31 Marley
Marley
Marley couldn’t sleep. Neither could Marshall, from the sound of his breathing.
They were both just lying there in the dark, not talking to each other.
But she was too exhausted to talk, too full of adrenaline and fear to sleep.
She knew Marshall was probably thinking about Josh and about the group’s reaction to hearing he was elsewhere—that it now seemed highly unlikely he’d committed either of the murders.
For the most part they had been relieved—and maybe disappointed.
After the behavior they’d all witnessed at the party, Josh was an easy-ish answer.
And then there was Lily. Marley had tried to call her a few more times, but the phone hadn’t even rung. Certainly the storm was screwing up her cell signal, and her battery was running low anyway. Someone needed to tell Lily what had happened, yes. But now there were also so many questions.
Why had she done what she’d done? What had she thought she would gain from writing those notes?
The only thing Marley could imagine was that she’d been hoping to ruin the week for them.
That she thought exposing all those secrets would cause fighting and cold shoulders and maybe even coming to blows.
But murder? She couldn’t have imagined it would come to that.
Could she?
A sudden blood-curdling scream sliced right down her back.
“What the hell was that?” Marshall sat up so fast he elbowed Marley in the gut.
From the corner of her eye, Marley saw something plummet past their window.
Something had fallen from Juliet and Josh’s balcony.
“No, please, no.”
Marley and Marshall ran down the hall, banging on doors as they went, trying to wake up everyone they could.
At the stairs, Marley somehow got ahead of Marshall and skidded into the great room on her bare feet.
She ran across the expansive space, her heart pounding painfully in her chest. When she wrenched open the sliding door, the wind hit her hard, but she realized it was no longer raining.
The world outside was still pitch black, though.
All she could make out besides the potted trees on their sides and the random debris across the patio were the dark clouds moving swiftly across the even darker sky.
That and the trees at the back of the property jerking around in the wind.
Marley’s hair whipped across her face and got in her eyes as she ran toward the end of the east wing, where her and Marshall’s room was located. They had the room at the end facing the backyard. The room directly under Juliet and Josh’s room.
Please just leave me alone, Juliet had said. I don’t want to see you or anyone else.
And Marley had listened. Marley had left her there, alone. She had even been somewhat relieved.
Marley hurtled over a broken chair and shoved aside a shrub that had come clear out of the ground and landed on the walkway.
How the hell that could have happened she had no idea.
But seconds later, all thoughts went right out of her brain as she saw Juliet—the twisted, lifeless, bleeding form of Juliet—splayed and broken across the raised planter border around the north patio.