kristen's father died? Are you satisfied with how some of the mysteries are working out? I would love to hear all your opinions. I'll try to have a shorter space of time between this chapter and the next... I'm off school for another week, so I'll maybe upload around New Year's. No promises, because I'm busy studying at the moment, I have mock exams as soon as I return to school. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the story!