Emma smiled, picturing herself strolling across the main green at Stanford, a to-go coffee mug in her hand. She’d sit on a bench and read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, waiting to meet Ethan after his philosophy seminar. When class let out, he’d give her a big kiss and introduce her to his professor as “my girlfriend, Emma Paxton.”
“I can keep you safe, Emma,” Ethan went on. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
His words brought her crashing down to earth. She pulled back sadly, shaking her head, the spell suddenly broken. “You know I can’t leave Tucson, not while the person who hurt my sister is still out there.” It was completely dark now, the sky bright with stars and the thin crescent of the moon. She looked out across the black expanse of the desert. “When I first started this, I was just trying to survive. But now … I feel like I know Sutton, Ethan. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like she’s here sometimes, still with me, cheering me on. I love her, and I can’t let her down. She deserves justice.” She shook her head again. “I’m either going to solve this thing, or I’m going to die trying.”
I felt my whole being fall very still. No one had ever made a promise like that for me, risked death for me. For once I was glad that Emma couldn’t hear my thoughts. I wasn’t sure I could find the words to tell her how grateful I was.
In the flickering candlelight, Emma saw that the color had drained from Ethan’s face. “Don’t talk like that,” he whispered. “I don’t want to think about anything bad happening to you. I couldn’t take it.”
His hand trembled in hers, and Emma suddenly realized that he had never really processed the danger she was in, had never really understood that a murderer was watching her. Watching them, she thought, remembering what had happened at the Old Tucson Movie Studios.
“Everything is so complicated right now,” she said soothingly. “Let’s see what happens—when the Mercers find out who I am, when you get all those college acceptance letters, when I figure out if I even have time to apply. We can’t decide anything until then, anyway.”
He nodded slowly. “Are there any new leads?”
She shook her head. “No, but I need to find out more about Becky.” She tried to speak firmly, but her voice caught. “I mean, she can barely brush her hair. Could she really put together a scheme like this—kill one of us, make me take Sutton’s place, break into Charlotte’s house to strangle me, somehow trail me all over the place without my noticing? It’s complicated even if you are all there.”
Ethan spoke hesitantly. “She definitely sounds unpredictable.”
Emma could hear the doubt in his voice. She thought back to all the times Becky had surprised her. One minute Becky would be doing something totally weird like crying in the middle of the supermarket over a slightly blemished grapefruit, and the next she’d be smooth-talking a waiter at the local diner into comping their dinner, or sneaking Emma deftly into a Disney movie without buying a ticket. She could be canny sometimes, even clever. She was a survivor. She and Emma were both survivors, and that meant they could be resourceful.
But that didn’t mean she was homicidal. Did it? But then she thought of how Becky had smiled when she called Emma by her real name, with such an eerily calm expression, as though she knew she wasn’t Sutton. As if she were sure of it.
Emma rubbed her eyes, the image of that manila folder coming back to her. “Dr. Banerjee has been her doctor for years. He had a file five inches thick on her. I bet there are session notes, diagnostic tests, all sorts of things in there. If I could get my hands on that, it might answer some questions.”
When she looked back at Ethan, his spine had gone rigid and his lips were pulled in a taut, angry line. His eyes looked black in the dark, unreflective and unreadable. “Psych records are private, Emma,” he said.
She recoiled at the coldness in his voice. “I know that. Trust me, I’m not thrilled at the idea of digging into my mom’s crazy past. But it could give us the answers we’ve been looking for. And we don’t have any other leads.”
He shook his head violently. “No. It’s wrong.”
“Ethan, this could clear Becky!” she exclaimed. A flare of irritation swept through her. Did he want to believe her mother was a murderer?
“You have no right to pry into someone’s head that way!” he snapped. Neither one of them spoke for a moment. Far off in the desert, some coyotes barked.
Then he exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry. I just feel strongly about this.”
At any other time in her life, she would have agreed with him—she didn’t want to go digging through someone’s private records either, particularly not her own mother’s. But the people in Sutton’s life protected their secrets so carefully, and Emma’s safety depended on learning everything she could.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t have access to the files.” Emma sighed. “I don’t really want to look at them, Ethan. I’m just so tired of dead ends.”
He touched her cheek. “I know you’re frustrated.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Emma smiled sadly. “So much for romance, huh?”
A small smile spread across Ethan’s face. “I would say romance isn’t totally off the table,” he whispered into her ear. He nuzzled gently against her neck, kissing her throat softly. Emma shivered at his touch, coiling her fingers in his hair. The heat of their brief argument didn’t dissipate, but it softened, morphing into a different kind of energy. Her nerve endings hummed beneath his fingertips. He kissed her, a longer, deeper kiss than before. She closed her eyes and leaned into him.