Emma handed the silver charm to Ethan. “Someone left it for Sutton at the country club. There was a note attached.” A chil ran down her spine as she relayed what the note had said.
A motorcycle rumbled in the distance. Ethan turned the charm over in his hands. “I don’t know anything about a train, Emma.”
Emma’s heart tugged when Ethan cal ed her by her real name. It was such a relief. But it also felt dangerous. The kil er had told her to tel no one. And she’d broken the rule.
“But it sounds like whoever gave it to you was part of the prank,” Ethan went on, “or a victim of it.”
Emma nodded.
They were silent for a moment, listening to the sounds of a lone basketbal bouncing on the far court. Then Emma reached in her pocket. “I have something to show you.” She passed her iPhone to him, her stomach flipping over as their fingers accidental y brushed. Ethan was cute—real y cute.
I had to admit Ethan was cute, too—in that disheveled, brooding, mystery-boy way. It was fun to watch my sister’s crush develop. It made me feel closer to her, like it was something we would’ve obsessed over together if I were stil alive.
Emma cleared her throat as Ethan scrol ed through the page she’d loaded. “It’s a list of everyone in Sutton’s life,”
she explained, the words tumbling quickly out of her mouth.
“I’ve gone through everything—Sutton’s Facebook, her phone, her emails. And now I’m almost positive I’ve got the date of her death narrowed down to August thirty-first.”
Ethan turned toward her. “How can you be sure?”
Emma took a quick breath. “Check this out.” She tapped the Facebook icon. “I wrote to Sutton at ten-thirty the night of the thirty-first.” She moved the screen over so Ethan could read her note: This will sound crazy, but I think we’re related. You’re not by any chance adopted, are you? “And then Sutton responded at twelve-fifty-six, here.” Emma scrol ed down the message page and showed what Sutton had written back: OMG. I can’t believe this. Yes, I was totally adopted . . .
An unreadable expression flickered across Ethan’s face.
“Then how can you think she died on the thirty-first if she was writing you messages on Facebook?”
“I was the only person Sutton wrote or talked to that night.” Emma scrol ed through Sutton’s cal log from the thirty-first. The last answered cal was from Lilianna Fiorel o, one of Sutton’s friends, at 4:32 P.M. Then at 8:39, MISSED
CALL, LAUREL. Three more missed cal s at 10:32, 10:45, and 10:59 from Madeline. Emma flipped ahead to the next day’s log. The missed cal s began again the fol owing morning: 9:01, Madeline; 9:20, Garrett; 10:36, Laurel.
“Maybe she was busy and didn’t pick up her phone,”
Ethan suggested. He took back the phone and clicked to Sutton’s Facebook page, scrol ing through her Wal posts. Emma grasped Sutton’s locket. “I’ve looked through Sutton’s entire cal log back to December. Practical y every cal she gets, she answers. And if she doesn’t answer it, she cal s whoever it was back later.”
“Then what about this post she wrote on the thirty-first?”
Ethan asked, pointing to the screen. “Couldn’t this mean she was avoiding everyone?” The last post Sutton had ever written was a few hours before Emma’s note: Ever think about running away? Sometimes I do.
Emma shook her head vehemently. “Nothing fazed my sister. Not even being strangled.” Just saying the words my sister connected her to Sutton in a deep, powerful way. At first, Emma had wondered if Sutton real y 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 kil s her? It’s too much of a coincidence. What if Sutton didn’t write this—what if the kil er 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 kil er to cover her ass.”
Ethan rol ed a forgotten tennis bal on the ground with the sole of his foot. A gash along the seam marred the bright yel ow fabric. “It stil doesn’t explain the note Sutton wrote you a few hours later tel ing you to come to Tucson. Who wrote that?” The tremble in his voice betrayed his nerves. A feathery chil darted along Emma’s spine. “I think the kil er wrote both notes,” she whispered. “Once the kil er 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 stil 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 fal into enemy hands one day. There’s nothing anywhere about what she did the night she died.”
“What about receipts in pockets?” Ethan tried.