Settling back in, I hung my head and spent some time staring at the worn, grey carpet. It was patterned with more than its share of stains, the origins of which I didn’t even want to speculate over. But, when you have little else to do, your brain will tend to entertain itself however it wants, so it set about trying to identify the oddly shaped splotches of its own accord, regardless of my feelings on the subject.

As I sat staring at what I had decided was most likely the fossilized remains of a coffee spill, I could hear one of the ballasts on the fluorescent light fixture above me humming toward extinction. It wasn’t terribly loud just yet, but I suspected it would be in the not too distant future. Hopefully, I would be out of here by then and wouldn’t be around to hear it when it finally died. Of course, given my current predicament, there were probably worse places I could be.

The officer who had brought me here referred to the building as The Bureau. I hadn’t seen much of it, but judging from what I had glimpsed, I assumed this was where the detectives were based as opposed to the uniformed officers. That wasn’t much of a surprise either. Given that I had cajoled my way into a sealed crime scene, it stood to reason that I had raised more than a few eyebrows in all the wrong places. I’m sure I had probably managed to make myself a suspect of some sort.

My sleep-deprived brain mulled that over for a moment before forcing me to let out an involuntary harrumph. So far, Felicity had been accused of the murders, new evidence pointed to the real killer being a half-sister she never knew she had, and now I was up to my neck in the wrong side of the investigation. I suppose there was nothing quite like keeping it all in the family.

I had just set my sights on identifying a different stain a foot or so over from the first when the relative silence of the interview room was broken by the sound of the door swinging open.