The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,88

first, Emma had wondered if Sutton really had run away—maybe sticking her long-lost twin sister in her place had been part of an elaborate prank. But once someone nearly strangled Emma in Charlotte’s house, she became convinced Sutton’s death was for real.

“Ethan, think about it,” she went on. “Sutton writes this random post about wanting to run away . . . and then someone kills her? It’s too much of a coincidence. What if Sutton didn’t write this—what if the killer did? That way, if someone noticed Sutton was missing, they’d read her Facebook and assume she ran away, not died. It was a way for the killer to cover her ass.”

Ethan rolled a forgotten tennis ball on the ground with the sole of his foot. A gash along the seam marred the bright yellow fabric. “It still doesn’t explain the note Sutton wrote you a few hours later telling you to come to Tucson. Who wrote that?” The tremble in his voice betrayed his nerves.

A feathery chill darted along Emma’s spine. “I think the killer wrote both notes,” she whispered. “Once the killer realized I existed, she wanted me here so I could slip into Sutton’s life. No body, no crime.”

Ethan’s eyes darted across the court, like he still didn’t believe Emma, but I was almost positive my sister was right. I woke up in Emma’s life the night of August 31, just hours before Emma discovered the snuff film of me. I doubted I’d straddled both Alive Sutton and Ghost Sutton worlds at the same time.

Emma gazed at the dark silhouettes of trees in the distance. “So what was Sutton doing that night? Where was she, who was she with?”

“Have you found any hints in her room?” Ethan asked. “Any emails, notes in her calendar . . . ?”

Emma shook her head. “I’ve scoured her journal. But it’s so cryptic and random, like she assumed it was going to fall into enemy hands one day. There’s nothing anywhere about what she did the night she died.”

“What about receipts in pockets?” Ethan tried. “Crumpled-up notes in her trash can?”

“Nope.” Emma’s eyes dropped to the space between her feet. Suddenly, she felt exhausted.

Ethan sighed. “Okay. How about her friends? Do you know where they were that night?”

“I asked Madeline,” Emma said. “She told me she didn’t remember.”

“That’s convenient.” Ethan scuffed the tip of his sneaker over the court. “I could see Madeline doing it, though. The beautiful, unhinged ballerina. Like Black Swan for real.”

Emma gave a short laugh. “That’s a little bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” She’d hung out several times with Madeline over the past week. They’d even had a heart-to-heart about Thayer and a few laughs in a spa hot tub. In those moments, Madeline had reminded Emma of her tough-but-caring friend Alexandra Stokes, who lived in Henderson, Nevada.

Emma looked at Ethan. “Maybe Madeline was telling the truth. I mean, do you remember what you were doing on the thirty-first?”

“Actually, I do. It was the first day of the meteor shower.”

“The Perseids.” Emma nodded. The first time she’d met Ethan, he’d been stargazing.

A shy smile crept onto Ethan’s face like he was remembering the moment, too. “Yep, I was probably on my front porch. The shower goes on for, like, a week.”

“And you were camping out there because stars are more interesting than people, huh?” Emma teased.

Pink colored Ethan’s cheeks and he looked away. “Some people.”

“Should I ask Madeline again?” Emma pressed. “Do you think she’s hiding something?”

Ethan shook his head slowly. “You never know with those girls. Not that I was privy to their inner-circle secrets, but something has always seemed off about Madeline and Charlotte. Before you came to town, when Sutton was still alive, it constantly seemed like they were vying for her attention and her position at the same time.” He stared off into the distance. “Like they loved her and hated her.”

Gripping Sutton’s phone, Emma touched the Twitter icon and called up each of Sutton’s friends’ pages, finding nothing remarkable on the thirty-first. But when she flipped to the tweets on September 1, something on Madeline’s page caught her eye. She’d written a shout-out to @Chamberlainbabe, Charlotte’s Twitter handle. Thanks for being there for me last night, Char. True friends stick together, no matter what.

“True friends,” Ethan said sarcastically. “Aw.”

“More like Huh?” Something wasn’t right. “Madeline and Charlotte aren’t touchy-feely. At all.” To Emma, they seemed more like uneasy comrades in the same popular-girl army. Then Ethan pointed to last night.