“Yeah.” Ethan pushed out of the pool. He looked at the flower beds and the cone-shaped bird feeder that hung from a birch tree—anywhere but at Emma.
They stood wet and shivering and almost naked on the deck. Emma wished she could think of something to dispel the tension, but her mind felt blank and waterlogged. A deep groan made her turn. Lights shone through the slats in the fence. A car idled on the street. Emma grabbed Ethan’s arm. “Someone’s here!”
“Shit.” Ethan tucked his shoes and clothes under his arm and ran barefoot to the back of the block fence. Emma shimmied into her pajama pants, wrung out her camisole, and ran after him. He gave Emma a boost, then climbed over himself. On the other side of the Paulsons’ backyard was a dried-out creek bed fil ed with random sticks and rocks, tumbleweeds, and overgrown cacti. The Mercer house was to the left, but Ethan veered right.
“I should get home,” he said.
“You walked here?” Emma asked, surprised.
“Jogged, actual y. I like jogging at night.”
The car’s engine idled on the street. Emma squinted in the darkness. The desert went on forever. “Are you sure you’l be al right?”
“I’l be fine. Catch you later.”
Emma watched Ethan until she could no longer see the reflective patches on the back of his sneakers. Then she fol owed the path to Sutton’s backyard, crept close to the edge of the fence, and emerged onto the driveway next to Laurel’s Jetta. When she looked over, she ful y expected to see a car in the Paulsons’ driveway, maybe even Mr. Paulson prowling around the property with a basebal bat. But the driveway was empty. The newspapers lay in the exact same spots they’d been an hour before. No lights were on inside the house either.
A cold, slimy realization washed over Emma’s skin. The car didn’t belong to the Paulsons at al . Whoever had been idling there, watching them, had been someone else entirely.
Chapter 11
Nothing Like a Threat at 2 A.M.
A few minutes later, Emma scampered up the front walk of the Mercers’ house. The tree outside Sutton’s bedroom window didn’t have a low enough branch to climb back up, so the only way she could get back inside was through the front door.
The key was under a large rock beneath a desert hackberry tree, just as it had been the first night Emma had entered the Mercer home. She slid it into the lock, praying that the Mercers hadn’t set an alarm tonight. The lock turned. Silence. Score.
The door swung open easily, and Emma scuttled inside. The AC was on ful blast, and goose bumps warped her damp skin. The glass panes over the family portraits glimmered in the pale streetlight. Detective Quinlan’s card sat on the console table by the door, just where Sutton’s mother had left it that afternoon. Emma cupped her palm over her wrist and remembered what it had felt like when Ethan rested his fingers there. She shut her eyes and leaned her head against the wal .
What was wrong with her? I wanted to ask. Why hadn’t she kissed him?
Creak. Emma froze. Was that a footstep?
Creak. Creeaaaak. A shadow appeared at the end of the hal . Feet tapped the floor, getting louder and louder, until Laurel stepped into the light. Emma jumped back and suppressed a scream.
“Whoa!” Laurel held up her hands. “Someone’s jumpy!”
She stared closer at Emma. “Why are you al wet?”
Emma glanced down at the soggy camisole clinging to her skin. “I just took a shower,” she said.
“In your clothes?”
Emma walked into the powder room and dried her face with a sea-green hand towel. When she glanced at her reflection, she saw Laurel watching her in the mirror. Had Laurel seen her and Ethan in the pool? Had she heard their conversation? Was she the one who’d turned the headlights on them?
It seemed possible. From the flashes I’d seen of my past, Laurel was a hanger-on, a snoop, a spy. I didn’t know why we’d let her into the Lying Game, but I knew I hadn’t supported it. I think, deep down, I was jealous. Laurel was my parents’ real daughter, clearly loved more than me. I didn’t want my friends to love her more, too. Laurel padded into the powder room and sat down on the closed toilet seat. “So when were you going to tel me?”
“About what?” Emma pretended to be fascinated with the mini soaps lined up on the edge of the sink.
“About who you’ve been seeing. About who you were talking to outside just now.”
Nerves snapped under Emma’s skin. So Laurel had seen. And if Laurel had kil ed Sutton, if Laurel knew Emma was with Ethan, Emma might have just risked Ethan’s life, too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice trembled slightly.
“Come on,” Laurel snapped. “You were with someone named Alex, weren’t you?”
Alex? Emma let the towel go slack in her hands, racking her brain for someone named Alex at Hol ier. The only Alex she knew was her friend from Henderson. . . .
“I saw that text on your phone in Ceramics,” Laurel said, crossing her arms and staring at Emma’s face in the mirror.
“Someone named Alex wrote to you. He said he was thinking of you.” Her eyes sparkled. “Was this the guy you vanished with at your party, too?”
Emma’s head spun. “Alex is a girl,” she blurted.
“Uh-huh.” Laurel rol ed her eyes. “When are you ever going to trust me again?” she asked in a low voice. Something painful passed between the two of them, something Emma couldn’t quite get a grip on. Sutton had hurt Laurel in the past—of that Emma was sure—and it seemed that maybe Laurel had hurt Sutton, too.