They were all there when I walked in, arrayed around the dining room table at the end closest to the fireplace. Aiden, of course, had taken the head of the table. The seat to his left was empty, presumably saved for me. The seat beside that was occupied by Gage.

Sometimes the men in my family could be overbearing, but on days like this, I appreciated the way they looked out for me.

I sat between my brother and my cousin and busied myself pouring a cup of coffee from the tray in the middle of the table. Cooper sat directly opposite me, on Aiden's right, and Knox beside him. Riley was on the end, a notebook and open pen in front of him.

He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on as he glanced down to the notes on the page, picked up his pen and made a slight correction. I tried to ignore the flip in my belly.

What was it about those glasses? And the scruff on his cheeks, not quite thick enough to be a beard. His untucked white button-down, sleeves rolled up, made him look almost professional until I got to the worn jeans and motorcycle boots.

I wanted to hate him.

He’d played me. Lied to me.

But he was still Riley. My Riley.

He glanced at me, his hazel eyes narrowing on my bare left hand. The engagement ring was on my dresser. We weren't planning to go out until later, and I didn't see the point in wearing the ring at home.

We weren't engaged. The ring was a prop. It meant nothing, but seeing it on my finger depressed me. I could put on a front for everyone else, but I knew the truth. I wanted that ring to be real. I wanted all of it to be real.

Was it better or worse that I'd had one night with him? One night where I really believed in love. In forever.

I couldn't decide.

My aching heart said it was worse to have tasted heaven only for it to turn sour. My brain repeated the old platitude about better having loved and lost, blah blah.

I’d loved and lost him once. I could have skipped doing it a second time.

I curled my hand into a fist and hid it under the table, pretending to ignore Riley's scowl.

"Where are we?" Cooper asked, getting everyone's attention. Aiming the tip of his pen at me and then Riley he said, “You two went out yesterday, pumped the gossip machine through Sloane. Any action since then that we haven't heard about?"

Riley tapped his pencil on the pad of paper. "Nothing since the yellow hyacinths and begonia on the seventeenth. Abigail is working on a benefit next week, co-sponsored by the Winters foundation. It would be a good opportunity to be seen."

"I thought all the tickets were spoken for," I said, remembering Abigail mentioning it at dinner the night I'd stayed with them. I wasn't a big fan of formal affairs. I wouldn't have anything to wear. But Riley was right; it would be an excellent place to be seen. All the best gossips would be there.

"I asked her to hold back a few tickets, just in case we needed them," Aiden said.

"Sophie and I will go," Gage offered.

"So that’s settled," Cooper said, making a note. "Between now and then?"

"I have some ideas for lunch, dinner out," Riley said. "What do we have from the flowers?"

"No trace evidence worth a damn," Cooper said. "We still don't know where they came from, and the account that paid for the delivery goes back to a prepaid credit card and a dummy email."

I looked from Cooper to Knox. “I don't understand how after all this time we have no clue who it is. How many times has he sent me flowers? He's here somewhere. He's watching me. You guys are supposed to be the best. How does he keep getting away from you?"

"Lise," Cooper said, looking pained, his voice placating. "I know this is frustrating. We're going to get this guy. He's been different than other stalkers we've dealt with. More careful. He resists escalating, getting sloppy. These last few weeks are the closest we’ve come to pushing him into making a mistake."

"He hasn't made one yet," I muttered, under my breath.

"No, but he sent three arrangements in less than two weeks. I'd call that an escalation," Knox said.

I looked across the table at Riley, meeting his gaze for less than a second before my eyes skipped away. "I just want this to be over. Tell me what to do. I'll do anything. I don’t care if it’s dangerous. Just tell me what to do.”

Riley leaned forward and pointed one finger at me. "No. No way, Lise. The idea is to push him into escalating. To push him into getting sloppy. All you do is pretend to be happily engaged to me. Safely engaged to me. You're not going to do anything."

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to be passive? To do nothing? I admit running away from home and staying away was not a great plan. But at least it was doing something. This is just—waiting. Waiting and hoping. It's driving me nuts."

"Lise, I know you're frustrated," Cooper said again, "but—"

“She's not wrong," Riley said, interrupting Cooper. Cooper shot him an annoyed look, one Riley ignored. "We've been doing the same thing for over ten years. Protecting Annalise, trying to figure out who’s sending the flowers and the gifts. None of it’s working. We're looking in the wrong direction."

"What do you mean, Riley?" Aiden said.

"I mean, I don't think Lise's stalker is a stranger. I think it’s someone she knows. I think it’s someone all of you know. And I think it has to do with Anna Winters."

Riley sat back, apparently waiting for a response. He got nothing but blank stares.

"Riley, that's a stretch, don't you think?" Cooper asked, his voice strained as if he were trying to be patient. "Annalise had a lot of media on her when she was younger. She was an uncommonly pretty little girl in the middle of a scandal, and it shouldn't have surprised anyone that she drew the wrong attention. I don't know why you think this has to do with Anna."

“And I don't know why you’re so resistant to the idea that it might," Riley shot back. "This isn't the first time I’ve brought it up and every time you shoot me down. Annalise looks like her mother. And there's a lot we don't know about Anna Winters."

"Are you suggesting we investigate my mother?" Gage asked, his voice tight.

The vein in his neck throbbed. Gage was pissed. I didn't like the idea either. My mother was dead. Her secrets were hers, and they’d died with her. The idea of digging in to her past felt wrong. Disloyal.

But… Before I could tease out the logic, Riley put it into words for me.

"Your mother and father were murdered," he stated baldly. "Unless you believe the murder/suicide story?" he asked, one eyebrow raised, knowing none of us thought for a second my father had killed my mother and then himself. It was the police department’s favorite theory, but there was no way it was true.

"No, but—,” Aiden said.

Riley cut him off. "There were no signs of forced entry. Whoever killed them, your parents let the murderer in the house. It could've been a stranger, but what stranger would've come all the way to their door? I know no one used the gates back then, but their house isn't exactly in plain sight.”

"My father looked into it," Knox said. "There was nothing to find."

"That's bullshit," Riley said. "I liked your father, but he was twisty as hell, and you know it. Just because he didn't tell you what he knew about the murders, doesn't mean he didn't know anything."

"Watch it, Flynn," Cooper said, his ice blue eyes narrowed dangerously.

"No, I won't, goddammit. This plan puts Annalise’s life on the line. We're using her to push this guy, and if there is even the slightest chance he had anything to do with the murders, we have to be smart. We have to be fucking careful. We cannot afford to be blind."

"Yeah, well, it sounds like you're accusing our father—,” Cooper started to say.

"I'm not accusing Maxwell of anything except having information he didn't share,” Riley said. “You know, you said yourself that his fingerprints are all over Anna's missing son. My guess is she asked him to hide the kid, and he did. But the truth is we don't know. There are a lot of people who were involved with Anna and James, Olivia and Hugh."

"Who do you think we should be looking at?" Aiden asked, quietly.

"I don't know," Riley said. "But all of you assumed it was a man leaving those pictures of the murders, and it turned out to be Marissa Archer. A socialite from the country club wasn’t on my list of suspects either, but there you go. Perfect example. Here's another one, did you know your uncle William used to date Anna when she was still Anna Marlow?”

"No way," I said, in disbelief. Uncle William and my mother? "When? She and my dad started dating in college."

"Before that," Riley said.

"How did you find that out?" Knox asked.

"It was in your father's files on the murders," Riley said.

"And what the fuck were you doing going through our father's files?" Knox demanded, his voice rising.

"What you should have done years ago. Looking for any information that would help me figure out what the fuck is going on."

"You had no right—"

"I had every right," Riley shouted, surging to his feet. "Are you serious? Do you think there's anything I wouldn't do to keep Lise safe?"

Riley and Knox glared at each other, Cooper looking between them, his eyebrows knit together. I couldn't tell if he was going to break up the fight or jump in. My head was reeling.

Uncle William and my mother? Maxwell Sinclair hid my missing half-brother? So many secrets. So much I didn't know about my parents.

"Settle down, both of you," Cooper said. "Riley's got a point."

"It's not William," Knox said, dismissively. "I'll grant you, it does look like our dad had something to do with hiding the kid, and we don't know why. We're working on it. But just because he’s mixed up with that doesn't mean he has anything to do with Lise’s stalker. Anna Winters died a long time ago. Years before the stalking started."

"Eight years," Riley clarified. "And at sixteen Lise was a dead ringer for her mother. The hair, the eyes—I've seen pictures.”

"That doesn't prove anything. It's a guess. You're trying to pull together random information—"

“That doesn't mean I'm wrong," Riley said.

"Doesn't mean you're right either. But if you want to play that game, maybe it's you," Knox said, evenly.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Riley asked.

"It means there were three different times over the last eleven years when you were in close proximity to Annalise just before she received a delivery of flowers."

Riley shook his head in disbelief. "No shit, Knox. She was one of my cases. I was keeping an eye on her. I was in close proximity to Lise more than three times over the last eleven years."

"True," Knox said. "But the three times I'm thinking of weren't part of her casework."

"You're wasting time," Riley said. "You know it's not me. This started way before I knew her, before I knew any of you."

"I know you've been in love with her for twelve years. I know it was enough to get you to risk your job, more than once. Looking back, maybe you signed on with us, maneuvered your way onto her case because you were already obsessed with her. Maybe you've been in love with her a lot longer than twelve years."

"Stop," I said, the word erupting from my mouth while my brain was still reeling from the accusations flying back and forth across the table. "Riley is not obsessed with me. He's not in love with me. Stop being an ass, Knox. None of us wants to think this is someone we know. But he's right. It could be anyone. Have you looked in on Marissa Archer lately?"

Marissa Archer had been caught leaving pictures of my parent’s murders for us to find. She'd started with Jacob, then moved on to Vance, and had finally been caught trying to break into Charlie's house. We still weren't exactly sure why. When she'd been arrested, she told Charlie the real murderer was still out there, but as soon as her son and her lawyer got to her, she'd stopped talking. The last I'd heard she was safely contained in a private facility for the mentally ill.

Aiden's voice was hard when he said, “No change. She's not talking. Literally. The last report was that she'd suffered a psychotic break and wasn't expected to recover. She's a dead end."

"So there's no way she's orchestrating flower deliveries from her padded cell?" I asked, only half kidding.

"No," Cooper said, shortly.

"Maybe it's Sloane," I offered, trying to lighten the mood.

"Wishful thinking," Gage muttered under his breath.

"I know, right?" I whispered back.

Riley shook his head at me, the side of his mouth quirked up in a half smile. "You don't want it to be Sloane,” he said. "She's planning to make you a ton of money."

"There is that," I agreed. "Anyway, if she was the stalker, she'd be after my twin, not me."

"Maybe if she was, Maggie would take her down, once and for all," Gage said.

Maggie did not appreciate the way Sloane tried to hit on her husband. Vance loved his wife and actively disliked Sloane, but it still bugged Maggie. It bugged me too, and Vance was my brother, not my husband.

"So what do we do now?" I asked. Joking aside, if we were going to look at people we knew, the suspect list swung from zero to more than I could count.

"I want to go back to the house," Riley said. "Lise and I were there yesterday, and there were pictures missing from the mantle. We didn't stay long." He shot a careful glance at me. "But I need to go back and look again. There may be more missing than just a few pictures."

"I'll go with you," Knox said.

"So will I," Gage said. "I was almost eleven when they died. I may remember better than Annalise what belonged where."

"Gage," I said, quietly, reaching out and taking his hand in mine. I squeezed his fingers, not knowing how to put into words what I'd felt being in that house again. The longing. The memories. The sense of a life interrupted, lost to tragedy and time.

I couldn't decide if I’d wanted to curl up on the couch in front of the fireplace or never set foot in the house again. All these years we’d told ourselves Winters House was home. And in a way, it was. Our fathers had been brothers and best friends. My brothers and I had been running tame in Uncle Hugh's house since we could walk. Aiden and his siblings had been the same in our house.

But Winters House wasn't really my home. That house in the woods with its shingles and stone—that was home, and it hurt to be there.

Low enough so only I could hear him, Gage said, "I haven't been in the house since I came back. I want to go. I want to see if I can help."

"You don't have to stay if it's too hard," I said, squeezing his hand again.

"I won't. I promise," he said. Gage was trying to make me feel better, but I knew he would stay no matter how painful it was. Leaning over, he kissed me on the temple and said, "I have to stay to keep Knox from riling up your boy."

"He's not my boy," I muttered.

Gage just laughed and got up looking at Riley and Knox in turn. "I have to get into the office later today. Let's go do this."

"Don't leave the house until I get back," Riley said to me.

I rolled my eyes in response. I wasn't going anywhere unprotected. Knowing the stalker had been in my parent’s home, had taken pictures off the mantle and who knew what else, had left me more freaked than usual.

Cooper, Aiden, and I watched the other three leave. As soon as they were gone Aiden said to Cooper, “You planning to take another pass through your father's files?"

Cooper gave him a long, steady look. The two of them had been friends almost as long as they’d been alive. They were tight, but Cooper had been thrown by his father's presumed death and further messed up by learning that Maxwell had something to do with hiding my missing half-brother. I could understand. None of us were eager to start digging into our parent’s pasts.

They were dead, and we didn’t want to risk our happy memories. The truth was a pretty ideal. In reality, it could be ugly. And pointless. How much did I really want to know what had happened to them?

“I think I have to," Cooper said. "I missed William and Anna dating in college. It must've been a side note or something because I can promise you it's not front and center in any of the files or I would've known."

"We're all a little fucked up over our parents," Aiden said.

"Truer words," Cooper agreed. "But, Flynn is right. We have tunnel vision. All of us. The harder we look for the baby Anna gave up, the more the search turns in on itself. It's not an accident, and it's got my father's fingerprints all over it. God knows I loved him, but Flynn's right about that too. My dad was a twisty bastard. Good father. Sometimes even a decent husband. But he had very specific ideas about loyalty and honesty. We did not always have the same view of right and wrong."

"Do you think he’s dead?" I asked Cooper. "Your dad?"

Cooper sighed. "I don't know. I want him to be alive, but if he is, and I get my hands on him, he’d better have a good fucking explanation."

I stood and pushed my chair back. "I'm going to my room to mess with my camera, start sorting through all those pictures. If Sloane’s serious about showing my work, I need to have some work put together for her to show."

"Lise?" I met Cooper's eyes. "Put the ring back on. Even in the house."

I nodded and left the dining room. I felt like I was on a treadmill and an invisible hand had just cranked up the speed. I was sprinting to keep up with no idea where I was going or what would happen when I got there.