Rebecca didn't know how to process what she was looking at. She had never seen that much blood at one time before in her life. Sure, she had seen episodes of Grey's Anatomy where people are bleeding out everywhere, but that was fictional. This was real life.

"Lydia—I—I—"

"I know. Please come in."

Rebecca let out a short laugh.

"Are you serious? You think I want to go inside there? When you look like that?"

Lydia looked agitated.

"Please, Rebecca, you need to come inside before someone walks past and sees or hears us. I—I was attacked, and I fought back. I swear Rebecca, I'm not out here killing people for sport. Please, just...come inside. Please."

Rebecca stared at her for another five seconds before she heard a door opening at the other end of the hallway.

"Get in. Please."

Rebecca took a deep breath and walked into the hotel room, where her eyes weren't sure which insane thing to look at first.

The floor was covered in blood, with what looked like shards of glass scattered around closer to the bed. A lampshade was rolling around by the dresser while the rest of the lamp was lying on the floor, its base completely coated in blood. There was a small patch of blood on the wall by the bed, a little bit above Rebecca's eye-level. It looked faintly drier than the blood on the floor.

And then there was the most obvious part of the entire thing. The place where Rebecca's eyes immediately went as she struggled to hold back the bile rising in her throat.

Jaxson Karl's body, lying on the ground next to the bed. His head was bleeding, sending a pool of red to surround him. His face was directed towards the door and Rebecca could see that his eyes were open and his mouth slightly ajar, as if he had taken his last breath mid-sentence. Or mid-scream.

"I—I—Lydia, what did you d—"

"I don't know." Lydia whispered, "He was threatening me, and then he banged my head into the wall, and then I...I don't know. I don't even remember it, really. But he said he was going to kill me. He was going to kill me. So I...I killed him first."

Rebecca took Lydia's arm and led her to a chair in the corner of the room, away from Jaxson's body. She had so many questions for the model that she didn't even know where to start.

"Why was he here?" Rebecca finally asked, trying not to look over at the body.

Lydia, on the other hand, was staring at the body as if looking away from it meant that he would magically come back to life and hurt her. Rebecca waited a few seconds after asking her question before repeating it, a bit louder. Lydia finally tore her eyes away from Jaxson and looked at Rebecca.

"I...it's a long story."

"Start at the beginning." Rebecca said gently, trying to not startle her. She had read about how to handle people who were in shock, but she couldn't really remember much of it.

Lydia nodded.

"Jax and I dated in high school."

Oh, so we're going way back.

Rebecca listened as Lydia told her so much more than she could have ever anticipated hearing. About their website that Rebecca had found, about her connection to Hank. About Jaxson coming to her hotel room and telling her everything he did to try and win her back. About him attacking her when she refused to take him back. About how without Jaxson Karl, none of them would have been in the position they were currently in.

"And so I killed him." Lydia finished, "I don't know what came over me. But I killed him. And now I don't know how to fix this or hide it or do anything that will make it so that I don't spend the rest of my life in prison."

Rebecca took a deep breath, trying to think about a solution. A logical solution. Instead, the only thing filling her head was annoyance with herself, not Lydia.

How have you inadvertently become an accomplice to murder twice in three months? She berated her inner self; I don't think I've ever heard of anyone that unlucky. Ever.

She remembered hearing the crack in the windshield when Hank hit it. She remembered the yell that stopped midway through—as if he had died while yelling out in fear, or in pain. His heart stopped beating and his lungs stopped yelling and he toppled over the hood of the car. She remembered Hank's body, sprawled out behind her own car. There had been so much blood coming from his head. Rebecca wondered if it had cracked on the pavement; the screech of the brakes had been so loud that she wouldn't have been able to hear if it did.

But there was so much more blood surrounding Jaxson. And his head...it looked deformed. Like a plastic ball where one pocket had been pushed in and nothing would push it back out. Hank hadn't looked like that. Rebecca hadn't been forced to look at Hank's body in fluorescent hotel room lighting, either. She wanted to throw up everything she had eaten that day—and since it had been a day without the anxieties of going to the Oconee County Courthouse, Rebecca had eaten quite a bit.

Now, she wished she were at the courthouse. Even on the witness stand. Anywhere but here, in this hotel room, watching her friend's stepmother mumble in shock over the body of her dead lover that she had just killed—who also happened to be prosecuting Rebecca's friend.

Lydia was still looking at her with absolute terror in her eyes, and all Rebecca could think of was the fact that she had not been helpful in the least when it came to covering up Hank's death. But somebody else had.

"I'm going to call Kennedy."

><><

"Jenny slipped something in his Tennessee whiskey, no law man was ever gonna find."

Kennedy had forgotten how much she loved Carrie Underwood until she had put on her country playlist when she hopped in her car. Church Bells was the second song to come on, and she realized she still knew every word. So, she was singing along at the top of her lungs.

"And how he died is still a mystery."

Rebecca had been so cryptic on the phone. Why was she with Lydia? Why did she need Kennedy? Why hadn't she told Kennedy that she was going to see Lydia before she got there?

Kennedy didn't want to see her stepmother. The woman was awful. But Kennedy had promised herself that she would start showing up more for Rebecca, and she was trying to be a woman of her word these days.

"But he hit a woman for the very last time."

Kennedy pulled up to the hotel that Rebecca had told her to go to, remembering that she had said to go to room 1K. Why she couldn't have just texted her, Kennedy had no idea.

She got out of her car and walked into the hotel, rolling her eyes as she went. Of course, Lydia was set up in a 5-star hotel that looked like a resort from the inside and out.

Gold-digger.

Kennedy walked down the hall until she found room 1K and knocked on the door. Five seconds went by without an answer, and she raised her hand to knock again when the door whipped open, and someone grabbed her arm. She was yanked into the room and the door slammed behind her. She heard a lock click before registering the man on the floor.

"What the f—"