The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,187

didn’t,” Emma reminded him.

“Well, he could do much worse than that,” Ethan said, running a hand through his dark, inky hair. “If he ever gets out, he could hurt you.”

Emma stared out the window at the streetlamps illuminating the way for the car along the deserted road. She didn’t want to think about that possibility. She hoped that Thayer would just stay locked up forever. And she didn’t like Ethan’s tone. Maybe he was just being protective of her, but having lived thirteen years with no one looking out for her, it felt strangely unwelcome to have someone telling her what she could and couldn’t do—especially a boyfriend, who was supposed to be on her side.

“You don’t know Thayer,” Ethan urged. “He has a temper, just like his dad.”

Emma shot him a look. “You don’t think I can handle tempers? I’m not Sutton, Ethan. I didn’t grow up in a happy bubble of a delusion. I was a foster kid. I’ve been screamed at all my life. I was abandoned by my real mom. I’m tougher than you think.”

“You don’t have to get angry,” Ethan protested.

“I just don’t understand why you aren’t backing me up on this. I thought you wanted to find Sutton’s killer just as badly as I do.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Ethan argued, his expression hard.

“Yeah, well, spare me your fatherly lectures,” Emma said darkly.

Ethan let out a small, incredulous sniff. They were silent for a little while, driving down the dark streets past the adobe houses and gravel lawns. A boy on a bicycle with a flashing light on the back wobbled on the shoulder.

“I just want you to be safe,” Ethan said finally. “Just hold off visiting him for now—for me? Maybe there’s another way we can figure out what happened that night. A way that gives you solid proof to bring to the police.”

Emma let out a sigh. Ethan was right about the risks involved in a jailhouse visit. And she had to admit that the thought of facing Thayer again terrified her. “Fine. I’ll give it a couple more days. After that, if we haven’t made any progress, I’ll have no choice but to talk to Thayer.”

Emma may have been reluctant, but I, for one, couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say.

9

STARSTRUCK

“Sutton?” Mrs. Mercer called out as Emma flew into the Mercer house after Ethan dropped her off. “You missed dinner!”

“Uh, yeah, I had some stuff to do after the tennis match,” Emma called vaguely on her way up the stairs.

She heard Mrs. Mercer’s footsteps in the hall. “I’ll leave a plate for you in the warming drawer, okay?”

“Got it,” Emma said, escaping into Sutton’s room like a fugitive. Not that she had any idea what a warming drawer was. And she wasn’t about to have a conversation with Mrs. Mercer right now. One look at Emma’s stricken, freaked-out expression and she’d know something was up.

She shut the door to Sutton’s bedroom and peered around, trying to get her bearings. Get a grip, Emma, she told herself, too keyed up to even make up a headline for what was happening right now. What she needed to do was figure out more about Thayer and his relationship with Sutton. Was it an intense friendship? A romantic tryst? Why had they secretly met the night Sutton died? If Thayer had arrived in Tucson the night of the thirty-first, then he was either the last person to see her alive—or he was her killer. But where had he been hiding since then? Why had he come back now? And how was she going to find out the answers to those questions without asking him point-blank—or revealing that she wasn’t Sutton?

Emma wished there were clues in Sutton’s room, but she’d already ransacked the place several times over since she arrived. She’d found information about what the Lying Game was, including pranks Sutton and the others had played and people they’d hurt. She’d scoured Sutton’s Facebook page and emails. She’d even read Sutton’s diary—not that it told her much at all, most of it vague snippets and inside jokes. New evidence wasn’t going to fall into her lap just because she wanted it to.

If only it would. I wished I could beam my thoughts into Emma’s mind and let her know that I’d been in love with Thayer and that we’d gone hiking together the night I died. This one-way-communication thing was a serious flaw in the whole being-dead thing.

Emma booted up Sutton’s