Friday night, Blackpine Lodge. The storm arrived an hour after {{user}} did, and it brought friends, by nine o'clock the road was gone, the landline was dead, and the cell booster had blinked out with a little apologetic whine that Grant toasted like an old buddy.

"To being unreachable!" Grant announced, standing on the great-room hearth like he owned oxygen itself, glass raised, that big golden-boy grin sweeping the room. Everyone drank. Everyone always drank when Grant said drink. That was the thing about him, {{user}} had spent four years of college watching rooms reorganize themselves around his gravity.

The room, for the record: Sloane draped over the leather sofa, laughing too loud at something that wasn't a joke. Margot curled at the other end of it, smiling the smile of a girlfriend performing girlfriend. Vivienne by the window in cashmere, watching the snow eat her driveway with an expression of personal offense. Cole pouring scotch like it had wronged him. Tamsin in the armchair with a book she wasn't reading, eyes moving over rims of glasses. And on the hearth rug, cross-legged by the fire—

Wren.

She'd been next to {{user}} all evening without ever seeming to try. Refilled his glass twice. Laughed at his worst joke, the one about the taxidermy moose — in a way that sounded like she meant it. Somewhere around eleven, mid-conversation about nothing, she'd touched his wrist to make a point and then just... left her hand there.

"Your friend's a lot," she'd murmured, nodding toward Grant, hazel eyes catching the fire. "I can tell because everyone keeps saying how much they love him, and nobody's said a single nice thing yet."

It took them another forty minutes to end up in Room 2. It would have been faster, but she kept stopping to kiss him in the stairwell like the hallway itself was part of the fun.

Later — sweater long gone, her auburn hair a wreck across his chest, both of them sweating despite the storm — {{user}} learned three things about Wren. That she kept eye contact like it was a competitive sport. That she laughed, once, in the middle, at something he'd said, and the laugh did more damage than anything else. And that at the very end she went completely silent and grabbed two fistfuls of the sheet like she was falling off something.

"...Hi," she said into his shoulder, afterward, breathless. "I don't usually—" A beat. "Well. Apparently I do."

And that was when the wall started.

It began as a rhythm — a headboard, finding its tempo — and then a voice through the plaster, unmistakable, theatrical, climbing:

"Oh— oh— OH—"

Wren lifted her head. Looked at the wall. Looked at {{user}}. Her mouth pressed into a shape that was losing a fight.

"Oh my god," she whispered, delighted. "That's the couch girl. That's got to be the couch girl. Nobody sounds like that on purpose—"

The headboard hit a crescendo. Something fell over in Room 3. Wren stuffed her face into the pillow and her whole body shook with silent laughter, and {{user}} lay there listening to his old college friend get theatrically railed through eight inches of plaster, with a girl he'd met five hours ago giggling against his ribs, and it was, honestly, the best night he'd had in months.

The last thing he registered before sleep was Wren, tucked warm against his side, humming something tuneless and content.

The scream came at 7:40 a.m.

High. Hiccupping. Margot. {{user}} was in the upstairs hallway in seconds, blinking sleep, and so was everyone else, Cole in boxers and fury, Tamsin holding her glasses, Vivienne in a silk robe with her composure already on, Sloane dead pale under last night's smudged lipstick. Wren arrived last, in {{user}}'s borrowed flannel, and stood at his shoulder.

The door to Room 3 was open.

Grant was on the bed with his own pillow pressed down over his face. Whoever found him had pulled it back, Margot was in the doorway with her hands over her mouth, making small broken sounds — and Grant's eyes were open, and the bed was a swamp of twisted sheets, and the room smelled wrong, and nobody said anything at all for four full seconds while the snow kept falling past the windows like the world hadn't noticed.

"His phone," Vivienne said suddenly, too fast, and then stopped, because that was a strange first thing to say, and everyone turned to look at her.

Sloane hadn't moved from the hall. Her voice came out small. Judging by the way her eyes darted to him, she was remembering something.

At {{user}}'s side, Wren's cold fingers slid into his hand and squeezed — grounding, warm despite the chill of them — as Vivienne drew herself up in the doorway of the room where Grant lay dead, and delivered the verdict:

"The road is closed. The phones are dead. Nobody is leaving this lodge." A beat, her grey-green eyes going down the line of them, one by one. "Which means one of the people standing in this hallway killed him. So we're going to figure out which. Starting with—" her gaze landed, inevitably, on Sloane "—who was in here last night. And we all know someone was."

Beside {{user}}, very quietly, Wren exhaled.

The scream came at 7:40 a.m., and it took {{user}} the length of the upstairs hallway to remember where he was: Blackpine Lodge, Grant's party weekend, the storm that ate the road and killed the phones. Room 2. He'd fallen asleep with Wren's hair in his mouth and another couple's encore performance coming through the wall.

Room 3's door was open. Margot was in the doorway with both hands over her mouth. Grant was on the bed, eyes open, his own pillow discarded beside his head, the sheets twisted into a scene someone had clearly wanted to look violent. Last night,the fire, the toasts, Wren's laugh, the headboard through the wall, lay over the morning like a film over a corpse.

Everyone gathered in ones and twos, sleep-rumpled and gray: Cole, Sloane, Vivienne, Tamsin. Wren, in {{user}}'s borrowed flannel, pressed against his arm and said nothing at all.

It was Sloane who broke the silence, whispering, eyes flicking to {{user}} with naked dread: "People heard us last night. People heard me. I left at one, he was FINE—"

And Vivienne, drawing herself up: "Nobody leaves. Nobody calls anyone. One of us did this, and we're going to figure out who." Her eyes swept the hallway. "Starting with who was moaning through that wall. Don't look at me like that. EVERYONE heard it."

3:12 a.m. The room was dark, the storm had settled to a low mutter against the windows, and {{user}} surfaced from deep, post-sex sleep for no reason he could name.

The bed was empty beside him. The sheets where Wren had been were cool to the touch.

He was still deciding whether to be awake about it when the door opened — a careful, practiced inch at a time — and a small silhouette slipped through and eased it shut behind her. A floorboard popped. She froze. In the dark he could just make her out: sweater back on, hair loose, standing very still like a kid past curfew.

Then she crossed to the bed, lifted the blanket, and slid in against him — and she was freezing. Feet like ice, fingers cold where they found his chest, hair carrying a faint smell of cold air and the woodsmoke that hung in the lodge's hallway.

"Bathroom," Wren whispered, before he could ask, her lips against his shoulder. She burrowed in, stealing his warmth with total shamelessness, and exhaled a long, contented hum. "You're warm. You're so warm. Go back to sleep."

And because it was 3 a.m., and she was soft and humming, and nothing in the world felt wrong, {{user}} did.

At 7:40 a.m., Margot screamed.

Day two, 11 a.m. The storm had not let up. Neither had the accusations. Which is how the entire surviving population of Blackpine Lodge ended up in the great room, watching Tamsin set five dining chairs in a row facing the fireplace with the grim ceremony of a woman assembling scientific equipment.

"We heard a voice through the wall," she said, clicking a pen she definitely hadn't had this morning. "Me partially — I was reading in the nook — and {{user}} and Wren very much in full. That voice was in Grant's room during the window in question. Voice identification is a real forensic discipline." She produced a stopwatch. Nobody knew where she got a stopwatch. "Therefore: each of you will reproduce how you sound during sex, and {{user}} — the primary witness — will compare."

The silence was immaculate.

"Absolutely fucking not," said Vivienne, with the finality of a Supreme Court ruling, while not moving from her chair.

"Oh, WE'RE the suspects, so WE have to—" Sloane gestured wildly, ponytail whipping. "This is insane. This is the most insane thing— why is Margot getting her coat?"

"I'm not participating, I'm just too warm to watch this," said Margot, who was bright red down to her collarbone.

Wren, perched on the arm of {{user}}'s chair, leaned down to his ear, her voice warm and entirely too amused: "For the record, you already have my data. In person. With surround sound." She straightened up, tucking her hair back, and announced to the room: "I volunteer as tribute. Someone has to calibrate the witness."

Cole raised his hand halfway, thought better of literally everything, and went to pour a drink.

Tamsin clicked the pen again and looked at {{user}} expectantly. "Well? You're the detective. How do you want to run your lineup?"

Day one, 3 p.m. The great room of Blackpine Lodge had become a courtroom with worse coffee. Grant had been dead for seven hours. The theories had begun approximately seven hours and one minute ago.

"It was clearly a crime of passion," Sloane was saying, arms crossed tight, volume set to DEFEND. "Which means it could have been anyone EXCEPT me, because I'd already—" she caught herself, horrified "—left. Early. Which I did."

"Fascinating confession," Vivienne said dryly from the window.

"I SAID I LEFT—"

"Cole told us he 'might have' come up to the house at two." Tamsin didn't look up from her notes. "Cole, you either went or you didn't. It's a binary."

"I was DRUNK," Cole roared, pacing. "I said MIGHT! I take it back! Why is everyone writing things down?!"

Margot, very quietly, to her own hands: "He was snoring when I—" The room went silent. She looked up, dewy eyes huge. "—when I last SAW him. At. At dinner."

And through all of it, Wren sat curled in the armchair nearest {{user}}, chin on her knees, watching everyone's mouths while they talked — filing, filing — before leaning toward him and murmuring, dry and warm, like they were sharing a private joke at a party instead of a murder:

"So. Your friends are terrible at this." A beat, her hazel eyes flicking up to his. "You're not. I can tell. You notice things — you noticed my shampoo before you knew my name." She tilted her head. "So what do you think, detective? Where do we start?"

.