Everyone agreed they were too tipsy to continue Never Have I Ever. Charlotte refilled the bowl of pretzels and stuck the first season of The Hills into the DVD player. Everyone settled in on the couches, in sleeping bags, or on Charlotte’s bed. It was like the power outage had had a sedative effect on everyone but her. Emma felt more awake and sober than she had before. Is Sutton in the house? Is she close? Every tiny sound, every movement, Emma glanced at the door, certain Sutton was going to cartwheel into the room.
She was so convinced, I half expected it to happen myself.
One by one, the girls’ heads went limp and their eyes closed. Charlotte snuggled into her bed. Madeline snored softly on the trundle. Lilianna burrowed into a black sleeping bag, and Gabriella climbed into a pink one. Laurel had curled up on the couch next to Emma; her fingers slowly and sleepily twitched. Emma watched the DVD until the last episode aired and the credits rolled. She tried to close her eyes, but she wasn’t sleepy. Come out, come out, Sutton. What would her life be like once Sutton returned? Once again she pictured their first meeting. Your life is so crazy! Emma might say to Sutton. Surely after putting Emma through so much turmoil, she’d let Emma stay with her for a while. After all, if this was some sort of demented test, Emma had passed with flying colors, hadn’t she? She envisioned the Mercers’ slack-jawed expressions when they found out Emma was telling the truth that first morning at breakfast. Perhaps they’d let her sleep in a guest room. Set a place for her at the table. Was it too much to hope for?
I didn’t think it was. Not that it could ever come true.
Emma’s mouth felt cottony from all the vodka. She groped for her water glass, but she couldn’t find it. She slid from the couch as quietly as she could and tiptoed out the door and down the stairs toward the kitchen. The marble floors in the foyer felt like ice cubes on the soles of her feet. An angular coat rack by the front door resembled a giant tarantula. Emma sucked in her breath and stepped toward a glowing light down the hall.
The digital clocks above the microwave and stove shone a stoic green. A metal chandelier hung over the center island. Emma’s skin prickled in a mix of fear and excitement. She cocked her head and listened for sounds of Sutton sneaking up on her. Breathing. Giggling. Waiting.
But there was nothing. Emma grabbed a water glass from the cabinet and tried the faucet. The water dribbled noisily into the sink. Just as she swallowed the last of the water and turned for the stairs again, she heard a creak. She halted and peered around. Her heart thudded. The clocks ticked from 2:06 to 2:07 in perfect synchronicity.
Another creak rang out. “Is someone there?” Emma whispered. Her vision blurred in the darkness. And then, all of a sudden, there was a loud crashing sound. Pain shot through Emma’s hip. She started to turn, but someone pushed her harder against the island and pressed a hand over Emma’s mouth. The water glass slipped out of Emma’s hand and clattered to the floor. Fear streaked through her, hot and messy. “Mmm!” she cried out.
The person didn’t pull away. A body pressed up against her, warm and close. “Don’t you dare yell out,” said a voice in her ear. It was raspy and indecipherable, a mere whisper. “What were you thinking? I told you to play along. I told you not to leave.”
Emma tried to whip around to see who it was, but the figure shoved her forward and pressed her cheek to the kitchen island. “Sutton’s dead,” the voice insisted. “Keep being her until I tell you different. And don’t try and skip town again or you’re next.”
Emma whimpered. The hand squeezed her wrist so hard she thought her bones might break. Then something cold and metallic encircled her neck. It grew tighter and tighter around her throat until Emma’s windpipe began to collapse. Her eyes bulged. She flailed her arms, but the wire just constricted her throat even more. Emma fought for breath, but she couldn’t inhale, couldn’t swallow. As she thrashed up and down, her feet began to tingle.
I stared in horror. My vision was clouded, just like Emma’s; all I could tell was that the strangler had broad shoulders. I thought of the dark shadow hovering over me in the trunk from the memory I’d just been given. That voice sounded a lot like this one.
But then the stranglehold around Emma’s neck loosened. Whoever it was pulled Emma back up to standing. Bright spots danced in front of her eyes. Air rushed into her lungs. She leaned over and coughed.
“Now keep your head down and count to one hundred,” the strangler went on. “Don’t look up until you’re done. Or else.”
Trembling, Emma pressed her forehead to the island countertop and started to count. “One . . . two . . .”
Footsteps rang out behind her. I strained to see who it was, but the figure was a dark shadow.
“Ten . . . eleven . . .” Emma counted. A door slammed. Emma cautiously raised her head. The kitchen was as silent and unassuming as it had been five minutes ago. She tiptoed to the front door and peered out, but the strangler was gone.
She bent over her knees for a moment, wheezing. As she stood up again, something knocked heavily against her collarbone. She cautiously groped her skin. Dangling from a chain around her throat was a round locket—Sutton’s round locket. The one she’d looked for in Sutton’s jewelry box but couldn’t find. The one Sutton had been wearing in the snuff film. The chain fit perfectly in the red, freshly strangled indentations on Emma’s neck.
Emma’s world turned upside down all over again. Sutton really was dead. There was no doubt about it now. Hot, wet tears dotted her eyes. Her shaky hand flew to her mouth and muffled a sob.
She did a full 180, peering frantically into the kitchen doorway, the bookcase-filled study, the double staircase, the majestic front entrance. Her gaze locked on a shining, uninterrupted red beam above the doorway. Next to it was a security system keypad, a green light illuminated over the word ARMED. Emma tiptoed to the device. She’d lived briefly with a foster family in Reno who had this same alarm system—they had a cabinet full of valuable antique Wedgwood china, and yet they made four foster kids sleep in the same cramped bedroom—and Emma’s foster brother had showed her how to use it. She hit the down arrow, and a list of times when the alarm had been armed and disarmed appeared. The last entry said ARMED, 8:12 PM. It was from when Mrs. Chamberlain had shut the door after letting in Emma and Laurel. There was no record that the power outage had disabled the alarm after that, though. Nor did the log indicate that Mrs. Chamberlain had had to rearm the alarm system after the power snapped back on. There was also no record that someone had tripped it, which would’ve happened if the strangler had gotten in through the doors or the windows. So . . . how had he gotten in? How had he gotten out?
Emma raised her head, a cold, slippery feeling passing through her. Maybe there was no need to get past the alarms. Maybe the strangler had been inside the house to start with. She thought about the voice in her ear. I told you to play along. I told you not to leave. And then she thought about the call with Charlotte and Laurel today. Are you at the Greyhound station? Laurel had asked. Could it be?
I was pretty sure it could be. I thought about the memory I’d just had. The broad-shouldered figure pulling me out of the trunk. The shock of red hair when she stepped into the light. Whoever had strangled Emma was indeed someone inside the house: one of my very best friends.
Chapter 20
DEAR DIARY, TODAY I DIED
As soon as Laurel pulled into the Mercers’ driveway on Saturday morning, Emma shot out of the car, flung open the door, and started up the stairs. She almost knocked over Mrs. Mercer, who was crossing the foyer with a pile of laundry in her arms. “Sutton?”
“I just . . .” Emma muttered, then trailed off. She reached Sutton’s bedroom, slammed the door shut, and locked it fast. The first thing she saw was a large stack of pink envelopes sitting on Sutton’s bed. RSVP said the one on top. Emma stared at an unfamiliar girl’s name written in pink pen at the top of the card. Can’t wait! the girl had added. She turned it over. SUTTON MERCER’S BIRTHDAY BASH, FRIDAY SEPT 10. GIFT OPTIONAL, FABULOUSNESS REQUIRED. There were at least fifty RSVP cards in the pile.
Emma collapsed on the bed, jostling a few of the RSVP cards to the floor. Her head felt like it had been crushed in a vise. Every time she closed her eyes, she felt the strangler press up against her, that voice in her ear.
Keep being Sutton, or you’re next.
She’d lain awake all night in Charlotte’s bedroom, armed with the new information and petrified from the assault in the kitchen. The home screen of The Hills had played over and over. Someone had killed Sutton—and it was one of her very best friends.
How could one of my best friends or my sister do such a thing? But then I thought about how nasty I’d been to all of them that night at the hot springs. What if I was like that all the time? What if, sometimes, I was worse?
Emma flopped down on the bed and stared at the pink paper lantern that hung by the window, trying to think things through. The killer must have taken the video down from the site because she knew Emma would show it to the cops immediately. The killer also knew, obviously, that Emma wasn’t Sutton. Emma tried to piece together the timing of everything. Had Sutton received the note from Emma, written her back, and then coincidentally died that very night? Had Emma’s arrival been a surprise—but a good surprise—for the killer? After all, there was an Insta-Sutton in Tucson again. No missing girl meant no crazed search, no hunt for a dead body, no crime.
Then Emma’s eyes widened, hitting on an even scarier idea. What if Sutton hadn’t received Emma’s note at all? What if the killer had been the one to lure Emma to Tucson, not Sutton? One of Sutton’s friends could have easily hacked into her Facebook account. She could have seen Emma’s note and sent one back immediately, knowing she had a naive girl to manipulate and put in Sutton’s place.
A tiny spider crawled along the upper corner of Sutton’s bedroom, pulling behind it a thin, gossamer thread. Emma stood, rolled back her shoulders, and marched over to the filing cabinet under her sister’s desk. THE L GAME, it said. Aka the Lying Game.
She held the heavy padlock in her palm. There had to be a way to unlock it. Pulling open Sutton’s drawers, she searched once more for the missing key, feeling for secret compartments built into the back, looking in every single empty jewelry box and CD case, and even spilling a nearly full pack of Camel Lights onto the carpet. Tobacco flaked onto her hands.
“Get it open!” I shouted to her uselessly. Screw feeling protective of my stuff. I was dead, and we both needed to know why.
Then something came to Emma in a flash. Travis. That YouTube video he’d watched about how to open a padlock with a beer can. During the brief time they’d been friendly, Travis had made Emma watch it, too. It hadn’t looked hard.
She leapt up and found an empty Diet Coke can on Sutton’s windowsill. Grabbing a pair of scissors, she drew out the design for the shim that would be used to break the lock and started to cut. In moments, she’d made an M-shaped shim, just like the criminal-in-training had made in the YouTube video. As soon as she wiggled the shim down the left shackle, the ball released and the lock snapped open. Emma couldn’t help but grin. “Thanks, Travis,” she murmured. She never thought she’d say that.