is available.
ISBN 978-0-06-186970-9
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062062949
Version 08162013
10 11 12 13 14 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
Epigraph
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
–OSCAR WILDE
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue - Life After Death
Chapter 1 - Charmed Life
Chapter 2 - CSI, Tucson
Chapter 3 - Spinning Her Wheels
Chapter 4 - Paper Trail
Chapter 5 - Extreme Times Call for Extreme Measures
Chapter 6 - A Criminal History
Chapter 7 - The Ultimate Prank
Chapter 8 - Truth or Consequences
Chapter 9 - Daddy’s Little Girl
Chapter 10 - Fish Out of Water
Chapter 11 - Nothing Like a Threat at 2 A.M.
Chapter 12 - A Secret of a Different Kind
Chapter 13 - Double the Trouble
Chapter 14 - An Opening . . . and a Closing
Chapter 15 - An A for Effort
Chapter 16 - X Marks the Spot
Chapter 17 - Tremors and Treachery and Threats, Oh My!
Chapter 18 - The Writing on the Wall
Chapter 19 - Creepy Vampires to the Left, Stalkers to the Right
Chapter 20 - Service with a Snicker
Chapter 21 - Tweet, Untweet
Chapter 22 - The Awful Truth
Chapter 23 - The Viking’s Revenge
Chapter 24 - Almost, But Not Quite
Chapter 25 - One Down, One to Go
Chapter 26 - A Shove in the Dark
Chapter 27 - Walled In
Chapter 28 - The Darkest Place in the World
Chapter 29 - The Aftermath
Chapter 30 - Clever Little Bitches
Chapter 31 - The Moment We’ve Been Waiting For
Chapter 32 - A Moment in Time
Epilogue - A Moment in Time
Acknowledgments
Credits
Copyright
Prologue
Life After Death
It’s the little things you miss when you die. The feel of sliding into bed when you’re exhausted, the clean scent in the Arizona air after a storm during monsoon season, the flutter in your stomach when you see your crush walking down the hall. My killer took all those things away from me just before my eighteenth birthday.
And because of fate—and a threat from my murderer—my long-lost twin sister, Emma Paxton, stepped into my life.
When I died two weeks ago, I popped into Emma’s world, a world that was about as different from mine as you could get. From that very first moment I saw what Emma saw, went where she went . . . and watched. I watched as Emma reached out to me on Facebook and as someone posing as me told her to visit. I watched as Emma traveled to Tucson, cautiously hopeful about our reunion. I watched as my friends tackled Emma, thinking she was me, and brought her to a party. I stood beside her when she got the note that said I was dead, warning her that if she didn’t continue to pretend to be me, that if she told anyone who she really was, she’d be dead, too.
I watch today as Emma pulls on my favorite thin white tee and swipes my shimmery NARS blush onto her high cheekbones. I can say nothing as she slides into the skinny jeans I used to live in on weekends and sorts through my cherrywood jewelry box for my favorite silver locket, the one that sends rainbow prisms around the room when it catches the light. And I sit silently by as Emma sends a text confirming brunch plans with my best friends, Charlotte and Madeline, even though I would’ve worded it differently. Still, Emma has the basics of me down cold—almost no one has noticed she isn’t me.
Emma puts my phone down, an uneasy look on her face. “Where are you, Sutton?” she asks aloud in a nervous whisper, as if she knows I’m close.
I wish I could send her a message from beyond the grave: I’m here. And this is how I died. Only when I died, my memory died, too. I have glimpses here and there of who I used to be, but only a few solid, fleshed-out moments have bobbed to the surface. My death is as much a mystery to me as it is to Emma. All I know in my heart, in my bones, is that someone killed me. And that same someone is watching Emma as closely as I am.
Does this scare me? Yes. But through Emma, I’ve been given a chance to uncover what happened in those final moments before I took my last breath. And the more I discover about who I was and the secrets I kept, the more I realize how much danger surrounds my long-lost twin.
My enemies are everywhere. And sometimes, those we least suspect turn out to be our biggest threats.
Chapter 1
Charmed Life
“This way to the terrace.” A tanned,