The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,79

right. A horrified look of understanding swept over his face. “Oh. Oh.”

“What?”

Ethan sank back into the seat and covered his face with his hands. “Was she blindfolded in this video?”

“Yes . . .”

Ethan took a deep breath and looked at her again. “I was there that night.”

Emma blinked hard. “You were there?”

“I was riding my bike when I saw this familiar car whip past,” he explained. “I recognized it by the SWAN LAKE MAFIA sticker on the back window—Madeline and I had assigned parking spots next to each other last year. It stuck in my head.”

Emma gulped.

“I don’t know why, but something made me follow them down this hill into a clearing,” Ethan went on. “By the time I got there, the camera had been set up and they’d just started strangling Sutton. I didn’t know what was going on or why they were doing it, but it seriously looked like they’d killed her.”

Emma sat completely still as Ethan explained what had happened: Just as Sutton had lost consciousness, he’d run into the clearing. The girls screamed and hid, knocking the camera off its tripod. He ran to Sutton and worked to untie her hands. “Sutton was still breathing,” he told Emma. “She came around.”

Emma stared out the dark windshield. “So . . . you were that person at the end of the video who took the blindfold off her? You saved her?”

Ethan shrugged. “I guess.”

He cleared his throat and went on. “But see, after that night, I didn’t hear anything from Sutton. Not that I thought she owed me anything, but it would’ve been nice to get . . . I don’t know. A real thank-you, maybe. So when you approached me outside Nisha’s party, I figured that’s what was about to happen. Something seemed off that night though. Different. The way you talked about Bitch Stars . . . your sense of humor. And every time I saw you after that, I kept getting that same nagging feeling. You were . . . sweet. And funny. And interesting. And . . . remorseful. The Sutton I knew—everyone knew—wouldn’t have felt bad about anything, ever. So I started to wonder if she had multiple personalities. Or had had, like, a spiritual awakening that made her not so . . . hard.” He pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets. “Whatever happened, I started to kind of fall for her.”

“That was me,” Emma said quietly, staring at her lap. “I was that girl at Nisha’s party. And every time after that. Not Sutton.”

Ethan ran his tongue over his teeth, nodding slowly. “So . . . who are you?”

A firecracker boomed in the distance. After it finished crackling, Emma took a breath. “I’m Sutton’s twin. Well, long-lost twin. We never knew each other. I didn’t even get to meet her once.”

Ethan stared at her without blinking. “Hold up. Long-lost twin? Like, for real?” He shook his head. “Start from the beginning.”

And then the whole story exploded from inside Emma, desperate to get out. “I tried to leave,” she explained when she got through explaining the SUTTON’S DEAD note. “I didn’t want to be stuck in her life. But her killer saw me at the bus station, I guess. And they cornered me in Charlotte’s house and said they’d kill me if I tried to leave again.” She shut her eyes, the feeling of the locket against her neck was as fresh and vivid as though it had happened just moments ago. “Sutton’s friends and her sister were the only people who knew I’d tried to leave. And Charlotte’s house is locked up like a fortress. It must have been someone who was already inside—one of Sutton’s friends. They tried to strangle me just like they strangled Sutton that night in the woods. The night they killed her.”

Ethan shook his head vehemently. “I’m not saying her friends didn’t kill Sutton, but if they did, it wasn’t the night the video was made. That happened two weeks before you got here. And everyone left after I stopped it. Sutton included. She was fine.”

“She left with them?” Emma asked, shocked.

A conflicted look crossed Ethan’s face. “Sutton and her friends pull crap like that all the time.”

“I know.” Emma rubbed her temples. “I never realized they got that dangerous though.”

All at once, it began to rain. The drops on the windshield sounded like tiny bombs going off. Emma looked at Ethan. “I have to get out of here.”

Ethan frowned. “Where will you go?”

“Anywhere.” Fresh, terrified