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There was a smooth rock ahead, dappled with moonlight. Emma dropped down to sit on it, her limbs aching from running in high heels. As she traced the tiny fissures in the rock’s surface, a memory came back to her from her childhood. Occasionally, her mother had had boyfriends, and even though Becky had abandoned Emma when she was five, Emma still remembered a few of them.
Most of the guys worked as truckers, shifty salesmen, or didn’t have jobs at all, but there was one guy Becky particularly loved named Joe, and Emma had liked him, too. He’d watched cartoons with her and brought her candy and little toys from the 7-Eleven, where he worked the graveyard shift. He was so much nicer than the other guys Becky dated that Emma began to hope Joe was her father—she was dying for one. But then, one day, Joe stopped coming around, and Becky stopped talking about him. “That jerk cheated on me,” Becky snapped when Emma asked where he was. Emma didn’t know what Becky meant—in her world, cheating meant moving your game piece extra spaces in Candy Land. She’d never even seen Becky and Joe play Candy Land together.
Heaving a sigh, Emma slipped off the rock and stretched, knowing she’d have to get back to the party before anyone started asking questions.
A hand clapped down on her shoulder, and Emma jumped. Laurel. It had to be. Images of the bloody tennis racket shot through Emma’s mind. She spun around, certain she’d see Sutton’s sister behind her. But it was Thayer’s hazel eyes that blinked back at her.
“Oh!” Emma whispered, wheeling backward.
Thayer’s white button-down had come untucked at the waist of his trousers. “Are you okay? Did you…hear them?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I heard everything.”
Thayer reached out as if to hug her, then clearly remembering their relationship had changed, awkwardly stuck his hands in his pockets instead. “This was what I was trying to protect you from that night at Sabino,” he said. “I saw your dad on the trail with…well, someone who wasn’t your mom. That’s why I tried to keep you away from them—and why I told you to run.”
Emma’s head snapped up. She’d not been expecting him to say that. “Wait. It was my dad on the trail?”
Thayer exhaled loudly. “Yeah. That’s why your dad ran after us. He’d realized I’d seen him,” he went on, sounding tormented. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was going to…but then I was in the hospital, and then I went back to rehab, and then you stopped returning my emails.”
My head was spinning right along with Emma’s. That desert dust I’d seen on my father. I’d been right. It was him we were running from. Him and some awful, home-wrecking woman. That was why he demanded to know what I saw. But had he come after me to bribe me to stay quiet—or shut me up for good?
“I haven’t told Laurel,” Thayer went on, pausing to wipe sweat from his brow. “And I don’t think you should either.”
Emma stared at him, feeling like her head was stuffed with cotton. “Why not?”
He bit his lip. “She isn’t as strong as you are. I just found out she was a complete mess after she took me to the hospital.”
“Well, she was really angry at me,” Emma pointed out. “You said you thought she wanted to kill me.”
Thayer shook his head. “Yeah, but I was at physical therapy this morning, and a nurse asked me how my girlfriend was. I thought she meant you at first, but she was talking about ‘the blond girl, the girl who stayed the night I was hurt.’ Apparently, even though I told her to go, Laurel stayed in the waiting room, sobbing.” Thayer took a breath, then ran his hand through his hair. “The nurse said she was so hysterical that they gave her a sedative and kept her in the hospital overnight for observation. They didn’t want her driving in that condition.”
Emma blinked as Thayer’s words started to sink in. She laced her hands behind her neck, trying to get her bearings. “Hold on. Laurel was in the hospital all night…and it was my dad at the canyon that night,” she repeated.
“Yeah,” Thayer said softly.
An owl hooted in the distance. A cloud passed over the moon. Emma looked at him. “Did my dad ever say anything about that night to you? Any kind of explanation for why he was there?”
Thayer’s eyes narrowed, and he made a small, incredulous noise at the back of his throat. “I’d say him running me down with your car was a pretty clear indication that he never wanted me mentioning that night again.”
Emma bolted upright, her limbs on fire. “He hit you?”
This isn’t happening, I thought. This cannot be happening. What I saw was no dream. Every last gritty, horrifying detail was real.
Thayer looked at Emma and shrugged. “Who else could it be? Your dad was chasing after us. And whoever hit me was driving your car. He has your keys, right?”
I had dropped my keys beside my car that night, but my dad definitely had a spare set, too.
Emma’s mind reeled, and suddenly everything she had thought to be true was turned on its head, and another picture began to click into place. So Laurel didn’t do it. But someone else was there the night Sutton died. Someone who had a motive to keep Sutton quiet. Mr. Mercer. And then something else occurred to her. What if Mr. Mercer wasn’t just trying to protect his affair? What if Sutton had threatened to tell the police that he’d run down Thayer? What if he’d killed her to shut her up?
But Mr. Mercer was Sutton’s father. Could it really be true?
