Written in 20 minutes. No type for typos.

Spinelli took a step back from Sam, trying very hard not to look more worried than he actually was. So what if Sam had killed Franco? Franco had needed killing, and Jason had been trying for nearly a decade — but there was something in the look in her eyes that made Spinelli very uncomfortable.

“Uh, okay, well, then I’m glad I know—” Spinelli flashed her a smile he hoped looked casual. “I’ll just be—” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll just be going.”

Sam narrowed her eyes, walked towards him. “Going where?”

“Uh.” Spinelli pursed his lips. “To Portland. To, uh, Ellie and Georgie. My family. They need me, and I’m really getting too old for this crap—”

Sam folded her arms. “You know I did the right thing. Elizabeth will go to jail like she should have for what she did to me, and Jason will get Jake. That’s the right thing. Then Jason and I can pretend none of this ever happened.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Spinelli said slowly, though he wasn’t entirely sure that Elizabeth’s sins against Sam warranted such a drastic revenge considering Elizabeth had largely let Sam get away with all her shenanigans.

Either way, Spinelli very much wanted to make sure that he didn’t give Sam a reason to think that he did not agree with her. Because if he could just…get out of here, he could tell someone who could fix this.

Because this was not a Sam that he knew how to reason with.

“You agree that she deserves it for lying about Jason, don’t you?” Sam demanded. “For trying to steal him from me again?”

Not the time to mention that Elizabeth had actually been lying about Drew — Spinelli just nodded. “Uh, yeah. I mean, we were all mad about it, right? So…this is fair.”

Sam stepped away from the door, studied him for a long moment, then shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Uh, listen—”

She walked over to the nightstand and Spinelli tried to inch towards the door. No quick movements, no fast talking — he slid his phone out of his pocket, behind his back, navigated to his emergency contact lists and hit a random number, hoping it would be Jason because, man, Ellie would not know how to deal with any of this crap in Portland—

“I need to make sure no one knows it was me,” Sam said as she turned back to him, a gun in her hand. Aimed at him.

Damn it.

—

“I can’t just sit here and wait for Spinelli to find something,” Cam said as he got off the sofa and started to pace. “He’s not returning calls—his phone tracker is off—”

Elizabeth pressed her hand to her eyes. She just wanted to go back to the world she’d gone to sleep in — with nothing more than regrets about a bad boyfriend in her thoughts — not this elaborate revenge plot that had put her boys in the middle of it, shoved her past with Sam into the forefront—

She was exhausted by life right now, and the fact that any hope rested on one Damien Spinelli did not give her any optimism.

There was a sharp knock at the door. Diane frowned at it, walked over to it, and opened it, narrowing her eyes at Chase.

“I’m not happy about this either,” the beleaguered cop snapped.

“You’re not taking my son—” Elizabeth stepped in front of Cameron.

“Cameron?” Drew said, looking back and forth between the cop and Cameron whose face had paled. “Why the hell—”

“I’m here because we got DNA results back for blood under Franco’s nails,” Chase told them. He looked at Elizabeth. “It’s a match. For you.”

“For me?” Elizabeth shook her head, looked at her hands, at her arms— “I don’t have any scratches on me—”

“Circumstantial,” Diane sniffed. “They used to be in relationship—”

“No,” Elizabeth snapped at the redhead who scowled at her. “You’re not going to explain this away by suggesting I scratched him during sex. We broke up a month ago. I am not going to lie and say anything differently—” Her throat closed, her stomach pitched.

“Mom—” Cameron put a hand on her shoulder as Jason and Drew both started towards her. The teenager halted them both with a hot look. “Mom, he was trying to hurt you last night. Is it—” He cleared his throat as she looked at him blindly. “We know you didn’t kill him. But maybe—before I got there—it was worse than you thought—”

“Cameron,” Diane hissed. “Don’t—”

“Shut up!” Cameron threw at her. “My mom didn’t kill him! I didn’t kill him! I’m tired of all of this—tired of being protected—I’m not a kid anymore!”

“He didn’t,” Elizabeth managed. She squeezed her eyes. “He didn’t—” She exhaled slowly. “He tried—but he didn’t.”

“If I could?” Chase suggested with a mixture of irritation and discomfort. “I didn’t see any evidence of injuries last night that would have drawn blood the way you’d need to in order get these results.” He hesitated. “We found a pool of blood in the living room. The results aren’t back, but it looks smeared.”

“Someone dragged his hands through her blood?” Drew made a face. “Christ.”

“It’s time to stop protecting each other, Mom.” Cameron found his mother’s eyes. “We were victims. And if Chase thinks someone else was there, we should tell him who it might be.”

Chase lifted his brows. “We’re still working the scene. We might find more evidence to support a third party, but yeah, I’m thinking someone else had to be there. No other way to explain the timeline. Who was it?”

Drew exchanged an uncomfortable look with Jason, started to open his mouth, but his brother got there first.

“We think it was Sam.”

Before Chase could process that, Jason’s phone rang. “It’s Spinelli—” He answered it, putting it on speaker. “Spinelli—”

“Hey—listen, put away the gun, and we’ll talk about it—” Spinelli’s tinned voice echoed in the silence.

“No! There’s no talking!” The shriek was unmistakeable. Then a gunshot rang out over line, and they heard a phone hit the ground.

“What—” Sam’s voice was closer as she came towards the phone. “Is—did you try to call Jason—damn it—” Then the phone clicked off.

+6