“Could’ve fooled me,” Charlotte muttered, and everyone giggled. Emma saw Gabby’s shoulders tense as she plunged forward on the trail.
Luckily, Emma knew the rules of Two Truths and a Lie; she and Alex and a couple of other girls had played it at a sleepover. Everyone took turns making three statements: one false, two true. Everyone else had to guess which was the lie. If they guessed correctly, the statement-tel er had to drink. If they guessed incorrectly, they had to drink.
“I’l go first,” Madeline volunteered, sounding out of breath as they climbed a slope. “One: When my family went to Miami last year, I crashed a party and met JLO. Two: I had a consultation for a boob job at Pima Plastic Surgery last year. And three: I think I know exactly why Thayer left. I think I know where he is, too, but I’m not tel ing.”
The words chil ed Emma. When she swiveled around and looked at Madeline’s face, she couldn’t tel if she was smiling or frowning.
“The boob job has to be the lie,” Charlotte’s voice rang out in the darkness. “Mads has the best rack of al of us!”
“Wrong!” Madeline taunted. “The boob job is true—I made an appointment because I was flirting with the idea of double-Ds. I changed my mind, though, when I found out what the surgery was like. So drink up, Char!”
“So which one was the lie?” Gabby slowed down at the front of the line. “Thayer?”
Madeline shrugged. “I guess you’l never know now.”
Emma fixed her gaze on Madeline. Could she know where Thayer was? Was she trying to protect him from someone—maybe their dad?
The liquid in the bottle made a swishing noise as Charlotte drank. “Okay. Statement one: I cheated on Garrett. Two: I think my dad’s cheating on my mom. And three: I kissed Freddy Krueger in the haunted house.”
“But your mom’s way too hot to cheat on, Char.”
Madeline sounded torn. “I’m not guessing on this one.”
Emma kept her mouth shut, a thought suddenly
swimming into her mind. While waiting for Sutton at Sabino Canyon, she’d seen a man she recognized from Sutton’s Facebook page as Charlotte’s father. He’d seemed flustered, and later, Emma found out Charlotte thought he was away on business.
But she didn’t dare say it, instead maneuvering quietly around two rocks.
“Freddy’s the lie!” Gabby whooped final y.
“Drink up, Gabby!” Charlotte crowed. “I was in the haunted house and felt these hands behind me. Someone spun me around and planted one right on my lips. It was total y Freddy—I saw his freaky nails. He wasn’t a bad kisser, Mads.”
Madeline snorted. “You can have him!”
No one asked Charlotte which one the lie was. After Gabby drank her penalty shot, Madeline said, “Your turn, Sutton.”
Emma took a deep breath and racked her brain for what she could say about Sutton. But then she had another idea.
“Okay. One: I worked at a rol er coaster in Las Vegas one summer,” she started.
“Lie,” Charlotte said automatical y, cutting her off. “You’ve never worked in Vegas.”
“You’re just trying to get drunk, aren’t you, Sutton?”
Madeline passed her the bottle. Emma smiled to herself, but didn’t bother correcting them.
They walked on. A lone coyote howled in the distance. A cactus needle scraped Emma’s shin. Then Gabby turned around and looked at them from the front of the line. “Am I next? One: My sister and I cheated to get on the Hal oween dance court. Two: Kevin and I made out in the haunted house right by the jar ful of fake eyebal s. And three . . .”
She paused for effect. Crickets chirped. “I once touched a dead body.”
The wind shrieked in Emma’s ears, and her heart leapt to her throat.
I shivered. Was it my body? More than ever before, I needed Emma—I needed her to nail Gabby and Lili and expose my murder. I needed them to go down for what they’d done.
Laurel sniffed. “A dead body? Yeah, right.”
Blood pulsed in Emma’s ears. It took everything she had to keep her feet moving forward, because if she tried to turn back, she might get lost . . . or worse.
“But if that’s the lie, that means you cheated to get on the court,” Madeline murmured. “You couldn’t do that, could you?”
“I don’t know, could I?” Gabby taunted. She twisted around and stared straight at Emma. Emma couldn’t see her features, but she could tel Gabby was smirking. “What do you think I’m capable of, Sutton?”
Suddenly, the trail hit an abrupt dead end, and the girls stopped short. Instead of a hot spring burbling before them, they stood at the edge of a cliff. Pebbles cascaded over the side. The faded light showed silhouettes of criss-crossing branches below. It was too dark to tel how far of a drop it was.
A gust of wind howled along the trail, rustling dead leaves at Emma’s feet, and she realized with a jolt how wrong she’d been to think she could handle Gabby. They were in the desert with no flashlights and no cel phone service. One wrong step, one stumble, and Emma would become the headline Gabby and Lili wanted: Teen Dies in Tragic Desert Accident. It was the perfect scenario, real y. Because if Emma died out here, everyone would think Sutton Mercer met her end during an il -fated drinking game. There would no longer be a murder to cover up, no reason for anyone to take Sutton’s place. It would al just be over.
“Uh, Gabby?” Madeline shuffled her feet. “Did we take a wrong turn?”
“Nope.” Gabby smacked the flashlight she was holding and tried the switch again, but it stil didn’t work. “The path continues on the other side of this cliff. It’s a real y easy jump, I swear.”