CHAPTER 5 - Brothers and Sisters

Early the next morning, Zachary waited until Monica had left for the clinic and went up to have his breakfast. Finishing it up, he took a deep breath and climbed upstairs to the second floor of the house. He had to carry Orion with him, since the kitten couldn’t leap up the steps yet.

Orion was about 2-months-old now. He had been born to Zack’s grandmother's cat at the Bishop Ranch along with two other litter mates. When Zack moved back to Azure Rocks a couple weeks ago, he visited the ranch and adopted the little black kitten, as his cousins had done the same for the other siblings.

“Alright, keep quiet, buddy,” he whispered to the cat, carefully placing him down on the hallway as he glanced toward the door to Taylor’s room. Luckily, his sister liked to sleep until late in the morning during the summers. Orion softly meowed in response.

The second floor of his house was a place Zack rarely went to, since he had decided to set up his room in the basement. It had the master room, occupied by his mother, and two other rooms, Taylor’s and the one that was supposed to be his, which was now a guest room. A bathroom was between those two bedrooms, and Taylor used it by herself.

Here goes nothing, he took another breath and went into his mother’s room. It was the largest bedroom in the house, obviously, with a king-sized bed, a desk with a computer, a shelf that had a TV and a few books and ornaments in it, a couch, and two doors that led to the en-suite bathroom and a closet. The blue carpet on the floor helped muffle his steps.

Now that he was there, though, Zack felt a bit at a loss, wondering where and what he should look for the evidence that his mother could really be involved with one of the three men. The most obvious place was her phone, but she had certainly taken it with her. The computer could be another source, but he supposed that nothing could be found there that he didn’t have access to through his own phone, like her Pulse account, for example.

“I should’ve searched for suspicious comments on her posts,” he whispered, looking down at Orion, who just stared up at him with bright-green eyes. “Don’t pee up here, buddy, or we’re gonna have problems.”

Zack gazed at her computer again, wondering if his mother had synced the chat apps in her phone with a desktop version. He ultimately decided to check it after he took a better look at the rest of the room, as much as he didn’t have an idea of what he could even find. In the age of phones and digital stuff, the idea of stumbling into a written note or something of that nature sounded absurd to the teen. Still, he went to the nightstand on the side of the bed that he knew his mother used the most.

Carefully opening up the drawer, Zack instantly slammed it back in place, Orion jumping up at the scare as the boy’s blue eyes widened in shock. Well, a large dildo wasn’t that shocking for a single woman, Zack supposed, but he didn’t need to see it. A flash of his mother lying on that big bed and working that thing in and out of herself crossed his mind, but it was gone just as soon as it came. It did make his dick twitch a little, though.

“That teaches me not to dive in blindly,” he muttered, and the sharp mewl from Orion told him his cat hadn’t enjoyed getting a jumpscare either.

This time, mentally prepared for what was inside, Zachary slowly opened the drawer, and ignoring the large navy-blue phallic object, he peered at the other contents. Nothing useful beyond a couple notebooks which he wondered if they could be diaries. That was a step too far, he decided, and pushed the drawer back into place.

“Yeah, nothing here,” he said, directed at Orion, and the cat meowed back at him. “I know I’m being ridiculous, buddy, but I gotta see if I can find something.”

After passing by the other nightstand and finding it empty, the young man ended up heading toward the closet, figuring there was a small possibility that something could be hidden amongst his mother’s clothes. It was a spacious room, with a carpeted floor, mirrors, and wooden dressers and drawers. “What am I even doing?” He said, slowly walking into it.

Looking and trying to decide where he would look first, Zachary noticed some coats, blazers, and heavy clothes to one side, a vanity table filled with beauty products, and the short blue satin robe that Monica usually wore at nights and mornings hung next to the bathroom’s door, which was inside the closet. Finally deciding that there wasn’t any obvious place he should start with, the young man selected a drawer at random and reached to pull it open.

“Holy fuck!” He wanted to yell, and yet, managed to keep it muffled behind a hand just in time. Just his luck that the first drawer he would pull open was exactly the lingerie drawer, or one of them, at least.

Too stunned to do anything but look, Zack let his eyes rove over the lacey and silky pieces. He knew his mother was always impeccably dressed, and even leaned on a sexier side on occasion, but he could never have imagined that this taste translated to her underwear. It was impossible not to imagine her perfect body wearing those numbers. She usually wore some quite daring bikinis, but lingerie was on a whole different level altogether. He dared to let a finger brush against the soft fabric of a pair of black panties and his traitorous cock slowly hardened against his will. Breathing heavily, the young man actually picked a lacy blue bra and held it in front of his face, marveling at how big the cups looked. Using a hand to cup the front, his eyes widened at seeing it didn’t fully cover it.

“Fucking hell, Mom,” he whispered.

“And just what the hell are YOU doing, Zachary Connor Bishop?” A raspy, yet firm, voice came from the side, and made Zack’s stomach drop as he slowly turned his neck to face his sister.

Taylor was standing barefoot at the door of her mother’s closet, her long, creamy, and fit legs leading to a pair of silky black boy-shorts, a light-blue crop top covering her medium-sized bust, but leaving her flat, toned stomach on display. Her slightly-wavy dark-brown hair was loose, and she was holding Orion in her hands. The icy-blue eyes on her beautiful face, though, looked positively chilling as she tried to understand the scene she just stumbled into. On another occasion, Zack would have thought she looked quite sexy, but as much as he tried, his mind couldn’t work at that moment.

“Kitten got your tongue?” She pressed. “I had no idea my little brother had turned into a damn pervert while I wasn’t looking!”

After a few more seconds of his heart almost leaping out of his mouth, Zack instantly dropped the bra, but remained on his knees, fully facing Taylor now.

“Tay, I… can assure you there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this,” he said, trying to keep his cool, a hard feat, since he was shaking with fear on the inside.

The older sister’s eyes narrowed even more as she took a step further into the closet. “Oh, so you weren’t ogling Mom’s underwear like a man who wandered the desert for months and just saw a bottle of water?”

“Dammit,” Zack slapped his own leg, trying to summon the words that refused to come. “This is part of the camera case. I guess some stuff came up that I hadn’t had the chance to tell you yet.”

“So you were hoping to find your camera hidden under one of Mom’s bras? I know they’re big, but dammit!” Taylor demanded, getting a little angrier by the second. “Zack, you’re more creative than this. Out with it! Right freaking now!”

Zachary finally took a deeper breath and was able to launch into the explanation of his theory, the one that he developed with Chloe and Thea when they found his mother flirting with men in the background of his photos. How they were guessing that one of the three men could have taken his camera.

Taylor sighed, the story was so farfetched that she was sure her brother couldn’t have come up with it on the spot just to cover up that he was ogling their mother’s underwear. “Zack, even you need to realize how much of a stretch this theory is,” she sat down on the chair by the vanity table as her fingers absentmindedly petted Orion, who was purring contently on her lap.

“I know,” Zack stood up and looked down at the carpeted floor, balling his right fist. “But it’s the only one I have, Tay,” he softly said. “I'm struggling really hard not to go to the police right now. The only thing that stops me is that I'm sure it'd cause a witch hunt here in our street, and I wanna avoid it for as long as I can.”

Taylor took a deep breath as well, staring at the napping Orion with a calculating look on her beautiful features. “Want me to talk to Dean? I met him at the party,” she offered. It disturbed her that the firefighter had possibly flirted with her mother in the same party he made a pass at her. The worst thing about it is that she had liked him, so she kind of wanted to shine some light on the whole matter.

“He won’t tell you if he snatched the camera,” Zachary reasoned as he pulled out his phone and accessed the photo he took of Chloe and Thea that had the firefighter possibly flirting with their mother. “Here’s the pic.”

Taylor stared at the photo, analyzing it before she gave the phone back to her brother. “Look, this doesn’t prove anything either way, but if I go to his house under the guise of a visit or a date, maybe I can snoop around a bit.”

“I guess that might work,” the younger brother sighed. “I don’t like the idea of you risking yourself like this. You never know if he won’t turn violent if confronted,” he pondered. “There was a cheating scandal here in the cul-de-sac before we moved and I think he might be involved. The couple who lived here even split up because of it.”

“I hear you, Zack, but there’s no other way, and I have a believable reason to go to his house, at least,” she responded. “I don’t want you blindly risking yourself. Don’t go breaking into Mr. Reed’s house, you hear me?”

Zachary let out a sigh. “Alright, I’ll see what we can do in his case,” he told his sister, even though that was starting to give him an idea, albeit a potentially risky one. “Luckily, I can count on Chloe as far as her dad is concerned.”

Roughly at the same time, on the house next door, Chloe McRose was in her room on the second floor. Being a soccer girl for a long time now, her bedroom wasn’t what someone would call girly, with the walls being painted a creamy white tone and covered by posters of soccer players from both genders. There wasn’t a vanity table, the few beauty products she owned being stored in the bathroom she shared with her younger sister. Instead, there were shelves with trophies and medals that she won in the field.

“Mmmm, yesss…, do it…,”

Right now, Chloe was sitting in a gaming chair by her desk, the laptop opened in a rather spicy video as the redhead intently watched it. Earbuds were on to make sure no one could hear it as she furiously masturbated to the muscled man firmly pounding the shapely blonde woman on the screen. Wearing a faded green hoodie, Chloe didn’t have a single stitch of clothing on below the waist, her pale, athletic legs spread as she shoved two fingers into her pink pussy, the ginger pubic fur lightly scratching her palm.

“Yesss…, c’mon, tear her up with that huge… fuckstick,” she whispered, her blue eyes never moving away from the screen as the fair skin on her face flushed a deep shade of pink.

Seeing as soccer had taken care of her hymen a long time ago, Chloe ended up acquiring an interest in porn at a young age, what with the billions of videos readily available on the internet. It was an alternative outlet of burning energy for the young woman, but also the only way she could take care of her sexual needs, as she didn’t have the courage to approach guys at school and they never took a second look at her either, since she always covered herself up so much. The only place she felt comfortable enough expressing her wild energy was the soccer field, and she had to admit the goalkeepers in the opposing teams often paid the price for that.

No one knew about this hobby of hers, and as far as Chloe was concerned, no one ever would.

“Mmm…, fuck, that’s a big cock…,” she mewled, still pistoning the index and middle fingers of her right hand in and out of her completely soaked cunt, throwing her head back and muffling a moan as her bare toes clenched. “Yes…, I’m getting so fucking close.”

KNOCK, KNOCK

Chloe almost fell off her chair at the sound of the knocks on the door. “Shit!” She muttered, heart beating madly as she scrambled to find her sweatpants while at the same time closing all the compromising tabs in the laptop. It was a routine she had perfect over the years to avoid getting caught. “Just a moment!” She called out.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK

The sounds came louder and more insistent this time, and Chloe glared at the door to the bathroom that connected her room to her sister’s. “Calm the fuck down, Holly! Jeez!” She finally got the pants on while kicking the discarded panties under the bed. Taking a look at her still drenched fingers, she impulsively shoved them into her mouth and sucked her juices off, since she enjoyed the taste, and then wiped off the saliva on her pants. “You can come in!”

She had fallen back on the chair when the door opened and Holly marched into the room, a glare on her freckled face as she stopped in front of her big sister’s chair, arms crossed.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that Zack had lost his camera and is investigating it?” The younger ginger demanded. Wearing a blue t-shirt and shorts, her bare feet sank into the carpet of Chloe’s room.

“What?” Chloe was taken aback, even if she knew what her 17-year-old sister was talking about. Ever since Zack came back, Holly had become a bit hostile toward her, and she genuinely couldn’t imagine why. “I wasn’t aware it was any of your business. Besides, where did you hear that?”

“Indy’s sister told her, and she just told me,” Holly responded, and then she put her hands on the armrest of Chloe’s chair, towering over her even if she was the shorter one of the sisters. Their sky-blue eyes held each other’s gazes. “My business is that I wanna help!”

Chloe let out a sigh, it was just like Holly to create drama where it wasn’t needed. “If you want,” she shrugged. “Zack has a theory, though, and it involves our dad,” she explained, and at the frown on her little sister’s face, she elaborated on the three leads Zachary was hoping to hold the answer to the mystery of his lost camera.

Holly snorted, pulling back from the chair. “That’s utterly ridiculous, Dad would never cheat on Mom,” she frowned again. “Sometimes they make me feel like I’m the adult here with how much they act like horny teenagers around the house.”

“That’s what I told him, but I promised to take a look,” Chloe shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, and Thea told him about the Quaids’ divorce,” she added. “He thinks it could have a connection if the wife was the one who cheated.”

Holly nodded for a few seconds, and then turned to the window with a pensive look. “If either Dean or Mr. Reed was the one who seduced Mrs. Quaid, they might not want a repeat of it and risk getting a homewrecker reputation,” she deduced. “But Mrs. Bishop is single.”

“Well, that’s the theory Zack has,” Chloe shrugged again. “I told him I’d ask our mom if she knows something about the Quaids. We both know how awfully nosy she can be.”

“Good point,” Holly chuckled. “Well, you wanna ask her now? She hasn’t gone to work yet.”

Chloe let out another long sigh and slowly brought herself to her feet, knowing that Holly wouldn’t drop it. “Alright, let’s do it.”

The McRose sisters then made their way down the stairs toward the kitchen, where Charlotte had just finished putting away the breakfast dishes. She was wearing a red button-up blouse that strained under the weight of her quite large bust, and a black pencil skirt. It was her usual attire for her job as a real estate agent.

“My beautiful pups. I don’t see you two together so often anymore,” she smiled brightly, pulling her two daughters into a brief hug. She smelled something on Chloe, and even though it brought a grin to her lips, she decided not to mention it.

“We were wondering something, Mom,” Holly wanted to get straight to the point. “What do you know about the Quaids’ divorce?”

The mother raised a curious eyebrow and regarded them with a quizzical smile. The reserved one looking up curiously and the passionate one seemingly quite impatient. “That’s a very specific question, girls. What brought this on?”

“We’ve just remembered them and got curious, is all,” Holly replied with a straight face.

“Yeah, it was quite messy,” Chloe recalled. It happened around X-Mas and New Year, and the shouting in the house next-door could be kinda heard from the street.

Charlotte let out a chuckle and then shrugged. “Well, if you really must know, Mira cheated on Brian, but no one knows who it was with,” she told her daughters. “I tried asking her before she moved out, but she didn’t want to tell me.”

Chloe and Holly exchanged a quick look, and then the latter turned back to her mother. “That’s awful, Mr. Quaid must’ve felt absolutely destroyed!”

“He was a kind man,” Chloe added, awkwardly nodding.

“Yes, but why do you really want to know?” Charlotte tried asking again, fixing the girls with a curious gaze in her own sky-blue eyes.

Holly grabbed Chloe’s arm and began tugging her back upstairs. “Oh, it’s like we told you, Mom. We just remembered them and got curious,” she laughed and looked at her mother over her shoulder just as they were about to disappear from the kitchen. “Have a good day at work!”

After that not-so-subtle exit, the sisters were back in Chloe’s room. “She’s totally not gonna suspect that,” the eldest one sassed.

“Ugh! I don’t care, it’s not like she can do anything about it,” Holly retorted. “So, are you gonna tell Zack about it?”

Chloe sighed again. “I will, hold on,” she pulled out her phone and began texting her best friend.

“I know Dad is above any suspicions,” Holly started saying while her big sister typed on her phone. “But one of us needs to look into him. Just a little, so Zack can feel better about it.”

“Oh, are you volunteering?” Chloe inquired in a hopeful tone.

Holly grimaced. “Shit, I can’t. Indy and I got a sleepover with Fiona and some of her friends tonight and tomorrow,” she told her sister. “So, if it happens that soon, it has to be you.”

Chloe’s head dropped and hung low, a long, frustrated groan escaping her lips, made worse by the fact that she hadn’t gotten to cum earlier. “Dammit, fuck my life,” she rubbed her hands on her face for a few moments before shifting her tired gaze to her sister. “Who do you think did it?”

“Honestly? I don’t care,” Holly readily replied with a sardonic grin. “All that I need to know is that Zack needs us to find his camera again.”

Later that day, Zack was on the porch of his house, accompanied by Chloe, Holly, and Brandon. Once the McRose sisters arrived, he relayed the latest news to them. He was kind of impressed that Chloe had brought Holly up to speed.

“So, this is where we are,” he told them. “Taylor managed to call Dean Wade and set up a date with him tomorrow afternoon. It’s his day off, so that worked out for me.”

“Like I texted you earlier, we found out that the wife was the one who cheated in the other scandal,” Chloe mentioned. “So you might be on to something, suspecting Dean.”

“Good to know, but I still need to clear Mr. Reed,” Zack nodded. “Hear me out, I was thinking about staking out his house tomorrow, at the same time Tay goes on her date with Dean.”

“Where’d that get you?” Brandon inquired, frowning in confusion.

“He’s planning on breaking in if Mr. Reed leaves the house,” Holly surmised as a smirk curled up the corner of her lips. “Bold plan, I approve.”

Zack chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “Maybe he hides his key under the doormat or something.”

“Aww, Zack, I dunno about this,” Chloe threw him a worried glance. “I think that’s going too far.”

“I kinda agree with Chloe,” Brandon remarked, crossing his arms. “Though if you manage to score the key…, it might not be so bad?”

“It’s risky as fuck, I’ll give you that, but it needs to be done,” the Bishop boy told them. “And… I’d really want someone with me,” he looked at them, mostly at Chloe and Brandon. “I think I’d feel safer that way.”

Holly frowned deeply, biting her bottom lip. “Dammit, tomorrow I can’t,” she said, trying valiantly not to let the sadness show itself too obviously. “Sleepover with a few friends.”

“And I already have a football thing with my friends,” Brandon gave his friend a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, dude.”

“Maybe you can ask Thea,” Chloe suggested, missing the murderous glare Holly threw in her direction.

Zachary’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of the playful blonde girl. They hadn’t exchanged any texts since the sexy photo she had sent him the previous night, but given how talks had flowed easily between them so far, he was really curious to see what could happen if Thea became his stakeout partner.

“Think she’d say yes?” He asked in a hopeful tone.

“I’ll text her later,” Chloe smiled while Brandon grinned like a madman behind the sisters.

“That only leaves your dad,” Zack told Chloe, and at that, the McRose sisters began protesting, but he interrupted them. “Hear me out first, please. It’s only a look, Chlo,” he said. “I was thinking about telling my mom I’ll be at a friend’s house tomorrow evening for a sleepover and maybe you can say the same to your mother.”

“You can probably coordinate it with Thea, since you might already be with her at the time this happens,” Brandon suggested, and Holly felt like she wanted to start beating up everyone in sight, but the younger redhead managed to hold herself back.

“Exactly, then we can see if my Mom and your dad do something,” Zack explained, looking at the two sisters in turn. “Assuming, of course, that something is really going on and he can trick your mom.”

Chloe let out an annoyed sigh. “And who’d check if they meet up?”

“Uhn…, well, I was thinking about you,” the blue-eyed boy revealed, bracing for the impending retort.

Before Chloe could speak, though, Holly quickly stepped in front of her. “She will, we wanna prove our dad’s not cheating on our mom.”

“Sure,” Chloe said, a little sarcastically. “I don’t get a say, like always.”

“Please, Chlo,” Zachary pleaded with his best friend, staring into her eyes. “I really want to discard every crazy theory I have before I do something even more drastic. No matter what Mr. White says, I’m gonna go to the police if this whole operation goes through and my camera doesn’t show up.”

“Is that really wise, Zack?” Holly inquired, hesitantly. “I mean, the other neighbors can get mad at you and your mom for being accused. There was no outsider at the party that night.”

“Holly, I’m ready to break into one of their homes,” Zack responded in a tired tone. “We asked almost everyone. Someone lied and I’m finding my patience growing thinner with every day that passes.”

The younger McRose nodded, not finding any words to rebuff her crush.

“So, are we all good for tomorrow? The ones who’ll be here, I mean,” Zachary inquired as his gaze scanned his friends.

“Let me text Thea,” Chloe pulled out her phone. Holly almost blurted out that she was going to ditch the sleepover with her friends, so she could be Zack’s stakeout partner, but at the last second, nervousness stopped her from it. The last thing she wanted was to say the wrong thing and ruin all her chances with her sister’s sexy best friend.