Chapter Two | Jordan

Jordan Conrad was still incredibly confused about where she fit into the entirety of Nathan's plan.

At first, he had demanded that she kill Michael Hadden. He had told her to murder someone, and then when she didn't follow through, he decided to have her be his delivery boy. One of the tasks didn't quite match the severity of the other.

But if there was anything that Jordan had learned over the course of the past few weeks, it was that she was absolutely not to question any order Nathan gave her. She didn't feel like being sedated again. Or murdered this time.

Jordan let her mind wander back to before everything had happened. Before Neil had been murdered, before she had received any threatening text messages from an unknown number, before she had anything to worry about besides Mary berating her outfit in front of Kate and their boyfriends. Jordan remembered when Mary was the absolute worst person to her, and she still managed to have such a small amount of dignity as to keep the queen bee as her best friend.

Now, Jordan had a strange group of best friends who were all being stalked and blackmailed, and her worries were far larger than who was going to hear Mary telling her that she couldn't wear navy and black in the same outfit.

Jordan looked down quickly. She was wearing navy today, but not black. Some habits were hard to break, even in the most dire of situations.

She headed into the police station, her mind still whirling with questions and memories and wishes that she had simply kept Neil from going out on that night in June. She didn't understand why this had to happen to their family—they were good people. She hadn't broken the law before her brother's death, unless you counted underage drinking. But all kids did that...it didn't warrant the stalking and near-death experiences that had followed. She had never driven after drinking. Jordan wasn't trying to endanger other people.

Above all, she felt like she had missed out on getting to know her brother. Seeing Roland's face at having his older sister alive and with them made Jordan's heart ache, even if the Green boy had been upset with his sister for lying to him. He had her back. She was alive and well and able to speak with her brother again. Jordan missed Neil; they hadn't had very much in common, but they had always been able to talk to each other about the important things.

Besides him screwing her best friend.

But maybe if she had taken the time to know him better, he would have told her about Mary eventually. Maybe. Just...maybe.

Jordan shook her head to clear it of everything about Neil. She didn't need him. She didn't need anyone else. She needed to get into the police station and deliver the stupid file folder in her hands before she was murdered by someone whose last name she didn't even know. The file folder with the giant "K" scrawled on the front with black sharpie, standing for the name of the person who Lindsey had determined deserved less of a life than she did.

Then again, who was Jordan to judge? None of the five had led very pristine lives since Nathan was introduced into their own.

Jordan walked up to the receptionist at the front of the station and smiled widely, trying her best not to look like she had anything to hide. Which she didn't know that she did...since she wasn't completely aware of what was inside of the file folder she had tucked under her arm.

"Hi, my name's Jordan Conrad. I—"

"I know who you are." The receptionist interrupted. She was a middle-aged woman, probably around 50, with dark brown hair that was showcasing light gray roots in need of a touch up. Jordan swallowed nervously as the receptionist raised her eyebrows at the high schooler. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

Jordan shook her head slowly.

"No, ma'am." She replied carefully, "School let out at 2:00 PM. I drove straight here afterwards. I wouldn't dream of skipping my education."

The woman nodded hesitantly while turning to check the clock behind her. Jordan let her eyes flit up to double-check the validity of her own story: it was 2:24 PM.

"Alright. What can I do for you, Miss Conrad?"

"I have some evidence that I'd like to show one of the detectives here. Is that possible?"

The woman nodded again.

"I suppose so. Detective Barlow is on duty. You can head on back to his office and I'll let him know you're on the way."

Jordan felt her heart drop at the sound of that name but kept her composure.

"Of course. Thank you." She replied, smiling slightly as she walked back towards Detective Barlow's office. She knew the way at that point and could hear the receptionist informing him of this impromptu meeting as she walked.

Jordan felt herself shaking and consciously tried to make it stop. Barlow had something to do with the chaos that was their current state of living, but she simply couldn't figure out what he had to do with it. It was almost scarier than Nathan, in a way—at least they knew that Nathan was physically threatening them almost constantly. With Barlow, they knew he had something to do with everything going on...but they just didn't know what.

"Miss Conrad, nice to see you again." Barlow grinned slightly as the girl walked into his office, "Have a seat."

"Alright." Jordan nodded uncomfortably, sitting down in the chair on the opposite side of Barlow's desk as he stood to close the door. "I'm not trying to be here for a long time, I just have something to drop off—"

"Aw, that's too bad." Barlow cocked his head to the side and looked her up and down once with a mixture of annoyance and curiosity on his face. "I was hoping to ask you a few questions."

"I'd rather just give this to you and be on my way." Jordan replied quickly, placing the file folder on his desk and leaning back in her chair, further away from him. "I know that you've opened the car crash back up into a murder investigation, and I think this will help you figure out who did it."

Barlow's eyes widened slightly as he leaned forward and plucked the folder off of the desk. He opened it and started to skim through the papers inside, eyes still wide and mouth slightly open in shock.

"This is...very helpful, Miss Conrad. I'm assuming you'll want to keep anonymity about who exactly gave us this information?"

"That would be preferred, yes." Jordan replied, standing to leave. "That's all for today, Detective."

Barlow nodded and Jordan headed for the door, stopping right before her hand hit the doorknob as the detective called out to her.

"Miss Conrad, one more thing."

Jordan sighed slightly and turned around.

"Yes?"

Barlow stood slowly and walked around his desk until he was a mere foot away from Jordan, looking down at her intensely. Her heart began beating faster, hoping that she wasn't going to have to use the pepper spray she kept in her purse at all times.

"Why were you and your friends at my cabin on Sunday?"

The question caught her completely by surprise as Jordan recalled the events of two days earlier. Everything had happened so quickly since then, and everything at the cabin had seemed so life-or-death, that Jordan had forgotten about Barlow showing up just as they were driving away from Nathan and his horror cabin.

Barlow's horror cabin.

"Your cabin?" She asked without thinking, "That was your cabin?"

Barlow nodded.

"Yeah, it's my cabin. My family's had it for years and my father gave it to me and my wife a few years back. Why were you all there on Sunday?"

Jordan felt herself growing queasy but kept her stomach in check for a few more seconds.

"We were sent there on a dare from one of the football guys." She shrugged, "I didn't realize they were daring us to go to your cabin, I thought it was just some random creepy place at the edge of town."

Barlow raised his eyebrows slightly, very clearly not buying it.

"Miss Conrad, some weird stuff has been going down at that cabin in the past few months, and you five just showing up doesn't seem like any sort of random coincidence—"

"I'm sorry Detective, but I have to go. I can only tell you what I know, and what I know is that we were dared to go there." Jordan interrupted quickly, feeling her lunch starting to come up the wrong way, "I'm sorry."

She left the office and the station as quickly as her legs could take her, waiting until she got right beside her car and out of sight of the station's windows to hurl up everything that she had eaten in the last 24 hours.

Barlow being involved in the cabin made everything so much worse. She wasn't sure exactly how, but something inside of her said that this was not something they were supposed to take lightly.

A/N: Hey guys! I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Also, if you're interested in self-publishing and don't know where to start, feel free to check out my latest blog post (external link to this chapter!) for my step-by-step guide on how I published Dear Sydney and Forbidden and a few insider tricks on the best ways to go about every part of the process.

-Katherine