Dark Secrets

Chapter 3

Amy woke up with a start. She opened her eyes, and nothing but darkness greeted her. She slowly remembered what had happened this morning. Detective Steve Mendoza showing up on her doorstep, telling her her brother would never come home again, resulting in her crying herself to sleep after he had left her appartment.

After you threw him out of the appartment, she corrected herself.

She looked over at the alarm clock on her nightstand. 8:42pm - she had slept for almost 8 hours. Then her eyes wandered over to the picture frame right next to it.

Jason and her, at Laguna Beach, last summer.

He looked so good, she thought, with his blonde hair, the blue eyes with which he could cast a spell over just any woman he wanted to. The muscles standing out on his arms, even more prominent since he had joined the LAPD. And that smile...her heart broke as she realized she'd never see it again. Jason was dead. Her brother would never come home.

Tears started welling up in her eyes again, and while she put her arm over them to stop them from flowing, she started asking herself why she was actually crying. Was it really just sadness and shock over the news that he had been murdered two days ago? Or was it because of what Steve Mendoza had told her just before he left her appartment the last time? If she was honest to herself, Amy knew, it was the latter. She knew she shouldn't feel that way right now, but she was disappointed in her brother, and she couldn't do anything about it. Could it really be true? Did Jason quit the job he loved doing the most and for which he had fought so hard with their father all those years? More, did all of that happen months back without him telling her, his beloved younger sister, anything about it, even lying to her without her even noticing the slightest thing?

Amy swung her feet out under her blanket and sat on the edge of her bed for a moment. Then she got up, went into Jason's room on the other end of her hallway and stood in the doorframe, staring at his his things. Shirts, jeans, paperwork, books, strewn all around the room, and on his bed there was his LAPD uniform. She had just ironed it a few days ago, hoping Jason would come home soon and need it.

She walked over to his bed, sat next to the uniform and took it into both hands. Then she stared into the nothingness, trying to recall any conversation she and Jason had had over the past three months, going over anything he said, looking for any hints.

"Brother, what did you hide from me?", she asked the wall. Then her view landed on a business card that peeked out from under his laptop. She stood up and reached for it. Bill Harrison, P.I., it said. A private investigator? she thought to herself. Why would he need one?

For a moment, she stared at the address until she realized that she knew it. She considered contacting Detective Mendoza for a second, but then she discarded the idea; whatever Jason had been hiding for the last three months - apparently it had been important - or dangerous - enough that he couldn't even confide in his partner of six years, let alone her. And she needed to find out the reason for that by herself.

Amy grabbed her coat and her car keys, then made her way to Bill Harrison, determined to bring light into the darkness that her brother's death had left behind.