The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,75

She didn’t dare move a muscle.

Madeline’s voice floated over the other sounds of the party. “Was she up there?”

“I even checked Laurel’s room,” Charlotte said. “She’s gone.”

“She can’t be gone.” Madeline made a face.

The girls turned for the gate. Emma crouched down and crawled to the next bush, then the next. Her bare knees dug into the gravel. When she reached the wall surrounding the house, she hoisted herself up and over. The rough surface scraped her arms and the top of her thighs.

Her bare feet crunched to the gravel on the other side. She looked around wildly. She had no money, no phone. No shoes. Where could she go?

A wall of parked cars stood in front of her, blocking her passage to the street. A Jeep Cherokee stood closest to her, a Toyota was to her left, and a crookedly parked Subaru Impreza pinned her in on the right. Then Emma spied a narrow escape corridor on the other side of the Subaru along the block-wall fence that separated the Mercers’ yard from the neighbors’. All she had to do was get around the Subaru and she was free. Sucking in her stomach, she squeezed past the car’s side mirror, praying that the car didn’t have one of those car alarms that blared as soon as someone touched it.

A clang made her stop halfway. Three figures stood at the back gate. One was tall and angular, with dark hair and golden skin. Another was shorter and thicker, with pale skin that shone luminously in the moonlight. The third girl had a familiar blond ponytail. All of them looked around. Laurel had a flashlight. Emma quivered, momentarily paralyzed.

“Sutton?” Madeline shouted, her voice cold and unfriendly.

Then Laurel gasped. “There she is!” She shone the flashlight across the yard to where Emma stood. They ran toward her, tramping through the flowerbeds and past the porch. Emma took off down the narrow corridor, her heart drumming in her ears.

“Sutton!” Charlotte, Madeline, and Laurel wove around the cars. “Come back here!”

Emma sprinted, her feet screaming, her gaze on the street just a few yards away. Just as she reached the end of the driveway, her foot landed on something sharp and hot. She yelled out and flew to her knees.

“Get up!” I screamed uselessly at her. “Get up!”

Emma scrambled to her feet. The girls had squeezed past the Subaru, too, and started down the corridor. Emma locked eyes with Laurel. Her shoulders were hunched angrily. Emma let out a whimper and staggered into the street.

And then the automatic light timer on the garage clicked off, bathing the driveway and the street in total darkness. Emma froze, her heart jumping to her throat. She groped for the edge of the block wall that surrounded the Mercer house, then ducked around it, out of their view.

“Sutton?” the girls called. Their high-heeled shoes clicked on the asphalt. They were moving closer and closer in the darkness. For all she knew, they were right next to her.

A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Emma jumped and cried out. She was yanked to her knees and dragged farther into the neighbors’ yard. Her palms hit hard, sharp gravel. Tears came to her eyes. Her foot throbbed in pain. Her nose twitched with the sharp smell of a cigarette. She stared at the dark figure in front of her, expecting to see Charlotte’s angry face or Laurel’s searing gaze. “What are you doing?” a guy’s voice asked instead.

Emma blinked hard. “Ethan?” she whispered, her eyes adjusting. She could just make out Ethan’s shorn head and angular jaw. He held a cigarette between his fingers, the red tip glowing eerily in the darkness.

Ethan stubbed out his cigarette in the gravel and stared at Emma’s sweaty, harried face, her torn dress, her lack of shoes. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Sutton?” Madeline called out at the same time. She was right next to them, separated only by the block wall. “Where are you?”

Emma grasped Ethan’s hand hard. “Can you get me out of here? Now?”

“What?”

“Please,” Emma whispered desperately, clasping Ethan’s hands. “Can you help me or not?”

He stared at her. A look Emma couldn’t quite discern flashed over his eyes. He nodded. “My car’s a couple houses down.” Hand in hand, they slipped into the darkness.

I only hoped he could get her away before they caught her.

Chapter 30

SOMEONE KNOWS . . .

Ethan led Emma to an old red Honda Civic hatchback with a gray door and a crack in the windshield. The