know what it is?”
Sweat prickled on the back of Emma’s neck and she saw a flash of blond out of the corner of her eye. She turned around and faced the front doors, certain she’d just seen someone jump out of view.
“I don’t have a clue,” Emma said, swallowing hard.
“Well.” Grandma clutched her purse and marched for the escalators. “Whatever it is, it seems like she’s up to no good.”
No kidding, Emma thought as she followed Grandma up the escalator.
Cool dread washed over me. One thing was for sure. Emma needed to search for evidence in Laurel’s room ASAP, and put an end to this charade once and for all.
14
RACKETEERING
Saturday afternoon, Emma stood a foot in front of Laurel’s door, her hand poised on the knob. Downstairs, she could hear Mr. and Mrs. Mercer bustling around, making last-minute arrangements for the party, but Laurel was nowhere to be seen. She was probably out with Thayer somewhere.
Twisting the knob, Emma stepped into the bedroom. The smell of Laurel’s tuberose perfume greeted her like a rush of heat. Two candles sat on Laurel’s desk, along with a cup full of mechanical pencils and a framed photo of five wild mustangs racing across a grassy field. The print was hotel-bland and oddly impersonal in contrast to the collage of photos and tennis ribbons Laurel had tacked up on her wall. Right near her closet was a black-and-white shot of Thayer standing with his arm around Laurel’s shoulders in the parking lot of Sabino Canyon. It was slightly askew, and the edge of a different photo poked out from underneath it. Emma lifted it up to find a photograph of Sutton and Laurel with their arms wrapped around each other in a nearly identical pose to that of Laurel and Thayer.
For a long moment, Emma stood there, studying Laurel’s and Sutton’s smiling faces. They looked for all the world like best friends.
I squinted hard at it, too, trying to remember when it had been taken. The end of school last year? After a tennis tournament? Maybe even earlier than that—Laurel and I looked so happy. I had no idea what had happened to change that. Maybe we’d grown apart when I’d found cooler friends. Or maybe it really did all come back to Thayer.
The hinges on Laurel’s desk squeaked as Emma opened a drawer. Inside was a hot pink eraser in the shape of a heart, rainbow-colored paper clips, and a stapler. Bic pens rolled forward. Scraps of notebook paper lay in piles. Emma picked one up. Mads, one of them said. I need to talk to you about something and it’s really important. Laurel had underlined really three times. Something happened this summer, and I need to get it off my chest. The guilt is eating me alive. Laurel. It was dated September sixth, a week after Sutton disappeared.
Emma dropped the note like it was a hot frying pan. Laurel couldn’t possibly have considered confessing what she’d done to Madeline, could she? Or was she going to tell Madeline that she’d seen Thayer? Either way Laurel clearly hadn’t gone through with it.
Stuffing the note into her back pocket, Emma searched under the bed, under the mattress, and inside the closet. Nothing. She was about to retreat when she saw blue athletic tape trailing out from beneath an armchair—the kind of tape she and Laurel used to wrap the handles of their tennis rackets. Emma crouched and saw a racket nestled beneath the cushions. She pulled it out, then turned it over in her hands. The racket’s dyed-red strings were bent so badly in the middle, Emma was surprised they hadn’t broken. When she touched one of them, some of the red flaked off. It wasn’t red dye—it was blood.
Emma’s fingers trembled at the edge of the racket. The frame was bent as well, as though someone had thrown it hard against something—or someone. Leaning in closer, she saw a long, dark piece of hair twisted along the frame—the same exact color of her own hair. Was that Sutton’s hair? She fought the urge to be sick. Was Emma holding the murder weapon?
She dropped it fast. Now her fingerprints were on it, too. She remembered what Ethan had said after she’d told him who she really was: If you run now, everyone will think you did it.
Maybe that was exactly what Laurel intended: for Emma to find this. For her to touch it. For the down-and-out twin to be framed.
Creak.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.