Kennedy didn't finish her sentence before Rebecca clapped a hand over her mouth, stopping the yell before it could finish. She struggled against Rebecca's hand for a second before beginning to calm down—but not all the way. She looked around the room frantically—were they planning to kill her too? Lydia was sitting in a chair, staring at Kennedy, covered from head to toe in someone's blood.

            Was the man on the floor ADA Karl?

            Rebecca let go of Kennedy after a few seconds of silence. Kennedy turned around quickly and grabbed Rebecca by the front of her nasty yellow t-shirt, pinning her against the door.

            "What the hell is going on here."

            "Kennedy, there's an explanation—"

            "Then explain, and explain quickly." Kennedy growled, "I'm not in the mood to be murdered tonight."

            Rebecca's eyes widened and she shook her head.

            "No, no, we—Lydia needs your help. Jaxson attacked her and she tried defending herself but kind of ending up...killing him. But it looks really bad, and you've covered up a murder before, and we—"

            "You thought you'd call your resident homicide expert?" Kennedy rolled her eyes and dropped her grip from Rebecca's shirt. "You dragged me into the murder of the dude who's trying to get me thrown in prison for killing his friend? Because that wouldn't look bad at all?"

            Rebecca shrugged.

            "I didn't think about that." She walked past Kennedy and towards Lydia, "She was in shock when I got here, but she's coming around. We need to make this place look like it did before, and we need to get rid of his body somewhere where it won't be found."

            "Lake Keowee," Lydia said quietly, "I was thinking about it. It would wash off any DNA and hopefully be deep enough that they don't find the body for a while, if at all."

            "Alright," Kennedy muttered, "I'll help. But only because you dragged me into this. I didn't want to be involved in the first place."

            "I know." Lydia spoke, a bit louder this time, "I appreciate you coming here, and you being willing to help. I know it's probably not how you want to spend the night before your last day of trial."

            "Well, I'm sure that's going to be postponed, since the attorney giving the first closing statement is currently lying on the floor with his head bashed in." Kennedy replied, her voice ice. "What did you do?"

            "We'll explain that later." Rebecca interjected, "Right now, we need to clean up."

            "Well, at least I planned for my murder," Kennedy mumbled under her breath. She looked around the hotel room, taking in everything she was seeing and trying to think of all the true crime documentaries she had watched in her life. "Rebecca, I'm sending you to the store. Buy some random groceries, a good chunk of them, and then get two bottles of bleach, the biggest ones you can find, a dozen dish rags, two big tarps or blankets, latex gloves, a pack of black trash bags, not the white, see-through ones, drain cleaner, a lamp, a dustpan, a pack of shower caps, a bottle of wine, three pairs of pajamas, all-purpose cleaner, and a roll of duct tape."

            "Do I get to ask—"

            "No." Kennedy interrupted, "Wear gloves the entire time you're shopping—it's December, so it shouldn't look weird—go to self-checkout to pay and use cash. If you use a card, you're the next one in this sick little group that's dying."

            Rebecca nodded, looking up from her phone, where she had been furiously typing everything Kennedy said.

            "I'll be right back."

            "Hurry." Kennedy ordered. Rebecca rushed out of the room and Kennedy locked the door behind her. She turned to Lydia.

            "Get up and follow me." Kennedy ordered, not bothering to wait around and see if she listened. She walked into the bathroom and heard Lydia's footsteps behind her. She reached into the shower, pulled the curtain all the way back, and turned on the water.

            "Get in."

            Lydia raised her eyebrows.

            "What?"

            "Get in." Kennedy repeated. "I want you to stand in this shower, completely clothed, until Rebecca gets back. Put your entire head under the faucet. And just...don't move. I don't want anything splattered on the curtain or the walls. Now get in."

            Lydia followed orders and stepped into the shower, standing directly under the showerhead. Kennedy watched as the blood started to run down the drain, trying to remember if she had included drain cleaner in the list that she had barked at Rebecca.

            Thirty minutes later, a knock sounded on the door. Kennedy walked over and looked out the peephole to see Rebecca holding half a million grocery bags in her arms.

            "How did it go?" Kennedy asked, locking the door behind Rebecca after she walked in.

            "It was good." Rebecca nodded, "I went to a random grocery store and they only had one cashier working, so no one even looked at me. I got everything you said. I didn't know what groceries you wanted, so I got some beans and fruit and bread."

            "I wanted the groceries so that you looked a little bit less like a psychopath with all that shit in your cart." Kennedy replied, looking for the bag with the latex gloves. She found them sitting on the very top of one of the bags and pulled them out. Once she had a pair on, she took a trash bag and walked to the bathroom.

            "Strip." She ordered Lydia, opening up the trash bag and turning off the shower. Lydia's clothes were significantly less bloody, and her hair and face were clean. "Put all your clothes in the trash bag but keep your underwear on."

            Lydia nodded and started to take her clothes off, putting them in the trash bag as she went. Once she was in just her underwear, Kennedy put the trash bag on the floor and helped her out of the shower, letting her dry off before sticking the towel in the trash bag as well.

            "Rebecca!" She called out, "Grab a pair of gloves for you and for Lydia."

            Once all three of them were gloved up, they got to work—all directed by Kennedy, the evident master of homicide cover-ups.

            Lydia was in charge of blood disposal. She took the white cushion off of the chair where she had been sitting with Rebecca and took it into the bathroom. She poured one tub of bleach into the tub and threw the cushion in with the blood-spattered side facing down. After thirty minutes, she took it out and laid it to dry on top of the toilet, all traces of blood stains gone. She drained the tub and scrubbed the walls and floor of the shower with bleach and then all-purpose cleaner before pouring drain cleaner down the drain and closing it.

            Rebecca ensured that the room looked as similar as it could have to before Jaxson entered it. She scrubbed the blood off the wall from where Jaxson had banged Lydia's head into it and scrubbed the splatters off of the nightstand. She threw the old lamp and lampshade into a trash bag and replaced it with the new one she had just bought. The new wine bottle was placed on the dresser after Rebecca opened it and poured a little bit down the drain of the bathroom sink—just enough to look like someone had enjoyed a glass of it already.

            Kennedy dealt with the body.

            In her head, she pretended that the body was fake. That it was a dummy, not a real person who had made her cry in court the day before, and that the blood was ketchup, set up for some stupid crime scene hands-on class in high school. She told herself that this was not real, and that she was doing this for someone she cared about—not someone who she had never had a polite conversation with in her entire life.

            She pulled out the pack of shower caps first and started wrapping them around Jaxson's head, focusing on where Lydia had apparently hit him consistently with the bottom of the blood-stained lamp across the room. She wrapped five shower caps around his head before securing them with duct tape, so that as much blood as possible would stay in the shower caps instead of leaking out when they started to take the body out of the room.

            After the shower caps were secure, Kennedy laid out one of the tarps flat on the floor. She got down beside the body and rolled him onto the tarp until he was more or less centered on it.

            It's a dummy. It's a dummy. This isn't real.

            Kennedy wrapped the tarp around him as tightly as she could and used duct tape to secure the ends and leave as little room open as possible.

            She repeated this with another tarp and then put both tarps in a blanket, because evidently Rebecca was an overachiever who bought both tarps and blankets.  She twisted the ends of the blanket into little knobs that looked like the edges of a peppermint wrapper and secured them with duct tape before rolling that blanket onto another blanket and repeating the process with the knobs.

            They'll be easier to carry out of here.

            By the time she was done, her entire shirt was covered in blood and there were little droplets on her leggings. She was breathing heavier than she had in years, but she managed to push the blanket-wrapped body towards the door and away from the blood around the bed.

            Rebecca swooped in with a dustpan and got as much glass off the floor as she could before going in with the all-purpose cleaner and rags, scrubbing at the floors and throwing rags in trash bags as they got too bloody to be useful.

            Ninety-seven minutes after Lydia had bludgeoned her ex-boyfriend to death, the hotel room was almost as good as new.

            "Alright, Rebecca," Kennedy nodded towards her friend's blood-stained clothes, "Strip."

            The girls took off their clothes and threw them in trash bags. Kennedy took a rag and soaked it in hot water before scrubbing herself down. Rebecca and Lydia followed suit.

            They took off their gloves just to put on the color-coordinated pajama sets from the grocery store and then replaced them with new gloves. Rebecca scrubbed a few more spots on the floor, Lydia threw the remaining supplies into trash bags, and they all stepped back to look at their handiwork.

            "It looks...good." Lydia said, her voice soft and tired. Kennedy nodded.

            "It does. Now we have to get this out of here."

            All three turned around to look at the heap of tarps and blankets propped up against the door.

            "How do you suggest we do that without freaking out the security guards?" Rebecca asked.

            "I've been staying here for a few weeks, and there are cameras absolutely everywhere." Lydia said, "But I'll go up to the room where they watch the feed and make sure no one's in there."

            "How do you even know where that is?"

            "A security guard recognized me a few days ago and wanted to impress me," Lydia shrugged, "It happens sometimes."

            "Okay, but then we're still on their tapes." Rebecca pointed out.

            "Once I see that you're both out of the hotel, I'll get rid of the footage. I can do it." Lydia promised, "Unless one of you wants to have that job instead."

            Kennedy looked at her stepmother for a long moment, trying to gauge whether or not she was willing to trust her for the first time.

            "No, you should do it." Rebecca said before Kennedy could make a decision, "We'll take the body out to Kennedy's car."

            "My car?"

            "There is no way in hell that I'm going to have my car come in contact with another dead body." Rebecca snapped.

            "Fair enough."

            "I'll text Rebecca something when I get up there. If it's safe, I'll say...thanks for stopping by. And if there's someone in there, I'll say...have you found the room yet?"

            Both girls nodded their agreement. Lydia slipped out of the door.

            "What if she just leaves?" Rebecca asked after a minute of waiting for a text.

            "It's her DNA all over the body, not ours." Kennedy shrugged, "If she ditches us, we'll just leave Jaxson here for housekeeping to find and she'll be arrested."

            "Good point." Rebecca mused, "I'm sorry for dragging you into this, I—"

            "Don't be." Kennedy shook her head, "We're even now. A murder for a murder."

            Rebecca laughed.

            "I can't believe this is what my life's turned into."

            Kennedy sighed.

            "Yeah, I'm sorry about that."

            Rebecca opened her mouth to say something, but her phone buzzed.

            "'Thanks for stopping by.'" She read the text aloud, "We're good to go."