The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,454

could pull up was that sickly sense of vertigo I’d had when Quinlan had first announced that I’d fallen. Garrett must have pushed me over the side—but there had to be a clue, some indication that he’d done it on purpose. What happened to me—what had happened to Emma and Nisha since—had been no accident.

Emma’s head spun wildly. It was just like Nisha’s death, covered up and made to look accidental.

Then, at the bottom of the report, two lines in bold type caught her eye.

CAUSE OF DEATH: CEREBRAL CONTUSION CAUSED BY BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA

MANNER OF DEATH: UNDETERMINED

She blinked. Undetermined. So maybe they weren’t so sure it had been an “accidental” fall, after all.

She kept shuffling through the folder. A stack of grainy surveillance camera stills were stapled together with printed-out e-mails from the Sabino Canyon visitor center, addressed to Quinlan. We’re eager to help in any way we can, the sender had written. The camera takes one picture on the hour every hour. We installed it three years ago after a spate of vandalism in the parking lot—it’s not set up to monitor activity on the trails. Emma quickly ran her index finger through the dates attached to the pictures until she found the ones taken on the night of the thirty-first. Her eyes searched for any familiar car, any familiar person. Any clue she hadn’t caught before.

From the photos it seemed that there’d hardly been anyone in the canyon that night, and she didn’t recognize any of the cars. Sutton’s Volvo was nowhere to be seen. Maybe the murderer had already stolen it by the time the picture was taken, or maybe she and Thayer had parked somewhere secluded.

Picture by picture, hour by hour, the parking lot emptied. At one point two new cars appeared—cars she knew. Mr. Mercer’s SUV and Becky’s rusted-out brown Buick. That must have been when Sutton had run into her father, and then, not long after that, into Becky. An hour later the cars were gone. Maybe the murderer had walked from somewhere, or had been dropped off by a taxi, just as Emma had been the following day.

She turned the page, and I felt an electric shock pulse through my being. There at midnight, under the sallow yellow light of a street lamp, sat a familiar silver Audi. I could just barely make out the sticker on the bumper. It read WHAT’S LIFE WITHOUT GOALS? The letter O in GOALS was replaced by a soccer ball.

I knew that car. I knew the dark, kidney-shaped stain on the passenger seat where I’d spilled a cup of coffee. I knew the cheesy shearling throw in the backseat, where I’d curled my legs up under me and quirked a finger, beckoning its driver to come close for a kiss. I knew the dent he’d left in the rear driver’s side door one night when I’d told him he’d had too much to drink, when I refused to give him his keys. I could see his soccer-muscled leg flying toward that door even now, crumpling the fiberglass with his heel.

It was Garrett’s car. And now that wasn’t all I could see. I felt the memory coming before it took me. It welled up like an undertow, and dragged me down, down, down—back to the last few moments of my life.

18

WHAT GOES UP . . .

When I feel the hand on my shoulder I spin around, fear tight in my throat. For a moment I can’t believe my eyes. Garrett stands inches behind me, his features clenched in a bitter scowl. He’s close enough that I can smell the whiskey on his breath. His hair is a wild tangle, and one of his knees is skinned below his khaki cargo shorts. The scrape oozes blood down his calf.

“What are you doing here?” I gasp, staggering a few steps back. Behind me the trail slopes sharply away. I catch my balance on a boulder.

His laugh cuts through me like a knife. By now I’m used to Garrett’s mood swings, his erratic behavior, but that doesn’t mean I like them. Good Garrett might be a sweet, earnest puppy dog—lovable and easygoing and maybe even a little vulnerable—but Bad Garrett is a whole different story. And just my luck, guess which one of them is here now?

He squints at me through the gloom, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. “No need to ask what you’re doing here,” he sneers. “You look like a slut in those shorts.”

I should ignore him. I should