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Jamie came back to the house late that morning, having met with the Governor and attorney general first thing. Without warning, they showed him Lee's autopsy file, telling him of the trouble it could cause for them as well as the rest of his family; they needed him to make it go away. He took the file with him, home to his own medical expert; too bad she was hungover on the couch.

"Morning champ," he greeted her as he sat in a chair next to the couch.

"Mmm," Lexi grumbled, one hand over her eyes, the other arm crossed over her. She was wearing black sweats and a gray sweatshirt that actually used to be Ryan's. She briefly wondered if he would notice as she had pulled it on that morning.

"Learn you can't drink like a cowboy?" he smirked. She held one hand up to point, keeping the other over her eyes.

"You can't drink like a cowboy," she reminded him. "I'm out of practice." Jamie chuckled a little but then it came rushing back what he was there for.

"I need you to look at something," he told her. She groaned, sitting up slowly.

"All right, what is it?" she asked, holding out her hand, rightly assuming it was the file he was holding.

"It's Lee's autopsy," he warned her and she jerked her hand back.

"Shit Jamie!" she accused. "I don't want to see-"

"I took out the pictures," he assured her; he wished the same had been done for him. "Unfortunately, it might be bad news for Kaycee if we don't handle this." She muttered a curse under her breath as she took the file from him.

She read over the medical examiner's detailed notes over her brother's injuries, where they were and what that meant. Even without pictures, it was a lot for her medically trained mind to process.

"Ok," she looked at him. "What do you want to know?"

"Could Lee have shot Robert Long in self defense?" he asked. That was the story they had right now after all to explain their deaths.

"Lee couldn't have shot anyone," she shook her head. "See where his injury was?" she noted on the diagram. "That would have instantly paralyzed him, from the chest down. Maybe he squeezed the trigger once as it happened? But it wouldn't have been accurate and he would have been falling as he shot." She looked her brother over. "How many times was Monica's brother shot?"

"Six," Jamie murmured.

"Dammit," Lexi said as she got up from her seat to pace. "Can't you argue Kaycee acted in self defense? " It was fairly obvious what happened now. Robert shot Lee and Kaycee shot Robert.

"Not with how these shots were," he shook his head. "And not for six of them."

"Dammit," she murmured again; deep down she knew this, but had been slightly hopeful Jamie could do some magic. "We have to tell dad."

"Ladies first," he motioned to the door and she rolled her eyes at him, but she knew it wouldn't be good.

…

They walked down to the corral where everyone was watching Jimmy. He was a pretty unwilling participant in breaking the horse that Kaycee had brought their dad; Lexi noted Rip holding a roll of duct tape.

"Look who's joined the living," Lloyd laughed as Lexi and Jamie came closer; she had grabbed her sunglasses on the way out the door, blatantly hungover. She made a playful face at him.

"You two are a sight," John commented. They really were; Jamie was in his expensive suit, looking like he was headed into some fancy law office. Lexi was in her sweats and sweatshirt, sunglasses on and hair a mess. "Somethin' must've happened," he said now. Why else would Jamie drag his sister out here when she looked and felt like this?

"Nothing good," Lexi agreed with him. Jamie nodded at the barn so they could go talk privately. As they were walking over, Ryan was walking by to go back with the others watching Jimmy.

"You good?" Ryan laughed at her. He did notice the sweatshirt, it was one of his with his favorite football team's logo on the front. He wondered if she took it to California with her or if it had just been sitting in the back of her closet here all this time.

"Is it always so damn bright around here?" Lexi joked as she went into the barn with her dad and brother.

"What's the problem?" John asked his kids when he got them alone. "And how do we fix it?" Jamie detailed what the medical examiner found, how bad it looked and how it looked bad in Kaycee's direction; there were also witnesses that placed him with Lee when he came back to the house. "Well, we'll get a different doctor to sign off on it." He looked at Lexi now. "Can't you do it?"

"There's a few problems with that," she told him bluntly; she already didn't like being involved in this. "I'm the victim's sister, not to mention the other suspect's sister. And I'm not licensed in the state. And I'm not an ME."

"It would make it look even worse if she did it dad," Jamie cut in.

"All right, all right," John said. "I can take care of the witnesses. Find a new ME and get them to sign off on a new report." Jamie was quiet. "What?"

"...even if we get a new report," Jamie was saying. "They're not going to match up with the photos."

"Then get rid of them," John said simply.

"Then they'll wonder why there aren't any photos," Lexi painfully pointed out; John saw what they were getting at.

He said he refused to let anyone exhume Lee but Jamie told him it wouldn't matter. They were going to have to get to Lee first.

"What if we didn't have to?" Lexi said, looking at the file again. "I know who this ME is, it should be easy enough to discredit him."

"What do you mean?" Jamie asked.

"The medical community isn't that big," she explained. "I heard about this ME in Chicago that got fired for getting high on embalming fluid. Apparently, they hired him out here." She closed the file. "Plus, I went to med school with the assistant ME."

"You think you can get him to write a new report?" John asked.

"I think he had a huge crush on me all through med school," Lexi informed him, meaning obviously she could.

"What do we do about the other ME though?" Jamie asked seriously.

"We'll send Rip," John decided. "Lexi will get the assistant to write a new report and there will be no witnesses putting Kaycee there. Problem solved," he said, heading out to leave the barn.

"You really wanna do this?" Jamie asked her as their father left.

"As if I didn't already feel like I wanted to puke today," she said lightly but she did roll her eyes. "I've dealt with worse, it'll be fine." And with that she pulled out her cellphone to track down the assistant ME, Sam's, number.

…

The next evening, Ryan and Colby were finishing up some work on the fence up by the main house. They noticed a car they didn't recognize pulling up out front and some guy with flowers getting out. As the guy walked up to the door, Ryan couldn't help but feel like he recognized him; he was taller, though slight, with blond hair. Where had he seen this guy before?

"Hey Sam," Lexi said as she answered the door with a sweet smile. That's when it all came back to him. This guy went to med school with her and had a huge crush on her; to him, it almost seemed like stalking but she told him he was being unreasonably jealous. He remembered seeing him a few times when he would go pick her up for the weekend; she always told him that he wasn't anything to worry about.

Somehow that stung worse than her living with that guy in California. As far as he knew, that guy was a decent guy. They might have gotten married and had a bunch of kids that went to private school and played stuff like lacrosse and tennis. He didn't know that guy. He knew this one, she said she didn't think of him like that, he was a huge creep, and now she was home a few weeks and going out with him. Especially after she had kissed him….though she had been drunk…

"Aw, how nice," Beth said as she came to the door, noting the flowers; Lexi noted her sarcasm. "I got those," she said as she took them for her sister. "You go, have fun." Lexi followed Sam down the front steps of the house. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" she called after her; Lexi flipped her sister off over her shoulder and Beth smirked.

Ryan noticed what Lexi was wearing. It was a deep blue sundress that he had always liked on her; it matched her eyes. She was also wearing a gray sweater with it and had on nude colored heels; she hated heels.

Once the car was far enough away, Beth went inside to throw the flowers in the trash. She had caught Ryan's eye as she did, heading back outside to talk to him as he worked.

"It's not a date ya know," she informed him.

"Sure looked like one to me," he replied.

"She's getting him to do her a favor to cover Kaycee's ass," she told him vaguely, though Ryan had heard about the autopsy report from Lloyd. Unfortunately at this point, Robert's report had already been released. With that information out there, there were going to be more questions about Lee and they were going to have to cremate him anyway. Lexi still had to get the new report though.

"Why are you tellin' me this?" Ryan asked her. Again, Beth always seemed indifferent to him and hadn't spent a whole lot of time around them as a couple. What did she care about his feelings about her sister?

"Big sister thing," Beth shrugged. "Outside of you, my sister's got pretty shitty taste in guys."

"That so?" Ryan questioned.

"Residencies and fellowships end in summer," Beth told him simply. "It's March. She moved in with that guy 6 months ago and she's suddenly back in Montana, no job, out of her fellowship contract?" She looked him over. "Whatever that adds up to, it means he's a shithead." Ryan paused as he took that in, not really thinking about her coming home so soon like that.

"I bet she's down to see you before the end of the night," Beth finished simply before heading back to the house.

…

In all the time since she had left Matt, Lexi never thought the first date she would be going on was with Sam from med school. He was smart, decent looking; lots of women would be happy to be going out with a doctor. He always kind of creeped her out though. After all, she knew he always liked her even though he knew the entire time she was at school she had a boyfriend, one that often came to pick her up for the weekend; one that could readily kick his ass. He always more or less implied she could do better, which always left a bad taste in her mouth. She never liked people like that; Jamie could sometimes be like that but she often gave him a pass as her big brother. This guy was just some random person that forced himself in her study group of friends.

All these thoughts drifted through her mind at dinner that night while he just wouldn't. stop. talking. They were sitting at a table with four chairs and she had hoped that he would sit across from her, but of course he chose the seat adjacent to her. She had sat in the chair closest to the wall, so she could see straight out the big window the restaurant had; she was going to need to see the street.

"Lexi?" he was saying and she snapped out of it.

"Hm? Sorry," she shook her head. "Things have been a little crazy lately, I'm just a little out of sorts I guess."

"I get it," he nodded. Hardly, she felt like saying but just smiled instead. "I was just saying I'm surprised you're back from San Francisco."

"City life wasn't for me," she told him, taking a drink of her wine. Truth was she did just fine in the city; it was the people that drove her away. Life on the ranch agreed with her much better though.

"This place is growing fast," he commented.

"Hm," she nodded politely.

"I was really sorry to hear about your brother," Sam went on now. "I remember when he would come get you at school sometimes, he seemed like a nice guy." He stopped. "I'm sorry, I'm sure you don't want to talk about that."

"I kind of do actually," she told him. Her mom always told her she had to rip the band aid off; and truthfully, there wasn't enough wine at the bar to make her want to stay there. "Or really, about his autopsy," she lowered her voice.

"That's kinda dark," he laughed, but then realized she was serious. "What…what do you want to know?"

"If it can be changed," she said simply.

"...we don't really do that," he hesitated. "Look, I know what it says alright?" He lowered his voice. "And I know what that probably means for your other brother…Kyle?"

"Kaycee," she corrected him through her teeth. "Look, I'm just trying to keep myself from losing another brother, all right?" She shrugged. "Your boss is high as a kite half the time anyway, how hard would it be to sneak one by him?"

"If I'm going to be changing autopsies to cover up a murder," he informed her, hand moving from the top of the table to under it. "I'm going to have to have more than a dinner date." As he said this, his hand found its way onto her knee, fingers just under the hem of the skirt of her dress.

Was it weird that, at this moment, she thought of her siblings? Or, rather, how they would handle it if they were there with her.

Lee would have grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him outside to kick his ass. Kayce wouldn't have even pulled him outside, he would have jumped across the table. Jamie would use what she called his 'scary lawyer voice' and ask if he was sure he wanted to do that. Beth would smash the wine bottle over his head. This was her though, and she needed to get what she came there for.

"Ok, remember I asked nicely," she smiled at him. Her phone was face down on the table, buzzing with a text message.

"Tell Jamie you're busy," he told her; her phone had gone off once before with a message from Jamie.

"It's not Jamie," she smirked at him, before nodding ahead. "You see that cowboy out there?" It had been Rip, letting her know that he was there.

"Friend of yours?" he asked, leaning back in his seat, having removed his hand from her leg.

"More like an adopted brother," she explained; she sat back in her own seat, taking her wine glass to swirl. "He just got done visiting your boss."

"Then you don't need me to do anything," Sam reasoned. "If your guy out there threatened-"

"Threatening isn't really Rip's style," she told him as she sipped then sat her glass back. "Suffice to say, you're going to be up for a promotion in the morning." She smiled. "And you want to know what your first order of business is going to be?"

"I'll call the cops," he told her.

"You absolutely could," she nodded in agreement with him. "Except, my guy, as you called him, doesn't have a habit of leaving fingerprints. You know whose fingerprints are going to be all over that room though?" she hinted.

"I work there, of course they-"

"That, coupled with your scathing social media posts about how much of an idiot your boss is," she went on, showing him what Jamie had sent her before; they were screenshots. "I hate him," she quoted. "When is he going to get out of here. I do everything anyway," she continued to read. "Plus, you told me tonight, over dinner."

"How would you ever prove-"

"It's my word against yours in this town," she told him. "You haven't been here long Sam, but you know the weight behind my last name." He just shook his head at her. "You could leave," she continued. "But, I happen to know that you got your older brother to take your MCATs for you." He looked at her in shock.

"How-"

"You remember Sarah, right?" she continued. "Always took pictures everywhere, every night out? She has a video of you, hammered, talking about how Mike took your exams for you." It was true, his brother looked enough like him to pass on the ID to take his med school entrance exams for him.

"They're just entrance exams," Sam tried to brush it off.

"It's like I told my dad, the medical community is small," Lexi reminded him. "First it's cheating on the entrance exams, then it's what else did he cheat on? His finals, his boards? His ME certification? Soon enough you're hiding out from my family in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, teaching biology to a bunch of highschoolers." He was silent. "Or, you can take your promotion and big raise tomorrow and do exactly what I ask you to do."

He remained silent, though he nodded in agreement.

"Thank you," she told him as she prepared to get up from the table. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my ride's here."

…

"You good kid?" Rip asked as he parked his truck that night behind the barn.

"I'm not a kid Wheeler," she reminded him with a smirk before they got out. "But I'll be fine." She shrugged. "Pretty sure Kaycee owes me, because this is not in the twin handbook." Rip laughed softly.

"Walk you up?" he nodded at the house.

"Actually, I'm gonna," she nodded back at the bunkhouse.

"Hmm," he nodded knowingly, smiling slightly, heading for his cabin. "Be good," he told her.

"I'm not the sister you have to tell that to," she smirked, heading into the bunkhouse; there didn't seem to be a lot going on that night.

"Little overdressed, aren't ya?" Lloyd joked from where he was playing solitaire at the table; the other chairs were empty as everyone else was either on a couch or getting ready for bed.

"I've had a long night," she told him as she sat next to him; Lloyd nodded knowingly. From the back they could hear an argument picking up between Ryan and Colby. They were in neighboring shower stalls and Colby asked to use Ryan's razor. The argument ended up being over what either of them needed a razor for since they both had beards. Lexi bit her lip to keep from cracking up as she crept over to the bathroom door.

"I've got a whole pack of razors up at the house if y'all need some," she told them as she leaned against the door frame and they went silent; both peered out from behind their respective curtains. "They're pink," she went on. "But-" They had both stopped their water. Colby grabbed his towel and got out no problem; Ryan seemed to stop for a second. He gave her a look and she shook her head, going back towards their small kitchen and sticking her head in the refrigerator for a beer.

She fought herself to keep from making a comment about how she had seen it all before.

"Well, damn girl," Colby commented on her appearance and she playfully rolled her eyes at him; he and Ryan had both gotten dressed quickly. "Good night?" He questioned; Ryan felt like shoving him but didn't as that would be too obvious.

"Rip brought me home before 10," she informed him, drinking her beer.

"His loss," Colby told her, turning to grab a sweatshirt. "Your gain," he murmured to Ryan. He was really pushing not getting hit by his friend.

"You're gonna owe us some of those," Ryan commented about the beer, joking to change the subject.

"Send the bill to Kaycee," she said as she finished it off already. She paused for a moment, not sure she should or could ask. "Can you…." She was asking Ryan, trailing off as she motioned towards the door.

"Sure," he nodded, grabbing his boots and heading outside with her. "You ok?"

"I wanna go see my mom," she was explaining. "But it's late," she noted the complete darkness of the ranch.

"I gotcha," he assured her, slipping into the barn to get a flashlight. They started off the walk down the narrow path in silence. "Bad night?" He asked her; she didn't ever see her mom unless she was feeling really bad.

"I've had worse, but still not great," she commented. "Hold on," she said now, holding onto his arm for support; she used her other hand to take off her heels. "I hate these things," she rolled her eyes as she walked the dirt path now barefoot.

"I know you do," he assured her, laughing a little. "Why wear them?"

"I knew my audience," she muttered as they continued through the dark. She stopped him on the path. "Did Lloyd or Rip tell you? About Kaycee and Lee?"

"Lloyd did, yeah," he nodded.

"I had to cover for Kaycee," she went on. "I probably made myself a freakin' accessory in the process…"

"You get what you needed?" He asked and she nodded.

"He's gonna fix the old report, yeah," she said, seeming relieved. They had turned into the grass now that started the family plot.

"You protected your brother Lexi," Ryan reassured her. "You don't have anything to feel bad about."

"I love him," she said. "I love this place. I just don't…"

"Love what sometimes has to happen?" He finished for her.

"Yeah," she sighed heavily. "And I get it. Protect Kaycee, protect Lee's grave but I…I just don't like how second nature all of that was." She shrugged, crossing her arms over herself. "Maybe that's part of why I wanted us to leave."

"What do you mean?" He asked curiously.

"I know San Francisco wasn't for you," she assured him. "And that's fine. I never cared what it was you did for work I just…" She shook her head. "I never wanted the stuff my siblings did, what Rip does, what I did tonight…you're better than all that. I didn't want that for you."

"I love this place too," he echoed her sentiment from before. "Every place has its troubles sweetheart."

"I guess you're right," she agreed with him as they stopped at her mother's grave. "She knew about all this, everything about this place, didn't she?"

"I'm sure she did," he agreed. "And I'm sure she's proud of you for helping protect it."

"Thanks Ryan," she gave a half smile.

"Of course," he nodded. He wanted to kiss her but knew this wasn't the time or place. "It's freezing out here," he noted after they were quiet for a moment. "Let's get you back to the house."

…

Ryan walked Lexi back to the main house before turning in for the night at the bunkhouse. Lexi sighed as she watched him go before going inside, noticing the light in her father's office.

"Hey dad," she greeted him, heels still in hand.

"Hi sweetpea," he said back, setting what he was looking at to the side. "How was your night?"

"Productive," she assured him. "Sam's gonna change the report. Kaycee's in the clear."

"I never wanted you to have to get involved with something like that," he told her seriously.

"I know," she assured him, then smiled softly. "A good, long shower and I'll be fine." He laughed a little before noticing her feet and the dirt on them.

"Go for a walk?" he asked curiously.

"Ryan went with me to see mom," she told him. "She makes me feel better."

"Me too," John assured her. "Goodnight sweetpea."

"Night daddy," she said as she kissed his cheek.

…

Lexi woke up the next morning to Jamie yelling at someone on the phone. She correctly guessed it had to do with the night before because the attorney general was on speaker phone, yelling about a fire at the ME office.

"Uh oh," she mouthed to Jamie as she came into the kitchen in her pajamas. He waved her off, handling this part with ease. He reasoned it looked enough like an accident and the other guy eventually gave in.

Everything was going to be fine. Except now Beth was storming into the kitchen in her robe, grabbing two bottles of wine before heading outside towards one of the troughs.

"Do not look at me," she informed Jamie. "I went out last night, you're up for whatever that is," she said as they looked out the window. Beth had stripped out of her robe and climbed into the trough.

"Great to be home, isn't it?" Jamie asked sarcastically as he went outside.